Waking up involved so much more than just opening his eyes. For so long everything had been distant voices and movements, fuzzy and unclear and beyond his reach, and in a way, nothing changed. Instead, like he was swimming up from the bottom of that lake again, he felt like a pressure on him was lessening, a tightness in his chest relieved.
Krory's first conscious breath stung his throat, but the cooled air seemed to flush something heavy out of his systems. His initial instinct was to focus on his breathing, forcing a pattern of in and out, in and out, until it no longer felt so strange. The fuzziness in his thoughts had cleared somewhat, and he was dimly aware that he was resting against a pillow and that he had not yet opened his eyes.
I was... I was... he struggled to think coherently. The realization that he could neither form a sentence nor remember anything beyond his sense of self brought on a panicked urgency. His body gave a massive twitch as it tried to coordinate the movement of rolling over, but while the movement failed, memories came rushing in. "Twins," he rasped aloud, "Noah. I was fighting..." But wasn't he in a bed? Something was wrong. "Allen! Lavi!" he cried out, lost with nothing but the pillowcase in view. Where in the world was he?
