Silence.
I still sat on the bed, staring blankly at the window that reflected my image. However, in my mind, something began to emerge. A memory.
Slowly, the world around me faded away.
I saw a woman. Her figure stood vaguely in the darkness, with long flowing hair and a calming gaze. I felt like I knew her, but who was she?
Suddenly, another memory assaulted me, sharper, clearer. I was no longer a grown man in a hospital bed. I was a little boy again in a hazy memory.
Rain poured down heavily.
I ran, my breath ragged. My small body trembled from the biting cold. I tried to find shelter, but the world around me had collapsed into chaos.
In front of my eyes, a blue light flashed and hit the ground, shattering the asphalt into flying fragments. An explosion followed, throwing my body onto the muddy ground.
I turned my head, and that's when I saw her.
The second fragment of my memory. My parents were vaguely present in my mind. They stood not far from me, trying to reach out to me. But before I could move, a blinding flash of lightning shot down from the sky, burning everything.
I wanted to scream, to run towards them, but my body was frozen. In an instant, they vanished. I was alone.
I don't know how long I lay there, and this is my memory. Rainwater mixed with mud on my face. My entire body felt stiff, trembling not just from the cold, but from fear that I couldn't describe.
I was about to lose consciousness when footsteps approached. A figure in black combat gear emerged from the rain mist. The blue light from the symbol on their shoulder was faint, reflecting on their face.
A woman in my memory wasn't very clear. She knelt down in front of me, looking at me with a soft gaze despite her body being covered in wounds and dust. Her long, wet hair clung to her face, but she still smiled.
I felt warm fingers touch my cheek, and then her gentle voice was heard amidst the pouring rain.
"Are you okay?"
I couldn't respond, this memory was so vague. I just stared at her, my eyes still filled with fear. She sighed, then without hesitation, she lifted my body into her arms. I was too weak to resist, too tired to question who she was.
The woman carried me through the rubble, through the scattered bodies, until we finally reached a place far from the destruction. When I opened my eyes, I was already in a different place. A shelter.
People with pale faces and thin bodies leaned against the walls of the large tent. The sound of children's crying could be heard in the distance, mixed with coughing and complaints from the refugees.
I looked up, gazing at the woman who was still standing beside me. She smiled at me - a smile that strangely made me feel a little calmer. Then, she knelt down in front of me, gently grasping my small hand.
"Even though the world has fallen apart, don't give up easily and stay strong."
Coincidence, my memories now recorded. When I was a child and ran away, I believed that my memories could still recover easily, that if I remembered them clearly enough, all those memories would come back. However, what happened was the opposite.
Now, I know. The woman wasn't just an illusion or a fragment of a hazy past. She was real. She was the one who saved me in the midst of destruction, who reached out when I was on the verge of despair. But why did I forget her?
The memory was like a chain that slowly unraveled. I saw myself at the age of ten, sitting quietly in the refugee tent with a blank stare. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. There was only emptiness inside me. I remembered people talking around me, whispering with sympathetic tones.
"Poor thing... it seems like he's severely traumatized."
"He doesn't talk at all?"
"No. Since he was brought here, he's just been silent."
The trauma was so deep that I chose to bury it all, about the destruction, about my parents, and about the woman who saved me. And now, after years, I finally remembered it again. I snapped back to reality, back to the darkness I was trapped in.
The Honkai's energy. Everything started to make sense now. This energy wasn't just a formless power floating aimlessly. It wasn't just a dense fog threatening life.
It was alive. It was a corrosive entity that destroyed everything it touched, eroding humans not just physically, but also mentally and spiritually.
I looked at my trembling hand. Part of me began to understand, maybe from the start, I had already been in contact with this power. And maybe, that was the reason why I was still alive.