The emptiness did not reclaim him. Instead, Elian Athen forced himself awake through a haze of constant, cyan light. The announcements that had declared his rebirth were gone, but their stamp remained in a permanent, ghostly exhibit seared into the very fabric of his perception. In the lower left of his field of view, a pulsing status bar: [Vitality: 12%]. In the lower right, another: [Willpower: 9%]. They were not metaphors; they were quantifiable realities, as real to him now as the damp, cold concrete he rested against.
The storm still stormed. The rain still came down in relentless sheets, and the wind screamed its scorn under the bridge. But the bitter cold, the bone-freezing chill that had been draining the life from him, was… contained. It was still present, a body sense, but not t
