Serala felt like she was having a really long dream.
In the dream, she found herself sinking into an endlessly cold crimson sea, its depths crushing her again and again with pressure that should have shattered bone and pulped flesh.
The water was not truly water but something thicker, something that tasted of iron and brutality, something that pulled at her with the hungry patience of forces that had claimed countless lives before hers.
And yet she fought!
Radiant white wings erupted all around her, spreading wide and beating against the crimson depths with desperate strength. They tried to lift her, tried to carry her back toward a surface she could no longer see, tried to save her from the drowning that felt so inevitable.
But nothing worked.
