Chapter 5: Eleven Years of Ice
Changling couldn't remember how long she experienced suffocation in that moment near death. She had witnessed drowning victims frantically struggling in the water, their chests desperately wanting to draw a breath yet unable to obtain it—the terrible dance of lungs crying out for air that would never come. She was grateful that she was too exhausted and weak to fight, merely waiting quietly for death in complete darkness. But she waited and waited, her consciousness still drifting through an endless void of darkness and suffocation. She couldn't help but wonder—could it be that after death, one simply floats in endless, eternal cold? She didn't know how much more time passed in that suspended state—perhaps a day or two, perhaps a thousand or ten thousand years, time losing all meaning in the absence of sensation—until weak light and shadow appeared in the pitch-black world ahead. Overjoyed, she wanted to rush toward it— Changling's eyes suddenly flew open! What met he...
