nothing.

Something pushes you down steep stone stairs. You can feel the heat rising as you descend. Burning light illuminates the tunnel ahead, and if your hands weren’t holding onto the sharp stone walls, stretching to find balance, you’d use them to cover your eyes. 

But the steps keep descending, and the light only brighter. Down. Down. Down. Until the whole passage is burning and the walls sweat and your hands slip and you fall.

And you find yourself in a chamber, deep underground, the outcrop of rock beneath you with only a thin carved bridge ahead, not far above a river of fire. You can hear the screams below you. You pretend not to. 

You know what this place is.

There is no guide. There is no other way. The platform is barely big enough for you, and the invisible hand in the small of your back urges you on. You walk sideways across, and cannot help but look down. Your legs shake, but you do not stop. You cannot stop. Something tells you that you couldn’t fall, even if you wanted to. 

This is not your end.

There is a gap in the rock on the other side. It draws your gaze, and the hand leads you towards it. There is no time to catch your breath, wipe the sweat from your face, if there is any time at all, down here. You slip between the jagged rock, the space barely enough for you to squeeze through, and it only grows narrower, until it presses into your spine and chest, stooping you, down onto your hands and knees, crawling through, and all the while the heat only grows.

All at once, the passage widens and the heat dissipates with it, and for a moment everything is still and dark. Until another push from behind, and another chamber opens ahead, ice white and freezing, the wind whips up and the blizzard engulfs you. 

You must go on. 

You move forwards, what you believe to be forwards. And each step colder. The sweat on your hands and face freezes, and the shivers turn to shakes, and each breath is a dagger to your lungs. 

High pitched squealing rings around your head, and you do not know if it comes from within or above. You stumble, and at your feet sits another, almost just like you, huddled over in the cold. The ice from their nose is long and they shake, but they can not speak, instead their cold dark eyes stare at you below frozen brows. Arm cracks the ice upon its surface when they raise it, and a frost bitten hand points ahead. You follow, and behind you hear the crack of the arm lowering. 

This is not your end.

In the distance is a gaping hole in the blizzard, and you make for it. This must be the place. What else could there be? Beyond the gap you look behind and see nothing but white, and looking ahead there is nothing, nothing at all.

And in this moment it begins to come back to you. They had promised it was only a routine procedure. You had promised that you would be better. You are not supposed to be here. 

But, you are. 

Who said you were not supposed to be here? You know what you have done. 

You know what you have done.

What wouldn’t you do for another chance? 

Is there anything you can do?

Is there some way to undo, to make right?

You know you belong here.