The world returned as a breath.
Cold. Damp. Wrong.
He awoke gasping, lungs dragging in thick, wet air as if he had drowned in it. A ragged cough tore from his throat, and he rolled onto his side, fingers clawing through the rotting moss beneath him. Mud clung to his skin. His clothes what remained of them were torn, stained with dried blood and dark soil.
He didn't know where he was.
Worse he didn't know who he was.
No name surfaced in his mind. No home. No past. Just the trembling of his limbs, the pounding in his head, and the suffocating silence around him.
The forest stretched outward in all directions, vast and ancient. Gnarled trees loomed like towering monuments to something long dead. Their branches twisted together high above, blotting out the sky, letting only a cold, grey haze leak through. The air was heavy with the scent of decay moss, mildew, and something else. Sweet and metallic. Old blood, maybe.
He forced himself upright, breath ragged, muscles sore like he had been buried under centuries of stone.
His reflection stared up from a pool of stagnant water near his feet.
A pale, thin face. High cheekbones, dirt-streaked skin. His hair was black, long, and tangled, as if it hadn't been washed in weeks. And his eyes normal, but not.
His irises were deep black. Not inhuman. Not monstrous. But strange enough that, for a moment, even he stared at them in unfamiliarity.
Who am I?
The question echoed in his mind, but no answer came. Only a flicker like a dream fading too fast to grasp.
Then pain.
It slammed into his chest like a wave. He doubled over, clutching the ground as something hot and electric surged through his veins. Behind his eyes, the world shattered.
Galaxies spun.
Stars were born, then consumed.
Black suns, bleeding light. Wormholes twisting space into ribbons.
Then silence.
He gasped, shivering. The visions faded, but something remained. A pressure in his chest. A presence. The forest looked the same, but he did not.
Something inside him had changed.
No, not changed awakened.
He staggered to his feet.
Something cracked behind him.
He turned.
A figure stood between the trees.
It was tall wrongly tall. Pale skin stretched too tight. Limbs too long, as if they'd been assembled from parts meant for something else. Its face was covered in a loose veil of moss, eyes peeking through like holes burned into paper.
Then another appeared to the left.
And another to the right.
They didn't move like animals. They didn't breathe. They just stood there. Watching.
Waiting.
He took a step back.
He had no weapon. No shield. No idea what he could do only the thrum of strange power echoing under his skin, like thunder trapped beneath flesh.
The creatures took a step forward, as if sensing his fear.
His fists clenched.
He didn't know why he had woken in this place, or what had happened to bring him here. But something inside him knew this much:
He had died.
And something else had come back in his place.