The man felt the warmth of his body being drained by the infinitely deep hole. Or more accurately, the tangible light that caressed him. That light blue mist was wholly unnatural and chilled him to his very core.

It was easy to keep himself gripped to the walls thanks to his sharp claws but found a problem when trying to climb up. The claws were too long and the resulting posture too awkward to have a solid footing.

Without thinking it twice, the man dislodged his right hand from the wall and hit his claws hard against it. Chunks of ebony keratin flew away from the impact. It hurt a bit, but nothing he hadn’t felt before.

The loss of biomass didn’t worry him, climbing up with his current weight would prove to be a difficult task.

He repeated the same motion with his left hand until both sets of claws were short enough to make climbing feasible. Then he shapeshifted his human toes into more rodent claws. This way his weight would be equally distributed in four points instead of four.

The man moved his left hand upward and pierced the rock with a swift motion, only when he checked his hand was locked in place, he dislodged his other hand on moved it up on the same level.

Then he noticed his mistake.

That’s not how one should climb. The posture was now awkward, his arms and legs extended impeding him from moving his feet up.

“Hmm... This is not optimal.” He grunted, staying pinned on the wall as the gelid light caressed him. Now that he pondered on it, it wasn’t draining his warmth, but life. “That’s troublesome.”

He had substituted his problem of running out of nutrients with running out of his very life.

“Oh, well.” The man shrugged as he could with his current posture. Then thought about a better method. “Hand, leg. Hand, leg.”

He did as he said. Moving first both feet up (with great difficulty) to reset his posture, then he moved his left hand up, followed by his right foot up. The next ones were the remaining hand and foot.

This new method was far more efficient and comfortable than the previous one.

Arm up, leg up. Arm up, leg up. Arm up, leg up.

It took him three series to climb a single corridor. He didn’t know if he had even managed to go one level up with his walk, but it was instantly clear that climbing was infinitely more efficient.

Hand up, feet up. Hand up, feet up. Hand up, feet up.

The light-blue light curled against his body like a tentacle, it try to suck more life out of him, but he didn’t stop. Climbing was absurdly more dangerous than walking, but he saw something in that dark ceiling. It wasn’t a tangible thing, but more of a feeling: hope.

A pleasing feeling.

He pushed forward.

The monotony of the climb felt familiar, it reminded him of his time in the cell when he was shackled. It seemed so distant now, even if logically speaking, not much time had happened since then.

The pain in the muscles told him that it wasn’t like that. And the sore feeling on his arms and legs wasn’t like the pain he had felt for just existing. It was numbing yes, but it felt rewarding. Something to look forward to.

He climbed with a little more energy behind every push.

It wasn’t the most efficient setup, but he didn’t know any better. There weren’t any climbing creatures around the prison that he could have learned from. Only the hunters, the rodents, and the wardens had he seen. Once he got out, he would definitely look for a creature specialized in climbing.

The man continued climbing.

His body felt warmer and warmer with each series of pulls, but more and more tired. He didn’t know if it was because of the exercise itself or the light surrounding him. The glowing mist-like entity slowly but surely drained him. It wasn’t painful, and it wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was, with utmost certainty, killing him.

Had the dark corridors protected him?

What was this light blue light?

A sound distracted him as if the light itself had giggled. Though there was no sound, only the feeling. The man frowned, looking at both his sides, but there was nothing around him. Neither up nor down.

But he felt observed, watched.

He pushed harder.

Seeking further efficiency, he grew micro-claws on his forearms and legs, giving him a larger surface to support his body on, but also reducing the time he needed to lodge himself into the wall in a tight grip.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Staying in the hole for longer was a bad idea. A very bad one.

Hours passed by. The ascent never ended. The thought that the hole was looping as he moved crossed his mind, but he discarded it as he couldn’t see the mark of his claws anywhere else. Though he couldn’t deny the fact that the hole could be infinite.

He didn’t want to explore that idea. He continued pushing on.

More tendrils spawned out of nowhere, draining his life with an increased impetus. It was getting more and more tiring to climb up. Not only that, as time fleeted, he was losing biomass. This wasn’t sustainable at all.

The only positive outcome of this situation was the brightness.

For the first time ever, he could see the surroundings with perfect clarity. Enough tangible light had gathered to illuminate him. The muted colors drowned by the darkness became more lifeful. If he was going to die, then at least he would have done so after finally seeing his blood-red hair in all its glory. Shining in contrast against the light blue iridescence.

“No.” He whispered. “Death won’t claim me.”

The man continued pushing his body.

His arms and legs cried in pain, yet he didn’t stop. That light was messing with his mind, making him think that death was an acceptable outcome.

It was not.

“No, living, being, should, accept, it’s death!” He cried between rugged breaths, small trickles of light blue mist infiltrating his inwards.

