As she came back to the waking world, a girl wondered why she had failed to hit the ground. She wondered about a lot of things, actually. But only when she mustered the strength to pry her gray-hazel eyes open and rise to her feet.
Too many questions, the girl thought as she stood alone at the dark bottom of a steep gorge. Where was she? Where was this place? But she couldn't bring herself to panic. She should have been scared. But she wasn't. She couldn't be.
She couldn't be a lot of things, she realized. Not scared, not happy, not sad; she couldn't even cringe at the fact that the ground around her was covered in blood. It wasn't right, she thought. Where there should have been warmth there was a deathly chill. Deep in her breast there should have been a rhythmic, emotional beat, but it was as still as quiet as the dead. There was nothing there. She could not feel.
Definitely not right at all. But it didn't stop her from trying. She knew what was supposed to be there, so her face screwed up in disgust as she stepped out of the grotesque ring of blood. She didn't know if it was hers or not, but had a sick notion that it had been hers… once.
That was her only consolidation; she could remember the concepts that should have filled that hollow in her soul. She could remember many things, she noticed. Flashes of something that might have been a lifetime sped through her mind in fast-forward. But there was no sound; all the voices were mute and burned away.
All of this made her realize something crucial.
She did not know who she was. There was little identity to these scattered snips of memory. She knew she had witnessed them once, but it seemed… wrong… to say she had really lived them as she was standing at the bottom of the gorge. They were from someone else's point of view now.
The someone else's name was… was…
"Alexandra Salazar," the girl said, wincing at the sound of her own voice. The name wasn't hers, not anymore…
Flickers of what must have been Alexandra's memory betrayed a bitter struggle with family matters, the Salazar family. Salazar. The word seemed to rearrange and warp, becoming something that was her own and binding to discover.
"My name is Alzaxras," she said. The name brought a sense of self with it. Not a feeling. A sense: a concept.
It was only after half an hour of walking aimlessly that she frowned in feigned annoyance. Not real, but she knew that the utter loneliness would definitely been irritating. There was absolutely no one around. No answers for her.
Not even for something as simple as the clothes she was wearing. They didn't appear in Alexandra's memory. The other girl took mainly to simple shirts and jeans. Nowhere did there exist a trace of the short cape, the zipper top, the studded belts, the cargo pants, the leather zipper boots. Alexandra didn't even wear gloves, not even the same half gloves that Alzaxras wore. Although she approved of the ensemble she simply didn't know where it came from or even why she was wearing. But it seemed to fit and that was all that mattered. Once again, not a single answer to her newly-dubbed name.

As she was deeply wishing to be around someone who knew what was going on, the cold stony ground shifted in front of her. A smear of black blossomed and grew into a great inky portal, cold and voidlike. Alzaxras recalled a flash of dark claws and glowing eyes for a moment before she snapped out of the trance. The bitter, encompassing door beckoned invitingly. Somehow when she was relieved of human emotions her intuition had refused to leave.
Yes, she thought, I definitely am going crazy.
Alzaxras walked straight into the swirling dark gateway, damning to hell all odds and risk. In a dizzying spin, a flash of black, and a pierce of cold she passed into an unearthly in-between place. She didn't stop walking and when she reached the end of the short corridor the bizarre, dark sensation of sudden movement repeated itself.

It really was too bad that she expected the ground under her feet as she exited her portal. A fall, several yells, a yellow blur and the winter-chill of an icy prison were all she met. A few blurry, ice-frosted faces through the cold, glasslike trap floated into view, dull murmurs bubbling dimly outside.
A perfect day, Alzaxras thought. Waking up in a small crater surrounded by blood. Not knowing where she was. Not knowing who she was. And now, she thought, trapped in a giant ice cube with people staring. She would need air soon. A perfect day.
Several more muffled voices called outside and a head's measure of ice melted off her face. Alzaxras almost forgot to breathe because all of the people around but one had left.
The person might have been around the same age as herself, with gold-tan hair and dark blue eyes that stared at her and nothing else. But she definitely was not a woman to be crossed. The serious stare and blood-red tattoos streaming down her face like sanguine tears assured Alzaxras that there definitely was something to fear here. Even if she couldn't feel it.
In fact, what little ran through Alzaxras's head could be summed up in two words. "Oh crap," she said under her breath.
"Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?"
"Funny story, actually…"