Groaning, Grahilo peeled one eye open. Just one. That was all the energy he could afford.
Immediately regretted it.
The sun above Scarragon had clearly made a pact with the gods of migraines. It was blazing. Mocking. Possibly sentient. And the sand? Definitely trying to digest him. It clung to his skin like clingy ex-girlfriend vibes—unwanted and unrelenting.
"Ughhh…" he muttered, because words were too painful.
His shoulder throbbed like someone had shoved a dagger in it, twisted it, then said "Just kidding!" and left it there anyway. A jagged, sticky ache bloomed through his chest, down his arm, like a vine of fire was making itself at home.
He tried to sit up. Failed.
The world spun like a carnival ride designed by a sadist. Beetle shells shimmered somewhere in the horizon, the wind whispered things in languages he didn't understand (probably insults), and Grahilo was pretty sure something with fangs had just skittered into a nearby dune.
"Oh great," he mumbled. "Not dead. But might still get eaten."
Rick Riordan would've said something like: If you're waking up in a foreign desert with a stab wound and a personal hate-club of monsters, you probably should've stayed asleep.
Grahilo blinked at the sky again.
"Well, screw naps then," he muttered, flopping onto his good side with the grace of a dropped sandwich.
His lips curled as he groaned, forcing himself upright with a grunt that sounded more animal than human. "They left me," he hissed, teeth gritted.
The wind blew grit across his wound like salt over fresh bruises.
"After everything—after running through claws and flame, after watching people die—they slammed the gate and called me trash." He punched the sand, sending a plume into the air. "All because I don't shoot lightning from my hands like a circus freak!"
He looked up at the distant walls of Kirigaar, no longer majestic—just cold. Mocking. Unforgivable.
"I could've died!" he shouted toward the towering silhouette. "I still might! But I'm not gonna let some cloaked bureaucrats behind a wall decide if I matter!"
Then he groaned again, pain blooming from his shoulder like a fresh storm.
If Kirigaar didn't want him… fine.
The sun beat down like it held a personal grudge against everyone beneath it, especially people with shoulder wounds and abandonment issues. Grahilo winced, staggered, and finally planted both feet into the sand with trembling defiance.
Blood still oozed from the ragged gash on his shoulder, but he didn't care anymore. Pain was just part of the scenery now.
He faced the horizon—endless dunes, broken metal, distant mountains curling like fists—and narrowed his eyes.
"I'm going back," he said aloud, his voice scratchy but firm. "I don't care how impossible it sounds. I'll find the rip, the gate, the crack between worlds. I'm getting out of this twisted sci-fi apocalypse and back to where I belong."
No applause. No encouraging wind. Just sand flicking his face like, Good luck with that, hero.
Grahilo started walking.
Every step was a protest. Against Kirigaar. Against fate. Against whatever cosmic prankster thought it'd be fun to toss him here without powers or warning.
Grahilo trudged through Scarragon's dunes, each step a stubborn echo of confusion and rage. His shoulder still burned, crusted over with sand and dried blood, but it no longer slowed him. Nothing did. He walked aimlessly—no compass, no direction, only the quiet crunch of his boots and a sky too big to care.
Then he saw it.
Nestled atop a dune like it had waited for him: a glowing green orb.
It pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat, casting eerie spirals of light across the sand around it. The glow was hypnotic—not just light, but invitation.
Grahilo stopped, breath catching. The orb hummed—not with sound, but inside his skull. A strange whisper. Not words, not thoughts. Just pull.
His feet moved before his brain agreed. He climbed the dune and crouched, staring at it. The light reached for his fingers.
He picked it up.
Suddenly, his arms stiffened. His chest tightened. His throat went dry.
SWALLOW.
The command wasn't loud. It was final.
"No, wait…" Grahilo gasped. But his body didn't listen. His hand rose to his mouth, orb in palm. He resisted. For half a second. Then—
He swallowed it.
The orb slid down his throat, cold at first.
Then the pain hit.
Excruciating.
Every nerve lit up like someone detonated a firework inside his organs. His spine arched. He collapsed backward into the sand, clutching his stomach, eyes wide, mouth gaping in a silent scream. Green light burst from his skin in veins and cracks, his vision fracturing into shards of color. His eyes were shifting from green to black .
