When Roland slowly opened his eyes.
Before him was an all-consuming darkness, boundless and suffocating.
"Where is this?"
"Just now... what happened?"
"Wait... who... who am I?"
He took a deep breath, forcing down the panic welling up in his heart as he gently rubbed the space between his throbbing brows.
Fragments of memory in his mind slipped through his fingers like quicksand; no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't grasp a single clue about himself.
The darkness was like congealed ink, so thick it was impossible to distinguish the boundaries of time and space.
His consciousness sank continuously into this chaos, as if it were about to be devoured forever.
Just as Roland was about to give in, his eyelids drooping heavily, an ethereal, misty voice suddenly echoed by his ear.
"You... you've come again..."
He snapped his head up to see a pair of slender, jade-like hands bizarrely emerge from the darkness.
