The horrid stench of ammonia and, what in short can be called death, was weighting down the air. Cries of despair and dread filled the empty underground. It was a terrifyingly big chamber built of big uneven sbs of stone with ceiling disappearing in the darkness. Small and sparse shining orbs were the only thing keeping shadows at bay.

  Ran panicked, quickly stood up. She was surrounded by other children of varying ages. She stood among children, barely reaching the shoulder height of some and in turn some barely reached hers. Most of the children were crying and sniffling, likely in a simir situation to Rans. Without even a hint of how she got here, Ran awoke among these stone-cold walls and dark shadows spreading in all directions. She was cold and shivering. She was slowly but surely succumbing to the feeling of helplessness. Though she wasn’t alone, she felt lonely and unprotected.

  That’s when she noticed it. A big ornate gate stood in front of her. The gate depicted different kinds of beings, such as dragons, foxes, phoenixes, huge insects akin to centipedes, flies and monstrous snakes, tortoises and wolves. All beings intertwined in a cycle of brawling and devouring one another. In short, the aura the gate was giving off was ominous to say the least.

  Suddenly, a voice, from behind Ran, reverberated through the room. The voice overpowered all sound: ‘Welcome, prospects of the Beast’ the voice echoed in the underground chamber. All hundred or so children turned to face a faceless silhouette of a man. The man dressed in a flowing robe, which seemingly alive swayed in the nonexistent currents of the wind.

  ‘All of you have been chosen as prospects for the Beast Pace.’ The man’s voice echoed with a hint of joy. ‘Let the selection commence, NOW!’ As soon as the silhouette finished, Ran caught a movement in the shadows of the chamber, terrified screams boomed out from among the children. Chaos ensued; most children froze in fear. Cold sweat ran down Ran’s back at the cries, that rang out into the vastness of the room. Cries akin to those of a wounded animal.

  Unexpectedly, the gate started to groan, revealing a dimly lit corridor beyond. Ran didn’t even have time to think. Fueled by instinct and fear her body made a run for the opening gate. The sound of steps behind told her some of the children followed, or was it the beasts from beyond the shadows? Ran reached the gate first. The gate was barely open, however, Ran squeezed through. Screams of terror and suffering along with sounds of bodies dropping and being dragged through the occasional pools of water on the stoney floor fueled her to press on.

  The gate revealed an intersection, small shining orbs levitating in each of the far corners of the three avaible paths. Ran froze indecisive. Bumping into her shoulders, other children overtook her. Seemingly not even noticing the other paths in their confusion, some turned left, some ran right, most children just continued in a straight line. Think, Ran, think! Ran’s mind cleared for just a moment, enough to notice the intricate carving of runes and statues on the walls of the pathways, each path of the intersection marked with different kinds of beings.

  The path leading straight was ornamented by various insects protruding from the walls, as if attacking the person about to enter. The right path was marked by depictions of snakes, wolves, birds and foxes. Ran didn’t have much time as she heard sounds behind her diminishing, she gnced over the left path noticing a couple of mythical beings, however what grabbed her attention the most was a being surrounded by dragons and monsters, observing from its high perch - weird scaly figure of a dog with long horns and flowing fur on its back and tail. Feeling some kind of familiarity, Ran sprinted down the left path.

  As she followed the dim light of the orb at the far end of the corridor the light disappeared, drowning Ran in absolute darkness. With light had gone all senses of hearing, touch and smell. Ran couldn’t focus on the outside world. After what felt like an eternity, all her senses focused inwards, on her organs. At first, she could feel her lungs expand, being pulled by muscles from various sides of her rib cage, then the beating of her heart, the more she focused the more her skin started to tingle and inch, she couldn’t really pce what was wrong with her, but she knew it at her core- something was terribly wrong. All of a sudden, she could feel blood flowing through her veins, she could hear the wet splotching of the blood in her veins and organs, she could hear the movement of her intestine and bowel. The orchestra of her body silenced even her very thoughts.

  A primal fear, akin to nothing she experienced in her short life, swallowed her whole being. Despite the air around, she couldn’t get any of it in her lungs, as if she forgot how to breathe. Ran started to thrash around hopelessly. Tears dampening the corners of her eyes.

