The first thing Lucas felt opening his eyes was the dizziness.
Heavy and pressing, sitting right behind his eyes, the kind that comes from impact rather than sleep. He pushed himself upright slowly, one hand against his forehead and the other pressed flat against whatever was beneath him — cold and solid and present, which was at least something.
His vision blurred, then settled.
"Where am I."
His voice came back to him strangely. Not the way voices echo in a room — something different, deeper, like the sound had somewhere very far to go before it stopped.
That was when he looked around properly.
Everything was dark.
Not the dark of a room with the lights off, not the dark of being underwater or underground. This was something else entirely, the kind of darkness that doesn't feel like the absence of light so much as the presence of something else.
