Chapter 45: The Mountain of the Misleading

Vosor, what do you think about this path?

Then Arnos realizes that he is alone.

Arnos starts laughing. “Hahaha… What has happened to me? Where am I even? I have been here for the past few weeks. I haven’t eaten anything. I have been surviving on lizards and other things I have never seen before.” He sits down on the ground. There is no sunlight. There are no green things anywhere.

Arnos says to himself, “I think I should kill myself. I would be put out of this miserable life.”

Then another thought comes to his mind. “I must find Vosor. I promised his parents that we would collect the woods together. But I made a huge mistake when I went into the dark woods. I should have listened to Vosor, even if he is younger than me. I must find him.”

Suddenly, Arnos hears a sound. He starts running toward a tunnel. He can still hear sounds, but there is no light at all, nothing except crystals in the ground and on the side walls.

Arnos thinks, “I should take one of these crystals and use it as a light source.”
He takes the stick he has carried since the start of this unfortunate journey. Using the long piece of wood, he breaks a crystal so it can produce light.

“I will use light to find light,” Arnos says. Then he adds, “If someone does not know what light looks like, they will never know what light truly is.”

Arnos laughs at himself as he walks alone through the dimly lit tunnel inside the unknown mountains.

Then Arnos thinks, “No… not again. Why does this keep happening to me? Why?”
After that, he thinks, “Whatever. I am just going to rest against this wall… or whatever this is.”

He closes his eyes for a few seconds. When he opens them, he looks angry at himself. He hits the wall, and suddenly it breaks open. It turns out to be a large hole that leads to other areas around the world.

Arnos opens his eyes wide in shock. He puts both hands on his face and thinks it was just a dream. Then he realizes it is real.

“It doesn’t matter,” Arnos thinks. “I must keep moving forward. There is no other option. This can’t go on like this.”

He takes six or seven steps forward, then remembers to pick up his things. He turns back and walks six steps to grab his sleeping blanket and his bag.

Arnos thinks, “When I first entered this place, there was nothing strange. But now…” He takes a few more steps and says, “It is a curse for me to even be here. The darkness itself is calling me.”

A door suddenly opens. When Arnos sees it, he smiles. “Nice,” he says, and starts moving toward the door he just found.

As Arnos looks ahead, he realizes that going through it might be a trap. He thinks about it for a moment, then says, “It doesn’t matter. If I go further, I might find the other side of the mountain.”

“Whatever,” he says, and moves forward. He looks at his hands twice to see if anything is missing. Then he realizes his bag is gone.

Arnos looks back and sees his bag on the other side of the door he came from. The door closes. He realizes he forgot to pick up his backpack.

Oh… no. Why does this keep happening to me? Arnos says. “I can’t believe this. I hate this so much.”
Then he says, “Well, whatever. I had nothing to lose in the first place, so it doesn’t matter.”

He walks forward and sees many strange things and people drawn on the walls. He steps back slightly and notices writing on the wall. It says that he is one of the 149 people who have entered this place.

Arnos looks closer at the drawings. At the start, it shows 148 numbers doing nothing. As he moves forward, he sees 149 people stealing land, stealing food, and burning people alive. Further ahead, he sees 14 people fighting each other.

In the last drawing, only one man is left. The man calls himself the first human who has lived many lives. In the final image, the number becomes 0, and there is a sword-shaped object next to the last person.

On the very last wall, Arnos sees himself. The drawing shows him standing alone after a great battle. He is the only one left, holding a flag.

“It shows someone like me,” Arnos says.