As the pain surged through my body, everything tilted.
The world began to fade slowly, then it snapped.
One moment I was there, in the manor.
Next, I fell into silence and began to hear voices.
Before I realized what was happening, I was already on my knees.
While the chilling air pressed against my flesh.
As I scrambled to remember what had happened, my head began to spin. I threw up on whatever I was standing on. After a while, the pain subsided.
Eventually, I forced myself to my feet.
"A shocking realization dawned on Caelum—he wasn't in his infant form anymore."
After accepting he was no longer an infant, he began to look around to figure out where he had landed.
But to his disappointment, all he could see was thick, hazy purple fog that stretched endlessly in every direction.
No walls.
No sky.
Just… space swallowed in a violet haze.
A white, intense light began to shine further down the end of the trail, although Caelum doubted that would be the exit, because to him it felt too easy for an exit to begin to shine a bright light. However, since he had no other leads on an escape, he began to head in that direction.
As soon as he began to walk down, he heard a loud slithering sound echoing through the fog, but he paid it little attention. He assumed his mind was playing tricks on him, or perhaps it was a lingering effect of the headache.
So he pressed on.
A few moments later he caught sight of something silver in the fog.
At first, Caelum thought it was a fallen tree.
Then it moved.
Silver scales slid through the haze.
One glowing eye appeared.
Then another.
Then another.
His stomach dropped.
The creature slowly raised its massive head above the fog. It resembled a dragon stripped of all flesh and ornament, leaving only perfection and terror.
Smooth silver scales covered its face like liquid metal.
Six glowing eyes ran along either side of its skull. The mouth split nearly to the back of its neck, revealing endless rows of needle-like teeth. Above its brow rested a natural crown of silver spines.
The moment Caelum saw its face, every instinct screamed at him to run.
He accelerated, moving faster than he ever had in his life.
His mind still struggled to process what he had seen.
Then a chill ran down his spine.
He looked back.
The serpent was right behind him.
No matter how fast he ran, the light drifted farther away. He said out loud, "Of course it's a scam. Why wouldn't it be?" he muttered through panic.
He ran for what felt like an eternity while the serpent pursued him, each time it got closer, it snapped downward in an overhead strike, narrowly missing his head.
As he kept running in a continuous straight line, eventually his knees buckled.
His legs were about to give out as he began to emulate his new mother's prayer while envisioning the statue to pray to; his only prayer in that moment was to die painlessly or in one fell bite.
Then out of nowhere, his mark burning hotter on his chest, he began to curse at it, yelling, "First you bring me out here, then you make me run for my dear life, and now you are bringing discomfort when the jaws of death are right behind my back."
As those words left Caelum's mouth, the snake came from the side, trying to swallow him in one fell swoop as its jaws began to approach him.
The mark lit up with bright purple light and enveloped him as he suddenly vanished.
As he stumbled through a large tunnel, his mark kept heating up so much that he couldn't think of anything else. Eventually, he landed on something solid, but the moment his skin touched the ground, he quickly jumped up, screaming in pain and yelling, "Hot! Hot!"
Only after several frantic steps did his body begin to adjust. Trying to steady his breathing to calm down as he sucked in air, he suddenly began to choke and felt a sulfuric acid taste behind his throat while he was wriggling and coughing uncontrollably with blood spilling on the floor.
He collapsed onto his back, desperately grasping for air.
The red floor scorched his skin.
Then the mark began to glow.
A soft purple light spread across his body, and for the first time since arriving, he could breathe.
As the heat assaulting his flesh diminished, only then did he stand up, although he could see a thin purple film covering his body, and burn marks were still visible. Caelum sighed. "At least I can breathe again, but this stupid mark could at least heal the scars to compensate for all the trouble."
He quickly stood up to try to figure out where he had landed this time.
So he looked around to view the area and the source of the heat. As he heard the sounds of loud birds, his first instinct was to look for where it was coming from, so he immediately turned his head to look up in the sky, and then he noticed this place had unusual twin crimson moons that hung overhead.
Ash drifted endlessly across the sky like black snow.
