Everything falls away, fades into the distance like a passing storm having ran its course. It was almost like those brief moments after the winds shifted and carried with it the wrath of mother nature, that lull where the rain which had mere minutes ago pelted the world in what was nothing short of a torrential downpour, drenching the towns and cities in such a way that everyone would begin to frantically seek shelter in the nearest building, would suddenly to ease into a gentle and rhythmic pattering against windowpane and shingles. The thunder no longer roared overhead with a booming ferocity that seemed to have the very foundation of one's home shuddering beneath the waves brought on the lighting as it would race through the air in a blinding flash only to touch the earth and return faster then the compressed air could expand. The rumbling would be distant now, a deep yet... comforting voice ushered across the darkened sky. And the winds would soften from their wild howling, returning to the familiar and often soothing whispers that would brush against one's face in the same fashion as a gentle hand of someone dear would brush one's cheek. It would be almost loving, careful, delicate as unseen zephyrs once raging would again grow tame and playful as they would usher through windchimes and bring the pleasant tinkering to the ears of those who might care to listen. She finds only darkness at first, and it was within death's embrace that she finds what had eluded her for longer than even the young woman is entirely aware of. Here, there is peace... a stillness that sets her free from what had so seized the blue-eyes blonde and help her prisoner in it's cold and wicked grasp. The searing pain of the obsidian blade bared by the ritualistic knife that had cut her flesh no longer electrified her nerves, agonizing pain racking through her body rampant and uncontained like wildfire set upon the one serene forests of her life. She could not feel the blood as it pours so uncontrollably from her severed arteries like a fast-flowing stream urged forth even faster by spring snowmelt from the peaks of distant mountains as the sun's warmth become glittering white to turn to water beneath its bright and shining light, each wild and frantic beat of her heart only seeing more of the crucial life source lost through fatal wounds inflicted by the one who had held her captive for seven days that felt more like seven centuries. Here, in the arms of death, she finds no fear to have her stilled heart racing panick-stricken against her breast nor is there the dull ache of her broken soul left behind by the one she'd loved and lost. No fear... no pain... There is only silence, an endless pitch black that promises sanctuary from all that has once left her hopeless and yearning for what she could not have.

In the same moment, she cannot hear her name as it left his lips when he calls to her, nor does the warmth of his arms chase away the paling hue of the young woman as they take her cooling body and the fae man pulls her to his chest, cradling that lifeless vessel in devastation. Beylani's conciousness is already so far gone, vanished from this mortal world that her skin cannot register the tears that fall like soft rain, unable to recognize the gentleness of his lips as they brush against her forehead just as she is unable to feel the contrasting warmth to chase away the cold that is also no longer felt. Gone, she is not there to witness the fury of the fae man as he takes the lives of those that had stolen hers, deaf and unaware of those terrified and pained cries as they begged for mercy. Their pleas did not take back what they'd done, and how she might have hoped to see the vengeance that came without kindness, dealt swiftly and without consideration for anything or anyone else. There is only dark silence that holds fast to the young woman who perished at the very hands of those very beings she her once thought to be no more than folklore and make-believe, creatures from children's stories intended only to mystify young minds and give a sense of wonderment and magic. Magic... something that was never supposed to be real, something that, as a child, she was always told did not truly exist in the world. And yet, how very real it had indeed been. All those years growing older in the safety of her hometown and finding a reason for those things her childish mind once considered to exist purely by that very thing she'd so strongly believed was true even when none of the adults seemed to, learning just why it was the sky was blue and the grass was green, how it was that the sun would rise and set at it always did or why the seasons changed every March, June, October, and December... only for the blue-eyed blonde to suddenly be thrust back into a world she'd thought she left in her childhood. How very real such souls had become to her over the several months when she'd made her home there within the heart of Sacrosanct, a place altogether foreign and so very different from the one she had been born in. How precious they had been to the young woman from the first day she met them and every day thereafter, Beylani only ever having loved them as though they might have known each other for so much longer than they really had, even in light of the vast years and status that divided her from Dorian and Andras. And... how absolutely cruel her fate had been, to have the very beings she was once so enraptured by to be the ones who took from her what was never meant to be theirs for the taking. But, life was often unfair, in so many terrible ways. This she had come to learn in her short life brought to such a sudden halt, stopped far too soon, those hopes and dreaming dying with her just as the pain, fear, and heartbreak does.

She is lost, meandering through a place she does not know, when suddenly there is a light in the darkness of death that has welcomed her to. What it was, the young woman could not be further from being certain of. Yet, she finds herself moving towards it... or was it that flickering light which now comes towards her? It is dim at first, like that of a single candle's flame flickering bravely in the dead of a cold, moonless winter's night, one that mortal eyes might narrow at as they try to bring it into better focus. Slowly, it grows brighter and brighter, until she is standing there in a field of endless gold. There are no trees in sight here, no white picket fences or barbed wire to define boundaries. Baby blues see nothing but swaying wheat and summer sky, unbroken by lazy white tufted of cumulus that would often hang there in the heavens above. A gentle wind brushes against her face and she can almost think that she feels that soft and fleeting touch, tousling elegant and loosely curled locks of sunshine and having them dance carelessly around her shoulders. Still, she is just as lost as she had been in the dark, wondering if this was Willowhaven simply for the fact that it looks so much like one of the countless wheat fields that grew on the same countryside as her childhood had, but she allows for her gaze to sweep slowly over the open expanse as she seeks anything that might be familiar. Surely this couldn't be what heaven was, remembering how it was always described to be place among the clouds and having once imagined that her grandmother might be there to welcome her with open arms and a warm, affectionate smile. Beylani is entirely alone here, without even the faintest melody of birdsong or the slightest movements of another creature. Only the hushed whispers of the wind and the soft rustling of the field surrounding her echo in this place. She tests her feet and finds that they will move for her, that first tentative and uncertain step beckoning another and then another before she is slowly walking through the swaying grains, reaching out a hand to realize that she can feel the subtle roughness of the golden grains that erupt from beneath her. She wanders aimlessly, all sense of time seeming frozen and she turns her gaze to the sun that caresses her skin, though there is no warmth. It is when she pauses in those forward strides taking her nowhere that she can see, turning to look the way she'd come, that something shifts. Suddenly, there is a warmth that hadn't been there when her eyes closed one last time to the world she'd lived in. It does not come from the sun that shines above her though, instead seeming to resonate from her chest. She lifts a hand and places it over where she knows her heart rests, and at first she cannot feel the beating that should be there, reminding her that she is no longer alive. She leaves her hand there for a moment, that warmth which had nearly been missed resonating there still. And then...

