... quiet. It's all gone so quiet, out here on the shale.

No one ever warned him about that. Tozer always imagined death would be a noisy thing somehow - choirs of angels, the pearly gates swinging open, maybe some applause and warm welcomes from loved ones who went before him. Yet when he's torn open in the Tuunbaq's jaws and flung aside, he feels... nothing. The ground crunches beneath the impact of his body like broken ice; it creeps into his veins as he bleeds out, faster than his mind can realize, I'm dying. It's all a mercy he doesn't deserve. The quiet, when it comes, feels like a mercy too.

Except he knows he hasn't been blessed... because why has he woken up?

"You." His voice is no more than a rasp. His vocal chords are dead, like all the rest of him. No heart thrumming in his chest, no blood leaking from his open wounds. He can't even feel the wind anymore.

All he feels... all he knows... is that he has to protect them. The person standing before him, the one who found him here. He doesn't know who they are, or how they got here, or if they somehow managed to wake him from death's eternal slumber... but the urge to guard them is so strong, it almost sweeps him away.

"You..." he manages to croak again, every word coming out pained, "aren't... safe... here."