It was gray and unrelenting. The sun shone down, but faintly. Cara O’Sullivan—the name she was sticking with for the moment—had seen many an overcast day back home. But even then, there had been color.

This was bleak. And it reminded her most of…well…pollution. Like those images of cities so choked by smog that it created a second layer of ‘clouds’ overhead.

Only—she inhaled experimentally—the air felt fresh. Just the skies were wrong.

Too vast. They made her eyes hurt at first, as if she was looking too far, strange as that sounded. Her mind instinctively pointing out that these skies had a depth her home lacked. Cara tried to process it.

And now—if all she had not seen in the tomb wasn’t proof enough, the skies themselves cemented it.

This was not her world. Cara jerked her eyes away from the stratosphere to stop the unsettling feeling in her stomach. She looked around, focusing on the dreary landscape. Shades of grey. Lack of color…grey skies…

“So it’s like England. I can live with that. At least it’s not raining.”

Cara smacked her lips. She could use some rain, actually. Or food. She had eaten mice and roots and dust-water all the time in the tomb. Now—as she walked down the meadow—her bones and body ached. Her feet were killing her. Cara sat down in the grass and felt at it. It was ashy—but soft. She closed her eyes.

What had Ser Dalius said? Noelictus was a place of death. Death magic—he’d described the lack of light and shadows well. She just hadn’t expected a full palette.

But for a moment—she was just glad to be out here. Alive. She was hungry, thirsty, footsore, and she really needed to relieve the…tension…of seeing ancient magic explode. It was hard to pee with ghosts hovering around and making comments about despoiling sacred tombs. Even with their backs turned.

Yet for a minute or two, Cara just lay there as the grass blew in the wind. She looked up and sighed.

“It’s the sky, Dalius. It’s…beautiful.”

She felt her eyes tingling again. But here she was, in an unfamiliar place, with no means of survival. Cara closed her eyes—then she sat up.

“Okay. I guess that was the tutorial. Time to fend for myself without friendly ghosts.”

She got to her feet, groaning. The first thing Cara did was walk towards a tree. She circled it, tapped at the bark. It seemed like a tree from her world, just colored a bit differently. Cara eyed it, shrugged, and then looked around. She edged around the tree so the tomb was blocked from view and took care of problem one.

“Whew.”

Cara was pulling up her pants when she realized a few things. Firstly—if this still was a game, it was extraordinarily realistic. Second—she had an audience.