Chapter 2: Triage

Panic was a tidal wave threatening to breach his mental fortress. Leo’s training, hammered into him through years of blood and chaos, was the only thing holding it back. It screamed at him, a familiar litany in an unfamiliar world.

Assess the scene. Is it safe?

He forced himself to take a slow, deliberate 360-degree look. The alien forest was eerily silent. No birds, no insects, just the faint, almost sub-audible hum of… something. Of life. The sheer scale of it was intimidating; the silver-barked trees were as wide as small houses. The light was all wrong, a soft, diffused lavender that cast no sharp shadows. It was beautiful, and it was terrifying. He was exposed.

Assess the patient. The patient is me.

He did a quick but thorough self-pat-down, his hands moving from head to toe with practiced efficiency. No bleeding, no obvious fractures, no signs of head trauma other than the fact that he was currently on a planet with two moons. His heart was hammering against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of adrenaline and pure, unadulterated shock. His gear was gone. No radio, no medkit, no phone. Just the torn fabric of his uniform, a grim reminder of his last moments in a world he now suspected was lost to him forever.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and the image assaulted him instantly. Mia. The unicorn charm. The look in her eyes. The name was a fresh, gaping wound in his psyche. He had promised. I’ve got you.

A scream tore through the forest, ripping him from his spiraling thoughts.

It wasn't human—it was higher pitched, more fluid, laced with a strange musicality—but it was a sound of pure, undiluted agony.

Instinct overrode everything else. The shock, the grief, the cosmic confusion—it all fell away. There was a patient. That, he understood. He was on his feet and moving toward the sound before he even made a conscious decision to do so. He pushed through giant, fern-like plants with leaves that curled away from his touch, the soft moss silencing his footfalls and making him feel like a ghost.

He broke into a small, sun-dappled clearing and froze.

The scene was one of primal, brutal violence. A young woman with long, silver hair that fanned out around her like a halo lay on the ground, clutching a deep, bloody gash in her side. Her armor, made of what looked like dark, sculpted leather, was torn. She had delicately pointed ears that peeked through her hair. An elf. The word appeared in his mind, unbidden, from a dozen fantasy novels he’d read in his youth.

Standing over her was a creature from a nightmare. It was a wolf-like beast the size of a boar, its fur matted with mud and gore. Its back was not fur, but a solid carapace of jagged, gray bone, like overlapping plates of slate. It snarled, ropes of thick drool dripping from its fangs, its eyes gleaming with a malevolent, hungry intelligence.

The woman, gritting her teeth against the pain, held a short, leaf-bladed dagger, but her arm trembled with exhaustion. She was pale from blood loss, her fight nearly over.

The beast gathered its powerful haunches, preparing for the final, killing pounce.

And in that moment, the woman’s eyes—a startling shade of deep violet—flicked past the beast and landed on Leo. They weren't seeing him, not really. They were staring into the face of her own death. It was a look of pure, helpless terror.

It was the same look he had seen in Mia’s eyes.

The world fractured. The trigger had been pulled.

The vibrant forest dissolved into a glitching overlay of strobing lights and pouring rain. The sweet smell of pollen was replaced by the acrid, metallic scent of blood and gasoline. The shriek of tearing metal from the bridge screamed in his ears, drowning out the beast’s snarl.

The unicorn charm, swinging back and forth, back and forth.

He was paralyzed, trapped in the amber of his worst failure. The Echo, as he would later come to call it, had seized him. It was a full-sensory assault. He could feel the phantom cold of the rain, the desperate weight of his duty. His body was in the forest, a stone statue, but his mind was on the bridge, forced to re-watch the blue sedan fall, again and again, in an eternal, punishing loop. He was useless, a spectator to his own personal hell.

He tried to fight it. Move! he screamed at his own limbs. Scream! Do something! But his body wouldn't obey. His lungs were filled with concrete.

Through the storm in his head, a new sound pierced the memory. A wet, sickening crunch. A choked-off cry of pain that was horribly real.

He saw the beast's bone-armored claws plunge downwards. He saw the flash of violet eyes go dim.

Failure. Complete and absolute. The first person he encounters in this new world, and he stood by and watched them die. The universe, it seemed, wasn't just punishing him. It was mocking him.

The weight of this new, fresh failure was so immense, so total, that it finally shattered the memory's hold. The bridge faded. The screaming wind died down.

Leo gasped, stumbling back into the full reality of the sun-dappled, alien clearing. The sensory whiplash was nauseating.

He was too late. The beast stood over the elf's still form, a dark pool of blood widening on the impossibly green moss. The sight was a dagger in his heart, twisting the fresh wound of Mia's loss into something even deeper and more monstrous. He hadn't just failed. He was a curse.