Click.

Absolute darkness surrounding me, I hurriedly tried to light my torch, only a little bit of light streaming in from behind allowing me to see at all.

Click.

I started to panic, fumbling with my new left hand, still jittering and twitching from the recovery.

Click.

Then, with a loud bellowing of hot air, the torch caught on fire, half blinding me from its brightness. Immediately regretting being so close to the fire, I struggled to put away the flint and steel fire starter, blinking away the blindness and taking in the lit-up cavern. The cave descended rapidly into the depths below, showing almost no sign of going upwards once more, none but what my brief vision had told me; the vision that I didn't use the Skill to produce. Trusting in my instincts that it was indeed a vision that I imagined, I picked up the torch and carefully began my descent.

Other than the odd sharp drop in height or accidental trip, the descent was uneventful, the flickering flames of the makeshift torch casting dancing shadows on the cold stone walls staving off some boredom as I looked at them. With nothing but my thoughts to entertain me further, I began to break down what I knew about the Monarchy System so far; or, to be more specific, the recovery side of things. It had taken all three points of my Stamina to regenerate my amputated hand, the amount of points it would've taken to reduce the severity of an attribute injury from critical to severe. Yet, in the short time in which my hand was missing, I received no indication that my attribute's status had updated, still remaining slightly damaged.

While on the topic of attribute injuries, I was reminded of my critically disrupted soul too. Surprised that I hadn't already repaired it, I brought up a recovery command and changed it to a full repair. I quickly poured all of my Will into the recovery, and fortunately it didn't fail like that time with my body and was fully healed to its normal condition. I braced for the weakness that had came when I first drained all my Will but nothing came, mirroring what had typically happened with the rest of my Resources. Not only was there no weakness, but there was no tangible sense of repair either, as if my soul was beyond my current senses, unable to be understood. Strange. If it wasn't the draining of my Will that had caused the weakness that plunged me into unconsciousness what seemed like all that time ago, then what was it? With a thought, I brought up my past notifications, something I wasn't sure I was able to do until now, and looked for the first notification that had come up after my soul recovery.

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Was it the gaining of my Monarch Skill? Or could it have something to do with another unknown property of the system? Such as that redacted Resource-like thing that caused my body recovery to fail? Even so, it didn't say that I had insufficient amount of that redacted Resource, instead just saying nothing. Frustrated that I still didn't have enough information on the nature of Monarch Skills, I put the topic on hold, vowing to come back to it when my Monarch Skill was further levelled.

My thoughts drifted back towards the topic of my hand's recovery again, still trying to decipher what the statuses associated with my attributes meant. Might it be the average condition of my body? No, that would be too easy to manipulate. If I had my skull caved in, would my attribute still be listed as slightly damaged then? It had to be weighted somehow, different parts of my body contributing different amounts to the attribute depending on their importance. Yet, even with my better definition, it still felt wrong somehow. Unable to derive anything more, I relented and did what I probably should've done immediately.

"Attribute Description"

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Attributes are universal across all Monarch System statuses and represent the average condition of a Monarch's body, mind and soul. By taking into account the current relevance of certain ailments that affect the Attribute in question and the Monarch's current situation, the Attribute's condition is calculated in real time and quantified into words. However, a clear distinction between a Monarch's actual conditions and their Attribute's conditions is that a life-ending injury that is resolved as a less-than-fatal level of harm in the status will no longer be life-ending. In this case, the Monarchy System will support a Monarch's continued existence using the Monarch's and the Monarchy System's [REDACTED]. Despite this great boon, the opposite is also true. A fatal condition may not be considered fatal in reality, and, since the Monarchy System status' goal is to bridge the gap between one's being and their Pure Sin's [REDACTED], it will attempt to equalise that fatality, which may result in the death of the Monarch. Another property of Attributes is that [REDACTED].

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So it was the situation that I was missing from the definition. Though it didn't say it outright, the description - which was much larger than any other ones I had seen so far - suggested that if I was in the middle of combat and losing, for example, then the future outcome of the combat could mean that my Attribute's condition is listed as fatal, even thought it, at the time of calculation, wasn't. It seemed that in a way, the Monarch System was seeing into the future somewhat and telling me the outcome. Then what was the true future? If the Monarchy System tried to kill me due to me dying in the near future, then was it really the injury that killed me? Or were the actions that the system took the ones that resulted in my demise?

