(The time-stilled world, in a dark cave somewhere far beneath the surface world)
Leo had absolutely no idea how many days he'd been out cold, or how the hell he was still breathing— still alive.
All he knew was that when consciousness finally did return to him, it didn't come all at once….
It came in flickers, in fragments. Like broken pieces of a memory trying to reassemble themselves inside a body that wasn't ready to wake up.
As the first thing he felt wasn't pain, but rather the odd texture of straw beneath his fingers.
Dry. Prickly. Foreign.
Then the pain came crashing in.
Like a goddamn landslide.
A dull, thudding ache tore through his ribs.
His shoulders felt like they'd been shattered and glued back wrong.
And his lower body…
He wasn't even sure if it was still attached to him until he touched it with his fingers to make sure it was still there.
His eyelids twitched open next, only to be greeted by darkness.
Not pitch black—
