Cold was the first thing he expected.
It never came.
Kael's cheek pressed against stone that should have bitten through skin and bone. The wall behind his shoulders should have been damp, rough, alive with winter. He waited for the familiar cruelty of temperature to announce itself, to confirm that he had failed—again—to hold the line long enough for others to escape.
Instead, there was only… nothing. Not warmth. Not comfort. Just an absence of the pain he'd anticipated, like a missing tooth his tongue kept searching for.
His lungs dragged air in on reflex.
The inhale was shallow. Wrong. It scraped.
He didn't open his eyes. There was no reason to. Eyes were for seeing what was coming. He already knew what came after the line broke: bodies, shouting, the wet sound of metal being pulled free, the moment when the world decided it was done borrowing your spine.
He tried to remember the last thing he'd seen.
Not a battlefield. Not a monster. Not the bright, cinematic violence that stories gave to men who died "well."
A doorway. A stairwell. The edge of a lantern's light trembling on stone.
He had sat down.
Just for a moment.
His arms had been heavy. His fingers numb in the way that came after hours of gripping a weapon, after hours of bracing and pushing and not letting the pressure move an inch.
He had thought: I'll close my eyes for ten breaths.
He had never counted to ten.
Now, air entered his lungs again, thin and reluctant. A soft wheeze followed, as if the body had forgotten the correct sequence and was assembling it from memory.
There was a faint hum somewhere beyond him. A steady vibration, like distant machinery. Like a city that never truly slept.
His mind snagged on that.
There had been no city where he died. Not like that. Not with a hum that sounded organized. Most nights had been quiet enough to hear the wind scrape across rubble. The only rhythm had been the slow deterioration of things that used to matter.
Kael's throat tightened once—not panic, not emotion. A reflex against dryness.
He swallowed.
Pain rippled through his chest late, arriving with a delay that made no sense. It wasn't sharp. It was deep, bruised, the ache of a body that had been pushed beyond its own rules and had only just now received the message.
He didn't move.
Moving too early was how you wasted what little you had. A lesson learned not from wisdom but from consequence.
So he stayed.
He listened.
The hum continued, unbroken. Beneath it, faint and intermittent, there were other sounds—distant footfalls that did not hurry. A brief clink of metal. Something like a low bell, or a signal tone, far away and repeating in a measured pattern.
This wasn't a battlefield.
That thought didn't arrive with relief. It arrived with suspicion.
His fingers lay open against the ground. The stone beneath his palm was smoother than he expected. Not polished, but not crumbling. A maintained surface.
A thread of cold air moved across his knuckles, but it didn't cut. It touched and passed.
Kael's left index finger twitched.
A small movement, unintentional.
His body's way of checking whether it was still bound to him.
The twitch became a slight curl. Nails scraped stone. The sensation was sharp enough to prove he wasn't dreaming.
He pulled in another breath.
The hum shifted slightly.
Street.
That word came with the faintest jolt.
His eyes stayed closed.
Light existed even through his eyelids. A pale orange bleed.
Magic?
He didn't like that his mind reached for the answer.
He waited.
Another sound: footsteps.
They didn't stop.
Kael's breath slowed.
After the footsteps faded, he tried, carefully, to change the way his weight sat against the wall.
Pain answered immediately.
He remained still again.
He needed sight.
He opened his eyes.
Stone. An alley.
Light beyond. Buildings taller than he could easily see the end of.
Mist in the air.
He stared.
No panic.
Inventory.
Location: alley. Urban.
Body: damaged. Alive.
Clothing: his, but altered.
He swallowed.
He needed water.
He needed to stand.
He did not stand.
He pressed one hand to the ground.
Pain flared.
He stopped.
Enough.
He breathed.
A figure passed the mouth of the alley.
Their gaze slid over him.
Ignored.
Kael's chest tightened.
Invisibility.
Useful.
He drew in a slow breath.
Then out.
He remained where he was.
He watched the light.
And in the steady hum of the city beyond, he felt something else—faint, like pressure at the edge of hearing.
A weight.
Kael breathed in.
Then out.
He pressed his palm to the ground again.
Not to stand.
Just to prove he could.
And that was enough for now.