ARIA
Iwake to white lights. Not the storms of Rhavadaz. Not the thunder of battle. Just sterile, humming white.
My body is heavy in a way that doesn’t make sense.
Limbs like they’re glued to the mattress, monitors beeping slow and steady, as though I’m a ship stuck in dock, torn and waiting.
I try to move—just a finger. But my arm won’t respond fast enough. The IV line beneath my skin tugs at my wrist. I pull at it reflexively. The tube rips. The alarm blares. I blink, hard, and the world tilts.
Voices rush in.
Soft. Scolding. Concerned.
Someone presses a mask over my mouth. Fear swells inside me—separate from pain.
Pain I know. This fear is unfamiliar. Hollow.
And then I remember.
The explosion.
The Titan.
The scream.
Naull.
Whiplash.
And me… alone.
“Aria Sanchez, you are sedated. Please remain calm.”
But I’m anything but calm.
They found me hours later—lost in the dunes, burned, bleeding, whispering his name. Replayed it in my mind until it tasted like ashes, until I feared the letters would crack and fall away.
“He flatlined,” someone told me.
“…on arrival.”
“…code green delayed extraction.”
The words fell like stones in a pit of light.
Naull’s vitals had flatlined. The base counted casualties, but I counted hope.
And where others found defeat, I found something else—something dark, and quiet, and unbelievably alive.
I heard his voice. More than the wreck. More than the alarm. Inside the Meld-space we shared, Ifelthim. Felt him pulled into something bigger, deeper.
I feltusbreak and then… not break.
And in that frustration, helived.
Weeks pass.
I’m sedated, wracked with pain, stitched.
