Estavir was standing in a forest, on a road that led upwards, not too steep at first but which got progressively worse. He stood somewhere near the beginning, but was already beyond a gate he thought looked a lot like the first gate next to the shrine.

Further ahead he saw what he liked to believe looked like a second gate. It was far away, too far to be sure if it really was a gate like the shrine one, or if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

He started walking, finding himself unusually light and lifting off the ground just a tiny bit more with every step, until his feet were no longer touching the ground; regardless of stretching as far down as his legs allowed.

He was now fully suspended and felt he could no longer hold his balance and started flipping, falling to the ground face first. But his face never hit the ground, instead he felt something pull him upwards by the legs. He panicked, fought and wrestled to break loose but to no avail; he was being dragged higher and higher.

As he looked down and around he could see the mountain becoming larger and higher too, the road stretching and writhing; the two gates, now only dots on a white line, kept diverging further apart until it all stopped abruptly.

He was hanging still, and the grip on his legs loosened.

With the release of the grip on his leg he started to fall, screaming, towards the foot of the mountain, woken up by the loud shouting coming from his own mouth right as his face would have connected with the pointed roof top of the temple where he was sleeping.

Covered in sweat, heart racing from the realness of it all, he got up slowly, not feeling quite rested at all, heading towards the bathroom and the kitchen. As was promised, bread and a few things to eat with it were present on the table along with a large vat of water he assumed was drinkable.

He cleaned himself, ate, and finally visited the empty chamber again. He was surprised to see that even in the full glory of the morning sun shining through its many windows, this large mostly empty room remained dark, with the same shadows present in all nooks and crannies as they were in candle light. The wall-door remained as tightly pressed.

He left the temple and took in a whiff of the morning air, which filled his lungs with a combination of dew and pollen softly caressed by the soft touch of the sun's warmth. It was a fresh and enjoyable smell, a rare and almost empowering smell, motivating him as he walked up to the gate. He stood in front of it, a few meters away, so he could properly assess it. He could still see a soft hum of golden glow even though the gate and archway were clearly made of wood and lacquered to give a scarlet hue.

He took a deep breath, gathered his strength and will, and took the first step passing him through the gate. With this he felt his journey had started properly, not realising the journey started as soon as he arrived by the campfire. Walking at a fast pace Estavir starts down a long road that started where the gate ended and stretched ahead as far as the eye could see.

The road went on for what seemed like forever in bends and curves ahead of him, and the steeper climbs were clearly visible in the distance. The hours passed and steadily the climb was becoming steeper as the bends got longer and wider and became less frequent.

The higher and steeper tree line was making it impossible to navigate ahead now, so at this point all Estavir could do was follow the road. It was after maybe another hour that the road started getting uneven and had fewer qualities which would be associated with a road and was looking more like a path, general guideline for travellers at best. Nevertheless the path remained mostly unobstructed and in the distance he seemed to spot a fork in the road, and a figure on the ground in front of it.

As he got closer he seemed to identify clothing, and by the size of the figure it must have been a child.

He got close enough to hear a whimpering coming from the child as it was hunched towards the two-way fork in the road, in front of some signs.

"What is the matter, kid?" Estavir asked as he stood over the child, leaning over a bit to hear a response over the sobs the it didn't seem to have control over.

"I've lost my way home, i don't remember which way it is."

Estavir looked at the signs but couldn't read the language they were written in. One sign was pointing to the road on the left, the other pointing right and in the middle of both was a crooked rectangular sign.

"Child, can you read these signs?"

The child looked up a little and nodded.

"The left one says 'right', the right one says 'left' and the middle one says 'don't trust the signs!'."

Estavir was conflicted as this made no sense, there didn't seem to be any visible differences between the two paths, they curved away from each other in the same fashion and at the same rate, making it impossible for him to see ahead from the fork in the road. The forest around him, as it had been up until now, was too dense to risk navigating through directly, so he would scout both roads and make a decision after seeing what's ahead; hopefully, in spite of the time it would waste, it would allow him to make the correct decision.

He walked down the left path first, which started by curving left and then right and back to left and so on, in a zigzag that continued for about an hour. After the hour of following the zigzag path he spotted the upper archway of a gate in the distance through some bald tree tops.

Finally i'm getting somewhere, he thought and picked up his pace.

He reached the front of the gate and it was a similar scarlet colour, with similar features as the one next to the house, but it didn't seem to have that hum-glow of golden. It did however lead to a more open area, very densely enclosed by thick trees accentuating three identical gates standing side by side at the back of the clearing, each with its own separate path; they looked just like the one he had only moments ago walked through.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

There were no signs, no marking on the ground, not even a visible difference between the three gates in front of him. As with the two-way fork he could not see ahead enough to decide. Disappointed in what he found he made the journey back, eventually finding the child still hunched and sobbing at the sign.

He passed the child without saying a word and it didn't seem to notice him either, or at least if it did it gave no indication of doing so.

The right path seemed to be identical to the left path with the exception that everything had a mirrored orientation, and within an hour of walking the path, he once again spotted the upper archway of a gate over bald tree tops.

Much to his dismay the open area with gates was identical to the one he visited prior; three gates next to each other. He became agitated and in his frustration he kicked a rock in front of him that hurled at one of the gates. It bounced off one of the gates and in a most unlikely fashion bounced back at him, hitting him in the shin. This only angered him further and in his anger he picked up the rock and slammed it into the ground before stomping on it a few times, which left a visible indent in the ground.

