Nathan doesn't know how long he's been stuck here, nor how he even managed to get in or why he did so.
It has to have been atleast two days, or atleast it felt around that long.
He's been trapped in a really big house for that time, wandering around the two floors and the different rooms.
He constantly changed his path hoping to see something change, but it all remained the same.
Why not break out?
He tried.
He came up to a window a while ago after finding no exits, tried to open it and failed...then tried to bash it open...then punched it out of frustration.
As a result, he is both stuck, and injured. His entire right knuckle is bleeding, and the house has NO medicine or bandages in it.
So he made do with rags from the laundry room, clean ones obviously.
'What kind of family is rich enough for a two story, five bedroom, three bathroom house, but not rich enough for a medkit?!'
Just as Nathan 'serenely' pondered trying the windows again, he stumbled onto something new...
It was a conffessional hall, with rows of seats and a podium infront
It was huge.
A grand and ethereal place, so majestic that he lost himself within it's beauty for a moment.
There was no way for somrthing this massive to fit inside a two story home, and when he turned around, he found that the corridor behind him had stretched out infinitely longer than he remembered it being.
"...Cu–...Consarnit."
The old timey expression forced it's way out of his mouth, replacing a much more vulgar expletive.
Seeing no other way, he entered further and walked through the path between the seats, stopping infront of the podium and looking up at it.
It was white, wooden, somehow appearing to be the most majestic object in the entire hall, dwarfing even the hall itself.
For a second, he hesitated, before turning left and walking towards the spiral staircase that led to the podium.
He took the steps slowly, ascending the staircase. His steps echoed across the empty hall, breaking through the pervasive silence that seemed to cushion the place, even if for a moment.
He walked, as if hypnotized, eyes glued onto a book splayed open on the podium, stopping infront of it without a word.
He saw a text, a short one, on the book's pages.
"The soul begs for release, it tears the cage, it embraces freedom."
Nathan read it out loud, slightly puzzled and unnerved by the...poem?
However, as soon as he spoke those words aloud, he heard a bell...a loud one, resembling church bells...it sounded far away, yet for some reason...
He turned around.
There was nothing behind him...
Not the empty hall he was in, mind you, not a wall either.
Instead...it was utter blankness, the absence of presence.
Not even darkness, just an endless nothingness he couldn't comprehend.
Then, eyes appeared.
Everywhere, countless, he couldn't even begin to approximate their number. Before long, Nathan lost his ability to count altogether.
Seconds stretched towards eternity, the cold, unbending rules of time seemed to defer to the strangeness. All the while, those eyes looked at him, past him, through him, behind him.
They did not blink, they did not tremble or shift like human eyes do, they are not human.
Those aren't human eyes.
They are not human.
They are not human They are not human
They are not human They are not human
They are not human They are not human—
Suddenly, the voice that did not belong to him went silent, replaced instead with a soft, amorous whisper.
"The line between aberration and ascension is subjective, with our own belief as the core of it's direction...tell me, if so, why must we struggle?"
"...What?"
Before Nathan could even regain his bearings and answer the imposed question, the echoing, soft voice spoke again.
Nathan could not discern whether the speaker was male or female.
"At this moment, the previous, and the next, all of the fundamental circles have intersected. Say, if so, what does our struggle amount to?"
"...You're not letting me answe-"
Once again, just as Nathan used his vocal cords, the voice interrupted him.
'If destiny is preordained, and all the world's worth has been rendered null, tell me, why not cast it all aside and wallow in despair?'
This time, he heard the voice directly in his head, and saw a pair of pale eyes looking down at him. It was unnatural, they had two pupils, rotating slowly around the center of the iris, enchanting and haunting at the same time.
"..."
Nathan did not hear the voice again, surrounded by darkness and nothing more.
"...If you're waiting for an answer...then..."
Nathan paused, an unnerving calmness permeating his mind, burying the emotions that should have lashed out.
"If...the only thing we can do is struggle...then why not struggle? Meaningless or not, in my eyes the actions of the individual are worth as much as one believes they are worth, regardless of outsider perspective."
Only silence answered him, before suddenly, he felt a tug on the back of his head and suddenly, he fell onto...the ground?
His perspective shifted, his brain churning out impossible, useless signals as a pervasive sense of confusion overtook him, mixed with a faint, crushing sensation.
Almost as of he was melted wax being squeezed through a tube.
Upon looking around, his senses and memories came flooding back in like a tsunami, sending him into a brief daze.
The overload of impossible events and incomprehensible happenings boiled his brain for a solid three seconds, before he instinctively disassociated.
He no longer concerned himself with trying to comprehend what had happened, shifting his focus on more important topics...for example.
"Where in the actual f**k am I?"
What surrounded him was nothing short of an underground medieval torture chamber, darkness wherever he looked and a thick, permeating stench of blood, not much better than the murder site he was just at.
One of his hands was chained to the wall, and he was wearing nothing but a ragged old tunic that definitely did not match his usual fashion style.
