Ronan fights, the same way he's fought nightwash and his own unmaking, though the experience couldn't be more different. When he's unmade, it's a great terrible nothing that eats him from the inside out, spilling out into more nothingness until there's no Ronan and the only thing he embodies is absence.

The will that's swallowing him up now is the very opposite. There's so much of it that it feels like he couldn't vanish if he tried, that instead he'll be preserved forever in this state. The same hands that pushed him under now tighten around his wrists and ankles, until it becomes too difficult to swim and he's left twitching, until he finally goes still.

Instead of drowning him, the darkness replaces oxygen. He breathes it in, or rather, it breathes for him - because he can't reject it, can't choose to hold his breath. His lungs expand and contract under its will. His heart beats with it, pumping it through his veins. He can't remember why he was fighting it in the first place. As soon as he gives himself over to the dark, the aching stops.