Index Casualty (BL)

1. artifact

Thunder rumbled in his ears, low and deep.

It prickled at his senses, making the hairs on the nape stiffen in response. Gu Yuzhi's eyelids fluttered, heavy but unwilling to lift themselves from the lull of sleep. Exhaustion seeped through every inch of his bones as he felt the weight of sleep drag him back down.

The thunder droned on in a ceaseless chorus. He was sinking, deeper and deeper—

Thunk.

Something collided near him—or rather, into him—but ran into an obstruction and sloughed off. Gu Yuzhi's eyelids trembled, but clung fast to unconsciousness.

Thump. Thunk thunk!

A few more muffled collisions followed, including one that knocked him sideways. The sudden change caused blood to rush into his head and finally, the eyelids opened. A pair of ordinary dark brown eyes peered groggily from a pale-faced, black-haired teen as he tried to process the sight before him.

The world was blue and iridescent, the air glittering with light. He seemed to be looking through something akin to glass, but much colder and with a faint silver sheen. His head leaned forward and bumped against the smooth, frigid surface that soon turned damp against his skin.

Ice.

Gu Yuzhi's eyes sharpened at the realization just as he found himself unable to move any other part of his body. He was hemmed in on all sides, lying in a rectangular, transparent box with his hands folded stiffly over his torso.

A frozen coffin? What kind of fairy tale setup is this...

While Gu Yuzhi was still sorting out his thoughts, a flash of white bumped into his container as it darted past in panic. The touch was light, but it still knocked him askew. He clearly saw the stream of bubbles it left in its wake, as well as the telltale curve of...a fin?

It was a shark.

Suddenly, the blurry blues and bokeh bobbing before in his vision made sense. He had woken up encased in some ice cube like a cocktail favor and was currently sinking in the ocean. The thunder he heard wasn't a storm at all, but the air bubbles rushing past as he plummeted into the depths. Occasionally, he could see larger pieces of metal and other objects falling past him in the water, perhaps the remnants of a wreck. Had he fallen from a ship? The possibility was high.

As for why the ice wasn't floating above the water instead, Gu Yuzhi could only sense a strong, almost magnetic force drawing the wreckage down from above. He also had no recollection of why or how he'd gotten here in the first place.

Hah...don't tell me I actually died from overwork.

While most people would be panicking by now, Gu Yuzhi was one of the highly evolved humans post-apocalypse who had developed abilities to survive in a harsh new world. He mentally searched for his ability core and found it sluggish, but stable in his abdomen. Then he slowly began to gather energy.

Right now his first priority was to melt the ice of the coffin around him enough so he could break through and swim to the surface. Compared to combat classes, his strength was only above an average human at best. There were all sorts of talents in the apocalypse, but Gu Yuzhi had been a Healer type with high survivability. He could recover from fatal injuries, cure a wide variety of wounds and diseases, and endure a lack of oxygen and increased sea pressure well beyond ordinary human parameters, but it'd be a problem if some giant chunk of wreckage decided to bury him beneath his bulk. There was also the matter of the strange force sucking him deeper underwater...

A section of ice in front of Gu Yuzhi began to crackle and hiss as heat radiated from his palms. Soon he melted enough room to move his hands and press them directly against the ice, speeding up the process. As his surroundings grew darker, the soft golden light radiating from his pupils shone all the more brilliantly in the depths.