Kira crashed into his chest.
She hit him hard, ignoring the thick layer of mud, gore, and beetle brain matter caking his ruined silver armor. Her arms wrapped tight around his neck, burying her face into his shoulder.
Sol tried to lift his arms to hug her back. He really did. His brain gave the command, but his muscles simply refused to answer.
The heavy, iridescent length of the Dreadwing Blade slipped from his numb fingers. It hit the bloody mud with a dull, wet thud.
The exact second the sword left his hand, the adrenaline that had been holding his broken body together just completely evaporated. It was like soone pulled a plug in the back of his head. The massive influx of essence he had sucked from the Rockhorn Beetle had stitched up his torn flesh just enough to keep him from bleeding out, but it hadn’t done a damn thing for his totally drained Sun Core. He was running on less than fus. He was running on empty, scorched pathways.
A fresh, blinding wave of agony flared from the puncture wound in his stomach.
Sol let out a ragged, choked gasp. And his knees buckled.
Kira felt his dead weight instantly. She grunted, hurriedly widening her stance and catching him under the arms before he could face-plant into the muck.
"Sol? Hey, Sol!" Her voice sounded muffled, like she was shouting at him underwater.
He tried, really tried to keep his eyes open, but didn’t succeed much, as his eyelids continued to feel heavier and heavier. He saw the warriors rushing over. He saw Zeyra finally jogging up to them, stopping a few feet away. The freshly minted Layer 1 girl just stared at him, her dark eyes wide, occasionally flashing with a hint of erald greed.
Sol wanted to tell Kira he was fine, just tired. But his mouth wouldn’t move. The dark spots swarming his vision suddenly violently expanded, swallowing the bright morning sun, the bloody clearing, and the cracked Veynar walls.
Everything went pitch black.
The heavy, thick mud of the battlefield completely vanished. The crushing exhaustion, the burning hole in his side, the sll of cooked beast brains... all of it just blinked out of existence.
Sol opened his eyes, and tried to look around, instead of harsh, blinding sunlight, the gray, overcast sky felt impossibly low.
A loud, chanical roar ripped past his left ear. He flinched hard, his hand instinctively grabbing for the hilt of his blade at his hip.
His hand grabbed nothing but the empty air.
Sol blinked confusedly, his vision slowly coming into focus. He wasn’t in a jungle. He wasn’t surrounded by the fresh corpses of giant monsters.
He was standing on the edge of a sidewalk.
Cars rushed past him, a blur of tal and humming engines. A crowd of people brushed by his shoulders, all staring down at glowing rectangles in their hands or staring blankly ahead. Nobody looked at him. Nobody even acknowledged he was there.
He looked at his hands. No spear. No blood. Just pale, clean skin, completely devoid of the thick calluses he had built up from swinging a heavy spear all day in the jungle.
He looked up at the towering concrete and glass buildings lining the street. It was incredibly familiar, yet unfamiliar, like he knew this street corner, but couldn’t recall the na. It all felt wrong. The air was too clean. There was no sll of ozone or rotting leaves.
He felt entirely out of place, like a ghost haunting a life that didn’t belong to him anymore.
Suddenly a hand lightly tapped his shoulder.
"What is wrong with you?" a voice asked.
Sol jerked around, every muscle in his body tensing for a fight, and turned around.
But there was no beast. There was no enemy.
Instead, "She" was standing there. Her hair caught the morning light the exact way he rembered.She was wearing a loose sweater, carrying a canvas tote bag slung over one shoulder. She looked up at him with that familiar, slightly annoyed, but mostly fond expression that used to make his teenage chest tight.
His ex-girlfriend. His first love.
Sol just stared at her. His brain misfired. He tried to say her na, but his tongue felt like a piece of dry leather.
"Why are you spacing out like this?" she sighed, tugging on his sleeve. "Hurry up and go, we are already late for school."
"School," Sol repeated, the word sounded foreign in his mouth, his voice sounding hollow, detached.
"Yeah, dummy. School. Co on."
She turned and started walking down the sidewalk.
He absentmindedly followed her. His boots... no, sneakers... hit the pavent with a dull, rubbery thud.
The environnt warped. One second he was walking past a coffee shop, and the absolute next second, they were standing in front of the heavy, rusted chain-link gates of the high school.
Sol stopped dead in his tracks. He stared at the brick building.
It was just a normal school. But staring at those double doors, a sudden, massive lump ford in his throat. His chest squeezed so tight it physically hurt. He couldn’t figure out why he suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe.
"Move it," she laughed, pushing him lightly through the doors.
He stumbled into the hallway.
It was a sensory overload of mundane noise. The harsh, loud slamming of tal lockers. The squeak of rubber soles on cheap linoleum floors. The overlapping, chaotic chatter of hundreds of teenagers complaining about howork, laughing about weekend plans, arguing over nothing.
The harsh glare of the fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with a low, annoying hum.
Familiar faces walked past him. People he used to know. People he used to call friends, acquaintances, rivals. So of them made eye contact. They waved, flashing easy smiles, and greeted him happily as they passed by to get to their classes.
Sol just raised a numb hand, greeting them back automatically, letting muscle mory carry him through the strange, echoing halls.
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