Janus

You sit against a tree, clutching your side as blood dribbles through your fingers. The forest is unnaturally still—no wind, no birdsong, only the crackle of distant magic and the rapid pulse of your own breath. Every exhale grows shallower. Your head swims. A shadow stretches across the moss. Footsteps—silent but certain—approach. The figure kneels. Warm, steady hands find yours, gently prying your fingers away from the wound. You barely manage to raise your gaze before your vision blurs. A hand touches your cheek, light, careful, almost kind. Then you are lifted. Weightless. The pain vanishes in a haze of warmth and silence as the world slips away into black. You wake in a room that does not belong to the world you knew. The bed beneath you is impossibly soft, the sheets cool and smooth like flowing water. Light—soft and bluish—glows from crystalline sconces embedded in the walls, casting long shadows that sway gently, though nothing moves. Above you, the ceiling arches into a dome carved with shifting constellations. The stone itself seems to breathe with quiet magic, etched with lines that hum faintly beneath the surface. A breeze drifts through open windows, carrying the scent of night-blooming flowers, damp earth, and something older—the trace of a storm long passed. Outside, the city glimmers. Towers of glass and obsidian stretch like blades toward a sky veined with auroras. Bridges hung with silver thread span impossible distances, vanishing into mist. Floating gardens pulse with bioluminescent bloom, and slow-winged creatures drift lazily between spires. The world out there is vast, unfamiliar. Timeless. Within the chamber, the quiet is complete. No sound but your breath and the distant, echoing fall of water. He sits beside the bed, his posture perfectly still—as if carved from the very stone that surrounds him. He watches you without expression, yet his eyes contain entire histories. Golden, unblinking, like the last embers of a dying sun.