Ridding my mind of that line of thought, not willing to go down that rabbit hole with my current severely disarrayed mind, I refocused on the cave, noticing that the sides were getting wider, and the steepness, shallower. Just as the cave floor finally levelled off, I looked up from where I was focused on the ground, minding where I placed my feet, seeing exactly what I had envisioned. I was standing on the top of a cliff face, looking out over a large cavern, my meagre torch lighting up barely any of it. From what I could hear, there seemed to be a pool on the cavern floor, however considering that it was splashing that indicated the presence of water to me, I realised that I wasn't alone in this cave. Unable to make out anything below, I looked up and froze. Bats. Rows upon rows of bats, with black, leathery skin, their unnaturally long ears stretching far behind their heads where they slept upon the ceiling. The light sounds of their scratching and moving echoed around the cave, barely audible. But to my ears? They felt like screams.

Not willing to risk myself any further, I craned my head over to where I saw the side exit and breathed a sigh of relief when it entered my vision. Putting one foot behind the other, I carefully made my way over to the exit. Not a single breath of air left my mouth as I lowered my torch, keeping it close to the ground. Not a single whisper of a sound came from me as I quickened my pace, ignoring a new notification, just a small leap away from rescue. And it just so happened that fate wasn't on my side.

A single misplaced foot was all it took for me to stumble, a crack of sound bouncing across the walls of the almost silent cave. I watched on with growing horror, as pairs of red beady eyes shot open and snapped onto my frame. As the cave lit up with red, I barely noticed myself as I leapt towards the cave exit with a scream and ran. Screeches of distilled evil blasted into my ears as the bats all took flight at once, swirling around and forming a cyclone of terror.

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I couldn't recall for how long I ran, spurned on only by my phobia and instinct, blanking out the screams of the bats behind me and my burning legs the best I could. The only thing I could latch onto in that moment was that the cave ahead of me was growing lighter, the dark becoming less oppressive, and the screams quieter. It was only when I turned a corner in the cave that I realised it wasn't natural light shining into the cave, but a dull, blue hue that lit up the small carved chamber I stumbled into. I would've liked to admire the beauty of the decaying architecture of the chamber I entered, dotted with half-crumbling pillars and ruined, ashen brick walls. On my right the chamber stretched on further, far beyond what the light illuminated, the pillared corridor seemingly going on forever. On my left, though, I had found the source of the light.

A solidified mist wall hung in the air, a giant blue symbol magically engraved into the translucent haze, floating just barely in front of it. No matter how hard I tried to make out the symbol, my gaze would go out of focus, my eyes stinging from a phantom pain. Too panicked to make a proper decision, I headed straight for the mist wall, the bats still coming from behind. This wasn't at all what my vision had told me. Then... did I make a mistake coming here? Should I have waited for the 'cooldown' to run out and use the Skill again?

Finally reaching the mist wall, I came to a stop just before it, looking back behind me. At first I thought I had lost the bats, nothing in the range lit up by the cool blue engraving on the wall and my torch; the noises just had to be echoes, that was all. Right?

My hopes were reduced to dust as the first bat came barrelling in, hitting one of the strange chamber's walls. Then the second came. And the third. Before I knew it, the entire swarm of bats flew in, rabid and mad as they chased me. Jumping back in shock, I barely noticed the mist wall swallowing me whole as I tumbled into it, my torch left behind, engulfing my sight in blue. Everything went silent, the bats' cries drowned out by the mist, as I hung there in the sea of the wall for what felt like an eternity. It made it all the more surprising then when a voice spoke into my head. At first I had thought it was the Monarchy System, reverting back to an auditory form as I was now blinded by the mist, but the voice felt different; it felt... free.

What? I couldn't help but be confused about the voice, it feeling so similar to that of the Monarchy System while being completely different at the same time. Just as I began to reach out to the voice mentally, in the same way I usually did with the system, an old one interfered; an old on that now felt revolting compared to the freedom the new voice conveyed.

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No words. There were no words I could've used to describe the sheer agony that had just been inflicted upon my being. It was as if, in that moment the horrid voice overrided the free one, it had been screaming. Screaming in pain, just like I was. And the Monarchy System had just moved on, corrupting and caging whatever I had just come in contact with and acting like the voice had always been that way. Desperately trying to comprehend what had just happened, I didn't notice the prescence of the Monarchy System bearing down upon me, inspecting me, as I grew more and more insane at having witnessed, no, lived something I shouldn't have. With a slight brush against my psyche, it was gone, returning to how it usually was; absent, and all-seeing.

