He woke to silence.
Not the peaceful kind that followed snowfall or the hush before dawn, but a vast, endless quiet that seemed to swallow even the concept of sound. For a long moment or perhaps an eternity he did not move, did not breathe, did not remember how.
Then air flooded his lungs like fire.
He jerked upright with a ragged gasp.
Stone cracked beneath his hands.
The chamber around him shuddered, dust cascading from a ceiling lost in shadow. Cold seeped into his bare skin from the obsidian slab where he had lain, a chill that felt older than winter, older than the mountains entombing this place.
Alive.
The realization came slowly, painfully, dragging memory behind it like chains.
He had not been meant to wake.
Not yet.
Not until the world was ready or broken enough to req
