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I’m dying, he thought, in some dim recess of his mind that was still capable of higher function. This is the end.

Then the pain crested to a higher peak, and he ceased to exist at all.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, awareness returned.

Fine, faint prickles of it. A sense of being. Ripples of pain and darts of cold. He shuddered, and could feel it, despite the seeming absence of limbs. He felt, yes, but didn’t feel like himself. He felt…

As if he floated. Buoyant in a sea of whispering silk.

He cracked his eyes open, which proved that, one, he did have eyes, and two, that he was surrounded by light. Not the piercing, too-bright glare of before, but a gentle, warm glow, silver-gray, the color of goose down.

He had a mouth, too, because he was able to say, “Where am I?”

He didn’t expect an answer, but a high, clear chiming filled his ears, soft and pleasant, like the garden bells in summer.

“Hello?”

The chimes came again, cascading musically. He turned – he could turn, and when he glanced down saw that he was whole, at least on this plane, and clothed in a robe of softest gray, his diamond winking around his neck – and surveyed the endless expanse of gray around him. There was no ground visible, though his bare feet were firmly planted. No sky above, no grass, or trees, or village.

He lifted his hands to his face and turned them, flexed them, examining their smooth, unblemished lines. No sword calluses or old scars. He reached up to his head, and ran his fingers through clean, silken hair. He felt…

He felt wonderful, actually. Pain-free and calm and strong. He took a deep, deep breath, what felt like the first he’d taken in ages, and it came to him, then, as the chimes rippled.

He was inside the magic. In the true, actual well of it. “Did I do it?” he asked. “Did I actually take hold of it all? Or am I truly dead this time?”

He turned in circles, though, and could find nothing of the plane of death.

Wait, though. Lucian had talked of multiple planes. Of the Between, and of Hel’s halls.

This certainly wasn’t a hall, nor was there a goddess to greet him.

The magic, then. The heart of it.

“Now what?”

In the distance, a light winked.

With nothing else to do, and no obvious idea how to get back into his body, Náli shrugged and walked toward it.

It was unnerving, stepping on thin air. He felt cool, smooth stone beneath his feet, not unlike the floors of his bedchamber, and so he looked ahead, rather than down, when the sight of so much nothing beneath his feet left his head spinning. On and on he walked, the distance immeasurable. It could have taken seconds or hours, could have been upside down, for all he knew. But finally, the winking light grew and took form as he neared it.

It was a flame. Fire burned in a wide, shallow stone bowl cut with black veins, perched atop a waist-high pedestal. The flame itself burned orange, but blue closer to the center, and at its very heart, the deepest purple unlike any fire Náli had ever seen.

Like the Selesee banners, he thought with a ripple of disquiet.

He walked slow circles around the pedestal, surprised to find that there was no fuel for the fire: no wick and no oil, no wood, no coals, no peat. Its source was invisible, though he felt the hard press of its heat against his face.

He walked another lap, glanced up–

And saw a man standing across from him.

Lucian, was his first thought. And then, no.

The hair was the same, at least. Long and white, it fell in silken sheets across broad, bare shoulders. Stripped to the waist, his torso was that of a warrior, padded with heavy, chiseled muscles, veins standing stark beneath skin smooth and white as marble. He wore loose, silken trousers that threatened to slide off pointed hipbones. His face was stark and sharply-angled, jaw like a blade, cheekbones like cut crystal. His eyes, tilted at the outer corners, were the most faded shade of blue, nearly colorless, fringed with white lashes.

A beautiful face. A cruel one. The arms of a swordsman.

Shock knocked the breath from Náli’s lungs, and when he inhaled next, he breathed, “Sel.”