To my surprise, we did not leave the vicinity of the castle.

Instead, Mereli led me further into the castle interior, to a place where the light of the sun could not reach. We snaked our way past decrepit hallways and tattered rooms, before finally stopping in front of a set of archaic stairs. It was a spiraling staircase that descended deep underground. From its appearance, it was built with stone, metal, and a hint of mold.

With her hand still firmly held onto mine, and with my own still placed snuggly on top of her head, I silently followed Mereli, as we descended down the staircase. The moment I did, two things in particular stood out to me.

The first was the stench. It was a strong smell, something that closely resembled rusting iron, but not quite. There was a weird sort of dissonance, as if the smell of iron was clashing with another, second smell that I could not identify. Add both together, and it resulted in quite a unique experience.

While the scent did cause my nose to wrinkle, it wasn’t entirely unbearable, rather, it gave me a sort of weird feeling of familiarity.

The second thing I noticed was the darkness.

I once again descended into darkness, the only difference this time was that I entered on my own volition. The darkness here was similar to the darkness in that room, or rather, within that void. It was a suffocating type of darkness, one that threatened to pierce through my skin and make its way deep into my body, but just like the smell, it wasn’t unbearable.

In the past, I was alone. There was nothing and no one to accompany me while the solitary darkness kept me confined as its sole prisoner. Now, it was different. There was a comforting warmth. Strands of silky hair ran through my fingers, while the heat from the crown of Mereli’s head kept that lonely sensation at bay.

This was different from that time. I wasn’t alone. I was no longer alone.

Although I could not see it, I could imagine Mereli walking ahead of me with a confident, nonchalant smile. Even now, she was casually humming another song that I could not recognize.

If she’s like this, then wouldn’t it be a bit embarrassing for me to be the one afraid?

With that sort of thought in mind, and with an attitude that did not want to lose to this little girl in front of me, I reigned in my earlier apprehensions, suppressed the goosebumps running down my back and wordlessly trudged forward.

After a while, the stairs began to taper out and the floor beneath my feet turned even. For what felt like forever, I found myself walking in a straight line. The smooth cobblestone beneath sent chills down my spine, while the quiet tickling at the back of my neck set my thoughts into overdrive. Only the continued warmth in the palm of my hand kept me from running back up the staircase.

Eventually, I noticed something had changed.

It was a bit hard to describe, but the atmosphere had changed… or maybe it was the feeling? Something within this small space had changed. There was a sort of dampness present in the air, while at the same time, a natural, earthy scent had replaced the previously overpowering stench of rusting iron.

Even without my sight, I knew almost immediately that I was now walking through some sort of cavern. The clearest indicator of this was the fact that the ground beneath my feet had changed. It wasn’t smooth nor cool to the touch like the stone floors of the castle, rather, I felt the softness of loose soil. Tiny flecks of loose stone and congealed dirt paved the road ahead.

Eventually, even the stale air around me changed. Everything suddenly felt more open and less confined, there was even a slight breeze coming from somewhere far away.

At the same time, the warmth from my hand abruptly disappeared. I heard a series of footsteps hurriedly run ahead of me. After a few seconds of tense momentary silence, a soft light pierced through the darkness.

It took me a while to adjust to that light, but once I did, I quickly saw Mereli’s distant figure. She was standing a dozen or so feet away from me, and in her hands, was an old oil lamp. With a faint, flickering luster, the light of the lamp illuminated the surroundings and drove the darkness away as if they were scattered packs of scuttering sewer rats.

I soon noticed that I was within a stone room.

It was a small, rectangular shaped room. The walls and the floor appeared jagged and uneven, as if they had been cut straight from lime stone. It was clear to me that this was a naturally formed wall. If and any human interference was probably kept at a minimum.

I looked behind me, and saw a rather narrow passage way that led into a familiar darkness. I knew that further ahead of that passage was the spiraling staircase that led up into the castle.

Before I had the time to think, the light suddenly waned.

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Mereli wordlessly walked over towards another narrow passageway, this one located all the way on the other side of the stone room. I hesitated for a moment, before I hurriedly followed after the diminishing light.

After a minute of more walking, we arrived at another cavern.

This time, it was considerably bigger than the last one. Even with the light of the lamp at our side, it was still impossible to illuminate everything.

The cavern was dome shaped, with stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites sticking out from the ground. If I had to give a rough estimation on the size of the cavern, then this place was at least half of a football field. Of course, this was a very rough estimate. With the darkness that surrounded the room and obscured my vision, it was almost impossible to see where the ground ended and the walls began.

Aside from the empty space of the cavern, there was also an underground lake.

The water was still, and colored a deep shade of black. I could not tell whether this black was due to the reflection of the shadows, or if it was the lake’s natural color, but it gave the impression as if I were staring straight into a pool of thick, viscous motor oil. I could only imagine just what type of creature lurked beneath its murky surface.

