[Welcome back, Host.]
The sound didn't just leave his throat—it tore free like a blade dragging through meat and memory. His lungs convulsed. His hands spasmed. Sweat poured from him in sheets, clinging to his chest like wet silk, his hair matted and slick with salt and fever.
The air burned.
The sky was wrong.
The trees — wrong. The wind — wrong.
No.
Not wrong.
Mortal.
Just 'mortal'
No singing stars. No whispering voids. No impossible colors bleeding from the clouds. Just the taste of dirt. The ache of breath. The ordinary, 'boring', 'beautiful' pain of being a man.
He collapsed backward into the earth, gasping.
The stars above were still.
The moon did not weep.
The grass didn't breathe.
This was 'the ridge'
The same ridge where it had all begun—where he'd kissed Eli's temple, bleeding and betrayed. Where he'd thrown himself into the abyss below the Dark Continent. Where he'd stopped being Atlas, and started becoming something else.
Now he was back.
