He woke to pain.
Not the clean sting of a wound, but a heavy, all-consuming ache that filled every inch of him. His ribs throbbed when he tried to breathe. His fingers refused to curl. Even his eyelids hurt when light pressed through them.
For a long time he didn't move. The ground beneath him was rough and cold, biting through whatever thin fabric clung to his skin. When he finally turned his head, grit scraped his cheek and the taste of iron spread across his tongue.
Around him rose peaks of gray stone, jutting out of a sea of white cloud. The air was thin and silent, the kind of silence that made his heartbeat sound too loud. He didn't know where he was. He wasn't even sure who he was. Only that everything hurt, and that somehow, impossibly, he was still alive.
He stayed where he was, unable to move. The pain still lived in him, dull now, like embers under skin, but it wasn't what kept him still. He felt no hunger, no thirst, only a slow emptiness spreading through his chest. So he lay there, staring at the bright white sky, and time slid past without shape or sound
At some point, he realized he couldn't hear the wind. The clouds below didn't move. Nothing did.