Those wings grew when he realized that he could not fly. Because he was inside a safe bubble – a refuge where no danger would dare to approach.
The world was burning and yet, he had not turned into ashes.
He did not scorch down the hell he once feared and he felt immune against the looming demons, only because he had become one himself.
He heard about his townspeople's sufferings and their cries.
Their insistent battle for freedom and rights. Their arduous love for the homeland they grew up in and their silent agonies for those have died.
He heard the pleas and the wails and the screams, yet it felt so distant.
He knew about those expressions and those people, but they somehow seemed too blurry and insignificant. Their loud noise had been drenched as murmurs.
His desires and dreams had completely blinded his principle.
Slowly, he accepted the safe life he was leading amidst the great war and colonialism. He was no longer uncomfortable with eating jackfruits and steaks while everyone else scraped for even just some rice and nuts.
He was no longer conscious of taking his slumbers in a spacious and clean room while the women crumple down into dark places to avoid the abusive soldiers.
He did not mind spending leisure hours while the country men were preparing their armors and artillery for their battle.
And while the world went on screwing itself there outside, the metaphysical bubble that formed around Toren thickened. He did not involve himself anymore.
And after painting a hundred pictures inside his room at the fall of dusk, he saw something – a place where he was not in.
His senses were transported into some kind of realm without his permission. He neither imagined it nor wanted to see it. The vast world was blazing with eternal seas of flames and prison cells hung above the soot black skies.
The wailing noises were worse than that of the great war's and the prisoners were like monsters melting into some metaphysical elements. Toren thought it must be hot flames or incinerating sins. He could not think straight because his heart was too nervous.
The horizon was darkening and sucking the noises, filling up the void and ordeal.
It was a whole different realm he never imagined existed.
Toren wanted to run and escape, but his feet were frozen.
His lips were paling and drying along with his face. His bloodshot eyes would not even blink for a second and shut them to be comforted with his own darkness. It was the scariest place he had been.
And soon, he returned to his bubbled room. Toren was panting hard, catching his breath, filling in through his dried throat.
It was almost as if his soul got sucked in the place and that he spent his time there for a decade when it had only been a second. It was the vision of hell.
He was so sure of it.
The butler quickly entered to check up on him and saw that he was lying on the floor, looking bent and sick, drenched in cold sweats.
It was as if he ran a thousand miles across a burning desert in the afternoon.