James felt something stirring inside him. It wasn't fear exactly, but a sharp awareness that something irreversible was creeping closer. Death was not something he feared after all, it happens to everybody, but what he feared was that death would come too quickly, before he could do the most important things, and Darvik's calmness, the casual way he had said it, made it worse. It was like standing at the edge of a cliff and the depth whispering your name to jump.
The idea of dying before finishing them made his chest tighten a bit. It wasn't just fear of dying, it was fear of leaving things unfinished, of leaving the world before he had made his mark.
