Ron Irus awoke in a place of stifling obscurity, save for a layer of soft earth beneath him that felt as though it had just endured a torrential downpour. He could see nothing. The expanse was swallowed by a void so absolute it was not merely black, but a profound, abyssal ink. It was bizarre. His vision extended no further than three meters, and even standing up offered no advantage.
Checking his body, Ron discovered that aside from his clothes, which had been reduced to charred ash, he possessed nothing at all. He gathered the tattered remnants from the ground, binding them tightly around his arms. Whatever they were, they were among the few things he owned. Leaving them behind felt wrong, for they might serve a purpose in the future.
Then he began to walk. But instead of moving in a straight, reckless line, he laid a thread along the ground behind him while swinging a thin, scorched strip of cloth in front of his face. It was a display of eccentric, almost paranoid caution. It was strange, certainly, but there was no one there to witness it. Ron worked with the diligence of an ant building a nest. Both labored to survive, though Ron's methods were far more extreme, and the ant at least had the company of its colony.
He walked on and on, but after several minutes, a chilling realization struck him. He halted, his gaze darting from the ground to the thread in his hand. A single thought echoed in his mind. "It is snapped." About three seconds ago, the tension had vanished. "Something is wrong." Something was out there. Something he could not identify. He knew his life could be extinguished at any moment.
"I am trapped. What is this space? What are the rules? Is there anyone else here? Everything is a mystery."
If he were to devise a plan, he at least needed to know his adversary. To survive, he had to understand where he was and what he was facing.
"Wait. There is one way to find out. Should I?"
Ron scooped up a handful of soil, sniffed it, and then shoved it into his mouth. Less than a second later, he spat it out and doubled over, retching. He had not expected soil that looked so fertile to reek of dead rats. The moment it touched his tongue, it tasted of an abominable, monstrous filth. It was as if he were eating a pile of canine excrement mixed with human mucus.
Ron desperately scraped his tongue against a piece of cloth that still held a lingering warmth, trying to wipe away the lingering revulsion. But then, he saw something he never wished to see. He was vomiting blood. No, that was not right. The blood was not coming from his throat, but from his tongue. His tongue had been shredded by that very earth. The entire muscle slid out of his mouth, landing on the ground in a deformed, mangled heap.
"Ugh. Ugh."
He tried to force out a voice, a cry, a scream, but then he fell abruptly silent. Because... he could no longer feel the pain. In fact, he had not felt anything from the start. His tongue had been destroyed before his neural receptors could even register the sensation. But if that were true, how did he still know the taste? Was it an inherent property of this place? If the earth was this revolting, why had he not smelled the stench from the beginning?
Ron did not know, but he realized something else about himself. "Why didn't anything happen when I touched it with my hands?" There are toxins that burn the skin and the insides alike, but some only react within the stomach. This, however, felt more like acid. It explained why the thread had snapped, yet so many mysteries remained.
"Why is this place so twisted? Why did the thread only snap after a certain time? Why can I walk on this ground unharmed? Why is it that I can only see clearly within a three meter radius? And why... is there a podium standing before me?"
Indeed, before Ron had begun his violent retching, there had been nothing in front of him. Not even a wisp of fog. Then, suddenly, a square manifested. Several dozen pillars of blackish blue gypsum stood there, varying in length but generally similar in height. All were planted upon a floor of obsidian. There was no design, no imagery. Just the abrupt transition from earth to obsidian stone.
Ron hesitated for several seconds before slowly advancing toward the hall. His steps were heavy and visibly uncomfortable, like those of a drunken man. The moment his footprint pressed onto the obsidian, the entire dimension seemed to skip a beat. Then, a series of colossal clangs erupted, sounding like tons of metal colliding. In a single second, dozens of massive chains coiled around the pillars, spanning across each other like iron bridges. They formed a word: J-O-E-J-O-A-T-H-A-N-E.
"Jojothane? Jojo Thane? Jojoth Ane? What on earth is that?"
Ron stared at the sight, instinctively recoiling a step, only to bump into something. A grotesque figure stood there. It was a naked, emaciated male body, but atop its neck sat a faceless head. It was void of any features. Ron did not scream. He stood paralyzed, waiting. Shock and instinct had robbed him of his voice. Then his knees buckled. Tears streamed down his face, and his trousers became sodden.
The faceless entity pointed toward the square. Ron turned his head, squinting one eye shut in sheer terror. It was a vision of true horror. Row upon row of faces. Skin masks of people he knew all too well. They were the people from the orphanage, all flayed and hung up like festive banners, like trophies of war.
Ron was speechless. He could not speak even if he tried. He spun around, intent on fleeing, but the faceless creature seized his arm. In a desperate move, Ron yanked at the knot of the cloth bound to his arm, allowing the creature to slide off him. Then, he sprinted back along the path of his thread, away from that place.
He ran, and he kept running along the line, even past the point where the thread had snapped, past its very beginning. He did not look back until he glimpsed a mysterious, shimmering white light. He had no idea how long he had been running, nor did he think he could have traveled far enough to encounter a radiant white silhouette. And then, within that white light, the faceless entity appeared again, pointing toward the distance behind him.
Ron's face turned ashen. He tried to run in the opposite direction, but he tripped, falling sprawling to the ground like a failure, like a coward in a horror movie who achieves nothing. But he could never have imagined that in this moment of crisis, a microphone would be pointed toward him.