Consciousness returned in fragments.
First: pain. Every nerve screaming.
Second: cold. Bone-deep, unnatural cold.
Third: silence. Complete. Absolute. Wrong.
I opened my eyes to find myself... somewhere else.
Not the battlefield. Not Azure Peak. Not anywhere I recognized. A void-like space stretched infinitely in all directions, not black, not white, just... empty. Colorless. Dimensionless. Like standing inside a blank canvas.
[SYSTEM REBOOTING...]
[LOCATION: UNKNOWN]
[QI DENSITY: IMMEASURABLE]
[SPATIAL COORDINATES: ERROR]
[BOSS, WHERE ARE WE?]
The figure in white robes stood twenty meters away, studying me with eyes that held too much knowledge. Up close, he looked young, maybe thirty, but his gaze carried the weight of centuries.
"Finally," he said. "A reincarnator. It's been so long since I've encountered one."
[ALERT: HE KNOWS]
[HE KNOWS EVERYTHING]
[ABORT PROTOCOL: UNAVAILABLE]
[WE'RE TRAPPED]
