Dan Heng stood alone amid the aftermath.
The air around him was thick with the scent of sap, blood, and something faintly metallic — like rust left out in the rain for too long. The ground behind him was littered with bodies that barely resembled what they once were. Twisted armor split open by force rather than finesse. Limbs bent at wrong angles, bark-like growths still creeping across cooling flesh. Wilted yellow blossoms scattered across the stone, already losing their unnatural vibrancy.
The Mara-Struck lay still.
All of them.
Dan Heng exhaled slowly, steadying his breathing.
The fight itself hadn't been difficult.
That, more than anything, unsettled him.
After the Second Nightmare, something inside him had shifted — not explosively, not dramatically, but persistently. Like waking up with water in his lungs, only to realize you could breathe it just fine. Strength answered him now without hesitation. His movements felt sharper, cleaner. When the Mara-Struck had surged toward him upon waking, feral and half-formed, he had reacted on instinct alone.
And they had fallen.
Quickly.
Too quickly.
Dan Heng lowered his gaze to his hands. They were steady.
Before he had woken up, he felt like he had experienced a short dream — strange, having come out of a Nightmare. It was as if he was being forcefully drowned in the depths of the ocean.
He frowned faintly.
'Where am I?'
The architecture was elegant but functional — wide walkways bordered by rails, suspended platforms hovering at varying heights, transport lanes weaving through the air like veins. It felt nothing like the Astral Express.
And that was the problem.
Dan Heng had expected to wake there, alongside Sunny and March.
The three of them had challenged the Nightmare together. Ascended together. It made sense — narratively, logically — that they would return together.
Yet here he was.
Alone.
He sighed quietly and stepped away from the bodies, boots crunching against shattered stone and dried growths. A few civilians peeked out from behind cover at a distance, eyes wide, fearful, grateful — he wasn't sure which. None approached him.
He didn't blame them.
He paused at the edge of a broad thoroughfare and looked up. Artificial sky arched overhead, stars carefully arranged.
Dan Heng closed his eyes for a moment.
Sunny and March will be fine.
The thought came unbidden, firm and reassuring. Sunny, in particular, had an infuriating tendency to land on his feet no matter the circumstances, turning a wild imagination into reality. If anyone could navigate waking up in the middle of a foreign structure without incident, it was him.
March would… adapt.
Probably loudly.
…In the distance, he could see a woman haphazardly swinging about a large sword, attempting to defend a man with long, blonde hair, and what seemed to be… a coffin?
Either way, the Awakened seemed like she was soon to be overwhelmed by the Mara-Struck.
Unless Dan Heng provided his assistance, of course.
Which he would, naturally.