A World Unknown

Darkness.

A void stretched infinitely in all directions, vast and consuming. The hero floated in it, weightless, lost. He felt nothing. No breath, no heartbeat. Just silence.

Is this death?

A sound—faint, distant—reached him. A steady beeping. Voices, urgent and hurried. The world flickered at the edges of his consciousness, pulling him back, even as something cold wrapped around him, trying to drag him under.

No. I… I can't go yet.

His mind swayed, struggling between the nothingness and the voices growing louder.

"Come on, Jack!" a voice barked. Sharp. Desperate. Someone was calling his name, shaking him from the abyss. "Stay with us, kid. Stay with us."

Jack?

That wasn't his name. His name was—was…

The thought unraveled, slipping through his grasp.

The dragon. The weight of rubble. The scorch of fire. The fight—lost.

Then, nothing.

His mind spun, flitting in and out of awareness as hands grabbed his lifeless form. There was movement, fast and jarring. A harsh voice cut through the haze.

"He's down! No pulse!"

Then the pressure started. Rhythmic, punishing. His chest caved with every forceful push.

Jack—no, the hero—felt it distantly, as though watching from behind a thick veil. His mind thrashed, but his body was still.

"Bag him!"

A rush of air forced into his lungs. Oxygen. But there was no response.

"His heart's still not beating!" the medic shouted.

There was no heartbeat. No breath. Nothing.

The voices of the paramedics blurred, fading in and out. The unfamiliar sharp scent of medicine, the coppery tang of blood. The hum of sirens, the bounce of the ambulance wheels over uneven pavement.

Is this really it?

His thoughts tangled, slipping toward the void again. It would be easy. To just… let go.

But something clawed at him. A stubborn ember buried deep within his being.

Heroes don't die like this.

There were still people to protect.

Still lives to save.

The world flickered again, a brief moment of awareness as hands slammed against his chest once more.

A jolt surged through his body. His limbs twitched violently, then fell still.

"Clear!"

Another shock.

Darkness again.

The monitor beeped erratically.

Ventricular fibrillation.

His heart, though not beating properly, was trying. It fluttered, chaotic and useless, unable to pump blood. A dying, desperate thing.

"He's still in V-fib!" a doctor shouted. "Charging again—stand clear!"

Another shock.

Pain. A searing bolt that tore through the darkness. His body arched violently.

The beeping spiked, then stuttered.

Still erratic. Still failing.

His mind was slipping.

Another shock.

Time blurred. How long had it been? Seconds? Minutes? The voices were quieter now. Hope fading.

A final jolt. His body seized, then slumped.

Silence.

Then, the words that shattered everything.

"Time of death—15:32."

No.

The weight of those words pressed down on him, suffocating. The world was slipping away, but he refused.

He was a hero.

And there was always someone to save.

MOVE!

The command wasn't to his body, but to himself. His very being roared in defiance, clawing back toward life.

A single beat. Weak. Shaky.

A gasp.

"His pulse…" A voice, stunned. "His pulse is back!"

Chaos erupted around him. Hands scrambled to stabilize him. Orders were shouted. The frantic rush of movement surged again.

But Jack wasn't listening.

He was here.

He was back.

The fight was over—for now.

A slow exhale left his lips. His body ached, heavy with exhaustion, but he felt it—the steady, fragile rhythm of his heart.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Jack let himself rest, before the next battle.

—---

"He's finally coming to and can breathe on his own. Remove the tube."

A voice—sharp and authoritative—cut through the thick haze. Jack felt something shift inside him, a pressure pulling at his throat. Then, the sensation of something being dragged out.

He gagged, his body convulsing weakly against the foreign intrusion. A rasping, scraping sensation burned down his windpipe as the tube was removed, leaving his throat raw and aching. He coughed—dry, painful heaves that rattled his chest. His limbs felt heavy, weighed down by exhaustion, yet his mind flickered, grasping for awareness.

"Where am I?"

His body ached in ways that were too precise, too unnatural. Not the dull, familiar pain of battle, but something clinical—clean wounds, stiff bandages, an unnatural stillness.

A hospital?

His eyelids fluttered, sluggish, struggling to lift. Blurred shapes loomed over him. Shadows moved, murmuring voices surrounding him like ghosts.

Then, darkness again.

---

Time passed—or maybe it didn't.

Consciousness came and went in fractured moments.

Cool hands pressing against his forehead. The beeping of machines. A distant hum of conversation.

Then silence.

Then noise.

Faces leaned over him, indistinct at first, swimming in and out of focus. Unfamiliar. All of them.

A woman—middle-aged, sharp-eyed—studied him carefully, murmuring something to a man beside her. Their words blurred together. Another person—a younger man, his expression strained—stood nearby. The look on his face was unreadable.

They spoke to him. He couldn't make out the words, but the tone felt… wrong.

Strangers.

Who were these people?

Jack's chest tightened, a creeping unease settling in his gut. Something was wrong.

He tried to move, but his body betrayed him. Heavy. Weak. Like a corpse dragged from battle.

More time passed.

When he woke again, there were more of them.

A group. Four? Five? He couldn't tell. Their voices were clearer now. Calling him a name. Jack.

That wasn't right.

"Who…?" His voice was barely a whisper, his throat still raw from the tube. He swallowed thickly, forcing out more. "Who are you?"

