Chapter 473: Listen.
Nero’s eyes snapped open.
He lay there in the quiet desolation, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. For a few minutes, he simply existed, unable to determine if this was reality or if he was still trapped in that dark abyss he had fallen into.
The silence was oppressive and heavy. Like the weight of the bones of the dead god kept pressing down on him.
Slowly, sensation began to return.
Pain flooded his body in waves, starting from his broken arm and radiating outward. Then came the numbness, a creeping coldness that spread through his limbs like frost. The contrast between the two was almost worse than pure agony would have been.
He was back. Very much back in his body.
Beads of sweat rolled down his face, mixing with the blood that had dried on his skin. His trembling hand reached across his chest to grasp his broken arm, fingers wrapping around the damaged limb as if holding it and his mind together through sheer will alone.
The pain was terrible, but not quite unbearable.
He’d experienced worse. Quite recently, in fact.
Nero focused on his breathing, forcing air in and out of his lungs in measured intervals, the sound of his wheezing slowly driving him mad.
Agonizingly, he managed to calm himself, the trembling subsiding to a manageable level, and the panic that had threatened to consume him recededing to a dull thumping in the back of his mind.
When he finally felt stable enough to think, he began to reason through what had just happened.