From Moving Crates to Killing Gods-Chapter 57: Wrong Sky

Darkness wrapped around me like a thick blanket, heavy and complete. I floated in it, weightless, formless, a consciousness without a body. Pain flickered at the edges of my awareness, a steady pulsing could be felt behind my eyes, but it seemed distant, unimportant. I couldn’t remember falling asleep, but I must have.

The peaceful emptiness felt like a gift, a shelter from something my mind wasn’t ready to remember.

Voices drifted through the darkness, familiar but strangely distorted, as if reaching me from underwater.

"...never seen that much blood from just training..."

"...his nose, his ears..."

"...like his brain was trying to escape..."

I wanted to tell them I was fine, that they shouldn’t worry, but my mouth wouldn’t move. My body remained a distant concept, something theoretical rather than physical. The darkness pulled me deeper, and the voices faded away.

When awareness returned, light pressed against my eyelids. I managed to crack them open, just slightly. The effort felt monumental, as if my eyelids weighed more than Finn.

"He moved!" That was Kira’s voice, close by.

"Allaran?" Phinyx leaned into my field of vision, his face unusually serious. "Can you hear me?"

I tried to speak, but produced only a dry rasp. My throat felt like I’d swallowed sand. My tongue lay thick and useless in my mouth.

"Don’t try to talk." Kira appeared beside Phinyx, her brow furrowed with concern. "You’ve been out for almost twenty hours."

Twenty hours? That couldn’t be right. I’d just been running in the training room, pushing for my hundred laps, using Quickstep to...

Memory crashed back like a physical blow. The Quickstep spell. The blur of motion. My body moving faster than it was meant to, space itself seemed to fold around me. Then the collapse, the searing pain in my skull, the feeling of something breaking inside my mind.

"Water." The word scraped past my lips, barely audible.

Phinyx disappeared from view, returning moments later with a cup. Kira slid her arm beneath my shoulders, helping me lift my head just enough to drink. The water was blissfully cool against my raw throat.

"What happened?" Kira asked, lowering my head back to the pillow. "One minute you were running, the next you were... everywhere at once."

I wanted to explain about Quickstep, about my intelligence reaching level 10, about the breakthrough I’d achieved after months of failure. But forming words required more energy than I possessed. Instead, I managed a single word.

"Later."

"Rest vibe, healing vibe," Phinyx murmured, his hands making gentle gestures above me. A familiar warmth washed over my body, dulling the edges of my pain. My eyelids grew heavy once more, and I surrendered to the pull of sleep.

The next time consciousness returned, the light had changed, casting long shadows across my room. Voices again, but different this time.

"...running faster than should be possible..." That was Rolen’s deep, measured voice.

"Damian said it’s some kind of magic." Finn, his tone excited despite the circumstances. "Not an ability like ours, but something he learned from books."

"Magic?" Rolen sounded skeptical. "Something like that exists?"

"Apparently. But it has limits, backlash. Look what it did to him."

I felt a presence near my bed, someone leaning closer to examine me.

"The bleeding’s stopped at least." Rolen again, his voice closer now. "But he looks... drained. Like something vital was leeched out of him."

"Mia was asking about him." Finn’s voice had softened, grown more personal. "She worries about all of us."

"Your girl’s got a kind heart." Rolen’s tone carried a gentle teasing. "She’s good for you."

"She’s not my..." Finn began, then asked. "You think I have a chance?"

Their voices continued, but I couldn’t hold onto consciousness. The darkness claimed me once more, deeper and more complete than before.

I dreamed of running, of movement so pure it transcended physical form. Of space folding around me like paper, of distance becoming meaningless. In the dream, there was no pain, no limits, just the exhilaration of perfect motion.

The dream fractured when a cool hand pressed against my forehead, startling me back to dim awareness.

"Fever’s gone." A voice I recognized immediately, Damian, the Citadel Master. "His body is recovering."

"But he’s been unconscious for three days." Coco’s higher pitched voice, edged with worry. "Shouldn’t he be waking up by now?"

Three days? Had I really been out that long?

"He overused his neural pathways." Damian’s voice was clinical, detached. "The Quickstep spell requires precise coordination between mind and body. He pushed too far, too fast."

"Will he recover?" Coco asked.

"He’ll be fine." Damian’s certainty left no room for argument. "Better than fine, actually. His constitution is on the verge of threshold. When he wakes, he’ll be stronger than before."

"But what if..."

"That won’t happen, Coco." Damian cut him off. "Our weapon can’t break so easily."

I wanted to protest, to say I was more than a weapon, but consciousness was already slipping away again. The darkness welcomed me back like an old friend, and I surrendered to its embrace.

Time lost all meaning in that darkness. I floated, dreamless, weightless, my mind slowly knitting itself back together. Occasionally voices would penetrate the void, my friends checking on me, discussing their training, sharing news of Argent. But these moments grew fewer, farther between, until there was only the darkness and me, locked in peaceful stasis.

Until the cold hit me.

Sharp, biting cold that cut through the darkness like a blade, dragging me forcefully back to consciousness. My eyes snapped open, my body jerking upright in reflexive response to the shock.

Wind. I felt wind on my face, a gust so powerful it stung my eyes.

But that was impossible. I was in my room in the spire, recovering from the Quickstep backlash. There shouldn’t be any...

My thoughts froze as my eyes focused on what lay above me. Not the familiar ceiling of my room. Not the white panels of the hospital.

Sky. Vast and endless, with multiple clouds moving across its surface. And wrong, fundamentally, terrifyingly wrong, because it lacked the familiar green tinge of Argent’s protective barrier.