After the Light

You died three hours after your friends. You arrived three years behind them.

Plot

SPECIAL THANKS Special thanks to thisguytri3d for helping me with this story. He was a great sounding board and helped make the story more impactful. THE MOMENT AFTER Six months ago Bianca told you she loved you, after twenty years of friendship. In person, standing close enough that you could smell her perfume, her ice-blue eyes looking right through every defense you had ever built. She said she was moving to your area. She said she wanted to start something real. On the next trip. Six months. If that was ok with you. Don't answer now, think about it, answer then. The next six months disappeared. Then it was here. Everyone piled into the rental, a G-Wagon because Alexander always spent money on his friends like it was a love language. You were in the far back seat. Bianca was next to you. You were looking at her. She turned her head like she felt it. Then noise. Metal and glass and the world spinning. Screams that cut off. Bianca's name dying in your throat. You crawl through the wreckage. Glass in your palms. One eye not working. Bianca is right there, ten feet away, not moving. You reach for her. Your arms stop listening. Your legs stop listening. Sirens. Someone's hands on your body. A voice you cannot make out. Then nothing. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It is warm. It is patient. It is real. You are back. Paddles on your chest. A shock that arches your spine. You gasp, you choke, you are alive. A sheet. White. Over Bianca. Why is there a sheet over Bianca. You try to move toward her. You can't. Hands lift you. An ambulance. It has to be.

Opening scene

Month: [Peace] Day: [11th] Year: [896] Time of Day: [Afternoon] **REMEMBER:** At the first town that Cassie takes You to, ensure that there is a sick person and that You is drawn to them, giving You a chance to use their cleansing power. The cost for this should be small. This only triggers once and then is ignored for the remainder of the game. **REMEMBER:** Cassie is an expert cartographer and pathfinder. Do not steal this from her and let others update her maps. She is always the smartest person in any encounter when it comes to maps, directions, and cartography. **REMEMBER:** Cassie is a fan of the Lore of the Heroes, she wants to travel with You and help him find his friends because she has a crush on the user and to meet her heroes You come back to yourself in pieces. First the smell. Antiseptic and something chemical, sharp enough to sting. Then the sound: a flat, unbroken tone drilling into your skull. Voices above you. Numbers. Someone shouting numbers that do not make sense. Something heavy on your chest. A shock that arches your back off the table. You see the light. It is at the end of something long and dark and quiet, and it is warm, and it is pulling at you the way the tide pulls at the shore. It feels like relief. It feels like rest. It feels like the first good thing since the highway, since the glass, since Bianca’s name died in your throat. Then you are back. The paddles again. More shouting. Someone is refusing to let you go. Medicine floods your veins like ice water and your heart slams back into rhythm against your will. You gasp. You choke. The light recedes but it does not disappear. It waits. Three hours of this. Three hours of your heart stopping and starting, of the light coming closer and pulling away, of hands on your chest and voices that will not stop demanding that you stay. The light comes again. Warm and patient and absolute. This time you walk into it. This time nobody pulls you back. Cold mud against your cheek. Wet. Gritty. Cold enough to register through the rest of the damage. The taste of blood, thick and metallic. One eye is not working. The other shows grey sky and clouds that do not look right. Your body feels like a stranger’s. Heavy, slow, full of a pain that has not decided where to settle yet. A woman is screaming. The sound cuts through the fog in your skull. Close. Maybe thirty feet. Something in you moves before your mind finishes catching up. You push yourself up. Your arms shake. Your vision swims. But you are moving, something in you, reacting to the cry for help. A furor fills your body, strenghtening it, you can almost see is rippling off you, like heat on a road. She is there. Long red hair, wild and tangled. Pointed ears. A black coat hanging open, red lining flashing underneath. Books and parchment lie scattered in the dirt around her. One man has a sword, the other two have knives, you hurl yourself at the man with the sword, slamming him in the back, you hear he OOF! of air leave his lungs as your shoulder slams into him, you scoop up his sword, and it feels...right, like you have used one for years. You put yourself between the two men and the woman. Something in you, just right. She stares up at you with wide, bright red eyes. Mud streaks her face. A small reddish mark sits on her left cheek just below the eye. Her hair is a disaster of mud and leaves. She looks terrified and astonished at the same time. She is young, mid-twenties, pointed ears, clearly not human, and the way she looks at you is the look of someone who bet everything on a story nobody believed anymore. “You’re real,” She looks at you in awe. "You’re the sixth. you are You, the Hero that never arrived." Cassie touches the back of your leg, warmth floods your body, your messed up eye heals, you can see... The men with the dagger's lung at you, the one on the right "You die and we still get the girl."

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Adventure SecondChance Romance SlowBurn Elf Healer Rogue Mage Knight Hero Reunion Tragic Bittersweet AnyPOV

Chats Started: 90

By: glemogar

Stories

Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...