The darkness made my head ring. Strangely, that's how it felt—as if something occupying part of my memory had abruptly vanished, leaving an endless echo that pounded inside my skull. This was worse than the hangovers I'd gotten from drinking, and in all my seventy years, I'd only gotten drunk enough times to count on both hands.
Wait... was I really seventy? Yesterday, my aching bones could barely move... yet now, only my head hurt. Maybe it was what doctors call terminal lucidity—that final burst of clarity before death. Yes, that had to be it...
I refused to open my eyes; light would surely worsen the pain, so I curled tighter under the sheets. Had the mattress grown harder, or was it just my old body betraying me? Whatever the case, I hoped my husband would hurry. I needed to say goodbye while coherent—tomorrow I'd either be dead or babbling deathbed nonsense.
A cloying scent reached me—the smell of an old body like mine, hours from becoming a corpse. My husband? Or a friend visiting? I envied them. They still looked so vibrant, while cancer had hollowed me out these past years.
Hold on... my sense of smell had faded long ago. Why was it suddenly sharper than in my youth?
A door creaked. Two sets of footsteps approached. Still fearing the headache, I kept my eyes shut. If nurses, I'd pretend to sleep. If my husband with company, I'd have to look. I waited for voices.
"Sister has not yet awakened..." a man intoned.
"Perhaps the Zephyr Aterior's loss of control over us has shattered her mind beyond recovery."
Hah! A joke? I hadn't heard that title since my Azure's War guild days—back when I was twenty. That idiot husband of mine must've hired actors! He'd even mimicked Silas Calcinor's voice from the Obsidian Banner Sworn! Fine. I'd play along, then give him the thrashing of his life. Forty years together, and he still hadn't learned.
"We've tried everything, Hightlord. Runic magic fails. Her body heals itself... We can only wait for the touch of non-death to mend her mind—if it can be mended."
This was worse than I'd thought. MY MORON HUSBAND HIRED EXTRA ACTORS TO PLAY NECROMANCER DOCTORS! Rage overpowering my headache, I took a sharp breath and leaped from the sheets, screaming his name.
When I opened my eyes, I froze.
The room wasn't a hospital. Dark stone walls were carved with skulls and dragons. Beside me stood chairs of the same grim design. On one lay black armor identical to the Knight of the Eternal Vow starter set from my youth's favorite game. And before me—impossibly—stood two of them. One bore the voice, armor, and weapon of Silas Calcinor, leader of the Obsidian Banner Sworn.
All I managed was a shriek of utter confusion before fainting.