  Images of her life started fshing before Ran’s eyes. Her kind mother, her beautiful smile, with her silky-smooth bck hair, which Ran inherited after her. Her small and shabby house, which despite all she called home. The forest behind the house where she used to py and climb on trees with her sister. Oh, her sister, unknowingly Ran began to weep and sob. Her poor little sister, her image in Ran’s memory was like a sun, radiating warmth and tranquility. Her innocent smile and curios gaze warmed Ran’s dying soul. The warmth started to spread quickly like a bonfire, pushing the influence of the malicious darkness out of Ran’s body.

  Abruptly, with a strong intake of air into her lungs, surroundings returned and overwhelmed her senses. She was breathing heavily and with urgency Ran turned raising on her palms and vomited onto the ground. While shivers still rushed through her body and the feeling of worms burrowing under her skin still clung to her senses, she pushed herself onto her legs and limped forward. Ran didn’t even notice the eerie silence and stillness of the air. All she could comprehend were the fading memories of the orchestra her body put up for her. The peace she felt whilst barely conscious gone and forgotten.

  Unsure if her mind was pying tricks on her, or if the effects of whatever curse was put on her remained, she stopped the upcoming vomit in her mouth. Ran could still make out the lingering feeling of her eyes moving within their sockets, as if scraped on sandpaper, and the weirdness of tissues movements in every step. The disgusting sensations of her body were silenced by a hushed rhythmic thuds and occasional spshes of puddles of water across the stoney floor from behind her. Steps. Ran turned her head around to look at the approaching entity. Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, …

  Nothing. All she could see were shadows. Rationally speaking, what was supposed to be behind her was the shining orb at the intersection, and yet, there was nothing but shadows. And whatever was fast approaching her. Ran didn’t wait. She burst into a sprint for the light at the corner, which at this point couldn’t have been further than fifty feet. A shadow at the side of the corridor brought her out of the panicked sprint. It was a corpse of a kid around her age. A boy leaning on the wall of the cold corridor, blood coming out of his closed eyes, ears and nose. Despite his gory appearance he looked surprisingly calm. As if the boy simply leaned on the wall to take a short break, to never wake up again.

  Before long, many more corpses came into view, all the children, which ran before Ran onto the left path. Some y with calm expressions akin to sleep, some with terror marked on their faces with bitten off fingers, gouged eyes and deep scratch marks all over their bodies and faces. Their limbs caught in the same convulsed movements as at the time of their passing, some cwing at the ground, walls or… heavens perhaps.

  Ran didn’t even stop to think or consider the children along her path. She had no luxury to think, to reminiscence or to mourn. Weakness meant death here, that much she already figured. She would take those feelings and shove them deep within for ter…maybe never. She simply ran. A thud behind her, heavier than others, suddenly drew her attention. A mere moment, as she kept her hearing sharp in an eternity of expectation, she awaited the following step of the entity behind her, when time for the next rhyme of thuds came and no steps followed, Ran dashed to the side, just in time to barely dodge the shadow flying past her left shoulder.

  The entity brushed her shoulder, and Ran was brought to her knees. Within a heartbeat Ran raised her head to gaze onto the enemy. It was a dog of a species she didn’t know. Seemingly skinless, very lean, muscles stretching under the stressed skin. The dog’s paws, strikingly resembling human digits, violently sought purchase on the slick ground. Before it managed to properly turn, she dashed into the dog trying to make it all fall over and run past, except, the dog seemingly unmovable as if made of stone. This close Ran got a better look at the ‘’dog’’. Patches of moss marking spots on the dog’s otherwise smooth surface.

  Ran was close, too close for her taste. She didn’t manage to dodge the dog’s bite. The monster bit off her little finger on her left hand and carved out some flesh from around her armpit in a quick succession of bites. As she pced her hand on the dog’s head in an attempt to guard her neck and head, with a turn the dog pushed Ran off to the side. She didn’t have to wait for another opportunity. She bolted.

  Following the corridor, a heavy stench of iron filled her nose along with the smell of ammonia from her emptying bdder. Warm fluid flowed down her side onto her thigh, being flung all around by her kicking her legs in a mad sprint. With the pain came a dreadful realization of the situation. She was wounded. Corpses all around. In an underground catacomb, trapped like an animal in a cage. Alone with an unsurmountable monster on her heels. ‘’I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die…’’ is all that went through Ran’s mind.

  She could feel her tears streaming down her face and a blockade of mucus building up in her nose. In her run Ran denied herself to even swallow, saliva running by the corners of her cheeks mixing with the rest of the fluids. She felt like a small child in a forest during the night. Completely lost in an expanse of empty space full of shadows and monsters, both real and imaginary. Powerless, weak, unimportant, obsolete, inconsequential. Death right behind her.

