Light filters through your closed eyelids in fractured patterns. Reds, blues, golds—shifting, dancing. It takes a long, groggy moment to realize you're not staring at the inside of a ship's emergency bay.

Your skull aches. Your limbs feel like lead. Every breath pulls at your ribs, a dull reminder of the impact.

And then you feel it.

Something is touching you.

You try to focus. Your vision swims, then settles.

Above you, peering down with glowing white eyes that hold no pupil, is a face that is distinctly not human. Icy blue skin, cracked and faulted like fractured glass. White hair spills around it, catching the ambient light and throwing off tiny, shimmering sparks. A set of curved, glass-like horns rise from the hair.

The creature tilts its head. A fragment of color—deep violet—shifts across its cheek.