"This dream again," Nox let out as he reappeared in that dream same again.
Everything seemed to play out as it previously did with the only difference being, he was observing as a by stander this time.
He sat on the grassy meadow watching as his younger self laughed with the people he identified as his parents.
Nox never really observed this, but he realized no matter how hard he tried, their faces were not visible to him.
No matter how closely he looked, he couldn't seem to make out their features. Their outlines were clear but their faces were completely blurred to him.
So he just stopped trying and got comfortable on the grass as the dream continued playing out.
Soon enough, he watched his 'mom' and 'dad' disappeared into thin air, one moment they stood behind young him, the next, they were gone.
Nox watched the sky tear open and the Eclipsed dropping from it, he watched the sun go out and the ground swallow his younger self.
He finally stood up, from the now barren ground and gave a little stretch which was weird since he felt nothing here.
"Guess it's time to wake up." He muttered, waiting for his younger self to almost completely fall before he jolted awake like he always had.
"...."
Nox seemed to have forgotten one thing, this time he was watching the dream from an outer perspective, so things were bound to be different.
He waited for a while but there was no change in scenery.
But that wasn't the weirdest thing.
He looked towards the hole where his younger self had fallen only to realize that the golden glowing humanoid thing and the ground of Eclipsed were looking directly at him.
"H-huh?" Nox let out in question as he was genuinely freaked out before calming himself and saying, "maybe they're not looking at me?."
But the moment the words left his mouth, the golden figure tilted its head, exactly the way he had just done.
Nox froze.
"…okay, that's not creepy at all," he muttered, taking an instinctive step back.
But before he could take another step backwards, the golden figure disappeared and reappeared right in front of him.
It didn't give Nox the chance to say anything as it placed a palm over his heart.
That was more than enough confirmation that they really could see him but he didn't think about that because the moment the palm made contact with his chest, a pain he had never felt before exploded within.
He felt as if lava was being poured in his heart and set ablaze from the inside out.
"GAHH—!"
Nox screamed out in pain as he dropped to his knees, clutching his chest. If this was a dream, wasn't he supposed to have woken up by now?
But no, he continued in this nightmare, feeling every single pain of whatever the glowing figure had done to him.
"Wh—what are you—doing to me?!" he finally managed to let out, but the figure said nothing in response as it only calmly watched him.
The more time passed the greater the pain became and it reached a threshold Nox couldn't bare anymore.
He dropped completely to the ground , unable to move even a single muscle anymore as he felt his consciousness slowly fade.
The last thing he managed to hear through all the pain was, "...last light", before everything went dark and he felt himself falling in a dark abyss.
***
Gasp!
Nox jolted awake, his breathing completely ragged and his lungs fought for air to be pulled within them through his nose.
He felt like someone who had just resurfaced from drowning so it took him a couple of seconds to realize that he wasn't in pain anymore.
And that's when he started noticing where he was. The first thing he noticed was that he seemed to be in constant motion....
Or rather, he was within something that was in motion.
Nox frowned, realizing he was lying on some kind of soft seat, way too soft for anywhere in Zone 9.
His eyes darted to the side and he immediately realized that he was inside a vehicle.
Specifically, an enclosed jeep-like craft with faint golden lines passing through its interior, making it recognizable as a Solar-tech, a high-end and military grade one. Definitely not something that belonged anywhere near the slums.
His confusion only grew when he glanced out the window and saw a barren landscape moving by.
This definitely wasn't the slums.
"What… the hell…" he muttered under his breath.
"Oh good, you're alive," a woman's voice was heard from the driver's seat. "I was starting to think I'd have to dump a body on my way back to the city. That would've been awkward."
Nox head snapped toward the direction of the sound.
The driver, a woman with short silver-white hair and violet eyes that she could see from the rearview mirror, didn't even look at him.
She was leaning back with one hand on the steering wheel, humming a tune that made her sound far too relaxed for someone driving through an Eclipsed filled zone.
Or at least that's what Nox had heard from the people in the slums.
"Who… are you?" Nox asked his voice hoarse.
"Someone with terrible luck," she replied flatly, still a bit sour about her canceled vacation. "You?"
He paused, wondering whether to tell his name or not, but in the end, he just decided to just go ahead and say it, "Nox."
She nodded in satisfaction, before saying, "cute name, rolls off the tongue."
Nox blinked, completely thrown off by her tone. "Where… where am I?"
"In my jeep," she said simply. Then, after a brief pause, she added, "And unless you want to die to the tier 2 Eclipseds out there, I'd advise you not to jump out. Besides, you should probably stay still since, you were kind of… crispy when I found you."
Nox's hand instinctively went to his face, expecting to feel burnt flesh, but what met his fingers was smooth skin, perfectly healed.
His jacket, though, was a different story. It was completely burnt alongside most of his clothes.... So much so that it'd have been less embarrassing if he was just in his boxers.
"How much?" After a short pause, he asked.
"Hmm?" She asked back in confusion as she raised her head to the rear view mirror.
"How much is whatever you used to heal me?" He asked, his golden eyes locking with her pale violet ones.
He remembered exactly how much damage he had suffered from both the collapsed bridge and the capacitor exploding.
There was no way he would just shrug off both damages without the help of some kind of healing solar tech, hence the reason he thought she was the one that healed him.
Nox also knew no one did anything for free in this world, so if this lady, a complete stranger, had healed him, then she'd definitely be expecting him to cough up every single credit or even worse force him to work for it.
Embarrassingly though, he didn't have a single credit to his name right now, so the possibility of paying her back right now was zero.
"I know the kid thinks I healed him, I'm not deaf," Astra suddenly muttered, confusing Nox.
Realizing that the kid was weirdly looking at her, she sighed, leaning her cheek into her palm while steering lazily with the other hand. "Talking to myself, don't mind it."
"And for your question," she added, "no, I didn't heal you."
"Then how did I—"
"That's what I'd like to know too," Astra interrupted his words, "but it seems you have no idea either."
"Anyway, we might get some answers at the academy."
It took Nox a couple of minutes before his brain finally registered her words, "the academy?"
His surprise was evident in his tone as he asked.
"Oh, right," she reached for something at the compartment by her side before handing it to him.
Taking it, Nox realized it was an ID of some sort so he read through it only for his eyes to widen in shock.
"YOU'RE ASTRA DAWN?"