I wasn't dead.
I should have been. The black water had filled my lungs, the darkness had swallowed my consciousness, my mother's ghost had delivered her final condemnation. I'd felt myself sinking into that terrible nothing where all the failed wolves went.
But I wasn't there anymore.
I was suspended.
Not floating. Not falling. Just held in place by something that felt like hands made of moonlight, cradling me in a space that existed between the drowning and whatever came after.
The water was gone. The corpses were gone. The darkness had transformed into something else entirely, a void that wasn't empty but full of presence, watching me with attention that made my skin crawl even though I couldn't feel my skin anymore.
I tried to move but my body wouldn't respond. Tried to breathe but had no lungs to fill. I was consciousness without form, awareness stripped of everything that made it mine.
Then the light came.
