Dark returned again to the possibility that had begun to feel more like a truth than a guess, total paralysis.
It was the only explanation that made sense.
He couldn't move.
Couldn't speak.
Couldn't see.
Couldn't even feel.
His body might as well have been carved from stone.
Yet his mind… it was perfectly lucid.
That dissonance was the most unsettling part.
'If this is paralysis,' he thought, 'then I've fallen into a nightmare worse than death.'
Because to someone like Dark, assassin, manipulator, ghost in the night, his body was his weapon.
His precision, his instincts, his movement… everything he had built his name upon depended on being in absolute control.
If that had been taken from him, then what was left?
A assassin with nothing but breath and memory.
A target waiting to be executed.
He replayed the moment again, unwilling but unable to stop himself.
The truck, inhumanly fast, its timing flawless, like it had been summoned with a single purpose, to end him.
He had seen many things in his time, seen people die, seen plans fall apart, seen blades sink into flesh with no hesitation.
But never had he imagined his journey ending like that.
It hadn't even been a battle.
Just a blinding strike.
A ridiculous, brutal ending.
And now?
He didn't even know if he was dying or already dead.
The fear crept in, low and insidious.
'If I can't move… I can't fight.'
'If I can't fight… I can't protect what I took.'
'And if I can't protect the relic… then they'll get it. That organization... they'll take it without effort, and I'll be nothing but a corpse in their way.'
For the first time in years, a knot formed deep in his chest, not of pain or regret, but of helplessness.
The worst kind of failure wasn't dying in battle.
It wasn't being outmatched.
It was being helpless.
They would find him.
They had to be searching for him already.
And if they had already found him, were those the voices he had heard?
The faint, unclear murmurs that filtered through the blackness?
He couldn't recognize them.
What if they were standing around him right now, staring at him with those same cold expressions they wore before they killed?
What if they were waiting for the right moment to gut him like a pig and take the relic from wherever it was hidden?
No.
Worse, what if they were the ones who had done this to him?
What if they had somehow kept him alive on purpose, paralyzed him with some new drug or machine, just to make him suffer longer?
To slowly strip away every edge he had until he broke entirely?
He clenched at that thought, or tried to.
Nothing moved.
Not even a twitch.
He couldn't scream.
Couldn't flinch.
Couldn't fight.
He was trapped in a silent prison built of flesh and failure.
And that, that, was the most unbearable truth.
'If I stay like this, it's over. Not just for me… but for everything I built. Everything I have."
There was no worse fate.
No more humiliating end.
Dark's mind, once razor-sharp and unshakable, began to pulse with desperation.
He had always believed that no cage could hold him.
But this?
This was the one trap he had never seen coming.
Suddenly, Dark felt… something.
It wasn't sharp or sudden.
It was subtle, like a feather brushing against skin.
The faint sensation of weight beneath him.
A softness, foreign, unfamiliar, but unmistakably real.
'This is… a bed?'
The thought entered like a whisper, delicate and uncertain.
He clung to it, desperate for anything tangible.
The surface beneath him wasn't stone or dirt or metal.
It gave beneath his weight slightly, cradling his back.
That ruled out a battlefield or alleyway.
This wasn't some dingy hideout or darkened warehouse.
No.
'This… this feels like a hospital.'
He didn't know how he knew, he just did.
Years of assassination work had sharpened every sense he possessed, trained him to pick up on even the smallest details.
The sterile softness beneath him, the faint smell of something chemical lingering just beyond reach, and the still air, it all pointed to a clinical environment.
Somewhere quiet.
Controlled.
That realization didn't ease him.
In fact, it sent a jolt of tension straight through his mind, even if his body remained unresponsive.
'A hospital?'
He didn't trust hospitals.
Not for someone like him.
Not when he was hunted by people who could turn medicine into poison, orderlies into executioners, and syringes into silent death sentences.
'They found me… didn't they?'