The dark did not fall. It rose.
It swallowed me not like a curtain drawn over the eyes, but like a tide creeping upward from the soles of my feet until it filled every part of me. Weightless yet crushing, empty yet suffocating, it pressed against my chest until even the act of remembering how to breathe became foreign.
At first, I thought I had died.
There was no battlefield, no cries of men, no stink of blood. No commander at my feet. No southerners chanting my name. Only silence.
But the silence wasn't whole.
Whispers threaded through it, faint, like embers carried on wind. My own heartbeat echoed between them, irregular, broken. Every thump reverberated too loudly, as though my ribs were hollow drums.
I tried to open my eyes, though I wasn't sure I still had them. For a moment, I thought I saw nothing but endless black. Then the dark shifted, and I realized it wasn't empty at all.
Ash floated through it.
