(…continued at Kieran's end)
What Kieran saw was darkness. All around him. Choking him, drowning him, dragging him on and on. Darkness! Utter and still darkness!
Not sleep.
Not death.
But suspended darkness.Like a clot, soaking him, taking from him, subtracting his life force.
Kieran became aware slowly…like something rising from the depths of the ocean. Still dark.
There was no sky.
No ground.
Only an endless, muted black threaded with faint pulses of red.
His pulse.
He felt it before he understood it.
Thud.
A sound without sound.
A vibration in the void.
Then he saw it.
A filament.
Black.
Thin as silk.
Coiled tightly around his heart.
Not piercing it.
Not crushing it.
But wrapped around it in deliberate loops, like a hand resting too firmly over something that was not meant to be held.
