What was left to endure for? Claudia is dead.

Was Lazarus aware when his tomb was cracked open?

Was Louis screaming still, when the coffin lid raised?

Claudia is dead. Louis is alive, but only just.

Claudia is dead. That is the only thing left to him now, now that he has run out of hallucination and fantasy, now that all strength and energy has ebbed away. Claudia is dead. Louis does not wish to be alive.

The blood finds him anyway.

Droplets of blood slipping through rocks, down and down and down, to find Louis.

Claudia is dead.

Louis sits up.

His mouth is full of blood and stones. This is animal instinct. A living body which does not wish to die, even if the mind has given over gladly to the thought.

No one asked Louis if he wished to live. Why would he? Claudia is dead.

But he is siting upright among the stones, breath coming heavily, wetly, through a mouthful of blood. Rocks drip from his lips, clatter back down to join the rest. Louis rakes an unsteady hand through them, lifting a second handful back up.

He's alive. Claudia is dead. There is little room for anything else in these first moments, this liminal space half in, half out of the coffin.

There is only the smallest shred of his mind growing aware that the blood Louis is sucking from these rocks belongs to Lestat.