Chapter Twenty-One: Only For A Second

The world around Yozora was a haze. Faint, distant voices floated in and out of his consciousness, like whispers carried on a breeze just beyond his reach. His body felt heavy, as though it were weighed down by the haunting memory of the battle that still lingered in his mind. His head throbbed, memories slipping through his fingers like grains of sand.

A voice, slightly familiar, cut through the fog.

"Why isn’t he waking up?" It was a woman’s voice, sharp with frustration. "Ma’am, our charts show he’s stable," another voice responded, this one calmer, more clinical, but distant, as if from a dream.

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What's going on? Yozora thought, his mind sluggish, his body unresponsive. He struggled to open his eyes, his eyelids feeling impossibly heavy. Slowly, the darkness receded, and a blurry world came into view.

The outline of a figure approached—an unknown woman dressed in black. Her features were blurred, hazy, as if shrouded by a mist his eyes couldn’t quite pierce. The air around her seemed to shift, her presence both commanding and unsettling. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t place it.

She leaned closer, her voice sharper now, cutting through the fog like a blade. “Yozora... wake up. Wake. Up.”

His heart raced as he tried to focus on her face, but his vision refused to clear. Who was she? And why did her voice seem to linger in his mind, like a shadow from a forgotten memory?

As Yozora’s consciousness stirred, the faintest image flickered at the edge of his mind. A name floated through the haze, unbidden yet insistent, as if whispered by fate itself:

Enola.