The darkness broke apart like wet paper.
Lin Yue's first sensation was weight, the sudden, disorienting return of gravity after a stretch of nothing, his knees buckling before his mind had finished catching up to his body. He caught himself on one hand against cold stone, breathing in air that tasted wrong before he even opened his eyes.
Incense. Thick, cloying, the kind burned in bulk rather than offering, layered beneath it, something damp and old, the particular smell of soil that had absorbed too many things it shouldn't have.
He opened his eyes.
The first thing he registered was the sky.