Silence.

Something shifted in the room, an unspoken weight settling over them. Uneasy glances passed between them.

A woman stepped forward, eyes shining with something—relief? Hope? "Jack… it's me."

He stared at her, uncomprehending.

Her face—a mix of concern and warmth—meant nothing to him.

The others looked just as expectant. They were waiting for something. For him to recognize them. To say something. To be someone he wasn't.

A cold sensation settled in his bones.

"Jack," the woman whispered again, softer this time. There was something in her voice—a fragile thread of emotion, as if she were holding back something painful.

A part of him wanted to reach for it, to make sense of it.

But he couldn't.

Because he had never seen this woman before in his life.

The woman stepped forward, her voice barely above a whisper. "Jack… It's me. Sophia."

The name struck him like a blow.

Sophia.

Memories surged—flashes of battle, of laughter shared between skirmishes, of a steadfast ally who had stood by his side through countless wars. His Sophia had been a warrior, sharp-eyed and unwavering. She had saved his life more times than he could count.

But this woman—this Sophia—wasn't her.

Her eyes were too soft. Her stance lacked the steel of a fighter. She looked at him with something foreign—something fragile.

"You're not her," he rasped. "You're different."

Sophia's face crumbled. "Jack, please—"

"Stop calling me that," he snapped, his voice rough and unfamiliar even to his own ears. His head ached—sharp, pounding pain radiating from behind his skull. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the dizziness, the overwhelming wrongness of it all.

The other men in the room exchanged worried glances. One of them—a tall, broad-shouldered man with a hardened face—spoke up. "Jack… We're your team. The guys from Station 41. We're firefighters."

Firefighters?

The word rattled inside his skull, bouncing off the fractured edges of his mind.

That wasn't right.

He was a warrior. A knight. A protector of the realm. He had fought beasts, stood against darkness, faced death more times than he could count.

A firefighter?

His breath came faster now, ragged and uneven. He struggled to understand, to remember.

Where was the battlefield? Where was the castle?

Where was the war?

Pain shot through his skull like a searing blade, forcing a groan from his throat. His hands gripped the thin hospital blanket, fingers trembling.

Something was wrong.

Something was terribly wrong.

The men—his supposed team—exchanged another look, this one more urgent.

"Get the doctor," one of them muttered.

Someone rushed out of the room.

Jack—the hero—barely noticed. His world was spinning, unraveling at the seams.

And for the first time in a long, long time…

He was afraid.

Jack's fingers clenched the sheets.

A spell.

A warlock's illusion.

That had to be it.

He had heard of powerful mind-altering sorcery before—magic that could trap a man in a waking dream, twisting reality to deceive the senses. If he had truly died, then this had to be the work of a necromancer or a warlock, trapping his soul in some conjured world.

His heart pounded. He had to break free.

With a sharp inhale, he pushed himself upright. The moment his feet hit the cold floor, his body responded instinctively—too light.

Something was wrong. He was weaker than he should be.

No—different.

His aura stirred, sluggish at first, like waking muscles long unused. Then, with effort, it began to circulate, warmth spreading through his limbs. Even in this strange, frail body, the flow of his energy responded.

The people—strangers—reacted instantly.

"Jack, what the hell are you doing?" Eric moved toward him, arms outstretched. "You're not okay. Just sit down, man."

"Please!" Sophia's voice was desperate. "Don't do this! You're scaring me!"

But Jack didn't hesitate. He had to escape.

His body, though weaker than his knight-forged form, still moved with instinctive grace. Aura-enhanced strength flooded his legs, and in an instant, he surged past them.

"Jack!"

The air rushed past his ears as he sprinted down the hallway, dodging nurses and patients alike. Shouts followed him—panicked voices, the pounding of footsteps—but they were slow. He was faster.

A door slammed open.

Cool air hit his face as he burst onto an open terrace—a garden?—high above the ground.

His feet skidded to a stop at the railing.

And then—

His breath caught.

The sight before him—vast, sprawling blocks of towering buildings, stretching endlessly into the horizon. The crisp, impossibly clear blue sky overhead.

No smoke. No burning ruins.

No crimson-tainted heavens.

His heart pounded in his chest, his body trembling as he gripped the railing.

This… this wasn't an illusion.

No illusionist could create something so impossibly vivid, so breathtakingly real.

His fingers curled, shaking.

A world untouched by war. A sky unsullied by demonic corruption.

Could such a place exist?

"Jack!"

Before he could react, arms wrapped around him, tackling him away from the edge.

"Shit, hold him down!"

"Jack, stop—don't do this, man!"

He thrashed, but his strength was not what it used to be. Hands gripped his arms, his legs—his team pinning him down, their voices frantic.

"You scared the hell out of us!" Eric panted, straining to keep hold of him. "What the hell were you thinking, running like that?!"

"Standing by the edge like that—" Sophia's voice cracked. "God, we thought—" She cut herself off, burying her face against his shoulder.

Jack's breathing was ragged.

They thought he was trying to jump.

More footsteps.

Security.

Doctors.

"Sedate him."

A prick at his arm.

The world blurred.

A spell? A drug?

No—he was slipping, sinking back into darkness.

The last thing he saw was Sophia's tear-streaked face.