Rai's eyes snapped open, and the world came crashing into him all at once.
For a moment, he couldn't breathe. Panic gripped him as confusion overwhelmed his senses. His chest felt tight, and the air was thick—thick with something he couldn't quite name. His body felt… wrong. His limbs were stiff, his movements sluggish as though his very muscles didn't belong to him. He could feel the weight of the ground beneath his palms, the earth cold and smooth as it pressed against his skin. He tried to push himself up, but his body didn't obey.
Where was he?
He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his mind, but the more he tried to focus, the more the world around him seemed to slip out of focus. Everything felt dreamlike, blurry. His senses weren't matching his thoughts, and for a few seconds, he felt completely disoriented. The strange, pulsing sky above him didn't help. It wasn't the usual blue he had known. Instead, it was a deep, unnatural shade of purple—like it was alive in its own way. Iridescent clouds drifted lazily by, swirling and shifting as though they had their own minds, moving with intent but not according to the laws of nature he knew.
Rai dragged himself to his knees, his breath coming in shallow gasps, trying to make sense of his surroundings. He wasn't on Earth. That much was obvious. He was surrounded by vast stretches of wild terrain—tall trees with twisted, glowing branches, plants that shimmered with an unnatural light, and distant hills that looked like something out of a dream. There were creatures moving, too—bizarre and fantastical, more like figments of an imagination gone wild than real beings.
His chest tightened. It wasn't just the confusion—it was the overwhelming sensation that something inside him had changed. He felt different. Not just physically, but in a way that made no sense. The air hummed with a strange, electric energy, and it felt as though something deep inside him was resonating with it. But what?
He tried to speak, but his voice came out distorted, hollow, as though it didn't belong to him either. He flinched at the sound, but before he could dwell on it, a sudden realization hit him like a crashing wave: his name.
It wasn't Rai anymore.
For a moment, he tried to recall his old name, the one that had been so familiar, so integral to his existence. But it was gone. There was no attachment to it anymore. Instead, a new name surged up from within his mind, pulling itself into his consciousness like a flood of foreign thoughts.
Solstice.
It wasn't a thought, exactly, but more like a sensation—a knowing that suddenly filled him up, replacing everything he once was with this new identity. The name Solstice held a weight to it, something deep, and the instant it filled his mind, he understood: this was who he was now. Not the gamer, not the man who had lived a simple life. No, that person was gone. What remained… was Solstice.
But who was Solstice?
He tried to move, to get his bearings, but everything around him was foreign. He pushed himself to his feet, his legs unsteady. His head spun as he looked around, taking in the wild beauty of the world that stretched out before him. No answers came, and the silence was deafening.
Why was he here?
Why this place?
He didn't know. And for the first time in what felt like forever, he felt truly lost. The world wasn't offering him any answers. There were no guides, no flashing prompts or instructions that he could follow to make sense of the situation. All he had was this new name, this new place—and a deep, gnawing sense that everything that had happened to him, everything that had brought him here, was just the beginning.
One thing was certain: this wasn't a game anymore. And there was no reset button to press.