After another day of monotony in school, Kazuki was heading home, only to wish he wasn’t. As the evening shadows cast their tendrils across the road, they alone offered him their morose companionship. As Kazuki rounded the last street corner bringing the house into view, he looked carefully for any signs of movement outside on the lawn. Finding nothing, he hastened his pace.

Left, left, right. Those were the sides of the dilapidated front steps he needed to step on to avoid them audibly creaking. Pull the door towards self, and then turn the knob. Kazuki had memorized these necessary steps long ago. Any failure to follow these rules would heighten his chance of detection.

Slowly cracking open the door, Kazuki held his breath as he scanned the inside of the foyer for any signs of life. Nothing. The familiar scent of harsh chemicals met Kazuki’s nose as he slipped inside with the elegance of a lithe cat. The television was on in the living room, as loud as ever, meaning his father was certainly somewhere in its general vicinity. He carefully stepped across the spotless linoleum floor to reach the stairs, taking caution so his steps would make as little noise as possible. He was about to sigh in relief until he raised his head to look up the stairs.

“Welcome home, son! How was your day at school today? Anything interesting happen?” Kazuki’s father, as cheerful as ever, beamed down at him with a radiant smile.

Kazuki froze, an awkward facial expression plastered on his face. After a brief moment of silence, Kazuki dropped his gaze and inhaled. “Same stuff as always Dad.” Came Kazuki’s reply. He trudged up the stairs, careful to keep his eyes away from his father.

“Ah well, not every day can be exciting. Hey Kazuki, what do you say we -” The noisy closing of Kazuki’s bedroom door sounded the decisive reply to the imminent question.

Engaging his bedroom door lock, Kazuki quickly shrugged off his backpack onto the floor with an accompanying sigh and, like a doll with its strings cut, he promptly fell face first onto his bed. The ever unmoved window shades cast the room with little light.

“Why today of all days” Kazuki mentally lamented, his fingers balling up. “Mother said he’d return this weekend, it’s hardly Friday afternoon!” Kazuki rolled onto his side, his eyes settling on his schoolbag in the corner of his room. Its coarse, dark fabric offered no response to his laments.

He could feel the usual anger welling up inside of him as he pondered his day at school. He had bombed yet another chemistry test, and the report of which was in his schoolbag. Not that this was unexpected or even particularly disturbing to Kazuki. What he feared was his dad’s inquiry regarding it.

His father, put humbly, was a very accomplished person. His numerous awards, multiple medical patents, and prolific global profile made him one of the best surgeons on this continent without hyperbole. But his father was not unrivaled in exploits in this house. Kazuki’s mother, workaholic though she was, ran her own law firm with too many high-profile cases to count. His mother was recently interviewed live on television about one of these cases two months prior, though he didn't care to remember the details.

And yet, here he was. Not only was he an academic failure, but his glorified shut-in status left him without other relevant aspirations. No sports, no social relevance, and no friends. Pathetic as always, as yet another day had passed without change - a monument to his failure sure to be accompanied by another pointless prayer for change. The all too familiar heat reached his eyes as his vision blurred.

“I’m so tired of this. Out of all the possibilities, this is where I ended up?” The schoolbag was no more than a black blur now. “I actually tried this time. I really did, and I didn’t even get close. What’s dad going to say when he finds out? It’s only a matter of time.” The wheels of Kazuki’s mind span out of control as the tears flowed.

This made the fourth test he had failed in the two months of his spring semester - a cynical personal best for his failing educational prowess.

Kazuki’s mind continued recounting failure after failure as the overwhelming emotions lulled him to sleep.

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“Ow, what’s poking me?” came the groggy thoughts out of Kazuki’s mind. Determined to continue his slumber undisturbed, he rolled over on his bed, or at least what should have been his bed.

Kazuki’s face met the hard stone floor with a concerning thonk, followed by an accompaniment of swearing as the pain fully brought him to his senses. He was halfway from pushing himself off of the floor when he froze with wide eyes.

“Wha - what the hell?” came his bewildered remark. Beneath him was a derelict stone floor, full of cracks and dust - a far cry from his carpeted bedroom. He realized he was buck naked and his eyes darted from his planted hands to the surrounding room while he desperately hoped that he was alone.

The small stone room was poorly lit, with adorning bioluminescent ivy and moss covering most of the walls and ceiling. To his right was something akin to a stone altar, about six feet tall and several feet wide. The altar was split down the middle width wise, with one of the two halves having sunk several inches. At the foot of the altar sat one set of clothes: a lightweight set of undergarments, a flowing hooded robe with blue ribbons interwoven into its fabric, and a broad-brimmed hat adorned with several feathers stuffed in its band. The most visually appealing item was the wooden gnarled staff that sat on top of the clothes; its outer portion dyed a sort of deep depthless black with blue carvings within the nooks of the staff providing a striking contrast to the eye.

After donning the clothes and taking the staff in hand, Kazuki rose to his feet feeling unsteady. Taking stock of his surroundings, he noticed across the altar was a poorly lit stone hallway with descending stairs blocking his view from more than several yards. Kazuki raised a hand to his face to feel his hurting nose, only to see his hand shaking.

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“Breathe in slowly. You’re not in danger.” He mentally repeated to himself several times, although he didn’t feel like he really believe it. After a somewhat successful attempt to calm his nerves, he took one of the brighter patches of moss off the wall and peered down the dark, foreboding hallway. The stone steps were in an even worse condition than the floor in the previous room, with even the little light he had highlighting the many gouges and cracks in them.

Kazuki looked behind him, hoping to find he had overlooked another passage or clue. His eyes granted no such convenience.

