There was no light at first. No weight. No sound.
Only the quiet.
Then came breath—sharp, instinctive, dragging him back into being.
The first thing he noticed was the smell.
Damp earth, sharp and mineral, as if rain had just fallen on stone. Beneath it lingered something else—metallic, faintly sweet, like blood carried on a wind that shouldn't exist.
Then came the sound of birds. Dozens of them, trilling in layered patterns that should've been familiar, yet none matched anything he knew. Too many notes. Too precise. The forest almost sounded alive on purpose.
Jace's eyes opened.
Sunlight filtered through a canopy of silver-veined leaves, scattering light in fractured bands of green and gold. He was lying on his back, a cushion of moss beneath him, cool and damp against his skin. He breathed in again—clean air, untouched by smoke or dust—and the sheer purity of it made his chest ache.
He sat up slowly. The movement felt effortless, but his muscles answered too quickly, as if his body weighed less than it should. The ache in his ribs—gone. The shrapnel wound that had torn through his side—gone.
He stared at his hands. The calluses remained, but the scars were too uniform, too shallow—as if printed instead of earned.
It wasn't healing. It was replacement.
The fatigue of battle had been wiped away. His uniform was intact, but cleaner somehow. Even the dirt on the fabric looked wrong—too fine, too uniform.
He rose to his feet, scanning his surroundings. Trees towered above him, black-barked and ancient, their branches webbed with faint bioluminescence. The air shimmered faintly, as though light were bending through something unseen.
Wind rustled through the leaves, but it had no direction, no chill. The forest was alive, yet hollow—like a world holding its breath.
"This isn't… Earth," he muttered.
His voice came out soft, muffled, as if the air absorbed it before it could echo.
He ran a practiced self-check. Armor intact. Rucksack secure. Weapon…
His eyes locked on it, resting neatly against a moss-covered root.
MARA.
He stepped forward and picked her up. The rifle felt solid, heavier than memory yet perfectly balanced. The polymer along the handguard was faintly warm—not from sunlight, but from something within. His thumb brushed the inscription he once etched into the lower receiver:
Semper Paratus. "Always Prepared."
He'd lived by the words, even when he'd stopped believing they meant anything. Maybe the words were empty—but the rifle never was. The weight of her in his hands settled something in him—steady, familiar, like the quiet recognition of an old friend who'd made it through with him.
He cleared the chamber. Empty. Magazine full. He racked the charging handle; the click was crisp, mechanical, familiar. The sound grounded him—a reminder that not everything had changed.
Still, the quiet pressed in.
He swept his gaze across the trees again, instinct taking over. Cover abundant. Concealment perfect. But it was too quiet to trust.
He crouched and brushed his fingers through the soil. It was soft, almost springy—like walking on soaked moss. When he pressed harder, the earth pushed back, pulsing faintly beneath his palm.
He froze. The ground shouldn't move.
For a moment, he just listened. The birds were gone. The layered chorus that had greeted him when he woke had fallen silent, cut off mid-breath. No wind. Not even the faint buzz of insects—just his own breathing, and something beneath it, like the memory of a heartbeat. He didn't notice when the silence began—only when he realized it hadn't ended.
He forced the unease aside. Fatigue, maybe. A trick of nerves.
He exhaled slowly as he started scanning again but more methodical and deliberate. The forest swayed gently, though no wind touched his face. Every few seconds, that faint shimmer rippled through the air like heat mirage but cool instead of warm.
He took one step, then another. Each footfall sank deeper than expected. The air felt thicker now—heavier, as if the forest itself were holding its breath.
He froze, rifle raised, thumb brushing the selector switch off of Safe.
The trees trembled, but there was no wind. Shadows bent where they shouldn't, and the light didn't match the angles. Nothing moved—yet every instinct screamed that something was watching.
This wasn't the quiet after an explosion. This was the quiet of a predator waiting.
Then he saw it—a shallow line cutting through the moss. Not torn, not dug—parted, like the ground itself had shifted to let something through. He lowered to one knee, hand hovering over the mark without touching. The soil was warm, trembling faintly—so faint he thought it was his own pulse.
He shifted his weight.
The vibration deepened.
Not from him. Not from above. From beneath.
He went still, breath held, eyes scanning the trees again. The air felt thick, pressing down on him. His heartbeat was the only sound he could hear—until it wasn't.
A new rhythm began to rise, slow and heavy, echoing from the ground itself. It pulsed once—faint, but deliberate.
The forest shivered.
The rhythm came again, deeper this time, thrumming through him like a heartbeat that wasn't his own, as the moss beneath him seemed to breathe.
He held his breath as the forest paused with him.
And the ground hummed.