Yuto drifted before awareness returned, suspended somewhere without weight or direction.

There was no pain at first.

Only silence.

A vast, floating quiet that felt unfamiliar after the violence of the battlefield.

Then sensation slowly reassembled itself.

Warmth beneath his feet.

Soft, shifting sand pressing gently against his soles.

He was standing.

The world around him came into focus in fragments, as if his mind was rebuilding it piece by piece from memory rather than sight.

An island stretched out in every direction, endless and unbroken. Pale sand shimmered under a soft, diffused light that did not cast harsh shadows. The air was clean, cool in a way that soothed rather than chilled, carrying a faint saltiness that clung to each breath he took.

Yuto looked down at his hands.

No blood.

No dirt.

No tremor.

Only stillness.

He knelt slowly, drawn by an instinct he couldn’t name, and touched the surface of a shallow pool nestled in the sand. The water was impossibly clear, so pure it reflected nothing but depth. He cupped his hands and drank.

The moment the water touched his tongue, something in him loosened.

Not just thirst, but strain. Fatigue. The accumulated weight of strain he hadn’t realized he was carrying. It dissolved instantly, replaced by a cooling calm that spread through his chest and limbs like a slow, gentle tide.

He exhaled through his nose.

Long.

Steady.

For the first time in what felt like too long, nothing hurt.

He stood again, unhurried, and began walking deeper into the island.

The sand shifted softly beneath each step, warm but never burning. Ahead, trees rose in clusters, their trunks smooth and pale, their leaves swaying in a breeze that never grew stronger or weaker. The motion was rhythmic, almost hypnotic, like the world itself was breathing in a slow, stable cadence.

Bird calls echoed somewhere far above, distant and scattered, never intrusive. Small shapes moved through the undergrowth, creatures too quick to fully focus on, slipping between roots and brush without fear or urgency. Everything here existed without pressure, without threat, without hesitation.

Yuto kept walking.

His shoulders lowered without him noticing. His breathing slowed to match the environment. Even his thoughts felt lighter, unburdened by the constant sharp edges of awareness that battle usually carved into him.

Peaceful.

The word came without effort.

Perfect.

Like this was the version of the world that had been waiting beneath everything else, hidden until now.

He stopped between two clusters of trees and looked around again, letting the stillness settle deeper.

No tension.

No danger.

No need to move faster than he wanted.

Just existence.

Then he looked up.

The sky did not match the rest of the world.

It was bright, almost luminous, stretching endlessly overhead in a smooth gradient of pale color. But there was no source to it. No warmth of direct light. No defined center. No sun.

Yuto’s brows drew together slightly.

That shouldn’t be possible.

A sky without a sun did not make sense. Even in places of cloud or storm, there was always something behind it, a presence that justified the light. This was different. The brightness had no origin. It simply existed, spread evenly across everything like a surface instead of a sky.

He lowered his gaze again, continuing forward.

The forest remained calm.

Leaves swayed.

Creatures moved.

Sand shifted.

But his attention kept drifting upward against his will.

Back to the empty sky.

No sun.

Just light without a source.

The thought formed slowly at first, unsteady, like something trying to surface from beneath deeper water.

A sunless sky.

He blinked.

Kept walking.

A sunless sky.

The repetition returned, sharper now, threading itself into his awareness without permission.

A sunless sky.

His steps slowed.

A faint pressure began building in his chest, subtle at first, like tension he couldn’t quite locate. The peace of the island remained unchanged, but something in him was no longer aligning with it.

A sunless sky.

Again.

A sunless sky.

Again.

A sunless sky.

The words no longer felt like observation.

They felt like recognition.

Yuto stopped completely.

The forest continued moving around him, untouched by his stillness. Leaves swayed. Distant calls echoed. Sand continued to breathe beneath the wind.

But none of it reached him properly anymore.

He had seen this before.

The realization didn’t arrive suddenly.

It settled.

Heavy and exact.

A place like this. A sky like this. Light without source, without anchor, without truth behind it.

His mind resisted the conclusion for a fraction of a second, as if refusing to accept what it already understood.

Then it clicked into place fully.

Astral Realm.

The name locked everything into structure.

The moment it did, the island reacted.

Not physically at first, but conceptually, as if the recognition itself was an intrusion.

The sand beneath his feet began to dull, losing its softness. The warmth drained from the air in subtle increments. The gentle sway of trees stuttered, their motion repeating in faint, unnatural loops. The distant animal sounds distorted, stretching and compressing like echoes caught in a narrowing tunnel.

Yuto took a step back.

The ground cracked.

Not like stone breaking, but like paper tearing along invisible seams.

A sharp pain lanced through his skull.

Then another.

And another.

The island fractured.

Edges of the world peeled away into darkness, revealing nothing beneath. The trees lost cohesion, their forms unraveling into thin strands of fading light. The sand dissolved upward in drifting fragments, as though gravity itself had lost meaning.

The sky remained for a moment longer.

Then it collapsed inward.

Yuto gasped, the sound ripped from him violently as reality snapped back into place.

Cold.

Hard.

Sharp.

Stone pressed against his back and shoulders.

Wind that carried no softness cut across his skin.

The smell of dust, blood, and scorched earth filled his lungs immediately, replacing the nonexistent purity of the dream.

Pain returned all at once.

Not gradually, but in a full, brutal wave.

His ribs flared with sharp intensity every time his chest moved. His head throbbed in deep pulses that echoed behind his eyes. Every muscle felt heavy, strained, as if his body had been rebuilt incorrectly during the time he was gone.

The battlefield returned with it.

The wasteland basin stretched around him, broken and uneven, marked by shattered stone and torn ground. The aftermath of violent impact was everywhere, scorched lines, crushed rock, disturbed earth that still hadn’t settled.

Shinny was there.

Tami too.

The beetle’s massive form loomed nearby, partially blocking the wind.

And Maya.

All of them leaned in slightly toward him, their attention focused entirely on his return. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Yuto’s heart gave a small, sharp jolt.

Maya was closest.

She had him resting in her lap.

Her hand supported the back of his head with careful steadiness, fingers steady against his hair, keeping him from lying flat on the rough ground. Her posture was composed, but her face was not what he expected.

The usual emptiness was gone.

Not entirely, but enough.

Concern sat behind her eyes, visible and unhidden, like something she had not intended to let surface but could not fully contain.

For a moment, the noise of battle, the pain, the exhaustion, all of it dimmed.

She cares.

The thought arrived without resistance.

Strange.

Simple.

Unfiltered.

The sensation almost softened everything else for a brief second, like the body forgetting to be in pain because the mind had found something else to focus on.

Then the rest of reality reasserted itself.

Yuto groaned as he tried to shift.

"He’s up," Tami said, exhaling with relief mixed with disbelief.

"Yeah," Yuto muttered, voice rough. "I am."

He pushed himself upward, every movement sending sharp reminders through his ribs and chest, but he forced himself upright anyway. His hand pressed briefly against the ground for balance before he let it go.

"What," he said, breath uneven but steadying, "you think I’ll let a few broken ribs and blood loss keep me down?"

Tami let out a short, strained laugh, the kind that came from exhaustion more than humor.

Maya did not laugh.

She kept watching him.

Quiet.

Focused.

But something in her expression eased, just slightly, as if a pressure she had been holding had finally released.

Relief, contained but present, settled beneath her usual restraint.