"Dear freak. I really wanted to... to get to know you better. Like meat in the stomach. But this is the end. Farewell!" Ignis heard the axeman's shout.

  Then the sound of breaking planks cut through the air. The cart spun beneath him, tossing him from wall to wall. The horses, neighing wildly, crashed into its side. One horse's head broke through the bars, and he fell backward.

  In the flickering, pale yellow light of a candlestick, he saw a woman in a gray cloak fade into view before his eyes. Only her hand, skeletal and barely more than bones covered with skin, emerged from beneath the rags. The shriveled, dry fingers were so thin that he was certain they would snap like dry twigs if he gently squeezed them in gratitude.

  "Thank you," said Ignis.

  A pair of blue eyes glowed from beneath the gray hood, meeting his gaze.

  For a few fleeting moments, he thought he was still on the Snowland, but then his memories rushed back, and logic placed the missing pieces.

  "Eat, my child, you must be hungry."

  He took the bowl of food from the trembling hand. Sitting up on the dry straw, he ate while inspecting his body. He found painful bruises, stitched wounds still oozing and swollen. On the ground rested a basin filled with water, soaking his used bandages, releasing the absorbed blood.

  He put on the worn clothes prepared for him. He wrapped himself so thoroughly that even his neck was barely visible. Following the jagged rock walls, he found his way out of the cave. The silvery light of the moon flowed over his brown hair. Below, deep chasms pierced the earth, as if giant worms had gnawed through it.

  Gray monks knelt before and behind the passages, their prayers directed at the sky. Their clenched hands, held under trembling chins, swayed left and right in the howling wind. As if too heavy, their hands kept lowering, then trembling back to their starting positions. Their eyes stared at the moon.

  Words of prayer mixed with the howling wind, cries, rustling leaves, groans, kind words, mule bleating, and furious curses. A burly man yelled at a gray priestess, then struck her fragile face with his fist. The sound of bones cracking joined the cacophony.

  The man drew his sword, the blade reflecting the moonlight.

  "Good-for-nothings! Why are you here? It's all your fault! You should all die. Go back to where you came from!"

  Ignis charged at him with his shoulder, knocking the sword from his hand. Pinning him down, he drew long arcs with his fist, smashing the man's face. His punches landed with a resounding thud on the skin, and the man's hands, raised in defense, shook with each blow. Silver sparks flashed on his soaked fist and the scattered drops of blood.

  "No, don't hurt him, he's not even fully healed. No!" cried the priestess, her voice choked as she struggled to her feet.

  Ignis glanced at the priestess, then at the man, before lowering his hand.

  "You rotten whore," the man spat at Ignis, then rose unsteadily, his nose broken.

  The priestess stumbled over to him with the fallen sword. Bowing her head, she handed it to him hilt first, and he snatched it from her. The blow sent her crashing to the ground again.

  Ignis jumped in front of the priestess.

  After a few moments of panting and baring his teeth, the man averted his gaze from them, cursing, and headed toward the path lined with torches. The monks tried their best to shuffle after him, accompanying him, and at the end of the path, they knelt and prayed for his safety.

  ***

  Ignis' goal was still too far to rest.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Ahead of Ignis, a priestess was shuffling along, dragging a basket full of supplies. She staggered, and then, as if her knees had given out, she collapsed. Ignis sighed, helped her up, and snatched the basket from her hands to carry it himself. The priestess stood up, smiled at Ignis, and then continued along the candlestick-lit path towards the shadows of the underground tunnels.

  In the tunnels, they stopped from time to time so the priestess could change the bandages of an injured person they encountered, give out a portion of food, while in return they cursed the gray god or outright grabbed her by the throat. The man lying on the straw now with his browned teeth merely spat in the priestess's face and growled at her. Ignis wiped her face with a rag while she murmured a prayer for the man's recovery.

  Descending deeper into the twists of the tunnels, they reached another pile of hay, where a fat body was sprawled. Right beside it, leaning against the wall, stood a bloodied axe. Ignis shuddered and hid in the shadows.

