"AHHH!"
Li Wei's eyes snapped open. His back arched off the ground. His hands clawed at the dirt, fingers digging into soil and grass and something else he couldn't identify. There was something in his chest. Something sharp and cold and impossibly wrong.
"Ah-ahh"
He couldn't get air. His lungs pulled desperately, but nothing came in. Just a wet, rattling gasp that scraped his throat raw and sent fresh waves of pain radiating outward from the centre of his chest.
What is this? What's happening to me?
His body convulsed involuntarily. The sudden movement drove whatever was lodged in his chest deeper, or maybe it didn't move at all and the sensation was just his body trying to reject it. Either way, the agony exploded through him like lightning, and he screamed again.
"Stop- make it stop- please-"
But there was no one to hear him. No one to answer. The words dissolved into the air above him, meaningless and ignored.
His vision swam in and out of focus. The sky overhead was grey and flat, stretching endlessly in every direction. No clouds. No sun. No birds. Just a colourless void that pressed down on him like a physical weight.
Where am I? What happened? Why does it hurt so much?
He tried to move his legs. His right foot twitched weakly. His left leg didn't respond at all. Panic flooded through him then, cold and sharp and immediate.
I can't move. Why can't I move? I need to get up. I need to-
His right hand came up slowly, trembling violently as if the simple act of lifting it required all the strength he had left. His fingers brushed against something hard and metallic.
A hilt. His palm slid lower along the length of it and met something warm and sticky that coated his shirt and the skin beneath.
Blood.
His blood.
No. No no no no no-
There was a sword buried in his chest.
The realisation crashed into him like a physical blow. His breathing quickened immediately, becoming rapid and shallow. Each breath pulled at the wound where the blade had entered, and each pull brought fresh waves of fire that made his head spin.
This isn't real. This can't be real. I was just- where was I? What was I doing before this?
He tried desperately to remember. Tried to think back to the moments before waking up here. But his mind felt distant and hazy, like he was trying to look at his own thoughts through frosted glass. Everything before the pain was blank. Empty.
I was at home. I think I was at home. Was I sleeping? Was I-
His hand fell away from the hilt and landed on something soft and yielding. Something that wasn't dirt or grass. He turned his head slowly, carefully, each movement a negotiation with the pain that threatened to overwhelm him completely. His cheek pressed against the cold earth.
A face stared back at him from less than an arm's length away.
It was a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties. Her eyes were open wide, pupils dilated and fixed on nothing. Glassy. Unseeing. Her mouth hung slack, lips parted as if she'd been trying to speak when death took her.
Blood had pooled beneath her head in a dark, spreading stain that soaked into the soil and turned it black. Her right hand was outstretched toward him, fingers curled inward as if she'd been reaching for something in her final moment.
Li Wei stared at her face. At her empty eyes. At the unnatural stillness of her body.
She's dead. She's actually dead.
His gaze drifted past her almost involuntarily. Another body lay just beyond the woman. A man, older and thickly built, wearing rough homespun clothing. His throat had been opened in a single clean line that ran from ear to ear.
The cut was so precise it looked almost surgical. Blood had poured down the front of his shirt and pooled in the grass beneath him.
Beyond the man was a child. Small. No older than seven or eight. Lying face down with one arm bent at an unnatural angle beneath his body.
More bodies. Everywhere he looked, there were more bodies.
They're all dead.
His chest hitched involuntarily. The sudden movement sent another spike of agony through his torso, but he couldn't stop himself. His breathing came faster and faster, each gasp burning like fire in his lungs.
What is this? What happened here? Why am I in the middle of—
His vision blurred at the edges. The grey sky above seemed to tilt and spin slowly, as if the world itself had come loose from its moorings.
I'm going to die here with all these people, and I don't even know where here is.
The thought arrived with strange, detached clarity. Not panicked. Not desperate. Just cold and factual, like an observation about the weather.
I'm going to bleed out. The sword is in too deep. Even if I could pull it out, I'd just bleed faster. This is it. This is how I die.
His hand moved again without conscious thought. This time it reached for the hilt once more, fingers wrapping weakly around the leather-wrapped grip. The metal was cold under his palm. Solid. Undeniably real.
If I pull it out... if I can just pull it out, maybe I can- what? What exactly am I going to do? Press my hands against the hole and hope it stops bleeding?
But even as the thought formed, he knew he couldn't do it. His fingers tightened fractionally on the hilt, and the subtle shift in pressure sent a fresh wave of agony radiating outward from the wound. He gasped. His grip loosened immediately. His hand fell away, landing limply at his side.
I can't. I can't do it. It hurts too much.
He lay there among the corpses, staring up at the empty sky. Waiting.
Time passed. He didn't know how much. Seconds bled into minutes, or maybe it was longer. Maybe hours. The pain didn't fade. It didn't lessen or become bearable. It stayed constant and overwhelming, a relentless presence that consumed his entire world and left no room for anything else.
This is how I die. Alone. Surrounded by strangers. I don't even know their names.
But he didn't die.
His heart kept beating. Slow and uneven, stuttering occasionally as if it couldn't quite decide whether to continue or not. But it beat.
Why am I still alive? Why haven't I bled out yet? The sword went straight through. I should be dead already.
He turned his head again, moving with agonising slowness. The bodies around him hadn't moved. Of course, they hadn't. Dead things didn't move. They just lay there, empty and still.
But I'm not dead. I'm still here. Still breathing. Still feeling this.
The realisation should have brought relief. Should have sparked hope or gratitude or something resembling positive emotion. Instead, it brought only more confusion and a deep, gnawing fear that settled in his gut like a stone.
Why?
The question hung in his mind, unanswered and unanswerable.
Why am I still alive?