“What the hell was that? It didn’t look like the small disk I saw above Maush and those people at the URCC… Am I hallucinating? A psychic? But Maush saw that light wave too…”

 Thoughts whirled through the reporter’s head. His psychoenergy was active, surrounding him on all sides, yet buried in his turmoil, he didn’t notice it. Accustomed to physical exertion, Auran automatically registered the chaos of his breathing, switched on “autopilot,” closed his eyes, and began to even it out—slowly, deeply. The glow faded, and Auran came to himself. The Flipp, meanwhile, had already begun its descent toward his home.

And yet, there were too many thoughts, too many tangled emotions.

The man stepped out of the Flipp and did what he always did when he felt unsteady — he headed for the track. He decided to climb home along the spiral walkway at a brisk pace, to clear his head.

After six deep breaths, he started. The air was dense and cool, scented with the freshness of early morning. His psyche instinctively set the rhythm for his body, syncing breath and stride, and within a minute the pace he wanted was there — steady, precise, and familiar.

The tangle of thoughts and feelings began to loosen only by the time he reached the roof. Auran decided to make another descent and climb. While running, he started sorting through the shelves of his mind.

He felt like an idiot for not walking the girl to her Flipp — just turning away, rushing to his own, and flying off. “Yeah… that was awkward. She probably won’t want to talk to me again.”

Then came the unease about those strange visual phenomena — the disk and the aura. He couldn’t explain them, yet somehow he was certain they were of the same nature, though what that nature was, he couldn’t say.

To his surprise, he also found among those scattered thoughts a sense of déjà vu: all these reflections about his own abilities and other people’s auras felt oddly familiar, as if he had already pondered them once before.

Set apart from the rest were his thoughts and emotions about his own aura.

 “Do I have one too? A disk—or a full, complete aura?”

He couldn’t quite admit to himself that he too wanted to be special, to possess something like that. And then the word “possess” frightened him. It brought back what he’d seen and heard at the URCC.

He shook his head—and realized he was already back on the roof after the second climb. His body felt the weight of fatigue, yet his mind was still sparking with thoughts. With quick, deliberate steps he headed to his apartment and straight to the shower.

In the shower, determined to keep the emotions of that ill-fated moment from returning, Auran gave his body another challenge — he set the water to switch randomly from scorching hot to icy cold.

He spent about half an hour regulating his body, then finally stepped out and headed to the kitchen. His muscles were heavy, his head humming from the violent shifts in temperature. He took a few steps — and suddenly the world tilted. A sharp wave of dizziness knocked the breath from his chest.

As darkness closed in, his last conscious act was to press the SOS button on his wristband — before collapsing to the floor.

A gray, viscous space was pulling Auran in. Splashes of dark color spread into vast blots, overlapping until they thickened into darkness. He tried to draw breath, but it came shallow— as if the space itself had seeped inside him, filling his lungs.

Then, among the darkening stains, a faint glow appeared. Another beside it. And another—familiar colors. Kaura… He remembered the radiance that had surrounded her.

“Kaura… Kaura…”

He struggled to swim toward the light, and the light seemed to move toward him in return. After a few slow, dragging minutes, it finally cast him out—into brightness.

The man opened his eyes and, jerking upright, drew in a deep breath. A bright light struck his eyes, and somewhere nearby a medical alarm wailed. He was in a hospital ward. The room was spacious and filled with soft, diffused light. Glossy wall panels reflected it gently; instruments and monitors blended naturally into the surroundings, as if woven into the very breath of the space. There was none of the cold sterility of an ordinary hospital—only a calm precision, where everything seemed to breathe confidence and order.

A nurse was at his side in an instant, and a doctor was already hurrying toward him from across the room.

"Excellent! You're back with us. You lost consciousness, and your heart rhythm was unstable — we were seriously worried about you."

Auran remembered what had happened.

 "Guess I overdid it with the training, Doctor," he said.

"Quite possible," the man nodded. "How are you feeling now?"

Auran took stock of himself; his body felt limp and heavy.

 "Weak," he admitted, leaning back against the pillow. "But overall, I’m fine."

"You need rest. Do you think you can sleep, or should I give you a sedative?"

 "I think I’ll manage."

The doctor nodded and left the ward along with the rest of the staff. The reporter stretched his arms along his sides and closed his eyes. Images drifted through his mind — his grandfather, Kaura, the landscape of the Pau River, swirling eddies of color. Entangled in those shifting visions, he drifted into sleep.

Somewhere deep beneath his consciousness, that same bright spot flared — steady, pulsating, like the heartbeat of the planet itself.