~Author's POV~
The pain woke her before she understood what was happening.
Lyra sat up in the dark with her hand at her throat, trying to pull air into a passage that felt narrower than it should. The burning had started low, and was spreading upward through her chest with the slow, deliberate heat of something that wasn't going to stop on its own.
She tried to stand. Her legs held for three steps before her vision doubled, splitting the dark room into two overlapping versions of itself that wouldn't resolve back into one no matter how hard she blinked.
She moved toward the door anyway. Her shoulder hit the wall once, corrected, hit it again. Her fingers found the door handle and pulled, and then she was in the corridor, the floor was coming up to meet her before she'd made the decision to sit down.
She went down hard onto her hands and knees. She tried to call out and what came out was barely a sound, her throat was too tight, the burning too concentrated.
