In the gilded, ornately carved lord's bedchamber, Gale bolted upright from the velvet bed. His chest heaved violently, his ragged gasps shattering the profound silence like a cracked gong.
He lowered his head, trembling, and reached for his chest. Where the fatal wound should have been, there was only a patch of searingly hot skin, but the moment he touched it, a pain like ten thousand steel needles stabbing him flared up.
Memories, like a shattered mirror, crashed back together.
The suffocating feeling of near-death, his gradually fading consciousness, and that golden light that had pierced the sky—it all now twisted together with the burning pain in his chest.
In an instant, cold sweat soaked his back. Gale suddenly curled into a ball, a whimper like a trapped beast escaping his throat.
This was a state unique to someone who had just experienced death, occurring in the very instant of Resurrection.
It was a despair that every veteran player had experienced.
