The first sensation he experienced was grass.

Cool and moist against his palms, impossibly soft after the emptiness he had just left behind. Ethan opened his eyes. Twice. His body straightened, allowing the world to materialize bit by bit.

Grass.

Only that remained. All around him, far into the distance and beyond - an immense field of green, gently swaying with the wind, endless and unhindered by any visible limits, each blade reflecting sunlight and returning it slowly and in waves.

Flat horizons stretched in every direction, ending where earth met sky and leaving nothing between the two.

Nearby, winding gracefully through the sea of greenery, there ran a stream. Tiny - not even wide enough for him to take a single step across - crystal clear, with water that flowed with quiet persistence over smooth pebbles.

Ethan turned, taking it all in.

Then he raised his eyes to the sky.

The birds were the first things he spotted. A flock of them flying in perfect synchronization over a blue sky that, with an odd intensity, reminded him of home. Ethan followed their trajectory upwards without even realizing he was doing so.

It was the next object that caught his attention.

Two of them.

He stood there dumbfounded.

One was enormous - larger than any sun in the skies he had known, glowing with such force that even the air surrounding it shimmered.

There was a second sun not too far away from it, smaller, closer in size to what he was used to, but definitely its own entity - two sources of warmth, two blazing balls of burning gases inhabiting the same sky like the cosmos simply could not decide which one should be enough.

"Wow," Ethan murmured, the word escaping him with unusual significance. "I guess I’m really in another world now."

He watched the larger sun, growing brighter and brighter within the borders of his vision, until his gaze locked onto it without thinking.

The pain arrived instantaneously.

"Shit, my eyes, shit!"

He tore his gaze away from it and, with a scream of anguish, placed his hand against his forehead, frantically blinking to dispel the painful afterimages that clouded his eyesight.

As if in response to the pain, his eyes started watering. He kept rubbing them until the effect subsided, and then he stared at the grass before him for several more seconds.

Straightening up, Ethan took a deep breath and released it, letting the world continue moving around him.

"Right," he mumbled, surveying his surroundings more carefully. "So... Where exactly am I?"

There was no answer except that given by the field. Identical horizons in every direction - flat and endless, green and undisturbed.

No plumes of smoke signaling settlements nearby. No paths running across the grass. No sounds other than those of the wind and the murmuring current of the stream.

"I have to find some people here," he declared, addressing himself in the same straightforward way he usually did in case of problems. "Find someone who would give me answers. See what is happening in this world and how I can save it from whatever threatens it."

Making a decision, he turned, pointed himself in a certain direction, and began moving forwards.

His first step was absolutely normal.

As well as his second one.

The eighth, however, stopped him cold.

Something was not right.

Not in an unpleasant way - but rather something had changed since he first started moving. Not that anything had been done wrong... But everything looked different somehow. As if rearranged. He lowered his hands and, inexplicably, opened them, watching as if making sure the mechanism still worked.

Something about his hands was not normal. They appeared smooth, devoid of the slightest sign of wear. Gone were the calluses of years past and multiple jobs he had done in his life. And he could not help noticing that something was wrong with their proportions - they looked shorter, or maybe even narrower...

Then he realized what else was wrong with him.

Or rather with his perception of himself. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

His body felt light, as though it had lost several pounds. Every trace of exhaustion he had carried for years was simply gone. He felt like a teenage boy again, alive and energetic, his body full of strength that it still retained but had been long dormant.

He froze dead.

"This isn’t right."

"Wait."

His voice.

The sound stopped him cold. This was not his voice - his own tone had been low, almost hoarse, and this one rang clear and sharp, as if he had regained his youth once more.

He recognized it only too well - he had last heard it many years ago, as a kid in his teens whose voice cracked for the first time.

"Wait -"

Saying it once again, he listened to himself repeating this word, with the same tone he was unfamiliar with, to make sure that the sensation was not a product of his imagination.

This was not him.

His eyes turned towards the stream.

He moved to the bank and crouched over the water.

Staring into the reflective surface below him, he went still.

Because the face looking back at him was not his own.