She flickers her eyes open to a stiff blackness, and a gentle, even weight spread across her body. She opens her mouth to fill her long-empty lungs, but instead finds herself gagged by a sudden torrent of dry ashes, forcing itself up her nose and pushing out ragged, choked coughs. She panics and flails, pushing against the layer of white, sooty grains in a desperate attempt to break herself free. The weight loosens around the end of her right hand, and she uses the leverage to force it up and above ground. Her shoulders become easier to move next, and she uses her free hand to scrape and dig at the ashen dirt atop her face, bare fingers raking into the loose grey sand until she can snatch a harsh, sudden breath. She blinks the light grains out of her eyes and looks up at the dull, grey canopy of clouds above her, pumping air in and out of her chest until she's capable of straight thought once more. With a strong, hard lurch, she yanks her torso up and out of the ashen bed, and wiggles her feet and legs to get them free as well.

She casts her eyes about the lifeless, ash-coated valley around her before hauling herself up onto her feet, leaning against the old dead tree she had been buried under. She takes a shaky step forward, slowly building her confidence before advancing down a short slope, past a series of gravestones and towards an old, broken stone basin. She looks over the figure sprawled out against it; an old knight, the gaps in its armour ripped and stained with dried, ancient blood. She looks between the abraised, battered steel and the old rags hanging off of her, making a move to start stripping the corpse clean for her own use. Her eyes are drawn, however to something hanging from its belt; a dull flask of mottled, emerald glass, its surface worn and aged almost beyond use. She crouches, unhooking it from the knight's armour and feeling it over, taking in a feeling of warmth from it, a feeling of treasury and dependence. A few flashes of memory come back to her recently-woken and addled mind: the image of a kindly old woman tucking a similar flask into her hands, although it was much cleaner than the one she now held; it was reflective, without a scratch, and filled to its brim with warm, fiery liquid. Other flashes slowly come back to her as she stands and places the flask on the edge of the broken basin. She remembers a simple farm, in a green and meadowed land, and being dragged away from it by some kind of duty. She remembers a great flame, and being forced to venture toward it by her lord, perhaps as some kind of sacrifice. She can't put names to faces, or places to times, and she sighs at her own disorientation.

She's knocked from her concentration by a sudden flurry of activity; a hideous squawk, barely human, brings her attention behind her, and she turns to face it just as a mass of white flesh and black cloth barrels into her, knocking her hard against the basin's edge. She sinks to the floor, on top of the knight's corpse, and glances up at the man standing before her, if it could even be called a man. Its skin was taut and deathly pale, and its limbs were fragile, thin and treelike. Its mouth hung open, emitting a beastly mixture of groans and shrieks, and its eyes were dull and lifeless, the sockets sunken and hollow. Hollow. That word sticks out in her memory, and she promises herself she'll remember why just as soon as this thing stops assaulting her. Her adrenaline overtakes fear, and she whips her head to the side just as the thin creature stabs down with what looks like the bottom third of an old broken sword. Her hand scrambles around in the grey dirt for something to fight back with, and it closes around something comfortable and oval. Her eyes flicker to it; the dead knight's sword, ornate but seemingly practical and definitely in better shape than her aggressor's. She adjusts her grip, her fingers shifting into familiar and instinctual positions as she kicks her bare foot out against an exposed knee, knocking the treelike monster off balance and giving her an opening. She struggles to her feet, bringing the knight's longsword high into the air and bringing her other hand up to its hilt before bringing it down onto her opponent's shoulder, the blade's still-sharp edge cutting into the paperlike skin and sinew with a satisfying wet thunk. The creature lets out a harsh, piercing shriek, craning its neck over to refocus its dead eyes on her. She doesn't give it a moment, taking a hand away from her sword's hilt to crack her knuckles into its brittle nose before reassuming her two-handed grip, pushing with her shoulder and pulling with her wrists and arms to split her way through the rest of the thin beast's feeble skin and bone. Her blade comes free, smearing gloopy, half-dried blood a few shades too dark across the two combatants as it cuts the now-loser from shoulder to hip. She lets it fall away, dropping the sword and wiping the blood from her eyes as she tries to figure out just how she had just survived, and why it had been so easily.

Two little snapshots rear themselves inside her head; one of training alongside knights in a courtyard, clad in similar armour to the corpse she'd been planning to loot, and one of a sturdy white-haired man, lecturing her about the pestilence of the undead hollows. A hollow, an immortal creature that has long since lost its memory and sanity, wasting away into little more than an unbreathing husk. That was what that thing was. As for how she'd dispatched it, she'd clearly had some military training. She shakes her thoughts away, before turning back to the armoured corpse. She begins to strip it of its aforementioned gear, spending several minutes unbuckling plates and belts, and then re-strapping them onto her own body. Now properly armoured, with a pair of thick greaves, heavy pauldrons, a steel gauntlet, and a heavy chainmail vest and coat, she picks up the mottled green flask and hooks it onto her belt, as well as a series of pouches and little bags, her sword's scabbard, and another, unfamiliar flask, similarly shaped but made of blue glass and covered with occasional patches of little crystals. Using a small length of cord from one of the pouches, she ties back most of her dull, golden, shoulder-length locks and slides the knight's helmet over her head, bringing the visor down to comfortably protect her face. Now fully clothed and armoured and no longer at as much of a risk of being mauled by hollows, she perches herself on the edge of the basin. Collecting what little of her memories she has together, she ponders her next move. She grew up on a farm, but was taken away from it by some kind of royal decree. She'd trained with knights as well, and had been tutored by the church. She'd also died, clearly, signified by the fact that she'd been buried here in the first place. But why has she been resurrected, and by who? She certainly doesn't feel undead or hollowed in any way, and none of the symptoms were presenting themselves to her. She casts her eyes away from where she'd woken up, and out towards the exit of the cave-like cemetery valley. She has little memory, no money or food, and not even her own name.

But just staying in the cemetery won't change that.