The last thing she remembered was the fire.

Not the heat of it, that had vanished long before the end, but the sound. The roar that swallowed her world, the crackling collapse of everything she had been standing on, the way the smoke curled into her lungs like a final, greedy hand. She remembered the moment her body gave out, the moment she stopped fighting it, the moment she let the flames take her. But this was not fire.

This was cold. Crushing, endless cold.

Crucifix's first breath in the Afterlife tore itself from her chest as she broke the surface of black water, choking on the shock of it. The Depths clung to her like tar, dragging at her limbs, pulling her down as though the flames had followed her here in another form. She kicked, fought, clawed her way upward with a desperation she hadn't felt in life. The water tasted like metal and old memories. When her hooves finally scraped something solid, she dragged herself forward, coughing, trembling, her mane plastered to her neck. The world around her was nothing but shadow and the faint, dull glow of a horizon that didn't seem to belong to any sky she knew. The only path was the strip of grey rock ahead. Barren, silent, waiting.

She stood there for a long moment, chest heaving, amber eyes burning against the gloom. This was not the place she had expected to wake. She had stared death in the face before, more than once, but this… this was a different plane entirely. No fire. No smoke. No familiar pull of the world she'd left behind.

Just the Depths.
Just the cold.
Just the beginning of something she did not yet understand.

With a final shake of water from her coat, Crucifix stepped onto the grey shore and began her walk toward Ethereal Reach, toward whatever story waited for her now.