Growing near the edges of the lake, was a sort of moss type plant. It was numerous in number, and grew in other places inside the cavern as well. The only reason why I was able to notice such a small plant, was because within this black filled cavern, it stuck out the most.

The moss was luminescent. It glowed with a faint greenish hue, that made seeing within this cavern just a tiny bit easier.

While I was keeping myself distracted with the new scenery, Mereli walked over to a particular corner of the cavern. There was a smaller space, sort of hollowed out from one of the walls of the cavern. It was just large enough to resemble a small, three-sided bedroom.

There, Mereli found another oil lamp, and quickly ignited it, increasing the brightness of the cavern once more.

The small stone room was covered in fabric. Old ragged pieces of clothing, thin blankets, and thick comforters were haphazardly strewn across the floor. Some of the clothes looked no different from dish rags and floor mops, while others looked intricately designed and lavishly expensive. Almost all of them were badly damaged, and appeared as if they hadn’t been washed in over a decade.

Tucked away in one corner of the room was a pile of empty, clay colored rucksacks. Located in another corner was another pile of the same rucksacks. This time, they weren’t empty, and instead, bloated up with unknown contents.

I would have been a bit more curious about what was inside, if I hadn’t caught a glimpse of the mold quietly growing on the bottom of one of the sacks.

As I followed Mereli into the stone room, I couldn’t help but stare at my surroundings with open fascination.

Almost immediately, I noticed something odd on one of the walls.

There was a small indentation. It was a hollowed-out space, circular in shape, and about the size of an adult fist. What made it stand out so much was the fact that the indentation was too perfect. It appeared sculpted, and felt smooth to the touch. That, and the fact that it was located in a very obvious location; dead center on the backwall of the stone room.

“That’s where Mereli found it.” Mereli, who noticed my lingering gaze, immediately chimed in.

“Found what?” I asked.

“The ball— err, the orb thingy.” She responded. “It was kind of cool and shiny. It was colored like the night sky.”

Colored like the night sky? What did that mean?

I did not quite understand what she meant, but right now, that wasn’t particularly important to me. There was something else bothering me, something that incessantly pestered and poked at the back of my mind like an annoying, squawking buzzard.

It wasn’t the odd indentation, nor was it the scattered blankets or the glowing moss. It was something— someone else.

My gaze traveled through the room, before it eventually landed on Mereli. Looking at her, all I could see was a little girl whose innocence was completely reflected in her immature gaze. I couldn’t imagine that someone like that was the one who created me, nor could I understand why.

I quietly asked, “Do you live here?”

“Yes.” She nodded her head without hesitation, an unchanging, inattentive expression on her face.

I hesitated. I hesitated for a long time, before I asked another question. “For how long have you lived here?”

Mereli paused for a moment, and thought. After a few seconds, she shook her head. With a faint smile, she responded, “Mereli doesn’t remember. Ever since I woke up here, I’ve always lived here.”

I nodded my head. The blank look on my face betrayed the swirling thoughts in my mind.

Looking down at her quiet calm, I couldn’t help but frown.

There was something. I felt that I needed to say something, but what? What could I say? What did I need to so desperately say to her? That I was sorry? That living like this wasn’t right? No, I couldn’t say any of those words, because those words would sound insincere. Because those words were insincere.

My existence was not something that could feel sympathy for her, nor was it something that could comfort her.

I wasn’t sorry for her, no, what I felt was something else. A faint trace of empathy.

I could understand her, not entirely, but just a little bit. I could understand the things that Mereli went through. It wasn’t exactly like her experience, but that blank void was something similar.

The darkness within this cave was similar. The eerie emptiness was similar. The feeling of isolation so thick that it threatened to choke the very breath out from my lungs, that was also similar.

I was alone in that empty space, so I could understand. I was alone, so I could empathize with Mereli. I was alone, so I knew the reason why the small smile she made hurt the most. I was alone, but… was she?

How did she feel, throughout all this time? What type of emotions, what type of reasons had she conjured up to keep that all too familiar feeling of isolation at bay?

Should I say it? Should I ask?

Just as I mentally anguished over my indecision, Mereli suddenly spoke.

“I was alone.” Her words echoed through the cavern like a haunting sonata. “Ever since Father and everyone else disappeared, I’ve been alone ever since. Mereli— I was alone, very, very alone, so… that’s why I made you.”

Lonely and desolate, but somehow that small figure appeared even brighter than the sun above the skies.

I did not know why, but I found Mereli’s current half smile to be different from before. It did not contain the usual traces of resignation that normally would have been present, rather, there was something else. Something… a lot warmer.

Without a doubt, it was a smile that I would have never been able to make alone within the darkness.

I opened my mouth to say something, but before a single word could leave my throat, a low rumbling filled the room.