The world is simple. At least it seems that way, with everything being put into categories, creating groups that anything can be put into. Everything is just a small part of a whole. Nothing evades this treatment. Sometimes there are things that are thought of as being outside all categories, but even those extremes can very well be placed into categories.

Nothing is special, not even my life. Surely, there are people like me everywhere. People with uncaring parents, people raised in abusive environments, people who are angry at the world, people who want revenge, people who want to live a better life, people who don't care about others, going as far as to kill, steal, and manipulate anything or anyone just so they can have it better.

All those people can be placed into categories. Despite that, they live as if no one has been through what they have. It's as if people want to be the only ones to suffer, just so they can feel special and wronged like no other.

Monsters are created by monsters and when those monsters realize what they are they start to observe the people around them and picking apart their actions driven by curiosity. At some point, they start to develop a sense of right and wrong, which usually varies greatly from the norm because of the abnormal reasoning and values of the monster possesses.

Good and bad. Black and white. A topic heavily debated from all sorts of viewpoints, but the thing that almost all of those viewpoints have in common is that they all have some things listed outside all categories. In the world full of black and white, those things are seen as gray, but gray doesn't truly exist. It is just an extreme that can be on the black or white side, but they never reach the same color.

If one who believed in the gray was put through multiple simulations where he was shown the results of two things said to be in the gray area, surely he could point at one, saying it was the worse thing one out of the two, implying that there is a difference between them.

That person would then come to the conclusion that there would be nothing said to be in the gray area if people could see the future, so there truly was only good and bad, but even if such a conclusion was the truth, it wouldn't matter since people couldn't know the future. The gray area continues to exist, just because the future isn't certain. In other words, its existence is dependent on time.

I'd like to think I'm one and the same with the gray area. We exist in the moment, and after that moment we disappear. The gray will cease to exist because it will be seen as black or white by people looking at past events, and I will be remembered by nobody because the people I will have known will be deaf by the time I pass away.

And because I'm just like all gray things, I do whatever I can to enjoy life as much as I can. That is my monstrous way of life and it has led me here to this ice wall.

Somewhere deep down, there has always been a thought that this wasn't the right way to go about things, but I never really listened. Even now, I didn't want to hear it.

Black, gray or white, I didn't care about any of that. I just wanted the thing that looked the best. Wondering if I made the wrong choice was trivial. I had chosen the lonely way. The way that left no traces. It could have been the best route or the worst route, but either way it was my route, and now I could only move forward.

I had thought that way for years, but now I found myself in a situation where there was no moving forward. I was stuck here, with no idea how to proceed. Maybe I did make all the wrong choices.

I grit my teeth and shook my head as I tried to come up with something. And after I thought about it for a couple of minutes, I came up with a plan.

I grunted and stabbed my left ice pick deep into the ice, and let go of the ice pick in my right hand, letting it hang off of my wrist that I had tied it to. Then I summoned my dagger.

"What are you doing?" the guide asked with his eyes wide in expectation.

"Don't disturb me," I said with my eyes on the overhang.

I proceeded to reach up, and then, with the extremely sharp tip of my dagger, I scraped the overhang. At first, it didn't seem like it was doing much, but with time there started to be something I could hold on to with my fingernails.

"No way," the guide gasped.

I wasn't done yet, however. I wanted some finger sized holes, and kept scraping the icy overhang. This time there were no results, though.

I was going to have to make do with what I had.

I made scraped spots for both of my hands, and then cancelled the summoning of my dagger. Then I took my glove off, exposing my bare skin to the unbearable cold. I put the glove into a pocket on my jacket before grabbing a hold of the small crack and trusting some of my weight on it.

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The next step was removing my other ice pick from the ice wall, letting go of it, and removing my left-hand glove with the help of my teeth and putting it in my pocket, so that I could grab the other crack in the overhang with my fingernails.

After I had the fingernails of both hands hanging on the overhang, I slowly removed my crampons from the ice wall, trusting all of my weight to my fingernails.

I pulled myself up as far as I could and pondered my options. I could hang on with my other hand and make some mire spots to hold onto with my dagger, or I could try to stab my ice pick as far as I could, and hope for the best.

I decided to opt for the second option. I took my left hand off of the spot and rendered put all my weight on my right hand's fingernails. Immediately, my body screamed at me, and the feeling of my fingernails being ripped off made me almost fall if not for me getting my left hand's fingernails back in place in time.

"Haaah, huuu, haaaa," I breathed heavily as my heart beat ran wild.

I lowered myself and stabbed my crampons back into the ice, supporting my body. It took a while to calm down. I felt like screaming. What now? What could I do?

My fingers were almost numb and there was some blood coming from under my fingernails. I couldn't do this for much longer. I had to figure something out.

I held onto the ice pick with my left band as I hit my forehead with my right hand that was balled up into a fist.

'Think, think, think...'

I thought about the structure of the overhang and every way I could reach the other side. Ideas popped up into my head every few seconds, but they were all wrong. They were all ridiculous. Well, the situation was ridiculous too. Maybe what I needed was something ridiculous.

'I have to keep the weight on both my hands, so I need to use my legs. But how can I do that? I can't stick it close and the angle is too awkward for my to get it far enough. Wait, what if I do it backwards?'

The guide watched with knitted eyebrows and an open mouth as I took my right leg off the ice wall and put my left leg to the middle of where my feet were, making it carry almost all my weight.

Then I turned my back on the ice wall and put my right hand's fingernails where my left hand's fingernails had been. After which I removed the ice pick on my left hand from the ice, let go of it.

Then, in order to make the complete turn, I put my left hand's fingernails where my right hand's fingernails had been, effectively switching their spots.

Now came the hard part.

I removed my left leg from the ice, and felt the weight on my finger nails increase tremendously. I was now hanging onto the ice wall only by my fingernails, with my back facing the ice wall. I looked down to where certain death awaited me if I failed.

I breathed in and gathered myself, after which I quickly, but carefully pulled myself up and brought my legs up at the same time creating the maximum amount of momentum, and once I was as high as I could get, I utilized my core strength to it's fullest, leaning my upper body back while pulling my feet over my hands. Then I pulled with my hands to get my feet as high as they could go before stabbing the ice wall, hoping my crampons would stick to it.

My fingernails slid off of the cracks, as I was forced to look straight down. I wasn't sure if my crampons had stuck to the ice wall, and I was expecting to fall, until I felt a pull from my feet, keeping my from falling.

I held myself back from having good thoughts before I uncomfortably got myself into a position where I could stab my ice picks into the ice wall and get myself back on track.

"You made it," the guide said, astonished by what I had just done.

"Yeah," I replied coolly, before putting my gloves back on and continuing the climb.

***

It didn't take long before I reached the top, which was just a snowy, flat landscape. I walked around for a while, but I found nothing there. I didn't know if there was something other in this ruin waiting for me, but I assumed I was going to be transported to a preparation room soon.

I looked at the guide, wondering if I should say something, but my mind was blank, so I just waited wordlessly until I got transported. And after a familiar sensation, I found myself in a huge white room.

I sat down against the wall and rubbed my face. What was I missing? Why did I feel like this? It felt like there was something to be gained from that ruin that I hadn't gained.

I had learned nothing.