Captain Lyralei's consciousness returned gradually, awareness filtering back through layers of disorientation that felt thick as molasses. Her enhanced senses struggled to process surroundings that seemed familiar yet wrong, as if reality had been subtly altered while she slept. The golden corridor stretched around her exactly as she remembered, but something fundamental had changed in ways she couldn't immediately identify.
The silence was what alerted her first. No breathing except her own, no subtle sounds of movement or whispered conversations that should have marked her teammates' presence. She pushed herself upright with movements that felt sluggish despite her Master-rank conditioning, her mind working to piece together fragmented memories of what had occurred before darkness claimed her.
