After waking, Touji knew something was off. He sat up, straightening his back and wiping his eyes, attempting to get a grasp on his position. To his astonishment and discomfort, he discovered that his hands and feet were chained to the wall behind him. The metal was rusted, its shackles so tightly wound around his members that he could feel his figures go numb. The the sting of cold sent shivers through his limbs. He yanked and pulled at them for a brief period, but quickly gave up as the boy realized he was only hurting himself further.

  Touji took a moment to re-observed his surroundings. He was in a hollow stone structure, with circular walls and a high ceiling. It air smelled old and smutty, it was clear that this place had been terribly maintained. He brushed the dust and grim off of his gym clothes, taking care not to make much noise.

  "What on earth am I?!"

  He ran his hand over the bricks behind him. It was rough and moist to the touch causing him to recoil his hands at the sensation. Touji tried to get a better look at his surroundings, but the chains prevented him from moving more than a few feet from his original position, leaving him with little visual feedback. Still, there was little to see. The whole scene before him was quite unnerving, especially in the context of what he remembered. He rolled past images through his head, hoping he could pin down his whereabouts and how he got where he was. His mind was a mess and thinking straight was becoming increasingly troublesome and difficult in the cold environment.

  While continuing to search his memories for an answer, a green mist slipped silently through the cracks in the wall and collected itself into an oval cloud a few inches away from his feet. He observed this odd smoke with fascination. It glowed and neither was it propelled by any wind or air, but appeared to move on its own accord. It traced the floor till it reached one of the chains connecting him to the wall and, merging with the metal, it flowed down the chain links with a light emerald glow. After reaching his hands and ankle cuffs the chains cracked with an unsettling demeanor, then promptly broke off hitting the ground with a thud.

  "Thanks... I guess." Touji watched as the green mist moved towards him. "Hey, look. I appreciate the support, but can you please refrain from coming any closer?"

  He frantically backed up against the wall, touching the cold and musty bricks hard against the back of his shoulders. The smoke continued to approach him, until a moment later, it disapated into thin air, leaving without a trace.

  "Well, that was creepy." He remarked, once again alone in the total darkness.

  Touji leaned against bulwark steadying himself as a stroke of dizziness washed over him. The chains holding him down had now disintegrated with nothing but dark charcoal remaining.

  A light tap a few meters away sounded a few meters away, frightening the boy as he gave a slight yelp. A small hole had opened in the ceiling, allowing a singular beam of light to enter. As the boy stepped out of the groove in the wall from which he had been restrained, he took another look around his enclosure.

  -Well, doesn't this look homie? He sarcastically thought to himself.

  The room was vacant, with no one else in its vicinity. Near the wall furthest away from his position stood a large marble stone, lying overtly on its side. He approached it and slid his hands across its dusty yet smooth top. The stone was roughly the size of a coffin maybe a little bigger.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  -Probably an altar of some sort, Touji hastily told himself.

  He wasn't impressed with the coffin analogy, and though alter didn't exactly make him feel all that much better, it at least didn't imply a definite negative.

  He sat down on the edge of the stone, placing his hands together and intertwining his fingers while calmly processing his actions. But after some time with almost nothing to work with, he threw his hands up in the air and had a long and profound yawning session before dropping them again while grasping in his pockets for his phone. It wasn't there. He felt around in his pants pockets, but they were empty.

  "Fudge! I must have left it in my school bag.”

  He had another sudden revelation, reminding him that his school bag was also missing. “What a pain."

  And a pain it was, indeed. It now appeared that he would have zero contact or help from any personage, (say emergency or family) unless they somehow stumbled upon one another. The problem was he wasn't sure how long that would take and by the looks of the situation, escaping this facility was probably the optimal choice as of now.

  "So, first things first. Why would I be here?"

  By the looks of it, it had a sort of Western medieval feel, with its stone pillars and brick stacked walls. There seemed to be only two options Touji could imagine. Either this place is an abandoned temple or a very much in use dungeon. Logic suggested the latter as he was literally handcuffed. He really didn't like where his thoughts were taking him.

  He glanced back down at the alter like slab, placing his foot on top and pushing it with his toes. The stone didn't budge.

  -Dammit. He had secretly hoped that it was hiding some sort of trap door, but he was sadly disappointed.

  Touji figured that standing around wasn't going to do anything and besides, the dust floating in the air that he had been breathing in for the past twenty minutes or so could quite possibly be poisonous.

  He once again scanned the room in the hopes he’d find an entrance. His eyes caught a glimpse of a hole beside one of the many half-pillars which hugged the walls near where he’d been chained.

  -Of course it was right next to me.

  Inside there was a steep staircase leading into an even greater darkness. The only issue with these stairs was that they went down instead of up.

  "It's sketchy that it's leading down, but I don't see any other entrances with a glowing exit sign above so I'll half to take my chances." He thought out loud, pretending that there was someone else to relay this information to.

  Touji wasn’t good at being alone. He wasn’t the best socially, but when in front of his family and friends he acted as the mature and collected older sibling should, at least to his understanding. But when alone he started to lose his edge, as his thoughts drifted to sometimes unpleasant places.

  He shyly peered down the hollow staircase. He was hesitant to move forward, as walking down a dark layer of stairs while not being able to see what lies at the bottom was something that would make any person have second thoughts. As a kid, he used to imagine that wolves and dragons used to roam his family's basement and he would get eaten alive if he couldn't turn the lights on fast enough. While this fear supposedly dies with age for the most of us, he was easily reminded that perhaps he hadn't so much as grown out of these fears after all.

  Nonetheless he took a deep breath and hopped down the steps, missing a few and almost falling. He did manage to catch himself thankfully, thus avoiding some painful injuries. Touji kept his hands on the walls as his eyes weren’t of much use in an almost pitch black environment.

  The walls of the passage were mostly made of wood, but there were places in which roots projected themselves from behind the wooden frames, tripping Touji if he wasn’t careful. It looked as if this tunnel had rarely been used (if at all), for a good decade or so from the way the dirt had settled. He hadn't gone more than forty steps when they changed direction and began to ascend.

  -Things are finally looking up.

  While this pun never landed it was a sign that his spirits were rising. For now...