BEGINNING OF ARC 1. "SECRETS ARE RAISED IN DARKNESS."
Shin slowly dragged his hand across the stone, fingertips following the pointy and uneven edges of dirty slabs.
It's been days now, he was sure of it. It had been harder to tell when he was hovering in that semi-conscious state, surrounded by hallucinations of people he knew (?), but now he was wide awake, mind strangely clear amidst this panic inducing situation. He felt hungry and weak, but not starved; he felt thirsty, his throat dried up and uncomfortably raw, but he wasn't dehydrated. He had bled out for what seemed to have been multiple days, maybe more, but he wasn't dead.
Odd. He didn't know much, but he knew for a fact that humans died when subjected to conditions like these.
… Two, three. His hand halted as he felt the angle of the two walls. Three meters, he noted in his head before continuing. One, two, three--. Cold metal made his fingers jolt in surprise. He frowned, blindly gliding both his hands on the metallic plane. His nails caught at the edges of the surface, between the iron and the stone, slightly digging in the space that separated the two. He followed it, up and down, and found a small cylindrical shaped-,
oh, hinges.
This was a door.
He patted the surface at the level of his waist, searching for something.
No doorknob. Of course.
His hand went back to the metal hinges, blindly feeling them in the dark.
Shin raised a silent eyebrow for himself, his thumb ran against the surface. It felt coarse under his fingers.
He scraped it with a finger, something got stuck under his nails.
A smile, perhaps the first since the boy had landed in this hell, bloomed on his lips.
The stones were so humid, the metal had rusted where both came in contact. A poorly thought out construction, if he knew anything about that (did he ?). Well, either way, wasn't that perfect for him.
He turned around in his cell, walking along the walls with newfound determination. His palms groped around in the darkness, his fingers exploring the variety of stones that were badly embedded into some sort of cement in search of something. One, particularly protruding out of the rest, caught his attention, he followed its edge, scraped the cement.
A full on grin made its way on Shin's lips when he felt a bit of it crumble away.
There was his way out of this hell.
The next maybe hour Shin had was spent patiently trying to pry off the rock from its wall, pulling and scrapping with his bare hands. Hesitant hope swelled a bit more in his chest each time the stone budged, even if by only a centimeter.
Suck it, universe. He humphed in self-satisfaction as he finally pulled it free, fingernails raw and throbbing, but feeling the weight in his hand with a mix of excitement and trepidation. It was a crude tool for a crude method, but beggars...- Something along those lines.
Following the walls with a hand again, clutching his ticket to the outside world close to his chest with the other, he dragged himself to the metal door once more. Like a blind man, he searched for the rusted hinges.
He raised the stone in his hand, aligning it as much as he could with the fragile metal, and struck.
The bang that echoed was enough to make him grimace. He paused as it reverberated, waiting for any sign that maybe someone (a captor ?) would come this way, alerted by the noise, but nothing.
Encouraged, he struck again, and again, and again. Blow after blow, he slowly chipped the weathered hinge, grinning like a madman in the darkness as the rhythmic sound echoed in the room. It took him at least another hour before finally hearing the rusty metal snap under one particularly heavy hit.
Shin pause and watched with fascination as a thin line of light filtered through the space as chips of iron fell to the ground. The shy ray fell on his hands, for the first time in possibly months, he could fully see something. The boy blinked a bit, and wiggled his fingers almost childishly.
They were thin, a bit bony, too pale, too small. An uncomfortable feeling rose in him as he looked at them, an itch in the back of his mind telling him something was wrong. He frowned but shook his head and pushed the thought away, it didn't matter at the moment. Escape first, think later.
Without wasting another second, he attacked the second hinge, pushing himself on the tip of his toes to attain it, stretching his arms as far as he could.
The same tedious work and amount of effort later, the metal snapped with the same delightful sound as the first, more light poured in.
Shin dropped the rock,
thud.
Bang.
He threw himself against the door, shoulder first, ignoring the pain that shot through him as he did so. He stumbled back, clutching his numbed arm, and tried again.
Bang.
Bang.
The door grated against the rock, Shin watched ardently as more and more light filtered in each time he knocked himself against the heavy metal surface, pushing it back each time a bit more.
"Come on..." He muttered under his breath, glaring at the only thing holding him back from being free, slumping slightly. Both his shoulders were killing him, and he had a slight suspicion he might've broken one of them, but to hell with it.
He stepped back again, careful, eyes rived on the entrance.
One last time, he ran and threw himself at the door, letting out a wince of back as he definitely heard something crack somewhere in his left shoulder blades. But that didn't matter,
what did was the deafening sound the door made as it finally yielded under the assault, giving under his weight with a thunderous crack.
He felt himself trip forward with the falling door, and let out a cry of surprise when he landed harshly on it. Dust rose from the ground, making him cough, the sudden brightness assailed his eyes.
Fuck that burns--.
He curled on the ground for a moment, holding his hands over his head to try and block out the blinding light, feeling the painful throb in his back and shoulders.
He stayed a minute like that, waiting until the pounding drum of his heart subsided in his ears, as he gradually got accustomed to the brightness of the place.
Peeking through his fingers, he squinted his eyes.
For a moment, he could see nothing but bright spots of white.
And then he adjusted.
He slowly rose to his feet.
He tried to swallow back the pit of anxiety that formed at the back of his throat as he looked ahead of him.
There was no outside world, the light that had blinded him at first came from poorly lit torches attached to the sides of the walls,
walls that stretched as far as he could see. Branching into tunnels and tunnels and tunnels in front of him in a labyrinth-like facility made of stones and metal doors.