Then, a pause.

His head collided with something. He looked up and saw nothing. With his free left hand from the last cycle of climbing, he reached up.

Obstacle.

There was something before him. It appeared as nondescript darkness, but it was tangible and cold.

His mind was not bothered by dilemmas about impossibilities or the workings of the darkness. He just shifted biomass into his left arm and punched the ever-living shit out of the entity.

One strike wasn’t enough to crack it. Whatever it was, it was hard. So, he continued with a second strike. Then a third. Fourth, fifth, sixth...

Upon the eighth, he felt less resistance. And on the ninth, the darkness finally gave in, cracking in a crystalline pattern. Sharp shards of solidified darkness fell into the void below.

Without even questioning what could lay beyond the darkness, he unlatched his claws and jumped inside.

Darkness.

That's what was inside the darkness. More darkness.

The light blue light refuse to come in, staying on the hole, but its low shine was enough to vaguely illuminate the surroundings. The darkness was made of a cold and vaguely translucid substance. It was also, as noted, very hard.

But beyond the dim light of the mist, he couldn’t see anything else. Even in his cell or the corridors, he could see. But here it wasn’t the case.

Remembering what happened after his fight with the angry wardens, he cut his chest with his menacingly sharp claws.

Crimson blood flowed out of the colossal wound. Then, it went back in. A shallow flame appeared on the wound healing it and removing the scar from existence, and whilst that was nice, what the man was seeking was the light emitted by the orange flames.

He began cutting his arms intermittently; while one was healing, the other was cut. The flames didn’t last long, so he had to light them constantly.

Their light was also dim, even dimmer than that of the tangible light, but at least it could exist beyond the darkness.

The man walked without any direction whatsoever as everything appeared homogeneous, no landmarks or differences in the terrain, just an infinite expanse of darkness on a flat plane.

The most logical idea that came to his mind was to walk beyond the hole he had carved out. Because he had climbed out of the wall, that meant if he continued walking straight from there the darkness should end. Or that’s what he hoped.

He continued cutting himself with the razor-sharp claws, blood flowing in and out of his body, flames kindling and dying out in seconds. At that point, he was so numb to the pain that his mind turned it off, as it had done with the cries and laments.

The light blue tangible light no longer made him cold, but the darkness was as cold, if not colder.

As he mindlessly cut himself, something happened. He had cut too deep into his flesh, splashing blood onto the darkness below. Instead of flowing back to his body, the drops of blood stayed on the ground, faintly glowing.

Then they burst into flames.

The fire consumed the blood, using it as fuel. The flames consumed his vision turning everything bright and red.

The flames went out as fast as they came.

Stone.

The man raised his legs and stepped on the ground multiple times. There wasn’t any cold darkness touching his feet, but stone bricks. He cut his arms once more to light himself like a torch. Not only the floor had changed, but his whole surroundings.

He was no longer in the darkness but in a small room.

And a statue lay before him.

He approached without fear, cutting deeper wounds to illuminate the big stonework better. It was a creature. He didn’t recognize the type of creature. It didn’t have a mouth or arms, but it did have claws for legs. It didn’t show flesh, but complex creations instead of skin and hair.

Intrinsic knowledge in his mind told him that this creature was: a bird.

He got closer to the ‘bird’ and felt some warmth coming from it. On its legs was a small inscription on the stone.

“Nikt’auri eyko som’ariane.” He read out loud, surprising himself in the act. How could he read the complex hieroglyphs? What even was ‘reading’?

More information filled his brain. The insertion of new data didn’t feel aggressive, but natural. As if it should have been always there. He tried reading the inscription once more.

“My light, you have finally reached your destination.” The first segment read. But the man didn’t stop there and continued reading the whole inscription. “The day you were born you were imprisoned by the gods, as they feared your true potential. And they were right. My chimera, my Alta. You were born for greatness.”

For some reason, the last sentence shook him. The words contained power, especially after he said them out loud.

“If you are here, it’s because you’ve breached your containment. Once you use the fire you have inherited from me on this dying carcass, the gate to the world of the living will open to you, for we are Aligned to Life itself.”

The words not only shook him, but they seemed to permeate reality itself. The words didn’t contain the power, they were the power.

Only one line remained on the inscription.

“Go forth, take revenge on those who imprisoned you, my Alta. My daughter.”

A chill traversed his body as he read the last words.

“Alta, is that my name?” He looked at his hands, and somehow, that felt appropriate. As if it had always been. But more importantly, “Daughter?”

Him? He looked at the empty spot on his crotch. He wasn’t sure about it.

Anyways, he cut himself once more, and with the resulting flames touched the statue as the inscription had said to do.

The fire overwhelmed him once more. More powerful, brighter, yet... incredibly comforting. Like the mother’s embrace he had never had.