…One month ago…
Kael found himself floating.
There was no up, no down, no left, and certainly no right.
His body felt weightless, devoid of the heavy aches and burning fatigue that had plagued him just moments—or perhaps lifetimes—ago.
It was calm.
Utterly, disturbingly comfortable.
He slowly opened his eyes, half-expecting to see a hospital ceiling. Instead, he found himself suspended in a void.
There was nothing around him.
No stars, no ground, no sky.
Only an endless, suffocating blanket of soft darkness that seemed to stretch out into eternity.
It wasn't the scary kind of dark, it was the boring kind.
The kind you saw when you closed your eyes in a room with heavy blackout curtains.
'Not this again,' he thought, a flicker of resignation passing through his mind.
It felt vaguely familiar, like a recurring dream he couldn't quite remember the plot of.
His mind felt heavy, blank… empty.
It was as if his thoughts were wading through molasses.
