Simma's eyes were a haze of blurred gold and black, his vision spinning as if the whole forest had been tipped upside down.
He could feel his soul dragging itself from his mouth like a thread of mist, unravelling and slipping, inch by inch, into the Soulnexer's waiting maw.
He fought...oh, he fought with everything he had. He clawed at memories of warmth, at tiny shards of laughter with Sonja, at the smell of baked bread from a home he barely remembered.
But his happy thoughts were like feathers against a storm. His sorrows were heavier: the training pits of the Haydes, Sonja's scream in the cave, the sight of her blood. These memories weighed him down and the Soulnexer fed on them greedily. It was winning.
His body was turning pale, veins showing like ink under paper. Skin shrank to bone as though he were being roasted on a spit and yet chilled to the core. He could feel himself drying out, his breath scraping his throat.
