Fire is the first thing.
In the dark, one ember flickered to life, then another caught and soon flames spread over stone and across rooftops until the city was ablaze at one end to the other.
Heat needled Miyuki's skin. Smoke clawed at his throat. Every breath hurt. He tried running, but the fire closed in, eating the air.
The ground lurched.
He hit scorched granite. Black walls shed bricks that crumbled when they landed. Smoke swallowed the sky.
Through the blaze he saw a figure, tall, human, a dark outline, moving straight towards the center of the fire. No pause, no glance back, step by step they walked into it and disappeared.
His chest was locked. He tried to shout. Ash fell out instead.
The vision snapped.
The city was gone.
The whiteout enveloped a forest. Wind drove snow sideways. Every breath was ice.
Then he saw her.
A woman was half-upright against a tree, her limbs loose as if she'd been dropped there. Dark blue eyes opened and found his. The same blue rimmed her hair wet and stuck to her brow.
The weight in his hand was a black steel sword whose edge was red.
A beat passed before he realized that the blood was hers.
Her eyes flickered past him for an instant, as if checking on something he couldn't see. She tried to speak. The wind took it.
Then she looked at him again. There was no anger. There was just a clean, quiet sadness that cracked something in him.
She reached to touch a pendant at her collar-a crest pulsed faint blue.
She raised the chain and passed it over his head. Cold metal struck against his neck.
A single word formed on her lips:
Sorry.
Frost crawled over her skin until, in one breath, she was covered.
He dived. The storm bucked. Everything went mute.
Snow rose. Taller. Darker—
—and it all went out.
Cold pressed against his face, weight upon his back, snow holding him down. The footsteps punched through the drift, steady, getting closer.
A woman's voice, close to his ear.
"I won't let you die here."