  Ran finally reached the glowing orb. Gasping for air, she turned at the silence behind her. The monster was gone. The corridor held a promise of endless nothingness. Ran waited a moment observing the darkness, ready to bolt at the first movement of the shadows. Nothing. As she turned to face the other way, the darkness returned. Her whole body spasmed and she apparently lost all ability to control her body.

  Ran’s muscles convulsed uncontrolbly as she fell to the ground. She gritted her teeth at the immeasurable amount of pain. She could feel iron in her mouth from her bleeding gums, blood burst forth in a sudden burst out of her nose and a few drops trickled down her cheeks from her eyes. She arched her back at the intense pain of her body being squeezed by her own muscles. She grunted heavily through her teeth.

  This time Ran calmed rather fast, but it didn’t help one bit. She didn’t know what to do. All her instincts were silent, all she could do was to wait for her untimely end. She turned and twisted. A couple of her muscles felt like they were tearing. She could feel a stretching searing pain from her tendons. She could see her veins bulge underneath her skin. She could also feel and even hear some of them burst under pressure, creating nasty bck and red spots on her body underneath the skin.

  Ran closed her eyes and focused on keeping herself breathing, everything else was secondary. Through her clenched jaws, she couldn’t scream out in pain even though she wanted to. Bile burst forth from her depths and unable to swallow she started to drown in her own fluids. The violent convulsion was joined by her panicked thrashing at the ck of air. Her consciousness started to fade away. Before long she lost her grip at consciousness and the world faded into nothingness.

  Ran came to with her eyes closed. If not for the pain and sores all over her body, she’d think she was already dead. She felt exhausted, she had had enough, at this point she considered dying a more merciful ending and yet… she didn’t want to die. Never would she imagine that the stone-cold ground could feel so warm and soft. She didn’t want to stand up just to suffer again.

  Still, the desire to live made her move. It was a miracle; she drew breath after ying on the ground for God knows how long. With careful and deliberately slow movements Ran pushed herself, leaning against the wall and limping. She continued in the only direction avaible to her.

  Eventually the stench of death was gone and repced with a smell of rotting wood and stale water. Upon entry into a room, what had drawn Ran’s attention the most was an enormous marble statue of a monster in the middle of the room, its horns almost touching the moss-covered ceiling. Ran could tell the monster was depicted with utmost reverence based on the detail of its scales, which covered its bulky muscles. Even the hair on the monster’s back and tail were so detailed she could point out individual strands of fur.

  The rest of the room was filled with wooden structures akin to those of a shrine, all rotten, wet and old, some even colpsed in on itself. Wherever Ran looked, nothing indicated a path leading further, in short, it was the end of the road. She looked back and noticed that the orb at the corner of the corridor disappeared as the one at the intersection did before.

  So, either she chose to look around hoping to find a path ahead or return completely blind in the shadows with the monster. She didn’t even have to think about it, she would, of course, choose the former. After looking around for a bit, Ran couldn’t find anything of importance, except. There was a big metallic bowl or a cauldron in front of the monster statue, big enough to easily fit multiples of her inside of it. As she approached the cauldron, she noticed the delicate pattern on it spanning its circumference. On it depicted various beasts devouring each other in an endless circle.

  Ran glimpsed inside the cauldron, and what she found inside surprised her. There were perfectly round balls inside. They were small enough to fit in her palm, had a very smooth surface, no smell and were brown with cracks of gold all around. The cauldron was filled halfway with those weird stones. Was it perhaps a sort of offering for the beast? After all this was the Beast Pace, so it wouldn’t be surprising if this was a pce for rites or rituals to a beast.

  Although, the state of the wooden buildings begged to differ. The state of everything around would indicate deeper meaning to the monster statue and its pebbles. Ran, however, couldn’t figure it out. Since there was nothing else to do, and the imminent danger seemed to pass, she decided to tend to her wounds. She soaked and rinsed her shirt off filth in a puddle and tore it into bids. Using it for bandages to cover her wet wounds. At least they wouldn’t bleed. As adrenaline faded many more aches and pain appeared, rendering Ran almost immobile. Realizing she had a fever coming up, in a desperate attempt, she hid underneath the rubble of one of the fallen shrines, crawling beneath the fallen roof and falling asleep.