His feet touched the Lake of Tears, and a cold sensation crawled up through his soles and into his bones. The chill was not merely physical. It felt invasive, as if something had slipped beneath his skin and begun to move through him.
Then Damon felt himself falling. He felt like he had been falling forever even if his body was still.
He was submerged in a bottomless body of water. There was no surface, no floor, no sense of direction. Even with his skill Water Celebration, which prevented him from drowning in any body of water, he could not breathe.
It was heavy and vast, spreading out fat beyond his senses, deeper than any shadow.
It was in that brief, suffocating moment that Damon realized he was not simply inside water.
He was inside something.
The realization came with a wave of instinctive dread. The fluid around him was too uniform, too warm in some places and too cold in others. It pulsed faintly. The walls were not walls but living membranes, translucent and shifting.
