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He hardly registered his body falling out of the portal.
His bones still hummed with the white glitches hanging onto him, the transport from the hellhole he was in to wherever this was felt like forever, an infinite amount of time spent in between dimensions, with the only true sign that he was really changing positions being the feeling of the code of the world itself enveloping his body and moving him along the way.
And isn't that a novel thought? He felt something. A sort of buzz around his very being, a hum in any and all the space not occupied by him, something unmistakably real and touching him and not reeling away from him in disgust.
Putting his focus on his body in the present, he immediately noticed feeling something new, something different. There was ground beneath him digging into his bones and a thick layer of white soft powder resting on top, undisturbed until his body fell and pressed itself into it.
He stared at his rattling forearms, the bones making an annoying noise that only served to give him a headache. His body shaking with what he assumed was— fear? No, not fear, something different. Something natural, written into any functioning being, a warning sign.
He stood up quickly, shaking out his arms and legs to make the trembling stop, there wasn't any danger, his limbs shaking and refusing to cooperate properly was unwarranted. He would— he would know if danger was nearby, he would have felt it.
Unfortunately, using logic and reason didn't seem to work against his stupid, rotten, deformed body. It simply continued to shake and send warning sign after warning sign down his mana lines, crawling up and down his spine in a way that only made him more uneasy.
He held back a scream of frustration, mind working overtime on checking his surroundings of the new environment, making sure there really wasn't anyone there, that his panic was truly unnecessary.
The ground, white; so much life around him, plants? no, trees, so many trees, a forest?— he catalogued over and over, as if triple checking everything he could possibly see would make it that much more real and not a trick that his mind could be playing on him.
The wind, soft, like silk brushing against him, almost nonexistent, almost like before— shaking bones and silent screams and so, so much white— he backed away blindly, making sure to not look at the ground for even a moment longer. He felt his breathing speed up, panic grasping his battered, broken soul in a firm grip.
The sharp texture of— something behind him took his breath away, and he knew that his wrong, changed, disgusting eyelights disappeared with the sudden contact making his brain stutter.
That shouldn't be possible. He thought, already halfway in hysterics. Touch wasn't a thing in the Anti-Void, maybe a rare luxury that his hands could grant him when luck struck and the numbness they carried lifted for a moment— but this? This sharpness shouldn't be possible at all.
The void was all soft silk and round corners— no corners, actually. Just reality stretching on and on. Forever in a state of numb stillness that made him want to rip out his non-existent organs just to be able to feel the texture of them instead of the ever present nothingness.
So how was this— how was this possible—
He felt himself slide down to the ground, back resting against the rough surface of whatever was behind him, mind reeling from the feeling of so many sharp points pressed into his back. This shouldn't be possible in the Anti-Void, he once again thought.
It shouldn't be possible; the Anti-Void was blank, more than dead and unfeeling— so this couldn't be the Anti-Void.
Just as he came to that conclusion, the memories snapped back painfully; memories of the portal, the escape.
He shoved his back against the rough texture behind him— the bark of a tree, because he was in a forest, because he got out and was finally free.
The laugh that escaped him would have been called manic if there was someone to overhear, but he knew there wasn't, he checked. Over and over, bending the code to his will to see if anyone was here other than him, but there wasn't.
He couldn't make himself react negatively to those news, he was almost— glad, that there was no one to look at his ruined, tainted, unstable body. He himself wouldn't want see his form if he didn't have to, if his other choice wasn't staring into the blinding abyss as it slowly corroded his mind—
Throwing his head against the bark again made the panic recede, a sharp pain ringing from the back of his skull all the way down his neck to his back— a pain he didn't care about. Instead, his soul was filled with morbid glee as he realized he could—he could actually feel pain. His ribs were protesting as he threw himself backwards again and again, wheezing and laughing at his freedom.
Eventually, with his back beaten and his skull throbbing with a dull ache, he returned to just sitting under the tree, his body shaking with soundless laughter. Simply enjoying the small gusts of wind that went through his ribs every once in a while, soothing the hurt bones of his chest and back.
He was free, his mind supplied, the obvious fact cutting through the fog culminated in his head, basically useless. But he could not be mad at himself this time for thinking something unnecessary. Because, being free was more than an observation.
It was a promise. He will never be trapped like that again, he will not let anyone put him in a cage like that again.