They spilled from darkness onto the hillside in a tangle of limbs and gasping breaths, Apollo's lungs expanding with air so clean it almost hurt.
The golden bow banged against his back as he rolled onto all fours, fingers digging into what his mind struggled to process, real grass, actual soil, not the spongy fungal floor that had yielded beneath their feet for what felt like eternity.
"We're out," he managed, the words scraping his smoke-raw throat. "We actually made it out."
The sensory assault overwhelmed him. Sunlight, honest, golden sunlight, warmed his face without the sickly filter of luminescent caps overhead.
Wind brushed his skin, carrying scents of wildflowers and distant pine rather than the cloying sweetness of spores. Shadows fell exactly where they should, cast by nothing more sinister than passing clouds.
