Desperation mounts with each passing moment. If I could breathe, if I had lungs, I would be breathless, panting for air. If I had eyes from which to cry, I would weep. But my body is gone, no more than a memory. Reality is slipping away.
Iam slipping away.
I cannot recall what I am doing here. I barely recall my own name. My very soul feels as though it is fraying at the seams as my frail mind struggles to contain the immensity of time’s great fabric, the scope of a whole realm compressed into a single pane.
I have to get out of here.
Even if I end up in Carvage, my fate will be better than thisslow atrophy into aether. I am prepared to choose at random, if only to escape the terrifying fray of my own consciousness. But then, finally, just as I have begun to lose all hope…
I feel it.
A pulse in the distance. Faint. Barely discernible at first. So weak I think it must be a hallucination born of delusional hope. Even if it is, I am too desperate to care. I follow it blindly, seeking out the current of familiarity.
Caeldera.
Please, gods, let it be Caeldera.
It is so far away. And I am so weak. The pathways before me diverge, branching in various directions. Dizzying directions. My mind is unable to think through the spinning.
What am I looking for?
Nothing.
Something.
The pulse.
Follow the pulse.
Where is it?
It’s disappeared again.
Just as I will disappear.
Perhaps it never existed.
Perhaps you have gone mad.
No.
No.
There is somewhere I need to go.
There is someone I need to see.
A place of grief and ruin.
A man of fury and fire.
Caeldera.
Pendefyre.
The pulse comes again then, on the heels of my defiance. Aheartbeat in the abyss, leading me onward. The leylines branch and, at last, I see it. My exit. Far in the distance, brighter than the rest.
More vital.