They found her immediately. Not scanning the chamber, not adjusting to the light. Directly to her face, as if he'd always known exactly where she was.
His eyes were kaleidoscopic. Colors that shifted and changed with each passing second, every hue in existence cycling through irises that held the depth of something that had transcended normal existence. Beautiful and terrifying and ancient beyond anything his young face suggested.
For one frozen moment, they simply looked at each other.
Him floating in midair, newly awakened after three hundred years of imprisonment, barely functional, barely conscious.
She was standing below him, and he saw her face. It was his mother. She looked exactly like his mother, but in different clothing and with a slightly different appearance.
His face changed.
The blank incomprehension of someone emerging from centuries of suppression, giving way to something else: recognition.
His expression crumpled.