  The priestess was changing the man's bandages under his arm, placing a compress on his sweat-soaked, furrowed forehead.

  "He was lying in blood, barely breathing when we found him. But see?" she pointed a trembling hand at his face. "He's smiling. There's barely any life left in him, he hasn't even come to, but he's smiling like no one among the living." Ignis remembered that grin well. "Dear child, there is always light in the darkness to show the way, you just have to believe in it."

  The sleeping axeman moved his head, opening his mouth to speak. Ignis retreated into the cover of the rocky wall. He was just mumbling in his sleep.

  The priestess looked up at the ceiling, clasped her hands together, and her prayer set off into the darkness.

  Mutterings, groans, curses, snores, and wails echoed in the tunnels. Ignis occasionally jerked his head back, but never saw anything in the dim light of the candlesticks. The priestess just shuffled forward unblinkingly, sometimes groaning as if she barely had the strength to breathe. They were all like that. As if something in the shadows compelled them to sacrifice themselves for others, to give everything, to surrender their dreams. As if they dared not rest, driven by an invisible hand, as if they were in voluntary servitude that drained all life from them, leaving only an exhausted, dry, cracked body with two blue eyes and a kind smile.

  From the next crevice in the wall, dark fluid seeped towards them. Whimpering trembled the air, and the priestess quickened her steps.

  The spongy membrane encasing the fetus was already torn, and the newborn was crawling towards them, groaning. His ribs jutted out one by one, his stomach was caved in under his chest, and his thighs were thinner than Ignis' arms. Every bone was visible under his skin. His sunken face was hidden by matted hair.

  The priestess knelt before him, looking straight into his eyes, and he lunged at her throat with his teeth and nails, as if she were just a piece of meat to satisfy his hunger. The priestess didn't move, the peace on her face never wavering.

  Ignis pushed the priestess aside and struck the newborn's face with the basket. The man scuttled into the shadows, the splashes of his slimy hands and feet, and the echo of his incessant panting reverberating off the walls. When he crawled back out, snarling and drooling, Ignis pinned him to the soggy straw bed, pressing his body down on him, and held the nearest lantern between them. The newborn tried to turn away from the light.

  "Are you still human?" Ignis shouted.

  The walls echoed the question. The man closed his mouth, rolling his eyes as if familiarizing himself with the place.

  "Where am I?"

  Soon more monks arrived. They surrounded the man, looking down at him with their blue eyes, waiting for his questions.

  And he received answers to his questions through the monks' trembling voices. Even if those answers were unacceptable.

  "What? I never hurt anyone!"

  "My child, what kind of life have you lived?"

  "I lived an honest life, followed the laws. Wait. I'm here because of that whore, right? I'm in the Darkness because of her. She said she enjoyed it too. It's her fault. Hers! I don't want to be here."

  Those same eyes awaited Ignis' questions on the day he was born into this world by breaking through the wall of his cocoon in the frigid cold of the Snowland forest. They asked him the same question then, but he had no answer, nothing in his mind. The priestesses said memories sometimes get lost in rebirth, but they would soon return.

  That was more than thirty years ago, and Ignis had simply resigned himself to the fact that he had to be here.

  "Our Creator brought your soul here for a reason. Trust in Him."

  "The world is full of bastards. Those bastards who slaughter their own families should be here, not me!" the man said.

  "Child, you have been given the opportunity to live and learn again. How you use it is up to you."

  ***

  At dawn, Ignis was already standing at the path lined with torches, followed by the gray monks reciting prayers. At one point, they knelt behind him and prayed to the Light for his safety, just as they did for those who had beaten them.

  "Thank you for everything."

  He wrapped himself in a tattered cloak, leaving only his face visible, and set off. Ignis gazed beyond the trees, over the sea of forest, mountains, villages, walls, curtains, doors, bars, and fabrics. He could feel Her. He was finally getting closer. That was all that mattered.

  Every comment adds one year to my lifespan. So go ahead. Help me reach immortality.

  I hope you’ll continue to enjoy the journey, and I’m really grateful to have you here!

  See you in the Darkness.