Darkness

Trapped in the darkness, Arran had little idea of how much time passed.

Occasionally his consciousness would fade for a while, and when it returned, he would blindly repeat Karanos's circulation technique to nourish his body. That the technique worked, he knew because his thoughts no longer grew hazy and confused — if nothing else, at least his body wasn't starving.

For a time, he had tried to count the cycles, hoping that they might give him some rough idea of the passage of time. Yet the cycles repeated endlessly, each no different from the previous one, and he soon lost track of them.

At any rate, it didn't matter. Knowing whether it had been a year or a century would not help him escape the situation. As for what would… that, he did not know. Not yet, at least.