The fear was exceeding any limits imposed.

She wanted to move, run, hide, but her body wasn't responding. It was as if those eyes had the power to paralyze her, to keep her chained to the floor with invisible chains. Her breathing became labored, the air seemed to become increasingly dense and difficult to breathe.

Then, from the depths of the darkness, she heard a human voice that rang out forcefully. “You must flee if you don't want to be caught,” said the voice, “I'm curious to find out what animal you will become.”

The tone was both a warning and an advice.

Terrifying.

The demigoddess felt a shiver run down her spine. The voice clearly belonged to the creature hidden in the shadows, to the owner of those yellow eyes that continued to stare at her without blinking.

It was a distant sound, perhaps the rustle of the creature's paw along the floor, that broke the spell that kept her immobile.

In an instant, Ada turned and started running. She had no idea where she was going, the darkness was so thick that she couldn't make out anything around her. She ran driven only by instinct and desperation, her arms stretched out in front of her in an attempt to avoid invisible obstacles.

The shadows seemed to move with her, dancing at the edges of her vision, stretching and contracting like living creatures. The girl felt as if the darkness itself was trying to grab her and hold her.

Behind her, in the distance, she could hear the rhythmic sound of heavy footsteps. The creature was following her, she was sure of it. She didn't dare turn around, fearing to see those yellow eyes getting closer and closer. The sound of feline footsteps echoed in the room, mixing with her frantic heartbeat and labored breathing.

She kept running, despite her lungs burning from the effort and her bare feet pounding on the cold floor. Spending endless days in the white room had killed her athletic abilities and that made it even harder to maintain her sanity.

She didn't know how big the room was, or whether there was an exit.

All her brain worked on was her survival, she had to keep moving, to keep running from the threat hidden in the darkness.

And hope it doesn't reach me.

The creature's words rang in her mind: “You must flee if you don't want to be caught.”

But escape from what? And where to?

As she ran into the infinite darkness, Ada realized that perhaps her escape was just the beginning of a plan unknown to her. It had always been good to think, even if it hadn't been very useful in that place.

It doesn't make sense…

Her brain was unable to process the thought. She was too scared to understand that the doctors had brought her there for a specific purpose.

She just wanted to survive, not think, like every little girl her age.

The shadows continued to dance around her, as she launched herself towards a goal that had not yet been chosen, guided only by the desperate desire not to be reached and by the hope of waking up from that endless nightmare.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

“That’it, good girl…” called a voice in his mind.

Without warning, the darkness began to dissolve, like fog in the sun. The shadows around her shattered, and Ada found herself faltering, her steps increasingly uncertain. The world was becoming clearer, but also more unstable. Her feet, which until then had been running in a blind frenzy, became heavy, as if something was holding them back. The darkness, now almost completely gone, revealed a space she couldn't focus on.

Her knees buckled beneath her. She collapsed to the ground, unable to continue any further, her body completely exhausted, her breathing broken. Her hands were shaking. Her mind was spinning, confused, unable to comprehend what was happening. Then the world went dark again, turning into the black void of unconsciousness.

When Ada woke up, she saw the white ceiling of her room again.

She slowly raised her head, every muscle in her body aching as confusion mixed with the fear that still filled her.

She was back in her cell. But something was missing.

Slowly turning her gaze, she saw that the cells on either side of her were still empty. The wolf boy and the snake girl were no longer there. That oppressive silence she had learned to fear was even deeper.

Ada huddled against the wall, hugging her knees. The room seemed larger, but also emptier than before. There was no howling, no hissing gibberish.

Only her slow breathing and the distant hum of the lights, which accompanied her solitude.

The days went by in a monotonous symphony of terror for Rutia's daughter. Every awakening brought with it the same distressing awareness: the hunt was about to begin again. The creature, which she understood to be a lion, with its piercing yellow eyes, was always waiting, a constant, menacing presence that followed her through the labyrinth of shadows and flickering lights every day.

Ada ran producing a frenetic rhythm that echoed in the deserted room. Her labored breathing mixed with the sound of feline footsteps following her, always at a constant distance, neither too close nor too far. It was a macabre dance, an endless chase in which the predator never really tried to catch up to the prey.

As the days passed, Ada's initial fear transformed into something more complex and tormenting. Anger began to boil inside her, a helpless fury at her situation, at the lion, at whoever had put her in this position. She clenched her fists as she ran, her nails digging into her palms, leaving little crescents of blood.

Her physical skills increased in proportion to her escape, but, despite this awareness, the little girl never managed to find the courage to face the hunter.

She was a simple scared and alone little girl.

She felt she was trapped in a cruel game, a sadistic experiment whose end she could not see. Despair crept into her heart like a slow poison, eating away at her hope day after day.

The environment around her seemed to feed on her anguish. The paths wound in an incomprehensible tangle, sometimes narrow enough to make her shoulders touch the walls, other times so wide that she felt tiny and vulnerable. Every day the roads were rewritten from scratch, making it impossible for her to memorize the right positions to navigate her escape.

The flickering lights cast dancing shadows on the walls, twisted figures seemingly taunting her as she passed.

The echoes of her footsteps haunted her, bouncing off the walls and returning to her like a ghostly chorus celebrating her endless escape.

“Ada, stop running… come to me, come to the lion.”

In the following days, the little girl learned that the large room in which she was locked up was not really without lighting. There were passages, endless corridors and tiny holes in the darkness. During her escape, there were moments when the lion allowed her one break. When she managed to find a temporary hiding place, Ada observed the outside world through small cracks in the walls. The light of the sun, or perhaps of the moon, had lost all ability to distinguish them, it filtered weakly, creating thin beams of white in the dim light.

Those glimmers were for the demigoddess as portals to another world, a place of freedom and normality that belonged to the life of another person, almost forgotten. She wondered what was out there, beyond the walls of her personal hell. She saw fragments of sky, sometimes blue, sometimes grey, and wondered if one day she would be able to feel the wind on her skin or the grass under her feet again.

But those moments of contemplation were increasingly brief. The sound of the lion's footsteps, always approaching, brutally brought her back to her reality. And so she started running again, driven by desperation and a survival instinct that refused to give in.