Darkness did not lift all at once.
It peeled away.
Slowly—reluctantly—like something that did not want him to wake.
At first, there was only sensation. Not pain. Pain was too small a word. What flooded him was pressure—vast, crushing, all-consuming—so immense it made the agony of the Thousand Hammer Crucible feel distant by comparison. Every nerve screamed at once, then went silent, then screamed again in waves so dense they blurred into one another.
Luca opened his eyes.
Or tried to.
His vision fractured immediately—shards of light and shadow overlapping, sliding out of alignment like broken glass that refused to settle. The world lurched violently, and a migraine tore through his skull so fierce it made thought itself feel dangerous.
W–where… am I…?
The question barely formed.
