It started as a heavy, waterlogged weight behind his eyes, the kind of pressure that makes you feel like you're trying to swim to the surface of a frozen lake with stones in your pockets. Zarius didn't wake up so much as he drifted upward, his consciousness snagging on the reality he didn't quite recognize.
Everything was wrong. The North, by its very nature, was a place of biting winds and the scent of old frost, but the air he was breathing now felt thick. Stale. There was the smell of damp stone, yes, but beneath it was something else, the unmistakable, salt-sweet aroma of human sweat. And then there was the heat.
It was an invasive, unfamiliar warmth. It wasn't the roaring, performative heat of a hearth back at home. It stayed close, steady, like it had its own rhythm. A living, breathing heat that seemed to be fighting a war against the ambient chill.
