Several hours pass, and Athan still lies on the white coated ground. The blood that oozed from his wounds has dried. His body is completely pale, with his fingers blackened, indicating frostbite.

  Suddenly, Athan’s eyes begin to open. It was like a surge of energy shot through him. His heart slowly begins to work again, along with his other organs. And slowly his wounds heal, along with the regeneration of his arm.

  With the sudden surge of energy, Athan pounces up for multiple breaths. A sharp pain roared through his lungs with each breath, but Athan endured.

  ‘What the hell happened? How am I still alive?’ Athan slowly turns his body to the side, using the little strength he has regained from the unknown source of energy. His right arm was still missing, and the wound to his side was still deep and gushing out blood with every movement. The wound on the back of his head is also still there, causing a serious amount of pain, almost like multiple migraines in one. Athan manages to still get himself upwards.

  Upon getting up, his eyes begin to widen. A slight sweat dripped down his face. Lying around him were multiple dead bodies of people from the caverns. Their heads smashed into the ground. Their innards lay all over. Athan’s face becomes pale with disgust, but instead of worrying about the dead, he just clenches his teeth and turns his body in a different direction away from the countless bodies.

  ‘Am I the only survivor? If not, just what happened to the enormous man-eater?’

  Athan slowly stands up, using the nearby rock wall for support. His body was shaking due to the pain. Despite the pain, Athan uses his left hand and clings to the cold wall. And with one foot in front of the other, he slowly walks around the wall, looking for the remains of the monster…if there were any at all.

  Walking around, he suddenly comes to a halt. His eyes became fixated. The giant man-eater that tried to kill him was now just a dead carcass lying in front of him.

  Carefully, Athan approaches the man-eater. Once at the man-eater, Athan begins to closely examine the wounds it sustained. Most of the wounds that Athan sees were burn marks that went across the torso and face of the man-eater, burning through to his flesh.

  The other wound was several indentations to his body, which seemed to be caused by powerful punches. Although the punches didn’t actually penetrate the man-eater…instead, it looks like the punches caused internal damage, which could be considered scarier than actually penetrating the man-eater.

  “Who the fuck, could’ve killed this thing?” Athan says in a weak, frail voice.

  Satisfied with his search, Athan gets back up to his feet. He looks around, seeing if there is any easy way through all the tall peaks. But in the end, there wasn’t. There were just wide paths covered in the white, flaky stuff.

  While walking up to one of the narrow paths, something happens without notice, and Athan starts to remember something.

  [You have gained a memory fragment]

  [You remember playing in white flaky stuff, with someone in the background calling it snow]

  With this new memory, Athan holds out his hand, letting the snow fall into it. “So, this is what this stuff is.”

  Athan’s face begins to light up in excitement. Athan wants to move his body and run around in the snow, but when he tries, the crippling pain roars through his body once more.

  This time, though…the pain was different; it was better than when he woke up moments ago. Athan looks at his wounds. To his surprise, the wounds have mostly healed. With urgency, he also looks at his right arm, and to his surprise, the arm was also healing back to its original state.

  Athans' mouth slightly opened. He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. It was like his body was transforming. Again, Athan questions whether or not this is his newfound strength.

  After some time, Athan suddenly remembers the group he was with. ‘What the hell? Why couldn’t I remember them when I woke up? I was able to remember the dead cavern people just fine.’ Confused about what is happening, Athan starts to doubt himself. But before doubting himself too hard, he remembers that he hit his head hard when he fell from the platform. So he decided that his lack of remembrance was due to the head injury.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Now with reassurance of himself and that his body was healing, Athan decides to walk through the wide paths.

  The wide path was cold, and on the ground lay a whole bunch of white snow. Walking through the long path, Athan’s stomach begins to make weird noises, and his mouth continues to get drier.

  ‘I’m going to need to find food and water, fast, if I want to survive as long as I can in these peaks.’

  Athan begins searching along other narrow paths in the hope of finding anything that might be food or water. Ultimately, Athan finds nothing, as the paths stretch for miles through the peaks.

  Athan grits his teeth.

  “Fuck!” Then he sighs and yells again. “I don’t want to die! Not yet!”

  After what seemed like forever to Athan as he was walking through the path, he finally heard some noise from ahead of him. Curious about what the noise was, Athan walked ahead of him, each step picking up pace. Once he arrived at where the noise was coming from, he found himself at a four-way crossroads, with him standing in an ample space.

