Faust started walking down the pathway. It was darker than the main room. After a few minutes, the uneven ground was no longer his only obstacle—stalagmites rose from the floor, while stalactites loomed from the ceiling. They obstructed his passage, forcing him to walk carefully. But it wasn't enough to stop him, so he continued, marking his path with small traces of blood. Barely visible, but enough.
He continued on the descending path for quite some time. Eventually, unusual stone formations appeared, catching his attention. They were like shallow holes, his hands were enough to reach the deeper part of it. Inside these holes, something piqued his interest. Though he hadn't yet reached the end of the left pathway, he had already discovered something—moss.
Faust approached it, examining it closely.
It was odorless. Its dark-green hue was nearly blue, and it emitted a faint glow. He scraped a small piece off using the stone in his hand and placed a tiny sample on his tongue. It had no taste. He swallowed it and waited, observing his body for any reaction.
Nothing happened.
Faust decided it was safe, at least safer than the worms. He scraped a handful and ate it on the spot, continuing until he was almost full. Then, he gathered even more, using his shirt as a makeshift bag to carry the glowing moss back. This area had dozens of holes, and the holes contained a vast amount of moss—enough to sustain him for quite some time. With this, the food problem was no longer a concern.
Faust returned to the main room and, after reaching the illuminated area, placed the moss against the wall opposite the 'worm-holes', as he decided to name it. He repeated the moss-gathering trip a few more times until he had what he considered sufficient.
During these trips, he began to notice something strange.
"Strange… Besides the worms, I haven't found a single other creature in this cave."
Caves usually had bats, insects, and sometimes even larger creatures. This one, however, was almost completely empty.
When he returned to the main room, Faust was already quite exhausted from all the walking. He decided to sit down and rest for a while. Nearly a full day had passed since he began making these 'food trips'. He was still a kid, his body weak and prone to fatigue.
Fortunately, his eyes had adapted further. Now he could see more than an arm's lenght in front of him, a vast improvement from when he first fell into the cave. Still, he preferred to stay in the 'light place', as he called it, near the deep water basin.
After staring at the worm-holes for some time, his eyelids began to droop, and before long, he fell asleep.
***
Faust found himself on a dirt road, surrounded by trees and grass—he was in a forest. His hands were stained red, and at his feet lay the body of a wolf, its organs spilled out.
He began drawing geometric shapes on the ground using the wolf's blood. He drew on rocks, tree trunks, grass-anything in his path.
"Did I make the right adjustments?"
He stood in the center of the drawing—a rune.
Blue energy began to form in his hands, spreading until his whole body glowed.
The blood too began to glow faintly, and the wind picked up. Leaves and insects close to the formation were swept away.
Suddenly, an explosion erupted from the blood, destroying the rune.
"This time was better. I'm almost there."
He sat down beside a nearby tree, then closed his eyes.
***
Faust slowly opened his eyes. By now, he was no longer surprised by these strange dreams.
"This is already the fourth one. I'm almost sure it has something to do with that book." He mumbled.
Just then, a voice echoed in his mind.
"Correct."
Faust's heart skipped a beat. He hadn't expected to hear an answer from his own mind.
"Am I finally going insane? Maybe all this time in the cave is messing with my head…" Faust muttered.
The voice echoed again.
"No, you are not."
"What?!" Faust jumped up and started to look around "Are you messing with me? Is this some sort of trick using the cave?"
The voice answered once more.
"Maybe, maybe not."
Faust fell silent, processing what had just happened. After a few seconds, it clicked—he had heard this voice before. The first time, he had dismissed it, thinking he just heard things. But now, hearing it again, he wasn't sure what to think. Still, he quickly regained his mental composure, calming himself down.
He walked around, glancing at the main room and part of the left pathway. Everything was still empty. He went back to the 'light area.'
He sat on the ground again. Deep in thought, before speaking.
"What are you then? Being all mysterious won't help anyone."
Soon enough, the voice responded again.
"Book."
"So it was that book. I knew something wasn't right. A book shouldn't make someone sweat and get that tired. There's more to it, isn't there? Those things were runes, right? You used them to somehow get into my mind? How? And those dreams… you did that, too, didn't you?"