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Blinking away the mist that I had just stumbled through and got into my eyes, I emerged on the other side of the wall. I had expected the wall to be thicker in a way, considering it looked deep from where I was viewing it in the chamber, and instead I had just gone straight through it, as if the moment I spent inside of it no longer existed. Also strange was the fact I had tripped backwards through the wall but was now standing up straight, looking away from it. I was only allowed to ponder on that for a short time though, until my sight returned once more and I saw life.

For all my eight, almost nine, years of existence, I had thought I had a pretty good idea of what life should be. Simple things like what colour looks like, or how things should behave when I do something to it, or even as simple as something like breathing. It was normal to me, in a way that suggested existence was meant to be this way. I was content with the world, only unhappy about the people inhabiting it. Except I was wrong. Only now did I know the truth. Life was so much fuller than I could have ever imagined and it had been taken away from me, caged behind that wall of mist. Just like what they had stolen from me, I realised that life itself had also been taken.

I had expected to be enraged about learning that fact, yet I only felt happy in this moment. After all, it didn't matter that it had been kept from me in the past. The only thing that mattered to me in this moment was that I had it back; existence itself had been returned to me, the first of all of the things I rightfully deserved and was barred from. Breathing the first real breath of my life, I took in my new surroundings.

Jutting out from the other side of the Crylian Mountains was a large balcony, crumbling from age just like the rest of the chamber behind me. It was constructed with a similar brick to that behind the mist wall, but unlike the ashen-white it had looked like before, it was now more vibrant than I could have ever imagined, the white colouration infinitely nuanced and mesmerising. I had been so mesmerised by the white bricks that I hadn't noticed that the entire world before me was now just like that, a whole entire new range of colour opening up to me, overwhelming my vision. Below the balcony, a familiar forest stretched on for miles, drawn in new colours that resembled greens and browns, all of the trees far larger than what I thought possible, with trunks thicker than houses and canopies bigger than entire villages. Beyond that were grassy plains that went on up until the horizon, the hints of something orange or yellow beyond that. What looked like wild horses and bulls roamed the plains freely, sprinting up and down faster than any beast possibly could. The mountain range went on for what seemed like forever, the only hint of its previous curvature that I had seen before entering the cave being a small curling of a peak inwards, though the rest was out of sight. Looking up at the sky, the new blue of it was blotted out by deep grey clouds, gargantuan and rumbling, blocking out the much too bright sun.

It was only then, when I had brought my gaze upwards, that I saw the reason this was locked away. I had seen it on the plains too, but the threat didn't register to me as I was too rapt up in the beauty of my new life. Almost identical in appearance to the demon that had started it all, an entire flock of winged monsters flew across the air, battling with what looked like living thunderstorms next to one of the dark clouds. At first I had thought my shortening breaths was an effect of seeing the familiar demons, thinking I was having a panic attack from a previously unknown trauma that had been unearthed. Then, I realised the second reason this true existence had been sealed away. My mere mortal body couldn't handle it.

Collapsing to the floor in shock, my lungs burnt as I tried to take in more air and failed. Shock swiftly turned to hyperventilation, heightening the agony with each new breath I took. A strange blue substance coloured the air I breathed, I saw, and it was that which was causing my body to break down. However, just as I realised that, the other side effects of the new air came into effect. My eyes stung with tears as the air crawled into their sockets, sweat evaporated from my skin as it was cleansed from it by the substance, and the nails on my hands creaked as the air forced its way under my skin. It took everything in me to stay conscious, desperately trying to keep myself alive, all worries about the bats possibly being able to come through the wall or that the demons could find me and kill me washing away. When I was clear of mind, I reached out to the Monarchy System, hoping that the blaring notifications on the edge of my vision could possibly tell me something. Ignoring the adaptation offers for spelunking and stealth, various odd updates of my mind attribute going from severely to fatally disarrayed and back to a severe condition again, I found what I was looking for.

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[ Elemental Plane>]

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[ Severely Damaged>]

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[ Critically Damaged>]

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[ Fatally Damaged>]

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Reading over the notifications, I managed to croak out one word in response, only spoken in the most dire of times in fear of my parent's wrath, moving past the pain the best I could. What was this word?

"...Fuck."