The mind.
A cave of wonders. The prison cell of of our experiences often twisted, changed, or reinvented to be subjected to the version of ourselves we either wish to become, or have desperately sought to suppress.
Kenshi's was blank.
As he woke on the seventh day of the seventh cycle, he awoke to Sento on his chest, his hands clutched it tighter than any waking cycle before. His knuckles white, the blade pulsed and his breath almost torn from him as he woke in a sweat and gasp for life.
Every night closer was a night colder and a night he suppressed his mind further and further with the blade. Only it could speak to him, only it could move him. His ancestors, their visions, their need for his journey to be as he needed it to be, or as they needed it be projected into him. What was the blade and what was his memory? His or its desire?
After a cold ration on a dull flame hidden by mud from an long night's rain, he sheathed the sword and prepared to reach the entrance of the forbidden cave.
The end of his destination.
This is the end.
We have been expecting you.
The voice crept like the rustle of grass beneath his feet, except it's all been caked in dirt and rocks. Though he felt the sun above him and the pierce of it through the fabric that covered his broken eyes, his flesh was cold.
One hand on the hilt, the other reached out to find the opening of the cave.
The course grain of stone across the cold sweat of his fingers edged slowly to the opening of which must be as dark as the empty recess of his eyes. No light shined in his darkness, but he envisioned what it must be like, or let the blade envision it for him.
Meters in and he found his steps dryer, but no closer to his objective. No further in toward his destination.
The ancestors breath took his own and he moved with their steps, but his own heart beat faster as he entered and slower when he stopped to realize the voice that had been the only thing he heard inside his head had stopped.
After an ugly pause, the deafening of the world around him was too much.
He betrayed the warning of the blade in his hand and called out to his objective.
Before his lips could part in the cold air, the walls of the cave spoke first.
We have seen you. Can you see us?
"No."
He stepped further in. With no understanding of the paths that turned, the forks that coursed like jagged veins through the cave he moved only as the blade told him.
Are you a gift to us?
"No."
They send us a gift. We leave them alone.
"The town?"
He could sense the walls tighten around him. A dead end perhaps, but the moment his body turned his ears were pierced and bludgeoned by a scream and the inability to grasp the words spoken until heard again.
"Tasukete!" The walls cried
He could sense the voice was female, and the dialect possibly of the near by town. Her voice however echoed off the walls with what sounded like a hiss, and the rumble of deep chested predator that would scour the foothills for prey to enter.
Like him.
Sento turned him toward the nearest fork, and he heard it again, but the voice was another's. A male's.
"Hitori ni shinaide!" Young, perhaps early twenties.
The voices grew the closer he travelled in, but only one grew louder than all the rest, even than that inside his head.
Which reached out him again as a dead end struck him and he squeezed Sento with anger.
Why did you leave them?
"I didn't."
Did you leave them for me?
He chose not to respond.
What seemed like an hour, maybe less, maybe more, he had lost track until such time passed that physically he felt exhausted and only when he could feel the walls open again and a chamber open up did he stop to take a breath, to rest.
As he sat on the dry stale Earth and soaked in the dust around him he could hear what sounded like wet sniffling. A bear? He listened and deduced that the sound, as it waxed and waned was human.
Crying.
Sniffling.
Sadness.
A female, the one that had gotten louder and louder until this very moment.
The other voices eclipsed by the fading of hers, even the voice inside him.
Gone.
Though he could not see around him, he reached out with his free hand and felt flesh, cold, and dry quiver and recoil from him.
"What is this?" He asked as the flesh was real, and the voice suddenly louder as the woman had been startled.
She sobbed, but her words were not intelligible.
She cries for her child.
Gone.
"What is this?" Almost demanded of Sento, of the voice.
The woman recoiled when he tested her to pull her to her feet. She begged of him with her sobbing. To bring her child back for it, like her, had been left to die here.
He pulled himself up with aid of the wall and listened to her cry a moment longer. The blade pulsed and yearned to release but this time he didn't give in. Not to it, but to the voices.
Stay with us.
We need you more than them.
He backed away into rough stone. The blade quivered for release, but he could only hold it.
Unable to strike, he ran.
Don't go!
The cries grew louder. The children, the women the loudest until his knees struck mud and the heat of the sun pressed against his face again.
He couldn't stop.
He had to run.
Further and further until the nightmare was over and the vast emptiness of sleep would overcome him by force if necessary.
The screaming of the blade and the voice inside his head now lambasted him in unison.
Was he going the wrong way?
Had all of this already been a mistake?
Only until the cold comfort of night did he stop. Until exhaustion forced him down did he rest.
Only when the nothing of sleep come did he allow himself to rest.