'It's super filthy.'
Nathan did not appreciate being dirty or cold, he wasn't well adjusted to temperature changes, so the sudden chill was quite uncomfortable.
He was already missing his thick, soft, heavy trench coat that his grandfather gifted him.
Unfortunately, there was no sign of it anywhere, and therefore...he refocused on his situation.
"...Chains?"
Almost unconsciously, he murmured out loud, his voice hoarse and unfamiliar to even himself, looking at the rusty, dangling chain connected to the cuff on his right wrist...his arms were utterly bare, with unnaturaly pale skin, barely any muscle and a visible lack of Vitamin D.
Almost like a corpse, he could clearly see the veins. If not for the blood he saw flowing inside, he'd have assumed the arm wasn't even alive anymore.
'The wall seems to be crumbling...maybe I can pull the chain out?'
And so he did...or, tried. Only to realize how utterly weak his body is. He didn't remember ever being this out of shape.
He couldn't even lift his hand all the way up, nor could he tug on the chain without his bones creaking.
It was like trying to move a mountain with the arm strength of a sheltered, sickly child. The motion caused his hair to fall over his face, causing him to pause at it's color.
'...Blonde?'
Nathan was absolutely certain his hair wasn't blonde, but he also couldn't remember what it was supposed to be.
'...Black?Brown?Ginger?White?Turquoise?...can hair be turquoise? No...yes?.'
Then, Nathan paused.
'N-no way...'
Was he bald?!?!
Actually, scratch that, he doesn't remember being bald...but he also doesn't remember what type of hair he had.
'What the hell am I even thinking about?'
For some reason, Nathan felt like he was going off his rocker. His thoughts were random and all over the place, taking only a moment to get distracted.
'So...I'm trapped in some salacious dungeon, terribly out of shape and starved, aswell as severely dehydrated, unsure whether I'm alone, in danger, or soon to be saved...and most likely, this body isn't even my own.'
Nathan paused, his brain finally managing to hold his focus for a while, as he reflexively vocalized his frustrations in a hoarse, grating voice.
"...Consarnit."
He had picked up the habit of saying this from his late father, who he mysteriously could not remember at all. Was he even a man? Maybe he was born to two women.
Wait...that wasn't possible, was it?
'Focus.'
He snapped out of his distracted state and began swaying slightly...as weak and stick-like as he may be, his body still had some weight, although negligible. He would just move around and try to shift the chain using physics.
The chain dangled, making a loud noise with every movement, the nail holding it to the wall, already loose from the years, slowly began to make it's way out.
It wasn't a pleasant process, every movement weighing on Heathcliff's thin limbs, creating a prevalent ache and soreness that usually comes with strenuous activity, but he didn't care.
Stubbornly, he used his meager weight to pull the nail until it seemed on the verge of falling out, before stopping.
'If i pull it out like this, it might hit me'
Nathan wasn't in a state where he could tank any damage, even if blunt, the solid metal nail would undoubtedly hurt the current him quite abit.
So, he paused, and took a step forward to stretch the chain, his weak legs trembling as he held himself.
'This f**king body...'
A light gust could probably blow him away, that's how scrawny his current body is.
A sensation of weakness that was once unfamiliar to him, now pervades through ever inch of his new body.
Thankfully, however, after pulling with all of the meager strength his body had to offer, he managed to finally extricate the accursed nail from it's stony prison.
It fell down on the stony ground, the already structurally compromised material cracking slightly under the solid metal nail as it bounced abit.
Nathan exhaled slightly, before looking at the cuff on his wrist.
'How do I get it off?'
After a brief moment of musing, Nathan began looking around the area...it was a pretty wide room, with dozens of human husks, formerly alive, now mere decorations, strewn around the walls like grotesque masterpieces.
'...Definitely a torture chamber.'
With that thought, Nathan slowly shuffled along the room, dragging the chain and nail with him. He rummaged wherever he thought he could find something useful, before finally reaching what appeared to be a cabinet.
After opening it, Nathan found an array of keys, they were rusty and covered in dried blood, as if used as instruments of torture instead of saws and knives.
There were exactly 37.
He picked one up and attempted to put it inside the cuff on his wrist.
It didn't fit.
He tried another one.
It didn't fit.
He began trying them all on the cuff, one after the other.
'This one...nope...this one? No...This...nah...oh, there we go.'
On his 37th attempt, he finally got the one he needed to free himself...tossing the key aside as he removed the cuff on his wrist.
He looked at the bail and chain on the ground, and then at his hands.
'I could have used it as a weapon, if it wasn't so damn heavy...'
He meant the nail, ofcourse. Normally, Nathan would have brought it with him as a rudimentary self defense weapon, but with his current body, it would only encumber him.
He just needed a way out, the less mishaps on the way, the better. He hoped he wouldn't need a weapon.
Then, he began walking towards the far right, where he could see an open double door...and a dark corridor behind it.
'This is the only way out...'