castles crumbling | revel, day one

Fire licks up your clamoring lungs, biting at the fleshy, paper-thin pink mass. The exhaustion had already begun to set in a couple of minutes before, but each time your body began to slow, you told yourself, 'just a couple more steps.' It took you far enough, though. Hunched over, with your skeleton-like fingers clasping onto your knees for whatever support you can find, you breathe ragged, drawn-out breaths.

The air burns as it travels down your throat. In and out, in and out. You have to coach yourself through it - you've never been much of a runner. Or much of anything that required the body and all its muscles and tendons to strain against the shell of yourself.

Minutes go by and you're still contorted there, trying to regain your breath. The broken pillars and crumbling stone edifices laugh at you, the wind whistling as it blows past. They've stood here for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Endured countless storms. And you can barely run two miles without folding in on yourself.

But slowly, you catch yourself and become whole again, racking your beryl eyes over your surroundings. The towering pillars, large but collapsed. You wonder what they could've held up in their time, fabled castles like one out of a fairy tale, perhaps? Honestly, it's breathtaking. And you just got yours back, so you rest your back on one of the columns. Carefully, you push at it and hold your cold hands against the withered stone, just to make sure it doesn't topple over you.

And you breathe once again.

Safe, for now.

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