I awoke to dreary midday light pushing against my eyelids.

My name is Ashemma. This is the story of how I died.

My muscles ached and my bones protested as I struggled to my feet. I felt cold stone under my fingers, gripping clumsily at it for support. I strained my eyes against the light, trying to figure out just where I was. When I finally got a look at my environment, a vast, disorganized graveyard loomed back at me. Headstones haphazardly dotted the landscape; stone coffins, some empty, some yet closed, looked as if they'd been smashed into the terrain by a giant, some on the ground, some buried against hill faces. Skeletal trees—naked maples, perhaps?—stretched their great leafless branches into the fog-laden air, dominating their respective territories and brooking no challengers.

'What am I doing here?' I thought to myself. I couldn't remember how I got there. I couldn't remember much at all; at the time, even my name escaped me.

I pulled myself out of the coffin I'd apparently been left in, nearly faceplanting on the cold earth. I felt the cold in my bones, such was the chill in the air. I pushed through the morning mist, and groped at the walls, and started making my way down the only path visible to me: towards the light, through a shallow stream. As I walked, I kept trying to remember what had happened, where I was, *who* I was.

Hitting my head on a root jutting out of the hill face shook me out of my reverie. I grunted and tried to shake the pain away as I turned the corner.

Something moved in the periphery and my head snapped up in surprise.

***