His hand is weak around the sweat coated hilt. His breathes are ragged gasps. His eyes flash back and forth through a panic of fear and worry, trying vainly to pierce the creeping haze of death. His body burns and creaks with each forced step. The skin is pulled taught by each movement. It is burned, from the air and fire all around. It lies below, above, in the walls and in the foes. There is fire in the floor and fire in the very air, waiting to snare him. His body bears scores of the ugly burn marks. A thousand failures, each pushing him closer to the edge.
He stands feebly beneath the large, domed ceiling. It seems so far beyond that, though. The ceiling does not truly exist for him. Very few things can manage a place within his slipping awareness. There is not much room in the fading consciousness.
One of the things he knows is the face before him. Once it was distinctly clear. Once he could remember what that face was called. He knows no longer. All he sees are the empty hands, the hateful eyes, the panting mouth.
Another of the few remaining things for the man. A memory which fills his mind even now. In that flickering state, he still manages to hold the sight of red hair and wide fields. He cannot think of the name, but he clutches that moment like a lifeline. His lips inarticulately mutter something about the scene.
The last thing he is able to keep hold of is the jagged blade which burns inside his gut.
It doesn't hurt so much as he had always imagined. There is hardly any pain there, only a seeping coldness. Steel touches what steel never should. The frosten metal is dug into hot organs, stealing their heat and giving only cold.
He is so cold now. There was heat before, surely, but none now. He is on his knees now. The blade jostles within, but holds fast. So cold. He can't see anything anymore. The world around is fading, has already faded beyond grasp. It's going away, any moment it will be gone.
He sees the red hair, just for a moment, as a flicker. Not the flicker of a spluttering candle, but the flicker of a flying bolt of lightning through the darkest night. The world shifted in that moment, and he moved with it. For that spot of time, he was there with her. They stood in the grass, laughed into the wind, and kissed for the first time, for the last time.
Tears are hot against cooling cheeks.
The world moved and was moved back. He is on the ground. One hand flies out and catches his body, halfway there. It is only a moment, for the limb is weak like jelly. He falls across the floor, splayed out. He doesn't know where his hands are. They seem so distant. It is so cold.
He is not hurting at all, only feeling the terrible iciness of that blade in his gut.
With a jerking movement, it is torn away. Cold air fills the gaping wound, just as warm blood leaks out. Feet depart across ashen ground, quickly leaving his smoky vision. He can hardly breathe. Each attempt creates a short, spluttering sound.
Now he can't hear those. He can no longer feel the failure of his lungs, or the vacancy in the center of his body. He can't feel the cold, or smell the blood. He doesn't know anything except a vague sense of red. The red becomes black as life leaves the eyes.
The body lies there, lost and unknown, cooling irreversibly inside the holy grounds of warmth.
Link is dead.