Without another option, Kazuki carefully started down the steps, using the staff to make sure the next step was not going to collapse under his weight. The dozen or so steps gave way to a short hallway, at the end of which was a large stone room with a vaulted ceiling. Much like the previous room, more luminescent moss and vines wove their way into the stonework, with cracks in the ceiling providing only trace amounts of sunlight in the dilapidated room.

Across the room sat a large vertical circular stone slab, whose immaculate condition naturally drew the eyes. Given its offset depth in the wall, it seemed to function as a sort of door. There was no greenery on the slab, instead chains thicker than Kazuki’s neck bound the circular slab so tight the bit in the stone upon closer inspection. Strange runes were embedded in the stone slab, the color of which caught and bent the light at peculiar angles.

After his inspection of the stone slab, Kazuki turned around to face the wall in which he came through. Three passageways stared back at him, the center one being the one he came through. The two other potential passageways were blocked off from a collapse of the stone walls and ceiling within them, leaving Kazuki with nowhere to go except from where he came.

Kazuki let out a frustrated sigh as his visual scan of the room did not yield any more passages to travel through. Turning his back to the stone slab, he sat and leaned his back against it. His stupid nose still hurt.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Kazuki muttered to himself, “Damn my stupid nose, ugh nevermind that - where am I? Wasn’t I just sleeping on my… on my…?” Kazuki’s short-lived soliloquy hit a wall as he tried to grasp the thoughts that seemed to flit just outside his reach. What was he doing before he woke up? It seemed like something he knew but couldn’t nail down, the thought of which taunted his distressed mind. Worrying he had concussed himself, Kazuki let out a groan and put his head in his hands.

Kazuki passed some time like that, the amount of he didn’t know nor did he particularly care. No sounds of life reached his ears other than his own breathing. The complete external silence was unnerving. Looking around, he’d expect a place like this to be crawling with bugs and probably at least a couple of overgrown spiders, but the only signs of life around were the bioluminescent greenery and himself.

After his repose, Kazuki decided to stand up and investigate the stone slab some more, thinking he might have overlooked some details. As he stood up, he heard something small hit the floor next to him, causing him to start. His eyes searched for the source of the noise, settling on a small dark rectangle that had appeared near his bare feet.

Kazuki froze for a moment, making sure the foreign thing at his feet did not start moving by itself. Kazuki’s fear of being ambushed by an insect proved to be unfounded as he picked up the object. In his hand was what appeared to be a leather bound booklet with a worn cover. Several unfamiliar symbols graced the cover, refracting light in similarly odd ways to the stone slab.

“Must have fallen out of this robe someplace when I stood up,” Kazuki idly remarked. Overall, the book was small and easily fit in the palm of one’s hand. It had a tightly wound twine catch to keep itself shut. Kazuki it over several times in a vain attempt to garner any more information about this peculiar book.

Turning to face the stone slab for more light, Kazuki undid the twine and opened the cover of the book.

Instantaneously Kazuki’s eyes were bombarded with brilliant light of all colors as light shot out from the pages like an explosion. Kazuki promptly fell onto his rear, dropping the book as he moved his hands to protect his eyes from the sudden outburst of light in the darkness. The torrent of light did not cease as Kazuki now blindly scrambled on his hands and knees to distance himself.

Kazuki’s fingers started to burn as his head pounded with a vengeance. The pain shot from his fingertips, enveloping his body in an Iron Maiden fashion as it started to strangle him from within.

Somewhere from within his mind came an incessant “I’m going to die I’m going to die I’m going to die” as he collapsed.

He couldn’t feel the ground beneath him anymore, and he couldn’t hear the stifling silence in the large stone room. He couldn’t even tell if he was alive. Kazuki’s mind withered under the pressure until it collapsed into itself, granting him amnesty in the form of unconsciousness.

…

Whether his respite was seconds or hours, he could not tell. When Kazuki came to, he slowly opened his eyes while steadying his breathing.

“I’m… fine?” Kazuki knit his eyebrows at the lack of pain throughout his body, save his nose. “Maybe it was all a bad dream…” he tried to convince himself.

Slowly standing up, he stretched out his arms. A new abundance of light cast rays onto his arms, the color of which caught his eyes. Bringing his hands together before himself to inspect, he recoiled.

“Blood? Who’s blood?! Is this mine? Shit, it’s a lot of blood.” Kazuki’s arms from roughly the elbow down were spattered with blood. Feeling unsteady on his feet, Kazuki eyed the spot on the floor he pushed himself off of. A disconcertingly sized pool of blood stared back at him.

Wide eyed, Kazuki pat himself down with his hands in search of wounds. He desperately tried to remember the details of his school’s first aid class as he feared for the worse, but Kazuki’s hands and mind came up empty. The lack of an obvious source for the blood spurred his heart rate.

“Ok, calm down! This had to come from someone - or something. It might not be mine… Think! What happened?” Kazuki did not have to spend long searching his memories. Instinctively flinching when he recalled opening the book, Kazuki turned around to look at the spot in front of the stone slab where he opened the book. Except… there was no stone slab and there was no book. Where the book had fallen consisted of a considerable crater in the stone floor, with the close stone slab having been seemingly obliterated, chains and all. Kazuki’s mouth hung open at the sight as the taste of iron pervaded his taste buds.

Outside the stone slab, light rays filtered into the gloomy stone room. A close-knit forest greenery lay outside, its strikingly vibrant green providing an incredible color contrast juxtaposed to the grey and black interior of the stone room. With his realization came the sound of birds and various animals from the outside, a treat for his sorry ears.

Entranced, Kazuki walked with unsteady feet to the opening and took his first steps outside into the new world.