Damon had made and stuck with his choice of the middle door out of the three doors that Symhar manifested in front of him.
The crazy thing was that he based his decision solely on luck, and from how his eyes gaped at what was before him, it could be said that perhaps he wasn't lucky after all.
"What the hell!" the player exclaimed as he gazed upon a flight of stairs.
The flight of stairs were very long and spiralled upwards toward a roof that he couldn't get a glimpse of.
This was the realm of the First Stairway. It was some sort of a dimension that existed on its own while also counting different floors of the Crimson Spire.
Everything in the dimension was white, sparkling and pure with the longest set of ascending stairs that Damon had ever laid his turquoise eyes on.
He looked up, almost breaking his neck as he tried to get a sight of the top of the steps but to no avail.
Nothing else existed inside the First Stairway. It was just him and the endless ascent of steps surrounded by nothing but white.
Damon swallowed. "I guess this is it," he said to himself as he lifted a foot to begin his climb.
He put his foot on the first of the many steps and his second foot afterwards.
The player consoled himself with the adage: 'The journey of one thousand miles begins with a step'.
Whoever had made that saying was flawlessly right about it.
The journey of a thousand miles did begin with a step but the hackneyed statement never mentioned how many steps it would take one to complete it.
Damon was going to find out first-hand. He chuckled lightly but little did he know that using that saying to console himself would come with regrets sooner than later.
.
.
.
Ten hours later.
An angry voice lamented, producing an echo that completely shattered the silence that existed inside the First Stairway.
"There's no end to this!"
Damon's heart was beating faster than normal as he ascended yet another series of steps in his climb out of this white dimension.
With every climb he made now, he could feel the full stretch of his muscle fibres as his calves ached badly.
His thighs were sore and his legs trembled with the sensation of pain searing through his body from his legs upward.
He was weary, angry and frustrated.
Every step came with an unseen resistance and felt heavier to take than the previous one.
Damon was exhausted.
He stopped and bent down to catch his breath.
Looking back down, he saw that he had come a very long way from the bottom but there seemed to be no end in sight.
He could see where he had come from nor could he see where he was headed.
A better way to put it, Damon felt the same way as a person stuck in the middle of nowhere.
He had been going for what felt like an eternity and he was getting even more and more tired with every second that passed.
The infinite spiral of rectangular stone steps had no end to it and that was what demoralized Damon the most.
Was he going to continue climbing the stairway with no end in sight?
Frustration gripped him and depression crept into his mind.
The combination of both feelings was made even worse by the silence resident inside this dimensional ramp.
It was so quiet that Damon could hear the air entering and escaping from his nostrils as he was breathing.
That was the natural state of the First Stairway and it was not helping his ascension nor his mental state.
It offered nothing but sheer loneliness.
Damon might have been motivated to climb faster if they were familiar voices cheering him on.
But that was not the case.
He was totally alone inside here.
Just him, the infinite flight of stone stairs and the lasting, ambient 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 Damon felt to be a full day and there was still no end in sight.
The climb of the First Stairway was terrible, a worse challenge than the Riddle Game.
Damon was beginning to think he should have just died on the Floor of Riddles instead of going through such grave torture.
.
.
.
If he knew beforehand what awaited him, Damon would not consciously had picked the door in the middle.
He would never wish it upon himself to pass through such a thing but left with a choice he had to since he had unknowingly picked the door brought him this pain.
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 point.
He 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, Damon sank and drowned 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, his chest visibly expanding.
His voice was lost to exhaustion and turned into a whisper that ordinarily he would barely hear.
But that whisper in such a severely silent world, as the one he found himself, echoed loudly into the empty expanse.