The light was everything. It didn't know who, why, where or even when it was. It just knew the light. It encompassed everything around it, and was all there was, all there ever would be.
Fen woke up, gasping, his senses overloaded.
'Shit'
There was simply too much to process at once. Fen was sure he'd died - or at least was about to. If this was to be true, then where the hell was he? His eyes moving back into focus and senses returning, Fen scanned his surroundings.
He was in a cave. A very large, very cold, very imposing cave at that.
It seemed man made, with several archways and small tunnels leading into a dark abyss. The cavern was also almost completely shrouded in darkness, except for a small ray of light with no apparent source - it simply fell upon Fen.
'What the hell did that creature do to me?'
Propelling himself upwards from the fridgid stone he had being lying upon and gently stepping upon the jagged floor, Fen quickly noticed a multitude of strange occurrences.
First, his previous mud soaked rags were no more, and were instead replaced with a slightly oversized uniform of sorts - something you'd see a supernatural wear, not a mundane scavenger like him.
Secondly, he could no longer feel the throb of his cracked ribs, nor the flow of warm crimson rolling down his face - he even seemed to be cleansed of the sludge previously covering his body.
Thirdly, and certainly most strange, Fen was crying. He hadn't even noticed till his bare feet had roughly pressed into the uncarved stone floor, as if it had brought his senses back to him. Stranger still, on some subconscious, unreachable and quickly fading level, Fen knew why.
It was the light. Somehow that universal, omnipresent luminescence had replaced the cruel flow of ichor down his cheek with a kind - a welcome - flow of salty bliss.
For these tears were certainly not of sorrow.
And as fast as it flowed into him, the memory was gone. The tears dried, the door was closed.
All that remained was a slightly lost young man, in a very dingy cavern.
***
'Huh'.
What had he been thinking about again?
'Ah, of course, the two strange occurrences - on top of the whole situation of course'
'It was two right?'
Shaking away his sudden doubt, Fen began to move around the dusk enveloped cavern, whilst patting down his slightly large uniform - his mind was suddenly very cloudy, which was to be expected considering he had barely just awoken after being impaled by a hand. That being said though, he needed to focus. Finding how to get the hell out of this place was certainly one such priority Fen thought, peering into a dark tunnel.
At the same time, Fen felt something hard in one of the many pockets of his uniform.
Moving away from the dark tunnel and closer to the precisely carved altar, Fen pulled out the object - which, once under the light, Fen determined to be a precisely carved pocket watch. Despite it's elegance, it didn't seem to be working unfortunately, frozen at the time of thirteen minutes past six. Discarding any hope of telling how long he had been unconscious, Fen flipped it over to it's back.
On it, hung a petite yet shiny mirror.
Usually, such a thing wouldn't of particually interested Fen - sure, it would be nice to have he supposed, but nothing of real value.
Now however?
Fen grinned.
Moving himself further closer to the light, Fen brought the mirror up to his face and looked in to it. He was half expecting to see a completely different figure to his usual gaunt frame, after all the reason he had been so excited at the sight of a mere mirror was due to Fen's strong belief that he was no longer in his body.
Quite unusually for someone who lived in the uninhabitable outskirts, Fen was quite well read - meaning he was by now well aquanted by stories of unfortunate men and woman losing their life early to tragedy - only to be reborn in another body, gifted with a blessed life. Not only this, many supernaturals from the real world had claimed they had been transported to other worlds, conquered them and returned - however many of these statements were true certainly deserved to be under question, but due to the sheer amount of them at least a few must of been correct right?
Fen had reasoned that, considering his circumstances fit this archetype perfectly, and that his body was seemingly completely healed and clothed with a brand new uniform, it was very likely he had been blessed by such a transmigration.
The image reflected back by the mirror certainly was not that of Fen's usual figure.
His distinct white hair was mainly the same, however this had been one of the first things Fen had confirmed - it was reasonable that he had been transported into a vessel similair to his previous body, it was a regular trope spouted by both fictitious novels and (maybe?) non-fictitious stories from supernaturals. What stood out though, was the red.
Not only had a small portion of his hair at the back of his head turned a vibrant shade of crimson, so had his previously hazel eyes.
Fen blinked.
'Holy shit'
Ripping off the uniform in a curious fervor, Fen quickly scanned his body, and to his annoyance, the familiar line of pent up anguish and despair remained.
It had been years since Fen had received the scar, so he certainly knew it well enough by now - well enough to know it was his scar, not some similair yet fake copy.
This unfortunately, caused a lot more questions that it answered. Fen was now at least pretty sure this was still his body - his lean physique and prominent scar seemed too exact. The problem was, his appearance was still undoubtably altered, with no apparent reason.
Sighing, Fen took a last look at his surroundings, put the pocket watch back in one of the many compartments of his uniform and moved towards a dark chasm, which in turn opened up into one of the many abyss-like tunnels.
Although Fen didn't fancy his chances against whatever creature was - knowing his luck - undoubtedly going to be lurking in the tunnel, the familiar pang of hunger and thirst didn't leave him with many options - the longer he dwindled, the weaker he would become.
Fen took his first step in the tunnel. The floor was still uncut, cold and jagged, and the embrace of darkness showed no sign of leaving. That step turned into ten, which turned into a hundred, which turned into a thousand. By the time boredom began to replace any prior feelings of fear Fen had felt towards the tunnel, he had lost interest in counting.
The tunnel, seemingly endless, refused to give Fen any kind of victory. There were small signs, such as ingraves or different patterns of tough granite that would occasionally appear visible to Fen, at least letting him know he was actually moving somewhere.
The fear was beginning to creep back in.
Fen kept moving.
He must of been travelling for at least ten hours now. His bare soles ached under the pain of the jagged cuts the relentless stone had inflicted, and his throat was beginning to burn.
Fen had briefly considered turning back what must of been a couple of hours ago. He'd previously been of the mind that if the tunnel was of a serious length, he would have to just pick one and commit, but Fen had began to doubt it even had an end.
Unfortunately, Fen also doubted he had it in him to make it back to the cavern, nevermind brave another of the tunnels - it must of been nearly 3 days since Fen had last drunk any kind of liquid, and it seemed dehydration wasn't going to let him forget that.
Something had to change.