The bright light from the mansion was fading and a new one took its place. Just as bright, it beckoned for her attention. But there was something different with this light. It pulsed.
The light glimmered at an interval as though alive and calling out. At first it was gentle like a lullaby. Then its tempo increased… rapidly. With each increase the air around the maze began to burn. Then a crawling scotching heat wave ran across the old mansion's compound setting everything that was dry to flames, which was everything.
Karin's heart raced on realizing this wasn't apart of the test anymore.
"Calm down… calm down." She tried to slow her breathing.
Suddenly the light's shinning tempo increased both in speed and power. A sonic wave washed across the maze unravelling it to the ground. At the center the well glowed a bright green in full display. Splinters flew everywhere attacking Karin where she stood. She planted her feet to the ground making her stance against the force and guarding her face from the flying debris.
"What's going on?" her voice wondered, confused.
The debris rose with dirt covering all the burning dead vegetation and putting them out. The dying flames turned into smoke and the smoke turned grey in the bright light.
Karin squinted her eyes looking at the well. The hymn in her ears was growing distant. Replaced by a splashing sound. The sound of something heavy being thrown into a pooled-up body of water and exciting some water droplets into the air, just like from the illusion from earlier.
And just as the risen water droplets landed back to the pool of water, the hymn completely stopped. It was gone with the wind.
***
Her clothes were completely scrapped and covered in unearthed soil. There were one or two thorns stuck in her hair irritating her skin. Her shoes, just like roots, were deep under the earth covered in soil that had just erupted from the surfing wave that had scrapped through the compound. Whatever flames were started in the beginning were gone just as fast as they rose.
Karin dusted of her clothes and plucked out the thorns in her hair. She coughed trying to get the dust out of her throat as she wrestled her shoes from the ground.
The devastation around her was immense. The maze of scrubs and giant thorn bushes were all gone, flattened into and across the earth paving a straight way to the well. The well was the only thing that seemed to be holding up. And it also held something strange.
The fountain on the other side of the compound was knocked down from its foundations and was currently lying on its side. Most of the other things that weren't made of stone was down and out. TKO'd one might say. Even the stone pavement from the old mansion's door to the main gate was nothing but brown dirt spread across its former whiteness.
What in hell was going on here? In as much Karin wanted real world experience, she didn't think it would come this way. And what was the deal with the well?
Questions came, but in her scared heart she knew the answers could only be found in one place. The well!
She fluttered her eyes once more and met the new spectacle that phased around the old well.
Its form was misty with a ghostly translucence. Its back arched such that its hand could touch the ground whenever it walked on its weak bended knees. Skin hang loose from its body like viscous mud hanging from a cliff. One would call them wrinkles but one could find more justice in saying that the old man standing by the well was just a skeleton trying to holding on to the skin in top of it.
The well itself looked different. It had the small misty ghostly glow just like the old man. The mist spread around it shimmering in a algae green shine, shifting and forming into a final and grand well.
Karin walked closer. She didn't know why but something was telling her to.
As she walked closer and closer, the old man by the well rested his hand by the pulley handle of the misty well and began to wind. Every step she took, a wind. Over and over until the rope of the misty well had only one wind left.
The old man wound the pulley of the well one last time. Floating from the well a large pool of well surfaced. It rose like a water spilling from a sink and turning into a never ending stream. the water poured forward, splashing on the ground and forming a pool of mire.
The etherical and misty looking well started to fade… evaporate with the mist that made it. The old man by the well followed suit.
Before leaving his mouth muttered. His head made a slight turn and looked at the confused Karin. It smiled, a long and weighted smile as its form became undone disappearing like fog in the morning sun.
The shimmer of the well faded gradually. The mist crawled of the surface of the well and faded to the moon.
Karin started to feel a wet sensation on her legs. She looked down and the mud from the sludge had flowed across the ground, like roots seeking water, and was now drowning her feet. Her eyes followed the stream and the higher she went the more the brown mud turned to a faint scarlet.
On the floor a figure lay. It was in what used to be white but currently brown and red stained clothing with a light cerulean blue sash carelessly ripped and opened around his waist. There is a hint of burning flesh coming from it. On closer inspection a charred scar slit through the figure's belly with cooling sizzling as some water evaporated from it.
She moved closer and noticed a deep, dark brown, almost charcoal-like undertone hair nested on the ground with a hardening pool of blood dripping down. She moved closer and the muddy figure took shape. It was a boy.
The realization didn't get time to settle.
Behind her she heard hefty footsteps. Then her name.
"Karin?" Kento called, worried and confused." Who are these people?" he asked.
In his hands two people lay, neither in good shape. One a bunny, her ears droopy, her eyes completely shut as she groaned in pain.
"Cilia?!"
In the other an unfamiliar girl. She was young, even younger than her, with burns across her skin that didn't do her justice. Who was she? Who was he? She wondered, her eyes swaying from the boy to the girl.
And why was any of this happening?
"Karin!" A voice called.
His arrival was as late as ever. Confused and unorganized. But at that moment he was a relief to Karin.
"Mr Kisharu…"