In front of him was a long flight of stairs that were ascending in a spiral pattern.
The First Stair was a realm on its own.
A realm where everything was white.
Inside the First Stair was a very long flight of spiral staircases.
Sethryn nearly wreaked his neck trying to see the top of it.
It was just him and the long flight of steps surrounded by nothingness.
He was in an empty white world with the steps beginning just in front of him.
"I guess that's it," he said, lifting a foot.
He put his foot on the first step and his second foot after.
"After all, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a step."
...
...
...
Ten hours later.
"There's no end to this!"
His heart throbbed fast in his chest as he ascended yet another series of steps. As he climbed them one after the other, his legs trembled and his calves ached badly.
He was weary.
Each step he climbed felt heavier and more tasking than the previous one.
Sethryn was exhausted.
He stopped and bent down to catch his breath.
Looking back, he saw that he had come a very long way from the bottom but there seemed to be no end in sight.
He had been going for what felt like an eternity and he was getting even more tired.
The infinite spiral of rectangular stones had no end to it and that was what frustrated Sethryn the most.
Was he going to keep climbing the stairs with no end?
Frustration gripped him and depression crept into his mind.
Their combination was made even worse by the ambient silence with the First Stair.
It was so quiet that Sethryn could hear the air entering and escaping from his nostrils as he was breathing.
That was the natural state of the First Stair and it was not helping his ascension.
Sethryn might have been motivated to climb faster if they were familiar voices cheering him on.
But that was not the case.
He was alone.
Just him, the infinite flight of stone stairs and the lasting silence.
The sound of his footsteps echoed even louder with each climb he made.
He stopped again after some time had passed.
Ten hours had turned to what Sethryn felt to be a full day and there was still no end in sight.
The climb of the First Stair was worse than the Riddle Game.
Sethryn was beginning to think he should have died on the Floor of Riddles instead of going through such grave torture.
...
...
...
Sethryn did not wish it upon himself to pass through such a thing but he still chose to, albeit unknowingly, when he picked a door at random.
Now, he was forced to continue an endless ascension.
A sense of loss.
The overwhelming feeling of failure.
The urge to give up at this moment.
Sethryn was overcome by a wave of different emotions nagging at his dying conviction.
He was nearing his breaking point and with his mind heavily burdened, Sethryn sank deeper and deeper into the ocean of despair.
He stopped and gasped, trying to catch his breath.
"I'm not sure how much further I can go," he breathed.
"This better come with good rewards."
He was breathing fast and heavily, and his chest visibly expanded.
His voice was lost to exhaustion and turned into a whisper that ordinarily he would barely hear.
But that whisper in such a silent world, as the one he found himself, echoed loudly into the empty expanse.
Hours after hours. Days passed and he kept walking, nearly falling a few times.
Each time he looked back to see how far he had come, his heart skipped a beat in fear that he might fall.
Just then, he caught a glimpse of something.
A hovering cloud.
Sethryn chuckled and began to walk faster.
The sudden appearance of the cloud brought him hope and boosted his resolve.
He was full of motivation to reach the top now that he has seen a reason to.
The more steps he ran up, the better his view of the cloud.
After running up more steps, he not only saw the cloud but a door as well.
A door stood beneath the cloud.
Sethryn smiled for the first time since arriving at the First Stair.
A glimmer of hope had suddenly appeared...
And nearly disappeared almost instantly when Sethryn lurched and fell off from the side of the steps.
The height he had climbed was hundreds or even a few thousands of meters high.
A fall was instant death.
His life flashed before his eyes as he lost his footing.
Everything played in slow motion yet could not be interrupted or stopped.
"What... the... hell," he said in his mind as his body descended from the side of the stairs to his death.
...
...
...
The door he had seen was indeed real and was the exit from the First Stair as well as the entrance to the 2nd Floor.
It was a long muddy brown door that stood between two clouds — one atop it and the other at its bottom.
The door marked the end of the First Stair and that was where Sethryn wished to reach.
Was it just going to end like that?
All his efforts shattered by a mere fall?
Sethryn's eyes opened wide and his arms moved under the command of his instincts.
His hands succeeded in reaching a step and he clung to it as if his life depended on it... which it did.
Sethryn's dangled in the air like a cloth dancing to the touches of the free wind.
He gnashed his teeth and struggled to pull himself up but lacked the strength to do so.
Just strength was not going to redeem him.
He had seen a glimmer of hope.
"I must get out of here," he swore to himself.
With his newfound determination, Sethryn reached for the steps and placed his second arm to pull himself upwards.
He struggled against exhaustion and finally came up victorious.
Sethryn breathed loudly a few times before looking up again.
He did not see the cloud anymore.
He wanted to scream but he was so weak that he did not bother.
The distance did not seem to shrink.
Sethryn dropped down flights of stairs in his fall. That was hours of climbing, perhaps even days.
His luck really did run out after the Riddle Game and fate was dealing with him.
Sethryn was clothed in a cloak of crippling despair as he found himself now feeling desolate.
His mind was blank and he was becoming an empty shell of himself.
...
...
...
A name flashed through his mind and her face followed.
"Eve."
Sethryn remembered his sister.
The very reason he became a player in the first place.
But what will such a memory do for him against the suffocating despair and creeping fear he was experiencing?