Kurtz awoke slowly with the brand of numb comfort that only comes to those who have overslept for far longer than necessary. He had no memory of where he was or how he’d gotten to the place he currently found himself, and if he had been at all in his right and correct mind, the fact that he felt no concern about that fact would in itself, concern him.

Lying there on the cold marble floor, he stared up at the ceiling, following the lines of the strange patterns etched in the stones with his eyes. How long he laid there exactly, he could not say, however he felt no eagerness to move from the spot and lacked motivation for any task whatsoever. Naturally, at glacial speed, his mind began trying to collect itself and retrace the events that led him to his current situation.

There was an intensely bright light, so fierce that it blinded him through his tightly shut eyes, he recalled lastly, the after image still burned his retina. What was before that? He wondered to himself, the frustration of having to work through the thought causing the lethargy to lift somewhat, though his mind seemed like it was still full of mud. He pushed himself up on his elbows and began the slow process of sitting upright to view his surroundings.

The room he sat in was composed of cold, black marble floors, covered in a layer of dust that seemed to have been blown out from the center, where a white dias was situated. In the marble of the floor, the stone on the walls and ceilings, and even on the dias in the center, maze-like lines were carved, in an almost random and chaotic pattern that the eyes seemed unwilling to focus on, bringing to mind the ethereal feeling one has when trying to remember a dream after waking up. There was a single exit from the room with a stone slab currently blocking the doorway, and several torches seemed to have been lit in braziers on the wall, high towards the ceiling, allowing the shadows to fall around the floor.

The air felt stale and cool, and tasted like copper to Kurtz, reminding him of the smell of rain on fresh dirt. He began the long process of pulling himself together, bit by bit checking to make sure he wasn’t hurt. Once he was satisfied that he was unharmed, he once again tried to re-examine his situation, faring much better the second time around.

The first conclusion he reached was that something had changed in him personally, for he was aware that in a situation such as his, panic and fear would be a common response, yet he was utterly and eerily calm. He’d never been particularly clear headed, feeling what he considered the normal amount of anxiety for any given situation, yet the lack of emotional response would have surprised him, had he the capacity to feel such at this given moment. He briefly wondered if it could be a form of traumatic shock.

Secondly, he noticed his extreme reluctance to perform physical activity. It took an extreme force of will to move in anyway, as if his entire body was simply happier just letting gravity have it and fall back down. He reflected and decided that it wasn’t hunger or thirst induced, and he felt completely awake.

The last discovery about himself he made was what he felt was ultimately the most vital. He was no longer breathing. There was no autonomic function of taking air in, and while he could with one of those extreme acts of will, force air into his lungs and let it back out, there seemed to be no need or desire for his body to do it regularly.

The curiosity that these facts brought up on an intellectual level was one of the factors that allowed him to rise up from his sitting position and attempt to walk around the room. The motion seemed to be easier the more it occurred, seeming akin to a sleeping limb returning to full feeling.

After walking for what seemed an eternity, he began to cough as air and heat began to return to his body. Between hacking rasps and shivers, feeling like he’d just been pulled from a cold river in the middle of the night, more steps were taken, feeling fear return and panic begin to set in. He began the slow shuffle over the stone door in a fevered, half mad attempt to leave the sealed room.

The stone door was immovable to the young man, and no matter how hard he flung his fist down onto the stone, not a sound was made. For all purposes that Kurtz could see, he was trapped and would most likely die down here.