Sirius woke up first.
It wasn't because he had pushed his body less than Ren, nor was it because his elite biology naturally recovered faster. In the end, during the harrowing escape, Sirius had sustained the most prolonged, brutal physical exertion of the two. He had sprinted, dodged, and bled through ten collapsing chambers, dragging his limits with a body that had only just been returned to flesh.
But Ren's exhaustion existed on an entirely different way.
Ren hadn't just run or fight. He had waged a complex, agonizing mind and mana war against corruption. He had fought it within the ancient door's mechanisms, within Sirius's chest, and deep inside his own circulatory system, over and over again, until the foundational internal architecture holding his system together had violently collapsed.
