The old man smiled, his thin lips hidden under the shaggy white beard, “You’re awake. For a while there I wasn’t sure if the the binding even worked. Souls are such fragile things–and binding them back to bodies isn’t an exact science.”
He gazed beyond you, out into the endless void of blackness, peppered only with glinting stars. “There’s work to be done, then,” he sighed, “I know you’ve only just awoke, but everything is in such a terrible state.” He hobbled by you, his boots clacking on the cobblestone flooring until he reached a wrought iron railing and leaned against it, again peering into the void beyond.
This all seemed so wrong. Was it a dream? You sat on a small bench, under a lamplight on what appeared to be a street corner. But no more than a few dozen meters away in any direction, the ground gave way to nothingness, sharply dropping off like a cliff. In the distance you saw only the blackness of outer space, the faint twinkling of stars being the only thing to remind you something else was out there.