Consciousness returned not as a gentle dawn, but as a violent tide, dragging me from the numb, silent dark of the void into the sharp, painful reality of a warm room, soft blankets, and her.
Anika.
She was sitting in an armchair, watching me. Her hair was a mess, her clothes rumpled and stained with what looked like melted shadow-frost, and her face a mask of pure, unadulterated exhaustion. But her eyes... her eyes held a storm—a tempest of fury, pain, and a weary resolve that struck a deeper fear in me than any monster I'd ever faced.
The last thing I remembered was the pain. I know I collapsed, which means Anika found me, but the question is how.
Nobody knows about that realm. There aren't any creatures, so there is no way Anika could have arrived there because of a hunch.
Still, I
