Nothing was known to her except total, all-encompassing blackness and a soft voice urging her to move forward. Forward, however, was a foreign concept to grasp in a universe of near oblivion. Where was forward when she wasn't even sure where up or down was? Her legs felt trapped and bound, as did her arms and neck. She couldn't move any of her limbs, and as her focus sharpened her panic rose. Where was she? How did she get here? Why was it so dark? The soft voice became louder, almost as if sensing her panic and trying to get her to move forward. But where was forward?

She was not one to be cowed into submission by something as intangible as the dark, she knew that well, but something about this hopeless void of absolute nothingness pulled at her mind and awoke a primal fear within her. Even if she didn't consciously know to be afraid, her body did, and that scared her more than anything.

Something was here, and it was worth fearing.

The voice pushed at her mind again, almost screaming. Forward. Now.

Without any further pressing, she tried. Pushing and pulling, writhing and wriggling, anything to break her free of these invisible binds that seemed to hold her in the darkness. It was hard, whatever held her here wanted her exactly where she was. The tightness around her only constricted more until she felt she was suffocating on it. She couldn't get out. She couldn't leave. Where was forward?!

Finally, finally, something happened. Her hand...it felt different. It felt like it had breached a barrier of some kind, free of the constraints that held the rest of her captive. She wriggled her fingers, slowly gaining feeling back into them while simultaneously trying to gain some kind of handhold to pull herself out of the blackness. Groaning in exasperation when she didn't feel anything, she instead braced it against the barrier that separated her hand from the blackness. Using the odd position of her body, she pushed downward with her freed hand while pushing her trapped torso upward to meet the weight. Her head pushed against what seemed like a wall, but she kept forward, even at the cost of a very painful and inevitable headache she knew she'd gain later.

Her head breached the barrier, along with the right half of her chest attached to the freed hand. A large lungful of air was sucked inward, and an even larger amount was exhaled. A faint thought in the back of her mind teased that she must have looked like a fish that had been pulled out of the water. Her mouth gasped open, then closed, then open again, hungry for precious oxygen that had been neglected to her before now. She couldn't stop the large breaths even if she wanted to-which she most definitely didn't. She hadn't realized just how much she needed air when she was trapped in the void. Sand rained down from her hair in clumps, partly sticking to the side of her face and collecting in her clothes.

Speaking of which... Her hand sloppily grasped the hot sand around her, fruitlessly looking for purchase in the barren grains. Chest still heaving, she weakly pawed at the left side of her torso still buried within the sand. Grains moved at an agonizing pace as the horror slowly faded and a new emotion filled her: confusion.

Where was she?

Her torso was almost out now, only a few more scoops of sand and her upper half was totally free. Taking this moment to look around, the young woman carefully surveyed her surroundings.

Nothing but desert. Sand filled her vision completely, and it only took a moment for the confusion to escalate into full-on helplessness. Not a single building or structure could be found within the blank and empty surroundings. She didn't even know where she was. The setting sun sent waves of near-unbearable heat onto her back and cast her shadow far into the distance.

She stilled, motionless, and slowly tried to process where she was and how she got there. Annoyingly, only a multitude of questions arose. Where was she? Who was the voice that spoke to her earlier? How did she get here? Where was her—

A thought. No, a memory. It reared its head like a pit viper ready to strike deadly venom into her heart and hissed the unthinkable into her ears. But it wasn't, was it? It wasn't unthinkable.

He had stabbed her. He had stabbed her. He had stabbed her.

She wasn't sure how many times she had to say it in her mind to make it more real. It didn't seem real. She didn't want it to seem real. And yet...

And yet.

She could still feel the cold metal in her chest, pulling at her insides and tugging at her broken flesh. The surprise that had soon faded to disbelief, and then sharpened into a piercing agony that nearly consumed her senses. Her training was likely the only reason she could even think at that point. As her limp head rolled to look at her killer, she remembered his face. His unregretful and smirking face. She trembled.

It was her friend. Her confidante. Her partner.

Why would he do such a thing? With the revelation came a flurry of newer questions-ones perhaps even more important than the ones she came up with earlier. 'Why' being the most common one.

A stunned silence came over her. Not that she was moving in the first place, but had someone been with her they'd of felt a chill in the hot and dry air. They'd of seen the way her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists of rage and hurt. Slowly, gently, a pale hand drifted to her chest; looking for a gaping wound but strangely finding none.

Had it been a hallucination? A dream? If so, how'd she get here? Did he really stab her? But no, the hopeful thought was swiftly dashed at the evidence shown on her worn clothes. A perfect blood stain, oval in appearance and thin in size smeared her ragged white toga with the brownish color of long-dried blood. How long had it been since she was buried? How was she even alive?

A raging headache was quickly accumulating in her skull, and to save herself a longer ache, she shoved the questions aside for a more convenient time.

Night was falling rapidly; she needed to find shelter.

