Lucian Valorian's consciousness drifted somewhere between waking and oblivion, his awareness fragmenting into disconnected sensations that his exhausted mind struggled to process into coherent thought.
Pain. Not the sharp, immediate agony of physical injury, but something deeper a hollow ache that seemed to radiate from his very core outward. His essence reserves weren't just depleted; they felt scraped clean, like someone had taken a blade to the inside of a well and carved away every last drop of water along with layers of stone beneath.
Voices filtered through the fog. Medical personnel, probably. Their words blurred together into meaningless sound, but the urgency in their tones was clear enough.
Hands on his body checking vitals, administering treatment, the cool touch of healing essence trying to stabilize systems that had been pushed far beyond safe limits.
'Did it work?' The thought surfaced sluggishly through the exhaustion. 'Did they get them out?'
