Kido woke with a start, his eyes gleaming in the darkness. His breath came in short gasps, a metallic taste flooding his mouth and nose. His entire body felt as though it bore the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He couldn't even twitch a finger. Every movement seemed a waste of precious energy, so he lay still, conserving what little air remained.
But one thing troubled him more than the pain: he didn't recognize where he was.
A sense of strangeness washed over him, as if he'd been torn from a familiar world and thrust into an alien one. Fighting through the confusion, he tried to piece together the scattered fragments of his memory.
Flashes of recollection returned—blurred at first, like shards of light in the dark.
He remembered… tunnels. An underground labyrinth he'd ventured into. Battles. Monstrous enemies.
And he hadn't been alone. He recalled companions. But their faces, their names… still eluded him.
Then, a sharper image burned into his mind.