In the brief moments it took for Faust to accept what was happening, he fired off a rapid series of questions, his voice full of curiosity. Still, he was careful, trying to probe the voice catiously. Trusting an unknown being capable of entering his mind didn't feel like a great idea.
Why wasn't he more shocked by all this? It was a good question. Faust was still a kid, but he was open-minded enough, he also adapted quickly to his circumstances. That alone, though, couldn't fully explain why he wasn't panicking over a voice in his head. After everything he had been through in such a short span of time—his entire life destroyed, his parents killed, his village ravaged, trapped in a cave, wounded, and almost starved—it seemed almost trivial.
His heart and mind had always been quite strong, but now they felt reforged by his experiences. A voice in his head didn't seem as bad compared to everything else.
The voice answered his questions, one by one.
"Yes. Yes. Yes. Kinda."
"Why do you talk like that? You don't use full sentences, just isolated words. Are you limited somehow?"
"Yes."
After talking for a while, Faust discovered some things about this voice.
It would only use up to four words at a time, then it would pause for a few seconds—almost a minute—before responding again. The voice was somewhat vague, but honest in certain ways. Faust realized that he was almost limited to only ask yes or no questions, with little room for elaboration in the answers. Of course, there was an easy workaround—Faust could ask something, and then the voice would respond with multiple answers, each four words long. But this took quite some time, if they were going to have a full conversation, it could take hours, maybe a whole day. It also would not respond to thoughts, Faust had to ask it using his voice.
Faust asked a few basic questions, trying to learn about it.
He found out that the voice had known of his situation from the moment he read the book—that was enough for it to somehow enter his mind. The voice could also influence him to do things he didn't want to. Though it never said as much outright, Faust was certain of it.
Faust's mind immediately flashed back to the moment he had run away, leaving his mother behind after hearing the command 'Run' in his mind. He fell silent for a long time, unsure of how to feel about it. He knew he probably couldn't have changed anything even if he stayed with her, but it was still hard to accept how easily he had been influenced into abandoning his mom to die, just as the voice made him.
Of course, the panic he had felt in that moment likely played a part in his actions. After all, it's natural for humans to prioritize their own survival, choosing their lives over others. To choose death is unnatural. His emotions were divided, but he decided that worrying about it at the moment wouldn't be useful, so he dismissed it for now.
Since he associated the voice with the dreams, he decided to call it "Red", as strands of red hair always appeared in front of his eyes.
The voice never answered what it was exactly, nor how it had entered Faust mind. It would simply remain silent when those questions arose, meaning it could choose when to withhold information. Faust also wasn't sure whether it could lie or not, but he decided to assume that it could. That way he would remain cautious.
After assessing all of this, Faust had a rough idea of what the voice was capable of. Suddenly, the runes came back to his mind. Since Red seemed highly knowledgeable about them, Faust wondered if he could find a way to use them, maybe the runes that had once seemed useless could now serve a purpose—if Red acted as his guide.
"Could you teach me more? Or at least how to use runes? Maybe there's a way to use them without mana?" Faust asked.
"Maybe. Mana first."
"So I can't use them without mana? No other way?" Even though he was not very hopeful, Faust still asked, a negative answer wouldn't bother him much.
"No. Mana teach." Red answered.
"You can teach me how to use mana?!" Faust was slightly surprised at this, he didn't expect to be able to learn it.
"Yes. But hard!"
"That's not a problem. I want to learn." After their previous conversation, Faust had finally gotten a grasp of Red's way of talking.
After that, Red explained a few things to him in a conversation that lasted almost two hours. He couldn't simply "teach" mana to Faust, his body wouldn't withstand it. If he tried, his body would collapse on itself, his heart would be destroyed, and he would die. Before anything else, Faust had to train, strengthening his body to at least a decent level so he could endure mana.
Mana was a natural force, like water or fire. If you touch fire without protection, you get burned. If you dive too deep into the ocean, the pressure will crush you.
Mana was the same. If someone tried to wield it without a body strong enough to handle it, they would die—or at the very least, suffer fatal injuries. It was that simple.
Faust understood that. He didn't question it. Even if Red was wrong, or lying, strengthening his body would still benefit him.
At the moment, his body was weak. He could barely manage five push-ups and fewer than fifteen sit-ups. But Faust was determined to change, to get stronger. He had already considered it; strengthening his body aligned with his goals. Now, he had an even better reason: Learning mana.