A low groan sounded from cracked lips as she painstakingly pushed the rest of her weak body out of the cooling sand. A few tries later and she found herself stumbling to her aching feet. Grey eyes gazing once more at the scenery around her, she picked a random direction in the vain hope that maybe she was going in the right direction. She hopes to find a civilization of some sort. Maybe a village

When at full height, it was obvious to notice that she was smaller than the average woman her age. Her body was slight and thin, swaying weakly with a prominent ribcage and stick-like limbs. Long, wavy, chocolate brown hair that reached mid-waist shifted gently with the movements of her head. It's soft, wispy texture feeling alien on her normally-bared neck. 'Probably shouldn't leave it bare anymore. More likely chance of someone slicing the back of my throat.' The undead woman thought wryly.

With that, she started limping and stumbling her way through the desolate sands. It was hard to walk, the sands grasped at her weak legs like beggars through the poor districts. Grains uncomfortably and annoyingly dug into the skin of her feet, her useless boots barely giving her any sort of protective comfort to ward against the elements. It was dark, but her mind faltered little when comparing the desert's lack of light to the never-ending oblivion that overtook her minutes prior. This kind of darkness; this darkness was nothing. This darkness hid nothing.

The thought of that mysterious presence rattled in her tired mind before wedging itself there in the back of her mind. No, she'll think about it later. First was survival, then she could dwell on the unexplained. Besides, she wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth-at least not right away.

Uneven steps dragged on for hours and hours, leaving dug out patterns in the sand behind her. The moon was out now, peeking out from behind the tall sand dunes like a mischievous kitten, shining a dull blue light on the expansive desert her. The...very expansive desert.

A surge of pathetic hopelessness rose up from her belly because while the moon had blessed her with light to see, it also showed her how foolish her venture had been. Nothing but sand before her, not even the telltale glow of a village, the rushing seas, or hovering mountains could be seen in the distance. She felt like falling to her knees and wailing. No. She wasn't this weak. When had she become this pathetic? No, she repeated. She'll find a village or die trying.

In hindsight, speeding up her pace in an old, unused ex-dead body probably wasn't the best idea, but it was the only one she thought she had. Within thirty minutes she was pausing for breath, cursing her stupid plan and vowing to train till she dropped when she got out of this.

Because she would get out of this. She won't allow herself to die right after getting a mystical second chance.

The sand was starting to look really soft now. The moonbeams washed over her comfortingly, urging her to take it easy. Take a short nap. Who needed shelter anyway? She'd been wandering for hours and encountered nothing, surely that meant this desert was safe enough to sleep in. She started to sit down.

As if on cue, an unnatural, visceral, sizzling sounded off to her right. She froze.

Her head craned slowly, ever so slowly, to look over her right shoulder. Oh no.

Nonononono, please no. She had hoped... She had assumed... She had thought -stupidly- that they'd been exterminated in her eternal sleep.

She was a foolish idiot. A weak, frozen, helpless idiot.

It was hideous, blending into the night perfectly. The gelatinous body held two beady eyes and a mouth that opened impossibly wide, revealing dirtied razor-sharp teeth stained with what the woman could only imagine was blood. Its back held inky black scales that gleamed in the moonlight and trailed down to the back of it's short and stocky legs, a sinister yet alluring look to them. The horrible feeling of true fear, something she hadn't felt in a long time, tingled down her spine.

The feeling of weakness was alien to her. She'd been training to fight these things since she was twelve, but now with the weak tremor running through her tired knees and her numb fingers, she felt vulnerable in a way that she'd never truly encountered before now.

Her breath hitched in her throat while her body stilled. Her mind ran with different tactics on how to kill the demon, but all failed in the light of her feeble body and lack of weapons. Her hands clenched and grasped at empty air where a sword, knife, anything would normally have been present to help her. Teeth clenched in silent anger.

Fresh horror ripped through her when it gruesomely swiveled its head to stare straight into her petrified eyes. It's gel body rose up like a tidal wave of promised pain, overtaking the falling moon behind it and washing her in its shadow. The sizzling intensified and grew menacing in her ears as it jerked around to face her and started galloping. Its deceptively short legs did nothing to slow it down from its hunt.

The woman, who'd been trained since young, could only stare at her impending (second) death. Her body stood stock-still, heart thumping wildly and mind screaming to move just move but to no avail. The demon got closer still, long claws nearly reaching her face. The woman kept her eyes open. If she were to die here, then at least she'll die looking death straight in the eye. Internally she chuckled darkly, she didn't get the chance to do that last time.

It was poetic, really. A kind of monster she'd been able to kill without a second thought back in her other life, killing her now at her weakest point. Even more ironic, back then she'd been fighting demons when she should have been looking for a different kind of monster. A more intimate one.

Visions of her last death weren't far from her memory as she stood there. The feeling of the sword was still there, like an itch she couldn't scratch, or a hole she couldn't fill. Her chest ached just thinking about it. The memory of her trusted ex-companion smiling like he'd just done something worth praise burned through her like acid. To think, she wouldn't even be able to find closure of why he did what he did. Why was she awoken just to die here? It didn't make sense, but, she supposed, her friend killing her didn't make much sense either.

The demon was almost on top of her now, practically breathing its rancid breath on her face. The moon shined from behind its deformed shoulder, like the beacon of a heaven she couldn't remember.