My consciousness sank into the deepest, coldest darkness, as if falling into a bottomless abyss of ice.
The burning pain of the fever was gradually replaced by a grander, more violent flood. It was not fire, yet it was hotter than fire; it was not ice, yet it was more piercing than ice. It roared and surged through my dried-up meridians, tearing apart the shackles of the past, washing away the pain and weakness accumulated over three years.
It was a kind of... hunger that had been completely awakened. A hunger for power, for survival, for taking back everything.
I did not know how long had passed. Maybe just a moment, maybe an entire night.
I opened my eyes.
The world was different.
Even in the dim light under the bridge pier, the outlines of distant ruins, the paths of dust motes in
