He smiled, because of course he did.
"Don't you dare," Maya said, crying now, and he realized she was trying not to say please.
"Hey," he said, and he wasn't sure if the sound made it past his lips.
"It's okay."
Then the world went out like someone flipped a switch, and somewhere behind the rain and the alarms and the fear, a console he could not see printed one last line he could not read with eyes:
KER ONLINE… ROOT ACCESS DETECTED.
IDENTIFIER: VA'RUNA — THE WORD THAT BREATHES
STATUS: TRANSFER
He died.
The rain kept talking to itself like nothing important had happened.
The monitors upstairs cooled.
The noise faded.
Somewhere, not here, not Earth, something inhaled.
------
Ethan woke to the sound of his own heartbeat and another one close beside it.
Thump.
Thump.
Slow.
Deep.
Warm.
He couldn't move.
No arms, no legs.
Just a floating weightlessness wrapped in heat and liquid pressure.
He tried to speak, but sound didn't exist here.
Only thought, and even that felt sluggish, like it was dragging itself through syrup.
"Okay," he muttered to himself. "Either I'm trapped in some kind of high-end VR tank… or I'm soup."
No answer came.
Just the double rhythm of hearts and that low hum surrounding him.
He tried to remember. The lab. Lightning. Maya shouting.
Then everything went blank.
His brain screamed for logic, but the silence swallowed it whole.
Then something whispered.
Not a voice, not sound.
Just meaning. Pure, raw meaning sliding into his mind like a thought that wasn't his.
KER ONLINE.
TRANSFER COMPLETE.
Cold rippled through the warmth.
He wanted to scream but had no lungs.
"Transfer? Transfer where?" he thought. "And why does this feel like I'm sitting inside a whale's playlist?"
No reply.
Only the quiet pulse of life all around him.
Time stretched.
Or maybe it didn't exist here.
He floated in the dark, sleeping and waking in loops that had no measure.
Sometimes he dreamed of sound turning into shapes.
Words becoming light. Sentences building things mountains, rivers, stars before dissolving again.
It was beautiful and wrong at the same time.
One word stayed after the rest faded.
Va'Runa.
It wasn't his.
But it clung to him like static. It felt… familiar.
The silence broke with something new.
Music soft and human filtering through the fluid.
A melody hummed low and careful.
He couldn't understand the words, but the emotion behind them wrapped around him like a blanket.
Then came actual speech.
Not English.
Something older, flowing and melodic.
"Len sael ven thae… Leth te velan…"
He didn't know it, but it was Velian the common tongue of this world.
To him, it sounded like song and language had a child.
He tried to process it like a linguist, catching tone and cadence, searching for repetition.
But the words refused to break apart.
They weren't meant to be studied.
They were meant to be felt.
The voice belonged to a woman gentle, tired, full of love.
Her heartbeat aligned with his own.
He could feel it through everything.
"Okay," he thought. "This is… actually happening. I'm inside someone. Oh, hell."
Panic spiked.
He tried to fight the weight holding him still, but the heartbeat answered by slowing, calming him.
The melody came again, easing him back into quiet.
He floated.
Listened.
Each tone and vowel seemed to vibrate with purpose.
He didn't understand the words, but somehow, they carried emotion and structure, almost like the language itself was alive.
SYSTEM IN DORMANT STATE.
AWAITING INITIALIZATION.
The words appeared again faint, distant.
He tried to focus on them, but they faded like a dream dissolving on waking.
He drifted through time again.
Sometimes the woman sang.
Sometimes she spoke to someone else a deeper voice answering her.
He couldn't make out the conversation, only fragments.
"Vel te arin, Sael'tha... lena ven te."
He imagined it meant something simple. "He's growing," or "He'll be fine."
The sound carried care and familiarity, and even though he didn't understand, it anchored him.
Then everything changed.
Pressure crushed in from all directions.
The warm world began to move, to shift. Rhythms quickened
The once-steady heartbeat turned frantic.
Panic hit him.
The world around him squeezed. He didn't know what was happening until instinct filled in the blanks birth.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!"
He had no air, no control, only the violent rhythm of something pushing him forward, shoving him out of the only place that felt safe.
Then light.
Cold slammed into him like ice.
Air ripped into his lungs.
Instinct took over, and he screamed. Loud. Wet. Real.
The world exploded into sound and color.
Blurred figures. Shouting. Movement everywhere.
"Sael'tha ven te! Letha runn velan!"
The words came fast, too complex to decode, but the tone was clear relief, joy, awe.
Someone lifted him.
Heat pressed against his skin again human warmth this time.
A heartbeat. Familiar. The same one that had surrounded him.
He blinked. Vision struggled into focus. Shapes became outlines, outlines became people.
A woman leaned over him, her face glowing with tears and exhaustion.
She smiled through them and whispered in that same melodic language.
"Myra sael'tha ven… Velian Va'Runa…"
He didn't know what it meant.
But it felt right.
Like a phrase meant for him alone.
Her voice trembled as she spoke, but her eyes were steady soft, bright, full of belief. The kind of love that didn't need words.
He didn't understand the language.
But he understood her.
Somewhere deep inside, something responded not the System, not memory.
Something older.
The warmth of her voice anchored him in this strange, impossible world better than any machine ever could.
Far beyond the walls of that small room, the world itself stirred.
The wind paused.
Rivers rippled once without cause.
Old ruins blinked with faint light before falling silent again.
No one noticed.
Not yet.
Deep beneath mountains and temples, a pulse ran through the unseen veins of the earth light older than the gods themselves.
SYSTEM REBOOT PENDING.
SYNCHRONIZATION IN PROGRESS.