It felt like he was being torn apart—and reassembled by something ancient.
And then—
Black.
Grahilo's body lay twisted in the sand, spasming under the weight of the green orb's invasion. Light surged beneath his skin, carving wild paths through bone and blood like it was rewriting every piece of him. His scream—silent now—was trapped behind clenched teeth as the pain gripped harder, crueler, deeper.
His vision fractured. Blinding green washed over everything.
Flashes—of places he hadn't seen. Symbols etched into ancient stone. Voices speaking in languages that shouldn't exist. Creatures—not Jiporugis, but something older. Watching. Whispering.
Then, like a switch flipped…
Stillness.
The light faded, slipping into his chest with one last pulse.
Grahilo gasped and shot upright, breath ragged, heart punching against his ribs. He was soaked in sweat, blinking wildly as the world returned in slow pieces: sand, sky, wind… silence.
But something was different.
His veins hummed. The air around him shifted. The sand trembled slightly beneath his fingertips, as if responding to his touch.
Grahilo sat hunched in the sand for what felt like hours—or minutes. Time didn't matter when your body had just been hijacked by glowing alien orb energy and your insides turned into fireworks.
His fingers trembled as he touched his chest. It was quiet now. No green light, no visions, no burning veins.
"What the hell just happened?" he muttered.
He looked around, half expecting another glowing object or Jiporugi to pop out of the dunes. Nothing. Just wind. Just sand. Just silence.
Stumbling forward, driven by instinct more than reason, he walked until he saw something that didn't belong: water. A thin, glimmering stream slicing through the sand like a vein. Small. Unexpected. Possibly imaginary.
He dropped beside it and splashed his face—cool, miraculous water—over skin that felt scorched and foreign. The moment he looked up, the reflection almost made him fall back.
He blinked.
Once.
Twice.
This was not his face. He had expected to have the features he had in his other life but he guess he was wrong.. His hair, once a tangled mess of black, was now silver. Not gray—silver. Like moonlight had threaded itself through every strand.
His dark skin shimmered beneath the sunlight—less dusty, more... radiant.
"I was light skinned in my other life but now I'm dark." He spoke to himself. " Not that I'm racist. I look good."
And his eyes…
They had always been brown. The color of familiar earth, of home. But now they blazed green. Vivid. Alive. Like the orb had left a piece of itself behind—and it was watching.
Grahilo stared into his reflection.
He narrowed them, then relaxed.
Not because he expected anything, but because the intensity unnerved him. Like the green was staring back, not just out.
He exhaled slowly, blinked once—
—and just like that, the light dimmed.
The green faded, swirling inward like smoke pulled into a jar. His irises darkened, mellowing into a familiar shade of warm brown. The kind he'd always had. The kind no orb had ever touched.
"Okay…" he murmured, leaning closer to the stream. "That's new."
The change felt subtle—like shifting gears in silence. No pain. No flare of magic. Just a quiet decision his body somehow obeyed.
But the green hadn't left.
It was waiting. Hiding just beneath the surface. Like an instinct. A spark.
"Didn't think that was going to happen but it did." He spoke. "That does it. I have powers. "
He got up,the wound nothing more than a dull pain.
He let out a breath. Then another. And before he could stop himself…
He laughed.
Not a bitter laugh. Not broken. Real.
The kind that sprang from disbelief, from relief, from standing in the middle of nowhere with a shoulder wound and silver hair and having just swallowed a cosmic orb like it was a vitamin. It echoed across the sand, dancing with the wind.
"I can't believe this," he chuckled, shaking his head. "You slam your gate in my face, call me trash, nearly let me die…"
He turned toward where Kirigaar loomed beyond the dunes—distant, proud, unforgiving.
Grahilo narrowed his eyes, voice low but burning.
"I'll show them. All of them. Kirigaar wanted power? They rejected the wrong guy."
The wind picked up behind him, swirling like it approved.
"Next time they see me," he muttered, "it won't be at their gate."
He turned from the stream, walking with new fire, green light flickering just beneath his skin.