It was a struggle just to open his eyes. Not the familiar heaviness of waking from a long sleep—this felt deliberate, as if invisible fingers were clamped over his eyelids, as if his eyes were never meant to open at all.
For a long moment, he had no sense of where he was. Sound reached him only as a muffled hum, like he was underwater. But by the feel of his palms and the position of his body, he knew he was lying on the ground. The texture beneath him was coarse and soft at once, like soil that had been ruined, scorched, reduced to brittle ash.
When he finally pried his eyes open by force alone, that suspicion was confirmed.
Blackened earth stretched beneath him. And mingled with the charcoal dirt was something else—something slick, warm, unmistakable.
Blood.
But why would blood be beneath him?
Not enough to suggest a murder. Not enough to belong to someone else.
So where—
A droplet slid from somewhere above, falling past his cheek and landing in the dirt with a dark red splatter.
Instinct guided his hand upward. He brushed his eyes, his nose. When he lowered his trembling fingers, they came away wet.
Fresh.
His.
It was his blood.
The realization snapped something open in him. His vision sharpened with sudden clarity—and with it came the sight he had somehow failed to grasp.
"Horrific" wasn't enough.
The scorched wasteland extended as far as he could see, a horizon of dead earth and drifting heat. And across that apocalyptic plain surged figures—soldiers, or at least shaped like them at first glance. The thought made him almost laugh.
Nothing about their bodies was right.
They were pitch-black, their skin or armor or whatever covered them glistening with thick fluid that dripped in long strands as they ran. Some possessed extra limbs jutting from their ribs or backs like grotesque branches. Some had weapons fused to those limbs—rifles, blades, cannons—though each weapon dripped the same tar-like substance, making it impossible to tell where the creature ended and the weapon began.
Opposing them were creatures that mirrored their form but gleamed white instead of black. They lacked the extra limbs, their silhouettes eerily clean. When any of them were struck, their bodies dissolved—not into corpses, but into puddles of liquid the same bright white as their forms.
Above him, he heard the thrum of engines. Hovercraft descended, dropping more of the pale entities. The black horde surged to meet them, unending, unstoppable.
Wa… up…
A feminine voice whispered—distant, distorted.
He froze. The world around him felt wrong, but also real. Too real.
Wake up…
Clearer now, but still far away.
He didn't want to be here.
Jake…
The voice knew his name. Gentle. Urgent.
Jake?
Was he Jake?
He couldn't remember anything before this burning landscape.
WAKE UP, JAKE!
Cracks split across the sky—hairline fractures spreading like lightning. The entire world webbed with shattering lines, reality breaking apart like painted glass struck from the inside.
Then everything collapsed.
Darkness swallowed him along with the falling fragments of a broken world—or a dream.
Or both.
He hit the ground.
Soft ground. Cool. Alive. Grass brushed his skin—vibrant green, impossibly gentle. He didn't recall blinking, but light returned anyway, bright and warm.
Clouds drifted above, harmless and white. A pleasant blue sky stretched above him.
Not the black smoke.
Not the burning horizon.
Not… whatever that place had been.
As he looked ahead, he saw not armies but a single figure standing beneath a great tree, its branches swaying in a peaceful wind.
The silhouette tugged at something buried deep inside him.
Jake…
Her voice did the same.
It sounded like his mother.
His breath caught. He scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward her, the grass bending beneath his feet as he ran.
He ran harder.
Faster.
With everything he had.
But she only grew farther away, no matter how desperately he chased her.
He wanted to stop. His lungs burned. His legs trembled.
But the thought of failing her—failing her again—snapped his hesitation in half.
Again?
That word echoed.
And with that single thought, the world cracked once more—fractures racing through the air—and everything shattered around him for a second time..