The sounds of waves crashing against rocks filled the air, the smell of salt and ocean carried on a steady breeze rolling across his body. Mike opened his eyes to a vast blue sky, clouds stretched long and thin.
The ocean spread endlessly before him.
Looking down, he saw a sheer rock cliff dropping straight into churning water far below. The sea struck the stone with violent rhythm, white foam exploding upward before falling back into the depths. It was beautiful in a brutal, indifferent way.
Mike pushed himself upright.
His body felt heavy. Not injured. Not weak. Heavy, as if gravity itself had thickened around him. His wings twitched reflexively, half-spreading before he caught himself. He flexed his hands. Scaled. Talons where fingers should be. Heat simmered beneath his skin.
Memory slammed into him all at once.
The pylons.
The runes.
The crushing pressure.
The bright suffocating light was the last thing he remembered.
"Bahamut!" Mike roared, his voice echoing off the stone. "What the fuck is going on?!"
Nothing answered him.
Not even the familiar distant presence. Not the rumble in his spine. Not the predatory awareness that had always lingered behind his thoughts since the bond had formed.
Only wind.
"Come on!" he shouted again, fury building into the words. "Answer me!"
Silence.
He slammed his fist into the ground.
The stone cracked instantly, racing outward from the impact point. Chunks of rock broke loose from the cliff edge and tumbled downward, clattering and bouncing before disappearing into the water below.
Mike stared at the shattered stone, chest rising and falling.
"…shit."
He stood slowly, scanning his surroundings.
The cliff stretched in both directions, jagged and uneven, sloping gradually upward toward a rugged coastline dotted with sparse vegetation. Scrub grass clung stubbornly to cracks in the stone. Low, twisted trees bent inland, shaped by relentless wind and salt. There were no buildings. No roads. No power lines. No distant city glow staining the horizon.
No Sanctuary.
No temple.
No council.
Just land. Sea. Sky.
Mike turned in a slow circle, wings partially unfurled trying to decide a direction. He listened carefully, reaching outward with his sharpened senses.
Nothing moved nearby.
No skinwalkers.
No one.
The absence was unsettling.
"Okay," he muttered to himself, voice low. "Okay. This is… not good."
He took a step forward and paused.
The ground felt different beneath his feet.
The thought came rushing forward making him uncomfortable. Looking up at the sky to count the suns and moons.
Mike shook his head sharply, trying to clear it. "No. Focus. Figure it out."
He reached inward for Bahamut again, deliberately this time.
You there?
Nothing.
The connection that had always been there, sometimes overwhelming, sometimes intrusive, was simply… gone. As if a limb he'd learned to live with had been severed cleanly.
Mike clenched his jaw.
"Don't do this," he growled, anger simmering beneath the words. "You don't get to just disappear."
The wind answered him, whipping against his scales, rattling loose stones near the cliff edge.
He exhaled slowly through his nose and forced himself to think.
He wasn't restrained. Whatever that flash of light had been, it hadn't stripped him of power. He could feel it humming inside him, dense and volatile. Fire moved when he flexed his throat. His wings were intact. His claws sharp.
But the world felt… quieter and the air was fresh, crisp.
Mike started walking inland.
The path wasn't a path, just a natural slope where the stone gave way to earth and scrub. He moved cautiously at first, senses straining for ambush or threat, but nothing emerged. Birds scattered at his approach, small and dark-feathered, crying out in sharp, startled bursts. Lizards darted between rocks.
Normal animals.
That alone unsettled him more than monsters would have.
After several minutes of walking, he stopped again.
Something was wrong.
He could feel it in his bones.
The air didn't hum the way it had in the modern world. There was no underlying vibration of electricity, no distant mechanical thrum. Even the smell was different, cleaner somehow, raw and unfiltered, not chemicals and burning plastic.
Mike frowned.
"Where the hell am I?"
He crossed over a small ridge and froze.
Below him, tucked into a natural harbor where the coastline curved inward, sat a city.
Not ruins.
A living city.
Stone walls encircled it, thick and uneven, clearly built over generations rather than planned all at once. Towers rose at irregular intervals, their tops capped with wooden platforms and fluttering banners. Inside the walls, tightly packed buildings of stone and timber crowded together, narrow streets winding between them like veins.
