Aurelion did not return to normal awareness right away. It did not feel like opening his eyes or waking up from something. Instead, it felt like the way he understood everything had changed. There was no clear sense of sight or sound like before, but he was still aware of everything around him in a different way.
He did not see the system in front of him like a place. He understood it as something he was part of. Every layer, every connection, and every process existed around him, but not outside him. It was all connected, and he was inside that connection.
Even with that change, one thing stayed clear. He was still himself. That mattered more than anything else. If that had been lost, nothing else would have mattered. The system had not taken that away. It had only changed how he existed within it.
