The city was a symphony of sound, a mix of car horns, chattering pedestrians, and music spilling from open storefronts. Leo Hawthorne, headphones on, was lost in his own world, the driving rhythm of his favorite song pushing him forward as he crossed the street. He was nineteen, with that feeling of almost-adulthood, the world stretched out before him, full of possibilities. He was thinking about the future, about college, about maybe finally talking to Sarah, the girl with the bright smile in his English class.
He glanced at the crosswalk signal, saw it was green, and stepped off the curb. He never saw the car.
There was a screech of tires, a sudden, sharp blare of a horn, and a flash of blinding light. Leo's world dissolved into chaos. He felt a heavy impact, a crushing force that threw him through the air. There was a moment of weightlessness, a strange sense of detachment, and then… nothing. Not blackness, but an absence of everything. Sound, sight, feeling – all of it simply ceased to be.
Time ceased to have meaning. There was no pain, no fear, just a void where Leo used to be.
Then, slowly, sensations began to return, but they were… different. Alien. There was no pressure, no weight, but a sense of floating, of being untethered. There was a coldness, not the chill of a winter day, but a coldness that seemed to come from within.
And then, there was sight. Not the familiar visual input of his eyes, but a direct awareness of his surroundings.
He "opened" his eyes.
He was in a jungle, but not one he recognized from any nature documentary or geography class. The trees were enormous, their thick canopies creating a ceiling of green leaves that blocked out most of the light. Plants, flowers and shrubs all around. The air hummed with sounds, the chirping of birds, the rustling of leaves.
He was… somewhere else.