So here I was, an "Æther"—whatever the hell that name or race even meant. The fact that I didn't know anything about it constantly irritated me. And the fact that I had no idea where to start or what to do was slowly driving me insane.
Over time, locked in my cell, I was forced to find ways to entertain myself, or else I'd lose my sanity.
Sometimes, I imagined being at home, in a faraway place, but oddly enough, all I could remember were the white walls of my house. It was as if my life had been spent trapped in a "box" only for me to be thrown into the world out of nowhere.
Hmm... I guess I should stop thinking about that.
Other times, I would count the stones around the prison or try to guess how many days I'd been locked up. This cycle of monotony and anguish repeated itself until the jailer, Anor, would appear. He had a unique ritual: once a year, he'd whip me to celebrate my "birthday."
"Happy birthday, kid," the monstrous man would say with a disgusting smile on his face, while his whip cracked across my back.
"That bastard." I hated that man with every fiber of my being. If I could, I would kill him. How? I didn't know. Could I? That, I didn't know either. But I would do whatever it took to make it happen.
As the years passed, I noticed something strange about myself: I wasn't aging. Ten years had gone by in this miserable hole they called a cell, and although my body was weak and malnourished—skeletal, to be precise—the only visible change was the length of my hair and beard.
Anor, in one of his rare conversations, mentioned that we, the "Æther," creatures sent by some entity, were easily recognizable. We stayed young no matter how much time passed. There was another reason, but I couldn't remember it—I had probably passed out from the pain.
I should be honest now. Sometimes, I thought about giving up, smashing my head against a rock and ending it all right there. It didn't even seem like a bad idea. There were moments when the darkness called to me, but for some reason, fear kept me grounded. I spent hours staring at the thin shaft of light that passed through the window bars. Sometimes I'd see a bird, maybe building a nest, or other times hunting insects that fell into the prison.
I envied that. Poor me, feeling envious of a bird just living its life. I must be a truly miserable person, right?
"Hey, kid, you know you're gonna die in here, right?" Every now and then, I could hear the conversations of other prisoners or the guards. Most of the time, they were just talking crap, but I never responded. I wasn't interested.
I had been silent for so long that even if I tried to say something, I probably wouldn't even recognize my own voice.
And that's how I lived in this place... if you can even call it living.
Until one day, while I was eating, a strange sound began to echo through the walls.
Tap tap tap tap.
Hm...?
They were soft taps, so subtle they would've gone unnoticed if I hadn't been paying attention. It sounded like small stones colliding, or maybe something like a hammer striking rock. "Am I going crazy?" I thought, looking around, trying to find the source of the sound.
The tapping persisted—small but steady.
Tap. Tap. TAP TAP.
The sound grew louder, more distinct, and I started to break into a cold sweat. "It's just my imagination... it has to be," I tried to convince myself, but the sound was real enough to pull me away from any other thoughts I might've had at that moment—not that I had much else to do.
I dropped the bowl and, with my heart racing, got closer to the floor, pressing my ear against it in the hope of figuring out where the noise was coming from. The vibration seemed to be coming from... the ground?
What kind of madness was this?
And then, as if answering my doubts, the ground in the corner of the prison began to slowly but steadily rise.
"Now I'm definitely crazy," I thought. Panicking, I ran to the opposite corner of the cell, squeezing my eyes shut, hoping that this was some kind of hallucination, a horrible nightmare, or whatever that I'd soon wake up from.
But I didn't wake up.
The sound continued, and the ground kept shifting. Amid the dirt and stones, a figure began to emerge. At first, it seemed unreal—like a bald head rising from the depths. I wanted to scream, but the shock paralyzed me.
The head slowly turned in my direction, revealing an aged but human face. It was an old man, not a monster. He crawled out of the hole as if it were routine. His lips curled into a smile, as if he found the situation amusing.
When he stood up from the hole, he dusted off his clothes, which were even more tattered and terrible than mine, as if he had been trapped there for decades. His eyes, though beginning to cloud with age, still shone with a deep blue hue.
"Ahh... I made it out," he said, still in disbelief at what he was seeing.
He straightened up, cracking the bones in his neck, and calmly cleaned the rest of the dirt from his hands. The old man's serenity was unnerving. His eyes finally settled on me.
"Ahhh, forgive the intrusion..." he said in a hoarse, but polite and firm voice, as if he were intruding into some common space and not a cell in a forgotten prison.
He walked toward me with slow steps. His body seemed frail, but he held an upright posture, though he trembled with every movement, as if the weight of his years was overburdening him.
But despite his elderly appearance, there was something intense about his gaze. The old man's eyes were steady, determined, as if they knew something I didn't. He approached with an unsettling calm.
"I thought I was digging in the right direction... huh huh huh huh." He said it in a casual, almost playful tone, as if he were talking to himself. His shoulders rose and fell slightly, as if he was holding back laughter. The man seemed harmless, like someone you'd see sitting in a small town square, watching the world pass by as he fed the birds.
I was still in the corner of the cell, curled up and in shock. I didn't know what to think. He, noticing my hesitation, continued approaching, now a little more slowly, perhaps so as not to scare me.
"I am Nathanael Faraz-Azraq," he introduced himself with unexpected courtesy, as if we were meeting in a living room, not in a filthy cell.
"I've been a prisoner in this wonderful place for twenty years... eight of which were spent digging this tunnel. Huh huh huh..." He laughed at himself, as if the absurdity of the situation was a joke. Twenty years? That was more time than I could even imagine—it was basically double the time I had been here.
The shock of the situation left me even more stunned, and my mind clung to irrelevant details, trying to process what was happening.
But finally, after years of silence, something inside me broke. Words slipped from my mouth almost involuntarily. Maybe all this time without speaking had led me to say this.
"Eighty-six thousand four hundred and fifty-two seconds... that's the time in one day." Nathanael blinked a few times, surprised by my sudden words. He looked at me, trying to understand what the young man in front of him was trying to say, but I continued anyway.
"Count that number three hundred and sixty-six times... and the jailer will come the next day."
There was a moment of silence between us. Nathanael slowly approached and, with his trembling hands, touched my shoulders, almost as if he were holding me in the present, bringing me back to reality.
"Do you still expect something to change just by counting?" His voice was gentle, but his words made me feel as though my efforts were useless, absurd.
Suddenly, all the years of pain, repression, and loneliness exploded inside me. The tears I had held back for so long finally fell like a waterfall, and I couldn't stop the sobs that escaped from deep within my soul.
"Damn... damn..." I mumbled a few things as the tears streamed down my face, my shoulders shaking uncontrollably.
Nathanael kept his hands on my shoulders, giving small pats, as if trying to comfort me in the only way he knew how.
"Don't worry, young man," he said softly. "I've been through this part. But I promise you one thing... it will pass. That, I can promise."
There was something in his words, something genuine, that made me believe him, even if only for a brief moment. Slowly, I began to wipe the tears away with the tattered sleeve of my clothes, while Nathanael watched me with a gentle and understanding gaze. He smiled, satisfied to have, in some way, eased a bit of my suffering.
Reaching out his hand, he offered to help me up.
"Come on, boy. We've got work to do."
I took his hand firmly and stood up, feeling a bit more human, as if his presence had pushed away, even temporarily, the despair that had inhabited me.
It was then that he asked a question that completely caught me off guard.
"Now... would you mind helping me up?"
"Huh?"
And that made me respond with a dumbfounded voice.
"What is this old man talking about?"