A lost friend's journey

Chapter 18

aha.. haha...This is you all's second betrayal T-T (The first being that one fake chapter, at this rate you'll end up being mini Scaramouches' and this fanfic will be your villain origin story. And at the rate the plot is going, I'll have to betray you around five more times, sorry in advance...)

Soooo... I had a huge plot hole to fix, and once it got fixed and maaany plot twists were added to solve the issue, I kinda burned out. From everything, absolutely everything. It is only recently that I found motivation to write again, so here I am! I hope you will like this chapter!!!

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He felt... heavy. His mind was blurry. He didn't know where he was, he couldn't move a single limb, and it scared him.

He felt like panicking, he felt like screaming, but even that wouldn't come out of his mouth. He felt trapped, trapped in his own mind, in his own body. It was a horrible sensation he didn't wish on anyone.

He was... he was hearing whispers continuously, ever since... ever since he became Celestia's prisoner. They had done something to him... they had tried to turn him into someone he wasn't, they had tried to make him their puppet.

"Can-"

There it was, he could hear bits and pieces of what was said, but he couldn't hear a full sentence. The words would sometimes get jumbled, the whispers would other times get too low to hear, and he wouldn't be able to distinguish what was said in either cases.

"-us?"

"-Shade-"

Some words would get his attention sometimes, would make him focus hard to understand what was being said to him. Was he the one those words were destined to? He wondered. But no one else seemed to be able to hear them. In Celestia, no one was reacting to those voices, so he must be the only one who could hear them. Then it must mean they were trying to reach him with their voices. The only issue was understanding what was being said. Was it even important? It didn't seem to be. Wouldn't the voices try harder if it was?

All Venti was aware of was that he had to wake up from whatever sleep he was in.

And then, he felt it. A strange pull, urging him to wake up. It didn't come from the exterior, it came from inside him, somewhere. He couldn't explain it, it was... strange, but he felt commended to wake up.

With a gasp, he finally felt his body moving in a sitting position as varying colors and shapes appeared in his line of vision. Venti felt obliged to close his eyes, squeezing them to fight off the headache that was forming.

For the first time since becoming Celestia's prisoner, he heard one of the voices as clearly as day, as if it was right beside him, whispering in his ear.

"You are safe, now," it said.

Venti gasped once more as he opened his eyes wide, turning his head to his right, the direction he could have sworn the whisper came from. And yet, there was nothing. Venti's heart was beating impossibly fast, blood thumping in his ears. He was disoriented. He never felt like this after any of his slumbers... What happened to him...?

He gripped his head hard as images came flashing to him. Images of Mondstadt. But that... that wasn't Mondstadt, was it? It couldn't be, not when a wind barrier was dancing menacingly around the city, not when the streets were empty, the sky so gloomy. And yet, it was. This wasn't some nightmare about Old Mondstadt. Old Mondstadt's architecture didn't resemble this, it was different from what he had known with Carmen. This was the city his people had built after the rebellion against Decarabian, this was the city he was rooming every day as an ordinary bard.