The water rose faster than my thoughts could keep pace with it, and desperation finally cracked through the thin shell of control I had been clinging to. I flailed wildly, arms slicing through the water in frantic arcs, fingers grasping at nothing, nails scraping against smooth stone that offered no purchase, no mercy.
There was no ledge, no hidden crevice, no sudden shift in the cave's structure.
Just water. Endless, suffocating water. I twisted, kicked, spun in place like a trapped animal, my movements clumsy and panicked, dignity long since abandoned.
I was going to die here. Not in battle, not in some grand sacrifice, not even with meaning.
I was going to drown. And what kind of death was that? Pathetic. Almost laughable.
Who the hell drowns after surviving everything I had survived?
Dying itself had never frightened me.