Smoke rose from dozens of buildings.
Ships bobbed in the harbor, wooden hulls, oared vessels with single masts, their sails furled. Smaller fishing boats dotted the water closer to shore.
No engines.
No lights.
No glass towers scraping the sky.
Mike stared.
"…that's not possible."
He scanned the city more closely, eyes narrowing.
People moved along the walls. Tiny at this distance, but unmistakably human. He could see guards pacing with spears slung over their shoulders, bronze glinting faintly in the sun. The armor was wrong. The weapons were wrong. Everything about it made his mind race.
A knot formed in his stomach.
This wasn't some illusion. The scale was wrong. The smells were wrong. The weight of the world itself felt different.
No satellites overhead.
No distant jet trails.
Mike swallowed.
"Okay," he said quietly. "When and where the fuck am I?"
The city was populated. That meant information. But it also meant eyes. And if anyone down there noticed a winged, scaled, dragon walking out of the hills, it would end badly.
Probably very violently.
He glanced down at himself again.
His form hadn't shifted back to anything human. If anything, it felt more… settled. Less strained. Like this shape fit more naturally here than it ever had back home.
That thought made the knots in his stomach worse.
Mike crouched low and moved along the ridge, keeping to the rocks and scrub, using the terrain to hide his presence. He worked his way toward a narrower part of the harbor where the city's walls met the sea.
As he moved, sounds drifted upward.
Shouting.
Laughter.
The clang of a hammer on metal.
Life.
Normal, messy, human life.
He paused near a rocky outcrop overlooking a small inlet where fishermen were hauling in nets. Their boats were simple things, tar, stained wood and rope, but they worked with practiced efficiency. The men shouted to one another in a language Mike didn't recognize.
Not English.
Not anything he'd heard before.
That settled it.
"…fuck."
He leaned back against the rock, wings folding tight to his body, and closed his eyes for a moment.
Think.
He'd been surrounded by divine constructs. Runes different than anything he'd ever seen. Pressure that overwhelmed but didn't kill him.
Abbadon's voice echoed in his memory, infuriatingly calm.
"Show him what you're truly afraid of."
Mike opened his eyes slowly.
"Did they banish me somewhere?" he muttered. "Or in the past?"
The idea felt insane.
And yet everything around him screamed ancient and untouched by modern technology.
Mike pushed off the rock and continued moving. He followed the coastline away from the city, choosing caution over answers for now. The land rose into rolling hills dotted with olive trees and scrub brush. Stone outcroppings jutted up at odd angles, weathered smooth by countless seasons. Farther inland, he could see the faint outline of mountains.
He walked for hours, cautious of flying as his figure would drawn unwanted attention.
The sun climbed higher, then began its slow descent. His body didn't tire, but his mind did. Questions piled up with no answers.
Where was Bahamut?
What happened at Sanctuary?
Where was Kelsey?
The last thought hit hardest.
He stopped abruptly, claws digging into the dirt.
"Kelsey," he whispered.
For the first time since he'd gotten her back from Hecate, real fear crept in.
He snarled softly and forced himself to move again. Fear wouldn't help. Panic wouldn't help. He needed to survive long enough to understand what had been done to him.
As the sun dipped lower, he found a shallow cave carved into the hillside overlooking the sea. It wasn't deep, but it offered cover. He ducked inside and settled near the entrance, eyes scanning the landscape even as darkness crept in.
Stars emerged, beautiful and vast.
The sky was thick with them, blazing and sharp, unpolluted by artificial light. The Milky Way cut a bright scar across the heavens.
Mike stared upward, something twisting painfully in his chest.
No satellites crossing. No blinking aircraft lights. Just stars and constellations clearer than he'd ever seen.
He lay back against the stone, wings folding awkwardly beneath him, and stared.
"Bahamut," he said again, quietly this time. "If this is a test… it's not funny."
Still nothing.
The silence stretched.
Eventually, exhaustion won out. When he woke, the sun was rising over the sea.
And somewhere inland, horns were sounding. Deep. Resonant.
Mike rose slowly, eyes narrowing. He smiled faintly, teeth sharp. "Alright," he muttered. "Let's see what kind of world this is."
Unaware that he stood on the edge of an age that would one day remember him not as Mike…
…but as something far older.
Something the gods would learn to fear.