  The paths were dark, making it hard for Athan to see what lay beyond them.

  Athan just continued to stand there. It was like his body was refusing to move. ‘Am I scared?’ Athan questions himself. But then he soon understands why his body wasn’t moving…the same sounds that he heard in the caverns and on the wall…were now being echoed through the paths—the sound of man-eaters clanking their teeth together.

  And after a few seconds, the man-eaters rose from the darkness, revealing themselves. Unlike the man-eater Athan saw on the peak, these were smaller. They were about the same size as the ones that he encountered in the caverns.

  Athan slowly stepped backwards towards his path. But while going backwards, there was this uneasy feeling that there was also a man-eater behind him. He slowly turns his head to look back. And standing in the path Athan was just walking on was a man-eater.

  His body froze. He suddenly realized that four man-eaters were surrounding him, blocking the four paths into the peaks.

  Knowing that he was going to have to fight to live, Athan raised his fists to his chin. Athan has never fought before…or at least from what he can remember, but for some reason, the fighting stance seemed natural.

  By this point, Athan's arm has completely healed, and he hasn’t even noticed.

  Using his eyes, Athan carefully keeps watch of the four man-eaters, who haven't moved since they revealed themselves. Without warning, a man-eater from behind him dashes with a burst of speed towards Athan.

  The man-eater closes the distance fast with its little pointy legs. And when it gets close enough to Athan, it lunges at him, its mouth wide open, revealing the mini razor-sharp teeth.

  Athan tries dodging the man-eater, but with his slow reaction time, the man-eater latches onto his leg and begins to chomp harshly at it—Athan shrieks in pain. The other man-eaters follow suit, charging at Athan at full speed.

  He tries to dodge to the best of his ability, but instead, he fails, and they end up latching onto him. One on his shoulder, one on his other leg, and finally, the last one was chomping at his torso.

  The pain was unbearable. Athan clenched his teeth and raised his fists. ‘I will not be dying here.’ The blood was rushing out of his body fast, and by this point the man-eters were at his flesh.

  Athan raises his fists in the air once more, and with a predatory look, Athan begins punching the man-eaters with all his strength. His punches were landing, but they weren't doing any noticeable damage. Still, he continued to punch.

  After several punches, growing weaker with each, Athan realizes he has to think instead of just punching aimlessly. He stops beating for a moment and just watches as the man-eaters tear through his body.

  Athan’s eyes scanned the man-eater's body, and then he saw it—a possible weak point in the man-eaters. Athan took a breath; his body was beginning to lose feeling. Fear was running through him still at this point, but he still managed to think rationally.

  He lifted his hands in the air and launched them at the man-eaters' middle spike, the longest one. Arthan begins to pull on the man-eater's spike, and slowly the man-eater starts to move. Their spikes were flimsy, and Athan used this to his advantage.

  In pain, the man-eater stops chomping at Athan and lets go and just stares at Athan with piercing eyes.

  This doesn’t stop Athan. He continues to pull on the man-eater's spike until finally the man-eater gets loose enough from his body, and Athan chucks him down to the floor, sending him far enough away.

  Breathing hard, Athan looks at the other man-eaters threateningly and does the same thing. He grabs their spikes and tears them off his body. Throwing each one of them to the ground.

  Athan figured it out. The man-eaters' weak point is their long middle spike. With enough force and strength, you could disrupt the man-eater and maybe even tear the spike off.

  The man-eaters were still alive, and now they have surrounded Athan from all sides.

  Athan’s body was aching in pain, but his desire to live was stronger. He raised his arms as high as he could and retook his fighting stance.

  One of the man-eaters in front of him launches itself towards Athan. This time, Athan times the launch, grabs the middle spike, and, while holding the man-eater in the air, uses his other hand to cleanly tear it right off.

  The man-eater fell to the ground in pain. Its little legs were rapid, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Purple blood was gushing from the wound. After a few seconds of struggle, the man-eater's legs give out, and the squealing stops.

  The man-eater has died.

  The other man-eaters who just watched their friend get killed brutally run away back into the paths.

  Athan takes a breath. His arms and hands were destroyed. The bones were visible. Blood was dripping from his arms to the ground. The setting ball of fire was illuminating Athan over the peaks.