The body opened its eyes.
For several seconds, it didn’t make a single movement. A ceiling stretched high above its position—not the flat concrete slabs of the laboratory, but ancient white stone carved into tall, sweeping arches. Thin lines of natural sunlight entered through enormous arched windows, falling in bright blocks across a polished stone floor.
The body blinked, the muscles in his eyelids stiff. He slowly turned his head from side to side.
The room was vast. A massive bed stood in the center of the space, surrounded by dark, heavy wooden furniture that smelled faintly of old wax. The walls were constructed from pale stone blocks, but they weren’t bare; intricate, fine carvings of unfamiliar lineage ran along the pillars and framed the thick window glass.
There was no mechanical hum. No hydraulic restraints. No silicone tubes. No researchers staring through a visor.
The body slowly sat up, the fabric of a loose linen tunic rustling against the sheets. Nothing hurt. That was the very first thing his brain registered. After the excruciating, fire-laced agony he had just experienced under the spinal tap, the absolute absence of pain felt entirely strange, almost unnatural.
He looked down at his own hands. The skin was pale, clean, and completely devoid of the needle scars or the red capillary tears from the lab. He rubbed his palms together, checking the texture. Then he looked around the vast room again.
Where am I?
The thought came naturally, cold and heavy. No answer followed it.
He pushed the heavy blanket aside, his feet swinging over the edge. He stood up on the smooth stone. His legs felt slightly unsteady, the muscles weak from an apparent lack of use. He waited, balancing his weight against the frame of the bed, before taking a cautious step forward. Then another.
The room remained perfectly quiet. There was a large set of double wooden doors on one side of the chamber, reinforced with dark iron bands. A smaller, plain door stood near the far corner wall.
And beyond the open windows—something caught his attention.
He walked toward the light. The glass panels led out onto a wide, semicircular stone terrace. The moment he stepped through, warm, clean air touched his face. He stopped.
For a long moment, he simply stood there, his fingers resting on the stone balustrade.
Below the structure was a vast, unbroken landscape. Green fields stretched out for miles, rolling toward the dark tree lines of distant forests. A wide river wound through the low valley, catching the noon sun in long, shimmering silver lines. Far beyond the edge of the trees, jagged mountains rose sharply against a clear, blue sky.
The air smelled of pine and damp earth. There were no concrete buildings packed against one another. No traffic snarls. No noise from diesel engines or transit buses. Only the steady sound of the wind moving through the valley.
The body stepped farther onto the open terrace, his bare feet cold against the stone. He looked left, then right. Nothing in the geography looked familiar.
“Where... am I?”
The words sounded strange, hollow in the vast open air.
A massive shadow suddenly passed across the stone floor of the terrace. The body looked straight up.
A bird was flying overhead. At first glance, it didn’t seem unusual; it possessed broad wings and was gliding easily through the upper currents of the sky. But then it turned, descending slightly as it circled back toward the stone towers.
The body watched its trajectory. The creature came closer. And closer.
Something felt fundamentally wrong. It wasn’t the way the wings caught the air; it was the absolute scale of the thing. The body slowly took a step backward toward the bedroom glass.
The creature continued its descent toward the castle structure. Only when it was close enough to cast a wide, suffocating shadow across the entire terrace did its actual dimensions become clear. Its wings stretched wider than the stone terrace itself. The downward wind from a single, massive wingbeat pushed against the body hard enough to disturb his linen clothes, forcing him to brace his shoulder against the wall.
The creature passed directly overhead. The body stared up, his breath freezing in his throat. He had expected to see a large bird of prey. Instead, he had just watched an entity that could have easily carried an entire residential house in its talons.
The creature circled once more above the stone peaks of the castle. Then it began descending toward the lower courtyard out of sight.
The body remained completely still against the white stone. He had no logical data, no coordinates, and no understanding of where he was. But one single fact was becoming entirely difficult to ignore.
This wasn’t home
The creature was coming closer.
He stood paralyzed on the stone terrace, his fingers white where they gripped the cold edge of the balustrade, entirely unable to rip his gaze away from the mass in the sky. At this specific distance, the true scale of the thing defied his brain’s ability to process it. The wings moved with a heavy, deliberate slowness, each downstroke forcing a massive, visible rush of air across the lower battlements. Its shadow spread over the stone courtyard like an ink stain, swallowing the manicured gardens below until the entire valley went dark.
He took a rigid step back, his bare heel scraping against the stone. Then another.
“What...?” The syllable was dry, catching in his throat.
The creature didn’t alter its trajectory. It continued heading straight for the level of the terrace. His breathing became incredibly shallow, his lungs refusing to expand fully.
There was nowhere to run. Even if he managed to wrench his body around and scramble inside the wooden doors of the bedchamber, what would that actually accomplish against a force of that volume? The entity was so colossally large that the stone castle itself looked insignificant, like a small toy dropped beneath its shadow.
He wanted to move his limbs, to dive toward the floor, but his legs simply refused to cooperate, locked straight at the joints.
The creature descended. Closer. Closer.
He tightly shut his eyes, his teeth grinding together as he braced for the impact of the beak.
Several seconds ticked past in absolute silence. Nothing happened. No wood splintered; no stone cracked.
He opened his eyelids, his chest heaving. The sky directly ahead of the terrace was empty. He turned his head sharply to the left. The massive shape was already several hundred meters beyond the western tower, gliding easily toward the distant, jagged mountains as if it hadn’t even noticed the building.
He stood against the pale wall, his breath coming in ragged, erratic gasps. “I’m alive...”