Vix floated, untethered, through the darkness. She was neither awake nor asleep, but somehow both at once, neither ever fully beginning or ending. Vix was aware of soft, soothing voices coming from somewhere above her, behind the darkness of her closed eyelids. But she did not have the strength to open them and see.

Time stretched meaninglessly on. A single second felt like a year. ‘Or is it the other way around?’ The thought drifted on the sea of Vix’s muddled mind for a ...