Consciousness did not return immediately.
First came a sensation – rough, heavy, almost hostile. It wasn't breathing or pain, but something deeper, denser, as if the very will of the alien body was pressing from within, testing the worthiness of the one who dared to awaken within it. Zario felt it even before his thoughts, before his sight, before his understanding of what was happening – an unbearably strong, furious, primal will that didn't belong to him... but was already beginning to merge with his existence.
When he finally opened his eyes, the world did not greet him with silence.
He met it with chaos.
Vision returned slowly, as if space itself resisted being seen. First, blurry patches of light and shadow, then crimson flashes, jagged silhouettes, movement. Lots of movement. The air was thick, saturated with smoke and something metallic, heavy, settling on the tongue. Every breath burned the lungs, but the body didn't refuse to breathe – on the contrary, it accepted it all as its natural environment.
He realized that he was lying on the ground.
He felt the trampled grass beneath his palms, wet and slippery, soaked with blood, and not just his own. When he tried to move, pain coursed through his body, but not the weak, human pain he was prepared for. This was the pain of a living weapon, damaged but still dangerous. Zario looked down and saw dark blood slowly trickling down his side, soaking into the ground, while around him, debris blazed, bodies burned, and structures collapsed, the purpose of which he couldn't immediately discern.
This body… was young. No more than eighteen, it felt like. But the strength hidden within the muscles, bones, and flesh itself was of a different nature entirely. It didn't feel borrowed or temporary. It was innate. Wild. So dense that it seemed if he stood, the very earth would react.
He slowly raised his head and looked around. And then it became completely clear.
It was a war.
Not the war spoken of in books or chronicles, or even the kind you dream of in nightmares. This was a real, living apocalypse, unfolding in space. Gigantic creatures thundered across the sky, their outlines shattering the very concept of form, leaving waves of distortion in their wake. Entities that could not be called beasts, men, or anything in between moved across the earth. They existed – and that was enough to satisfy an already insane thought.
Amidst all this chaos, he noticed people.
Some of them hovered in the air, as if the laws of the world were merely a guideline for them. A terrifying aura emanated from their bodies – dense, oppressive, making their instincts scream with danger. Their encounters with these monsters shook the space, ripping apart the earth and air, leaving behind bursts of power that made their insides tremble.
Zario blinked slowly.
His vision finally regained focus, and with it came a strange feeling: a reluctance to run. Instead, something else was rising inside her. Cold. Heavy. And yet… painfully familiar.
He understood.
He truly found himself in the thick of war. In a world where loneliness was not a state but a law, and hell was not a metaphor but an everyday occurrence.
And this body, this will, this scene – all this was not a random beginning.
This was an introduction. An introduction to another world with its own distorted nature.
A tall figure appeared suddenly, as if erupting from the flames themselves. The man was disproportionately large, nearly two meters tall, in tattered armor coated in soot and blood, and he moved so quickly, as if afraid to miss his final breath. He fell to his knees right in front of Zario, without even looking around, and immediately set to work – his rough, trembling fingers pressed his palms to the wounds, infusing the broken body with a strength that caused the air around him to vibrate faintly.
Zario didn't immediately understand what was happening. His consciousness was still fuzzy, the sensations rolling in waves, but through the pain, he clearly sensed something else – he was being restored. Warmth, dense and heavy, penetrated his skin, tightening the torn edges of his flesh, dulling the burning. He looked down and saw the blood stop leaking, his body, which only a moment before had been ready to fall apart, stubbornly coming back together.
Then he looked up.
The man's gaze was simultaneously empty and full. There was no hope or plea in it – only pure, animalistic terror, so intense it almost tasted like something. It wasn't a soldier's, a healer's, or an ally's. It belonged to a creature too close to something it shouldn't be looking at.
Zario said quietly, almost lazily:
"Who are you?"
These words had a stronger impact than any blow. The tall man shuddered as if a jolt had run down his spine, his hands froze for a moment, and then he jerked back, collapsing lower, almost hitting his forehead on the ground. He began muttering incoherently, his voice breaking, his breathing ragged, and within a second he was on his knees, head bowed low, begging, choking with fear, not to kill him.
Zario watched the scene with slowly growing interest. Something inside him clicked, fell into place, as if a missing piece of a puzzle had finally been found. The reaction was too sincere, too profound to be a mistake. It wasn't respect. It was knowledge.
He understood this immediately, without further ado. He understood his situation, even without knowing the name of this body, the history of the world, or the reasons for what was happening. In this world, he was feared. Not as a threat to the future, but as a nightmare already realized.
A smile spread across his face – slow, greedy, almost joyful. Without checking for doubts, without asking further questions, he gave the order, more out of curiosity than cruelty, wanting to see the line, if there even was one.
"Hey you... I'm not in the mood right now, so be kind, entertain me with some blood."
The man did not hesitate.
He pulled the knife out so quickly, as if he'd been waiting for this moment for a long time. The movement was clean, confident, without a shudder. The blade sank into the flesh, blood gushed down, and everything happened too easily, too naturally, as if it were the most perfect thing he'd ever done.
At that moment, Zario burst out laughing.
Laughter burst from him, loud and hoarse, without any attempt to contain it. He laughed as if the world had finally spoken to him in a language he understood. When he waved his hand, ordering him to get away, the man, bleeding profusely, crawled away, head down, vanishing into the smoke, screams, and roar of battle.
Zario was left alone.
He slowly rose to his feet, feeling his new body obey him without resistance, his muscles brimming with power that responded to his every intention. Flames roared around him, the sky was torn by the moving silhouettes of monstrous creatures, and the air was thick with an aura so dense it could almost be clenched into a fist.
He stood in the middle of war, in the midst of chaos, blood and madness, and for the first time since waking up, he allowed himself to look around calmly.
Somewhere deep inside he already knew the answer to the question that he had not even managed to formulate yet.
It remained to be seen what kind of nightmare he had become for this world.