Ren opened his eyes a full day later.
He wasn't anywhere near one hundred percent. His body immediately broadcasted that harsh reality to him, filling his limbs with the heaviness of wet sand.
It wasn't the drowsy fog of a long sleep; it was the agonizing, hollow ache of a mana-biological system that had been completely drained and was only halfway through rebuilding itself.
But he was conscious...
He was tethered to the waking world, and that was vastly more than he could say for the last forty-eight hours.
The very first thing he noticed, even before his heavy eyelids fully fluttered open, was the hum in his chest.
The small fungus had returned.
It rested deep within the center of his system-space, exactly where it had always belonged. It had fully recovered from the catastrophic systemic collapse that had violently banished it into the ether during their frantic escape.
Its presence was an immediate, profound relief.
