The scent of woodsmoke and freshly baked bread became the anchor of Mark's suspended consciousness—a thin, golden thread pulling at the edges of a world that no longer felt entirely real. For a year, his body had lain unmoving, a silent vessel between death and life, while deep within, something extraordinary stirred. The Aurora energy, no longer merely a foreign current coursing through his veins, was becoming him. Each passing day wove it deeper, reshaping him with quiet inevitability.
His blood—once a simple, human red—now shimmered faintly with a hidden, opalescent luminescence, like moonlight trapped beneath his skin. His bones were denser, singing with an almost imperceptible hum. His muscles coiled with an unfamiliar strength, fine filaments of cosmic light weaving themselves through the fabric of his being. It was not sleep. It was gestation—a rebirth in agonizing, silent slow motion. He was becoming something new, something not entirely human, and yet tethered to the fragile warmth of humanity by scents, sounds, and whispers that slipped through the cracks of his unconscious mind.
The first things he perceived weren't sights or thoughts, but sensations—fragile fragments drifting through the fog. The soft rise and fall of his chest beneath a well-worn woolen blanket. The distant, melodic chatter of birds greeting a new morning. The faint crackle of a hearth fire, steady and nurturing. The soft murmur of voices, old and gentle, moving around him like the rustling of autumn leaves.
There were other sensations too. The cool kiss of air on his skin. The earthy musk of rain-soaked soil seeping in through open windows. A breeze carrying the distant lullaby of river water lapping against the bank. They were alien to him—alien because they were kind. He knew no kindness in the sterile, metallic world of the lab he had come from. No softness. No hearths, no voices that weren't clinical commands. Only alarms. Needles. Cold instruments. A cage masquerading as science.
Here… there was quiet.
Time, meaningless as it had become in his suspended state, shifted when a shaft of golden sunlight slipped through the lace curtain one morning. It stretched across the small, humble room, spilling over his still face. Warm. Soft. Unlike the glaring white light of examination tables, this light did not interrogate. It embraced.
A small, calloused hand, smelling faintly of soil, flour, and dried herbs, brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. The fingers were warm, trembling just slightly. It was Mara. She hummed a tune as she moved around the room—a simple, melancholic folk melody that spoke of rivers and old stones, of seasons turning. Her shawl rustled softly against the wooden floor. Her footsteps matched the rhythm of the fire's crackle.
Something in that sound reached down through the endless darkness inside Mark and found a spark buried deep—a faint flicker of recognition. A feeling he didn't have words for. Not yet.
His eyelids fluttered.
It wasn't graceful. It was slow, clumsy, like stone doors creaking open after centuries. A sliver of light pierced the void. His breath hitched. His fingers twitched against the coarse fabric of the blanket. His heart beat—a sound that felt both familiar and foreign.
His eyes opened.
The world did not come to him in a single rush. It unfolded like the dawn, layer by layer. At first, there was only blur—the indistinct shapes of ceiling beams overhead, warm and golden from the firelight. Then came texture: the uneven grain of the wood, the hand-carved joints, the faint spiderweb cracks in old plaster. Colors followed—rich browns, soft golds, the gentle pink of Mara's shawl faded with age but lovingly patched. Then sound came sharper—the birdsong outside, the river's flowing hush, the scrape of a wooden chair on the floor.
Finally, scent wrapped it all together. The warm tang of bread baking. The smoky sweetness of the hearth. The faint medicinal bite of crushed herbs drying on the table.
The world was alive.
Mark inhaled sharply, and with that breath came strength—a surge through muscles that had been still too long. His body, altered in sleep, obeyed him without hesitation. He pushed himself up on his elbows, startling himself with the effortless power in the motion.
Mara turned at the sound, the bundle of herbs in her hands slipping from her grasp. Leaves scattered across the floor like green snow. For a heartbeat, disbelief froze her features. Then the lines of age and worry melted into something radiant.
"Ren!" she cried, her voice trembling with joy. "Ren! He's awake! Our boy is awake!"
Her words rang through the cottage like church bells, shattering the fragile quiet of morning.
Ren burst in from the kitchen, still dusted with flour from kneading dough. His white hair framed his face like a soft halo, and though his body bore the weight of many winters, his eyes shone with the unrestrained tears of a man who had hoped against hope. He stopped in the doorway, breathless, staring at Mark as if looking upon a miracle.
"Bless the spirits," Ren whispered, his voice rough with emotion. "A whole year… we thought you'd never open those eyes, son."
Mark's gaze darted between them—two strangers, yet not strangers at all. Their faces glowed with warmth, with something he could not remember ever seeing directed at him. Care. He could feel it—not just in their words, but in the air of the room itself, as though it clung to every surface.
But inside his mind, a storm raged. Flashes—fragmented memories—struck like jagged lightning. Steel tables. Blinding lights. The scent of antiseptic. The cold grip of restraints on his wrists. Screams—his own? Someone else's? Then the river, the rushing cold, the darkness swallowing everything. And now, this cottage.
He tried to speak, but his throat was a dry desert. The first sound that left him was a broken rasp, half-breath, half-voice.
"Easy, boy," Ren murmured gently, crossing the room with a steadiness earned from years of quiet strength. He lifted a cup of warm water and pressed it carefully to Mark's lips. "Take your time. The world waited for you long enough. No need to rush back into it."
The water slid down Mark's throat like a promise, washing away some of the rust of silence. Mara was kneeling beside him now, adjusting the blanket, her hands trembling with both fear and joy. She smelled of lavender and river water and something he couldn't name—something soft and human.
"You've been asleep for a year," Mara said, her voice low, as though speaking too loudly might break the fragile moment. "The river gave you to us that night. We thought you'd… we thought you were gone. But you kept breathing. Quiet as the stars. So we kept hoping."
They didn't ask him where he'd come from. They didn't demand explanations about the faint light that sometimes shimmered beneath his skin. They didn't shrink back in fear from the unknown. They only offered warmth.
They told him they had found him washed ashore after a storm, his clothes torn, his body burning with a strange fever but alive. They had tended to him through summer's heat and winter's frost, through nights when they feared his breathing might stop. When the seasons turned, they gave him a name—"Mark"—the only name they could salvage from the half-faded patch stitched into his ragged shirt.
As Ren spoke, Mara reached out and touched Mark's cheek with work-worn fingers, her eyes shining. "You're safe here, boy," she said simply. "That's all that matters."
Mark swallowed hard. Safe. The word landed inside him like a stone thrown into still water. Ripples spread through places in him he didn't know existed.
Outside, the river continued its slow song. Sunlight pooled golden on the wooden floor. A faint wind slipped through the open window, carrying with it the sound of the village—distant laughter, a cart creaking over a bridge, the world simply… existing.
For the first time in his life, Mark didn't feel like an experiment, a subject, a thing.
He felt… human.