A brittle crack released a man from his crystal cage. The eyes came to life as he regained consciousness. Where…?

He wandered away from the jagged walls of crystal which had previously trapped him. His stiff limbs moved with a similar cracking sound as the crystals. Ultimately, his numb feet brought him to stumble. The man fell onto the sharp, mystical shards scattered like glass.

Ouch. That… didn't hurt. The man stared down at his turned-over palms, confused as to why he did not feel any pain. The bluish glow of the crystals enveloped his hands. The man lifted his head and staggered back upright.

Where am I? His eyes surveyed the cavernous space. The pointed tips of crystals rose and fell to meet each other in stalactites, stalagmites. Why am I here? Who… am I? He knew naught but his surroundings, where he had been swallowed in a crystal cave.

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There must be someone else around. Warily, he tread deeper into the cave to search for more people trapped like him. Or captured, he considered. Where there were captives, there would be his captors. The man had only just been set free, and though he did not know much, he did not intend to be encased in a crystal cage again.

Weapon, he thought and instinctively reached his hand toward the ground. I'll need one. The man would pick up the nearest sizable rock. Before his outstretched fingertips could touch the ground, a greatsword manifested in his grip. Magical, blue sparks drifted through the air from the weapon's apparition. The massive blade, too long and heavy for any man to reasonably lift, rested its tip across the crystal rocks.

The man stared at his reflection in the glossy, crystalline blade like a mirror. Though he did not know anything about himself—did not have an image of his own face—he had expected a resemblance of humanity. Instead, his cycloptic eye, a horizontal slit across his face, glimpsed nothing but crystal. Mirrors can't eat people, and yet I've been consumed. What have I become? Or have I always been this way?

He did not know. He had nowhere else to go but deeper in these caves—or find a way out.