Fantasy world with absurd physics

A man stood beside a rectangular table, his hand reaching toward the papers scattered across its surface. With a fountain pen, he jotted down a sequence of symbols and variables.
[n → p + e- + -νe]
He longed to test his hypothesis, but he was nowhere near a proper laboratory. He looked out the window, where the cold glow of moonlight bathed the floor.
"Hah... Just another night," he sighed.
He walked toward the door, only to halt halfway between the table and the threshold. An eerie realization struck him. Looking down, he creased his brow in utter confusion—he was casting two distinct shadows. One followed his boots naturally, while the other remained static, anchored back beside the dark oak table.
Driven by curiosity, he decided to test the phenomenon. As he raised his right hand, the distant shadow mirrored the movement in perfect synchronization. He knew without a doubt that the distant shadow was his own, yet he was deeply baffled by the spatial absurdity of its position.
"Excuse me," a voice called out.
Another shadow materialized beside him the moment the voice faded. His heart pounded violently against his chest as he leapt away from the shadow's reach.
"What in the world is this absurd phenomenon?!" he yelled.
The sharp creak of an opening door echoed through the room. Turning toward the sound, he froze. Standing in the doorway was a figure unlike any he had ever seen—adorned with long, pointed ears. Thinking he was hallucinating, he tried to force himself awake, but his senses remained sharp. What stood before him was undeniably real.
"Is something the matter, my new lord?" the figure greeted smoothly.
"What the heck is this place?!" another voice shouted from somewhere outside.
The voice sounded oddly familiar, though he couldn't quite place it yet.
"Who is that person yelling?" he asked the long-eared figure.
"Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac," the figure replied.
He wanted to meet him. Before he could even take a step, the shadow beside the table vanished, reappearing five meters in front of him as if reacting to his intent.
Intrigued, he decided to test another hypothesis. He stepped back toward the table, and sure enough, the shadow snapped back to its original position beside the dark oak surface.
"Is something the matter, my new lord?" the figure asked.
"Nothing at all," he replied smoothly. "Could you bring him to me?"
"As you wish," the figure answered.
Before she had even finished turning around, her own shadow vanished and reappeared five meters ahead of her. A realization struck him: this absurd phenomenon was entirely normal to her. It was a fundamental law of this world—ordinary to its inhabitants, yet utterly bizarre to an Earthling.
His mind immediately raced, searching for a mathematical formulation to explain the anomaly. He needed to discuss this with Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac as soon as possible.
Walking back to the table, he stared down at the paper he had scribbled on earlier. He racked his brain for the right variables, but frustration crept in. He couldn't possibly define the variables without first understanding the underlying mechanism.
"Mr. Fermi," the voice called out.
He looked toward the source of the voice. Two figures stood before him. One wore a coat and tie much like his own, while the other was a humanoid entity woven entirely of pure light, adorned with a floating shawl.