He was falling. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that he was sinking. It was hard for him to say, lost as he was in the darkness. But the burning sensation in his throat as he struggled to catch his breath reminded him of drowning. "Sta-!" No matter how many times he spat out what was in his mouth, more and more seemed to come out of his body. “Whe -... -ter?!” Vaguely, he wondered if he wasn't throwing up blood, but the idea seemed so improbable that he rejected it. Yet he couldn't see any other explanation for what was happening to him. Maybe he was dying. “Doc -... we?!” This would indeed explain the fact that he is probably choking on his blood. He had to face the evidence; he was dying.

He thought of the sky. If he was living his last moments, he wanted to see it one last time. He could hear the sound of voices around him, but the words were incomprehensible to him. Vaguely, he hoped that the sky would be visible to him, without his field of vision being obstructed by all those people he could hear. “He -... op -... -yes!” As he focused to open his eyes, he realized two things. The first one was that he couldn't open his left eye. And the second was that he could feel his body aching with pain. It was really strange, how his brain had been able to completely block the transmission of pain until now. And as if to point out to him that he had done an excellent job up to that moment, his body was instantaneously shaken by electric shocks.

He felt every one of his nerves. He heard someone shouting, but the sound was drowned out as if muffled. It sounded like the person was spitting at the same time. It wasn't until he felt a soft mass, both cold and warm, that he realized it was him who was screaming. A feeling of goosebumps gripped him as a viscous mass slid down his throat. It was only when he swallowed that he realized that a hand was holding his jaw and forcing him to drink a strange liquid that tasted bitter but at the same time sweet.

“Young master! Drink! ”

Despite the urgency in the voice, he couldn't swallow the liquid anymore. He could feel a substance rising in his throat. Escaping from the iron grip on his jaw, he managed to turn his head and let out what was in his mouth. Immediately he felt arms straightening and supporting him as he continued to spit out liquid which landed with a crash into a kind of iron basin. Unfortunately, his vision was too blurred to really tell what was happening. He could only make out shapeless colored spots in the corner of his eye, while the sound of hurried footsteps indicated to him that people were hurrying around him. However, the sound of the footsteps was strange. It was as if people were running over parquet flooring and then carpets or rugs, and this was completely illogical. In spite of the pain, even though he was coughing up a lake, he couldn't stop a bad feeling from overtaking him.

“Hold on, young master!”

Yes, definitely a bad feeling.

“Stacie!”

As he tried to catch his breath, he was caught by a new wave of vomiting, spitting out black blood. Immediately, a new basin was placed in front of him as panic spread again among the occupants of the room. He could feel that the end was approaching.

“Anastasiy!”

In a last effort, he spat out a black mass that seemed to be trying to cling to him. A gloved hand appeared in front of him and threw the thing away as an orange glow lit up the room for a moment.

"What the hell was that thing?!"

"Stacie!"

Immediately, two faces turned to him, concern written all over their faces...

"Who… who are you?"

And again, darkness.