ERIS
I sat by the dying fire, the orange light flickering across my boots, and felt the dull, insistent throb behind my ribs. It wasn't a sharp pain, not yet. It was more like the slow, rhythmic beat of a drum made of glass, a constant reminder of the structural failure sitting right over my heart.
For months, I had lived in a beautiful, dangerous delusion.
I looked down at my hand, palm resting flat against my chest. My fingers curled into the leather of my tunic. How could I have forgotten? How was it even possible to let the most fundamental truth of my existence slip into the background of my mind like a half-remembered dream?
In the beginning, after I woke up in this second life, every second was a war. I spent every waking moment fighting to stay stable.
I remembered collapsing in the dirt, the smell of my own singed hair, the terrifying sensation of losing control over my own limbs as the Pyronox hammered at the inside of my skull.
