Pain.
It was unlike anything she had ever felt before.
A deep, crushing agony that pulsed through every fiber of her being, as though her bones were shattering and reforming with each excruciating second.
She wanted to move, to scream, to do anything that would make it stop. But her body betrayed her.
A suffocating sensation overwhelmed her, like she was drowning in an ocean of fire.
What's happening to me?
Athena tried to recall the last thing she remembered, but her thoughts were scattered, fleeting like whispers in the wind.
A battle? A mission? A war?
No.
There had been a confrontation. Blood. Betrayal. A war of interstellar proportions. And then, darkness.
Her eyelids fluttered open, heavy as if weighted down by years of exhaustion. Blinding light. White walls. The sterile scent of antiseptic.
For a moment, she thought she was trapped in a medical facility in the Andromeda Galaxy, perhaps a military base or an imperial hospital.
