Cold air brushed my face before I even opened my eyes.

For a moment, I thought I was still falling. Fragments of the fight replayed in my mind, too sharp, too vivid to be a dream. The battlefield bathed in broken light. My blade trembling in my hand. And then… him. No, not his face. Just the pressure. The way reality itself seemed to fold, as if someone had pinched the world shut around me.

I remember lunging forward. And then, nothing.

When I finally stirred, the first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t move. I was sitting upright on a chair, my wrists bound behind the backrest by something smooth and unnaturally cold. Not rope. Not metal either. It pulsed faintly, like it was alive. My boots rested against stone tiles still warm from residual energy, and when I exhaled, my breath fogged slightly in the night air.