Chest-beating is not generally a good sign, is it? Is he going to— oh. The pale boy's face is now bright with a fresh wash of fear and confusion, as if he's just now seeing this landscape for the first time and finding it frightening. He shrinks away, backwards. Dead anyway, the war boy said. Hall of the slain.

"No! We aren't. We can't be." It can't be true, this is nothing like the Fade—it's all so ordinary, the habits of things like light and gravity still predictable—but the possibility alone is overwhelming. "Darkness, then the room with the doll, knocking again and again, but I don't remember dying..."

The doll in question, its stuffed body meant to be a girl, black hair and a little pink dress, is hanging from his belt. The little charcoal has gone to powder in his fist. Rapid, quiet, as if running through words by rote: "Feel the ground, the breath in your lungs, fabric rustling against your skin. Feel the ground. Focus. Breathe."