I can’t even cry out, and I barely feel myself falling to my knees as the ring overtakes my thoughts. What’s happening? What is happening?? I’m being flayed alive, and it’s a thousand times worse than my last near-death experience because I am so hopelessly within my body this time. I am so aware of every millimeter of pain, of my nerves as they tear away from me like disconnecting cables, of my life force being cleaved in twain.
Krystoff yelps; the ring is no doubt bleeding energy from him to try to heal me. But it can’t possibly keep up.
The pain crawls up my neck and down my leg like a massive snake. It squeezes itself around me until it becomes a nothingness, and the nothingness is almost more terrible than the pain. It’s empty and unmoving—a phantom limb except the limb is half of my entire body.
Am I bleeding? Am I dying? I faintly register Krystoff trying to attend to me, perhaps trying to heal me faster, but he doesn’t make a dent. He can’t assuage the nothingness.
And from my nothingness rises a form, cloudy and indeterminate at first, but it molds itself into a face. A body. It clarifies itself, and the talisman dissolves from my hand to join it. A woman. Who is she?
She speaks in a similar manner to Kaguyos, multifaceted and beyond sound.
The Duenkhy 