Quite bitter at this point, he returned to the two-way fork once again.

The child was still there, the signs were still there, though the middle one seemed even more crooked than before, but aside from that nothing had changed. Estavir attempted to ask the child some more questions but all he got was sobbing and whining about missing its mother. Not entirely surprising he thought, though not particularly useful.

He decided he would need to make a decision somehow and would leave it to chance, he threw a dagger from his breast pocket straight up and waited for it to fall, wherever the blade would land he would go. It landed blade facing the left passage; the one labelled "right" by the left sign.

By the time he had gotten to the three gates once more the sun was starting to become obscured by the side of the mountain, and visibility was steadily reducing. He walked under the bigger gate to approach the three gates ahead, preparing to let chance decide his path when he nearly tripped.

Upon immediate inspection it was a small hole in the ground that had caught his foot, seeming rather like a mark left after someone smashed a small rock into the ground, much like he did at the gates on the other path.

For a moment he was frozen in contemplation, it couldn't be that this was the same hole he made earlier, on another path, there didn't seem to be any other way unto this clearing, and he couldn't have confused the gates, the three were clearly in front of him and the only way he could have come here behind him.

He had to be sure so he took his sword and slashed into the ground. He carved the word "NO" deeply and unmistakably in the ground and spit on the ground inside the O to leave his thumbprint.

He ran back down the path as fast as he could, passed the signs and child, too quickly to notice that the centre sign had now fallen off its peg and the child wasn't actually there anymore, and managed to reach other clearing quickly enough that there was enough luminosity to see the ground in front of the three gates. To his terror there were markings on the ground, cut in a way he would have described as his own carving spelling "YES".

He was being toyed with, none of these roads would lead anywhere, he needed to get back to the original fork in the road and figure it out there.

Quite tired from the repetition and running around the entire time he was becoming sluggish, and trying desperately to keep his wits about him. However it was becoming rather dark and he had no way to make light of any kind with which to help spot danger.

By the time he got back to the fork in the road with the signs it had become quite dark and his eyes had adapted to the dark but only enough to walk at a leisurely pace. He looked at the signs completely forgetting about the child, and the lack of its presence.

He had finally noticed that the middle sign had fallen, which he picked up and examined. The side he couldn't understand was facing him but with his fingers he felt carvings on the other side so turned it over. It was rather hard to see in the dark but a combination of close inspection and feeling the shape of the carvings slowly revealed its message.

"D.O.N.T...T.R.U.S.T...T.H.E...C.H.I.."

It was then that he felt a weight on his back and a pulling under his chin, he was being strangled by a rope and couldn't wrap his hands around it to prevent him from getting choked, so he did the only thing he could do, reach into his breast pocket, grab his knife to stab the assailant's side.

It worked, the grip on his neck loosened and the weight lifted but he heard no body drop. He turned around, still holding his dagger in one hand, dropping the sign and drawing his sword in the other, facing a shadowy figure holding a dagger of his own to the young child he was holding hostage. The child cried and begged the traveller to help but the figure and Estavir appeared to be frozen in time in a staring showdown.

Only a few seconds had passed and Estavir threw the dagger, closing his eyes after it had left his grip, hoping he was right. The dagger flew and hit its mark; there was the sound of a body dropping followed by deep hollow laughter.

He opened his eyes to see the dagger planted firmly in the face of the child who was lying on the floor laughing as only a demon would.

"You have done well young traveller." a voice said as the child's body turned black and seemed to congeal together, rising and reforming into a standing shape shadow and contour with two bright glowing eyes that seemed to go on forever. The figure pulled the dagger out of its face and threw it at Estavir's feet.

"Your actions speak volumes, but what volumes would your thoughts speak those same events with?" the shadow began, "Are they black? Or red perhaps? Certainly not blue or green?"

A pause hung over the two staring at each other.

"Did you know or simply hope?

"The illusion of choice here has been broken wouldn't you say?"

"Who are you and what do you want?" Estavir demanded to know, still holding his sword in his hand and raising it towards the shadow figure.

"Why, we brothers are here to play tricks on you of course, to play the part; you will see.

Do try not to die... 'It' has high hopes for you."

The shadowy figure turned itself inwards and reduced into nothingness with an audible sense of amusement, leaving Estavir stumped and speechless, leaving him with many unanswered questions.

For now he looked at the fork ahead and this time there was no doubt; there was never any choice, he simply did not know what he was faced with.

The signs indicating each road were understandable to him now, even in the dark he could read them clearly now, they said nothing nearly as vague as "left" or "right"; indeed the illusion was broken. Resigned, he walked down the path to the right, encountering in mere moments a big gate which despite being in the darkness of night was plainly visible by its golden hum-glow and he knew he was on the right path.

After about an hour of walking absentmindedly along the path he saw a glow in the distance to guide him, which he followed to three gates. This time however, instead of being alongside one another, they were overarching each other, upon one another, unified in place, glowing more intensely now that all three glows combined, illuminating clearly the word carved in front of them; "YES".

Estavir was tired and weary and he stood in front of the letters he knew he didn't carve, yet his mind and body told him he did. He fell backwards to the ground and lay there as he looked up at the stars which were now visible, bright and numerous. His eyes teared up a bit as he spoke out loud, fading into sleep right then and there: " yes, yes, yes..."