Soft light shone as abysmal darkness clung to him. The grayish fog did not slam into the bifurcated path of light and darkness made in the corridor's wall.
The boy in the brown overcoat laid splayed out on the tilted ground. His right ankle slowly felt to be his own. Without looking at it, he moved it.
Once to the left and then to the right. His ankle had remembered how to move. Rare light touched it. Vanishing right after into the deep dark.
Pushing himself up with his right elbow, he sat upright. The grayish fog swirled in front of him just a few arms away.
Without waiting further, he stood up. Turning to face the only path he could walk now.
After thirty or so steps in the chosen path, he stops. Taking his small metal pipe out. He tossed it over and over in his palm. Contemplating.
'Should I?...Or could I even?' He shifts his eyes across the black crystal walls. The absence of an answer was his answer thus he pocketed the want to cut everything inside.
Moving onward he kept going. Thinking in his mind of the last few murals he had seen, and a singular string of unrecognizable symbols. The wanderer didn't know of anything that matched it, but he believed it to be symbols from a language or something that held meaning.
Motes of light bumped into him. Some scattered, some didn't. He kept going on. Darkness always clinging to him where light didn't.
After traveling for more than what feels to him to be thirty or so minutes, he chose to look back. And jumped in fright. Skipping ahead instinctively.
What he saw behind him only a few paces away was the same dark clothed skeletal being.
The boy never heard it coming. But he spotted it. And the boy did not want to know what it wanted anymore.
So the wanderer began running. He ran and ran and ran.
Light particles slammed high and low all over his body. Deep darkness clung and let him go, never restraining him.
Why did he run now? Even when it is the same entity. He did not think of it.
Why is he afraid suddenly? Having already faced the same being without fear the first time. His heart did not wander to this conclusion.
Only his feet worked, his arms compensated. Each step striking down at the ground while his hands tried to grab on anything in front of him.
Why did he not show a same sense of fear after having just escaped the mysterious fog? His soul did not scream out this philosophical tangent.
Running and running, he had no time to notice neither back nor to his sides. He only ran.
Seemingly a slow grind of slow boredom seeped in. His body ached a bit. That was new to him since entering the castle of unknown origins.
To no particular change that he could observe since running blind, he slammed into a black wall. "Ughh!" Stumbling he turned away to his left, massaging his forehead.
He ran and ran and ran.
Once again, slammed into another wall. Same utterance, same action of massaging his forehead.
Repeated this again for couple more times. He had boredom that went from boredom to literally gnawing at him. His forehead aching, his knees screamed. He still did not choose to stop.
He was still running near blind in the path of soft light and cruel darkness when his stomach groaned too. Not out of pain, rather due to lack of eating. That got his attention more.
He slowed himself to a jog. Peeking back, he scavenged his own overcoat for pieces of roasted meat. He brought one up to eat. 'It's…gone?'
Not wishing to meet it again, the boy didn't stop. He just slowed down from a jog to a simple walk.
Scarving down the bits of roasted terrabeast meat. He put his foot down without him noticing it went a little down more than what it would on a flat ground.
He kept going on. Every step a bit inclined down, he still munching on the bits of roasted meat. After couple more minutes of straight walking, he noticed that the wall to his right is coming closer. 'Wasn't I going straight?'
The boy touched the black crystal walls with remnants of the meat on his fingertips. "Smooth as seen."
He turned left and kept walking. His jog ended with his last bite. The wanderer did not look back, he only chose to advance. His heart as well had calmed down.
Another hour went by. In that, he ate another small bit of meat. Then another hour.
Within those two hours, he began noticing that he was going down and left. 'It's like a spiral path downwards.' The boy scratched his chin.
In that same span, the light particles or motes had risen in their numerousness. There were more of them now than in the start of the path. Still he couldn't interact with them except them snuffing out when colliding with him.
Darkness still hadn't become scarce. It was fighting an unseen battle to hold its existence.
Raising his hands, the boy ran his fingers through the soft light motes like they were of silk. His steps taking him down and left. A few more steps, and thus he saw.
"A beam?"
A pure beam of light had penetrated the path of soft light and cruel dark. Slowing himself down, he moved to the left wall and peeked out the curving angle.
The path opened into a massive hall of purest black crystals. A single line ran across the far end from top to bottom. Seeing no entity from this far, the wanderer came out.
He gripped a bone dagger in one of his left pockets. Advancing carefully he saw the same beam of light coming from that slit.
It was when he was only hundreds of steps away, he noticed it. The slit exist in between a gate. And the light? It wasn't just pure white.
The closer he got, light became colourful. Mostly holding the colours of green and blue, a bit of white at times.
But that was not the only thing, another entity stood next to the slit. One that had a pale shroud, to him it felt to be made of green and blue. 'Maybe…that's just light..effects?'
A hundred steps away, the entity's supposed head was clearer. The wanderer considered turning back and he did. Only thing was that behind his back was just a wall of black crystal. There was no path, no exit except the slit.
Dejected at his powerlessness, he turned to face the entity. Seventy steps away, the entity nodded and it turned to push open the massive carved gate. It was then the wanderer noticed this gate held its own mural story. He couldn't see or note it more than a split moment.
The very next moment he was flooded by blue and green light. Internally however, he felt as if everything descended an unknown height.
Mirage of lights subsided and he felt the wind once again. A day's light that felt just the right bit of hotness as the wind cooled him. Yet, his eyes didn't had to adjust even once for the sudden changes in lighting.
Thus, he witnessed it. The verdant forest and blue skies in front of him. The wanderer spun to look back.
There it was a sixth of a league away or so was the very castle he was exploring. The gate closed but two beings were in front of it. One in a black shroud and the other in a pale one. Right behind the castle, he could observe the never-ending desert he possibly was in.
The wanderer in the brown overcoat wasn't sure whether he was still in Ashtrim. He could be somewhere he never had heard of, he thought. Yet, he bowed to the shrouded beings.
And he turned to walk on into the forest of an unknown land. "Hopefully, I hope I am still on the same land that has the city of Ashtrim."