Small As An Ant

As 13 walks, the huge open space seems to stretch on endlessly, with no clear end in sight. The light from the opening above slowly fades as she moves beneath a roof. All around her, metal scrapes and clangs against itself, a constant sound like impending doom that never quite arrives.

There must be a door to the main building, she thinks.

Her lantern flickers in the darkness, illuminating only the floor below her boots. Everything else is swallowed by shadow, the darkness wrapping around her like a curtain of fog. The metal floor panels creak under her weight.

From the condition of this place, it hasn’t been touched in many, many years… yet there were bones. Human bones. If it had been thousands of years, those bones would’ve turned to dust, she reasons as she keeps walking.

Then she hits a metal wall.

She raises her lantern, and a symbol comes into view—a massive symbol, far too large to fully make out in the dim light. But it is unmistakably a symbol.

“Interesting,” she murmurs.

Keeping her lantern raised, 13 turns and begins walking along the wall, heading left.

From all my time walking this Waltz, I’ve never felt watched—but now, only now, it feels like something is staring at me from the shadows. 13 thinks this as she continues along the wall, step after step.

Is it this place that makes me feel this way… or is there actually something there? She stops herself, forcing her thoughts back on track.

Then she runs into a metal door, almost hidden, blending perfectly into the wall. She tries to open it, but it doesn’t budge—locked in place by rust and grime.

A door… but it won’t open. Do I stay here and keep trying, or move on and search for another? she wonders, suddenly aware of how long she’s really been here.

It feels like I only just entered this place, yet I’ve been walking for ages. On the surface, the sun never set—it was never dark. But down here, in this underground coffin, it’s nothing but darkness. It’s messing with my sense of time… no matter.

She grips the door again, straining. This time it gives—just enough for her fingers to slip into the crack. With a sharp pull, she forces it open all the way. Dust erupts into the air as the door finally breaks free.

13 walks into the dusty corridor, human bones scattered everywhere. She stumbles over them as she tries to make her way toward the end, the passage feeling almost as endless as everything else in this world.

“I wonder what happened here… this is unsettling,” she says to herself, stepping over—then on—human bones, even smaller ones that once belonged to children.

“For there to be so many bones, something must’ve happened here,” she murmurs, trying to observe every detail. But the darkness swallows most of it, allowing her to see only fragments at a time.