In the distance stood mountains shaped like gigantic spears thrust into the heavens.
Nothing about this place looked natural.
As he was still in his revelry, he suddenly heard a deafening roar that nearly tore his eardrums; as he looked to find the cause of such a high-pitched sound, he then noticed a massive monster with black skin and red horns protruding out of its head with large chains on its legs.
As it lumbered closer, a single thought crossed his mind.
What is that thing?
As he stared at the creature.
The chains around its legs alone were larger than houses.
His throat went dry.
"What... what is this place?"
Suddenly one of the monsters, pushing a large stone, noticed him; he quickly hid near the largest object he could find, barely managing to hide behind a pillar. Luckily, the monster hadn't noticed him. Just when he thought that he could breathe a sigh of relief, he saw flying skeleton birds that flew ahead, grabbing what looked like screaming, transparent, floating entities.
Upon closer inspection, Caelum deduced that those must be souls.
The realization made his blood run cold.
Caelum thought, If they find me, who knows what will happen? While his body began to quiver in horror as they flew by, Caelum concluded that he couldn't hide forever, so he decided to move forward because, to him, what choice does he really have?
So he pressed forward, hoping the monsters here wouldn't notice him. As he kept moving, he noticed all the monsters. The monsters were moving close to a giant crater, so he tried following them by hiding close to the large stones protruding from the floor.
The closer he got, the more intense the heat became, to the point that the purple film covering him began to flicker.
Caelum knew that wasn't good and tried to back away to somewhere cooler so as not to destroy his only lifeline, and while thinking about how scary this place is, he accidentally slipped on a small rock, slamming face-first into the ground.
The impact caused the vibrations from the already fragile film protecting him to break in that instant. Caelum's body began to burn, and he began to choke, screaming in agony because of the loud noise he was making, which made all the monsters turn their attention towards him.
He didn't need anyone to tell him immediately; when they locked eyes with him, Caelum realized he was doomed, and right on sight, multiple monsters grabbed his body like he was a roast hanging over a flame and pulled him closer to the crater.
They bound him to a stone pillar beside the crater; he fainted soon after.
Luckily, the mark began to glow again and reconstructed the protective layer while the color on his face began to return.
By the time he woke up, he realized he had been tied up to a relatively short pillar closer than he had ever been to the crater, although the mark had begun to glow brighter than ever enough to even obstruct his vision.
It was then that Caelum began to wonder how he was going to unbind himself, if it was even possible, as he was thinking that he suddenly started seeing his captors begin forming a massive line and kneeling one by one; even the skeleton birds landed with their cages from them. Caelum began to hear horrifying voices begging constantly. It was at that moment that he realized his assumptions were correct; they were human souls.
As terrifying as that realization was, another concern quickly took over.
Every massive creature had gathered in one place.
He was starting to worry the ledge itself might collapse beneath their combined weight.
It was then that he felt an enormous pressure pressing down on his body; it felt like his organs and skeleton were getting pressed in as he tried to look at what was causing this intense shift in gravity.
Then Caelum looked up and immediately wished he hadn't.
At first, his mind refused to understand what he was seeing.
A colossal silhouette hung in the sky, wrapped in crimson and violet light. Vast wings unfurled behind it, blotting out everything else. Tendrils of scarlet energy coiled through the air like living veins, twisting around its body before vanishing into the storm of light surrounding it.
Then pain exploded behind his eyes.
He screamed.
It felt as though molten needles had been driven into his skull.
Warm liquid ran down his cheeks.
His vision blurred.
Something wet splashed against the ground beneath him.
Blood.
Blood was pouring from his eyes.
Panicking, he tried to look away, but the image had already branded itself into his mind.
His sight grew dimmer with every passing second.
Shapes dissolved into shadows.
Colors melted together.
Somewhere above, something collided with the cliffside.
As he heard that, a sharp cracking sound came.
The boulder binding him split apart.
For a brief moment, Caelum felt weightless as he plummeted downwards.
The heat surged upward like being next to a volcano.
Then the world beneath him vanished.
And he fell.