Thump...

Was that her heart she feels there in her breast, daring to beat when the blue-eyes blonde had felt it stop as the darkness swallowed her? Was it real, or just her mind still somehow trying to realize that she was dead? Her hand lingers there, and she soon begins to feel that warmth spread across her chest. Soon, it washes over her as another weak heartbeat drums ever so faintly."Lani"....... Through the soft rustling of golden wheat, through the gentle whispering breeze that touches her skin only now becoming aware of its touch, there is a voice. It is far away and fleeting, but most of all, it is familiar. Andras. As soon as his name echoes within her mind, as if perhaps it was answering back, the young woman is suddenly overwhelmed by darkness once more. The field, the sun, the wind... the light, it all vanishes before her as though it had never been there st all. And, perhaps, it really hadn't been. She feels as though she is free-falling now, and yet there are no screams that rip through blush-colored lips as the blue-eyed blonde falls further and further into the black oblivion. Would it end? Would she be flung against something solid, the wind knocked from her lungs that suddenly dare to take but a single first breath that has unknowingly brought her back from death? She does not know. Still, the young woman who died there upon the stone slab cannot make sense of what it is that is happening, and yet she does not fight. Struggling has had yet to get her anywhere since that nightmare had begun, so perhaps it was the silent question of why she should try now when it failed to save her own life that has her accepting whatever would come next. Would heaven be waiting for her? Would she finally have the chance to see her grandmother again after all these years since she'd passed away? And, if it was the afterlife that she was now falling into, where had she been before, where the fields had stretched on into forever and the sun hung unmoving in a perfectly blue sky? An indescribable sensation begins to wash over Beylani, and it almost seems as they her plummeting descent slows when suddenly there is a pressure that envelopes her. She does not know that it is Andras' arms that she is feeling as they hold her cold and bloodied body against his. She is unaware of how the fae man carries her away from the place where she has died, nor can she make sense of everything that happens after. Still, she is lost in the pitch black of unconsciousness as the very magic that had killed her, ended her existence and the life she knew, now works to return what it had taken. And yet, even as that weak heart dares to beat again, things were not being restored to what they'd been. No, everything was going to be different. That heartbeat, though so terribly frail now, would never be as it had been before her life was lost. Those baby blues, while still closed and entirely lost to the world and what was happening within it, so unaware of the crossing into Somnia and the biting cold that touched her skin as he carried her towards the lodge, would not open to the same life she'd led before her murder.

Unsure of just how long it was that she remained in the dark, finally her mind is able to break away and call her eye to open. Long lashes flutter weakly over baby blue as they see light filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the sunrise. Her first breath is ragged, shakey as her body registers the deep and lingering ache that seems to take hold of every bone and every muscle in her slender frame. Where.... A pained moan is pulled softly from her lips as she tries to regain her focus, to get her bearings on just where she was. Soon, the haze lifts, and though it is blurred, the first thing she sees is the glistening snow. Snow? Her gaze shifts away from the daylight, moving to the thick blankets that encase her. Suddenly, her senses are overwhelmed. The stain that polishes the hardwood flooring, the heavy smokiness of the burning embers in the fireplace that seems to crackle and pop as loud as lightning... and him. She had always known his scent before, but now it is heavy and assumes dominance over all else. She turns her head in that down pillow, her neck still stick as her body finds itself again after having been robbed of life only to receive it again. It takes a moment for her to focus on the figure in that chair not far from where she lay, but after only a few heavy blinks he comes into view. Slouched there with large bat-like appendages draped to either side of the chair, his bare torso stained crimson and dark locks askew, there was no mistaking him."Andras...?", she ushers weakly then. Was this just a memory from the morning after Halloween, after she'd nearly been killed by the vampire that haunted almost every night after the fae man had saved him? But... she'd died this time... hadn't she? She'd been so sure she had. He hadn't been there, hadn't come crashing into her blurred vision before her eyes had closed and her heart stopped. It hadn't been the warmth of his hand holding onto her own to be the last thing she felt. His voice had not been the last one she heard, instead only remembering the sobs that had fallen from her own lips, the low and ominous chanting voices of her captors as they stood in cloaks with shadows cast over their faces. It had been the voice of her killer that was the last she'd heard... So, how was she still alive when she knew her life had ended... hadn't it? How was she in Somnia, when the young woman should surely still be walking those endless golden fields over perhaps entering through those pearly gates of the afterlife? None of it made sense just yet, and so the blue-eyed blonde does not look away from him, still working to awaken from what she'd been so certain had been her own death."What... happened?", she asks him. And yet, Beylani knows what happened. At least, she knows what should have happened. She should have died there in that cellar. But she hadn't. Why am I here? That is the true question that her words are seeking the answer to.