"The good news is you survived. The bad news is everything else." — First rule of borderland medicine
***
The first thing Rhys noticed wasn't the pain.
It was the taste.
Powdered stone coated his tongue like flour gone rancid. It ground between his teeth with every shallow breath. He tried to spit and couldn't. His mouth was too dry. His throat was too clogged with debris.
The air itself felt solid. Thick enough to chew. It carried the metallic tang of blood and the acrid smell of extinguished magic.
His ears rang with a high, constant whine that seemed to come from inside his skull rather than anywhere external. Not silence. Something worse. The complete absence of the world he'd known moments before.
No dripping water from the tunnel's moisture. No distant echoes of life elsewhere in the mine. No whisper of air movement through passages that connected to the outside world.
