Time passed.
Not in the way it had before, not marked by alarms, nurses, or even the dim sunlight of a hospital window.
It passed as a rhythm of discomfort and quiet, measured in hunger, thirst, pain, and the faint drip of water from the walls.
Days melted into nights, though there was no difference between them. Weeks followed, and then months.
He counted them sometimes, though not precisely.
The counting was more of a habit than a tool—fingers tracing invisible lines on the floor, the occasional hum to himself. It helped him mark time, though it also reminded him how endless it was.
At first, everything felt unfamiliar. The darkness, the cold metal door, the echoing drip of water.
His body hurt constantly from the residual poison, from the stiffness of crawling on the stone floor, from muscles unused in the old ways.
But gradually, his body adapted. Not healed fully, not comfortably, but accustomed enough to move without agony dominating every thought.
The weakness in his arms, once sharp and relentless, became a dull background ache.
The hunger and thirst still gnawed at him, but he learned to ration the small water he could gather.
He crawled less and used his new strength cautiously, testing the space in measured ways.
He learned which spots had more water dripping, which walls were weaker, which sections of the floor echoed more clearly if he shouted.
Sometimes he spoke aloud to keep himself sane.
"Okay… drip is slower here," he muttered one day, crawling to a corner and tilting the bowl.
"That's probably enough for the next two… hours?"
He laughed quietly at himself. A dry, humorless laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.
Other times, he muttered things just to hear a sound besides his own heartbeat.
"You've got this, Zhiyu. Just… don't die yet. And stop thinking about poison for five seconds."
His voice echoed, thin and uneven in the dark. He didn't expect a reply. He didn't get one. But it helped, somehow, to speak to himself like that.
Months passed, and his mind shifted in ways he hadn't expected. At first, he clung to logic. Time measured by dripping water and movement.
Hunger and thirst carefully noted. The panel in front of him, numbers and conditions, became his anchor.
But slowly, sanity frayed at the edges.
The endless silence gnawed at him. The same walls, the same dark floor, the same routine day after day, became oppressive.
He began imagining patterns in the echoes, voices in the drip of water, shapes in the shadows that weren't there.
"Someone's coming," he whispered one day, holding the bowl under a dripping spot. No one came.
He waited. The dripping continued. "They're… watching me, aren't they?"
He shook his head. "No… don't be stupid."
Hours later, he found himself talking to the panel.
Not asking questions, not testing systems, just speaking aloud.
"Hey, stats… don't judge me. I'm doing my best."
Sometimes he laughed at the absurdity of it.
Sometimes he cried quietly, curled in a corner, wishing for sleep that lasted more than minutes.
He began noticing small changes in his thoughts.
He was calculating constantly, trying to predict when the footsteps would come, when the food would arrive, when he could drink.
But his calculations sometimes spiraled, imagining possibilities too dark or too strange.
"What if… no one ever comes? What if this place isn't even a world for people?" he said aloud, voice small and ragged.
He waited for a reply. There was none.
He reminded himself of logic again, repeating it like a mantra. "Drip equals time. Drip equals survival. Count drops. Count movements. Count numbers. Numbers don't lie. I'm going to die."
But the more he counted, the more the numbers took over. Sometimes he imagined the panel itself moving, laughing at him.
Sometimes he pictured the shadows shifting on the walls, shaping into faces or creatures.
Even in those moments, he remained practical. He gathered water. He conserved energy.
He touched his body, tested it, stretched it.
Survival remained the focus, even if his mind wandered into corners that made him shiver.
Months in, he had grown physically stronger than when he woke up in this body, but mentally, he was stretched thin.
He was sharp when he needed to be, humble in his thinking, but sometimes he caught himself muttering nonsense aloud, tracing imaginary lines in the darkness, imagining conversations with shadows that didn't exist.
"Hey… you… don't move," he whispered one evening, pointing at the wall as if it could answer.
"I'm watching you too, okay?"
He sighed, lying back. "I'm losing it. But I'm still alive. I'm going insane."
Time passed slowly, painfully, but in that stillness, he adapted. He became observant, cautious, and methodical.
The world outside might have been cruel, invisible, or nonexistent, but inside this cell, he learned to measure, to wait, to survive. And yet, in quiet moments, when the dripping water was the only sound, he realized how fragile his mind had become.
It felt like another day had started, though there was nothing to mark it except the way his body felt slightly different. Less heavy. Less sick. He checked the panel out of habit, more reflex than hope.
There was something new.
Poison resistance.
He stared at it for a long moment, then let out a quiet breath. His body still hurt, but the constant burning and nausea were gone.
"So… that stuff didn't kill me," he said softly. "Good to know."
The relief barely settled before something else happened.
Metal screamed.
Not one door. All of them. The sound hit at once, echoing violently through the space.
His heart jumped so hard it hurt. He flinched, pressing himself against the wall, breath shallow and fast.
"Okay. Okay. Calm down," he whispered.
He waited for the familiar sequence. Door opens. Bowl slides in. Door slams shut.
It didn't happen.
Seconds passed. Then more. The noise faded, but there was no closing sound. No footsteps moving on.
His door stayed open.
He stared at the darkness where the doorway should be, pulse pounding in his ears. His first thought was that he was hallucinating again. Stress. Isolation. His brain making things up.
He squeezed his eyes shut, counted to ten, then opened them.
The opening was still there.
His stomach twisted. Fear crept in, slow and cold.
"This is worse," he muttered. "This is way worse."
An open door meant change. Change meant uncertainty. He didn't know what was outside. He didn't know if someone was waiting. He didn't know if this was a test or a trap.
He stayed where he was, back against the wall, staring at the open space without moving toward it.
"I'm going nuts." he said quietly, more to himself than anything else.
His hands trembled slightly.
For the first time in months, the cell wasn't the cage anymore. And that terrified him more than the darkness ever had.
He forced himself to think instead of panic.
'If I were the one running this place, why would I open all the doors?' he thought. 'It wouldn't be kindness. It wouldn't be a mistake.'
He ran through the possibilities slowly, the way he always did when he needed to stay calm.
Let them starve faster.
Let them kill each other.
Test who can move on their own.
Lead them somewhere else.
The last one made the most sense.
'You don't open every door unless you want people to leave them,' he thought.
That didn't make it safe. It just made it logical.
He pushed himself up and moved toward the doorway. He kept one hand pressed against the wall, fingers sliding along the cold surface.
The metal felt the same as before, solid and real.
This wasn't a hallucination.
Outside, there was no torchlight. No flicker. Just darkness stretching out beyond the cell.
He hesitated, then stepped through.
He remembered the direction the man had always come from.
Right side.
He turned that way instinctively, clinging to the wall as he moved. His steps were slow and careful, feet testing the ground before committing.
His heart beat hard, but his breathing stayed steady.
'If this is a trap, panicking won't help,' he thought.
He kept moving along the wall, one step at a time, following the only path he knew.
He kept walking until he noticed a faint flicker of light in the distance.
"What is that?"
It was small, unstable, but unmistakable.
His steps slowed immediately.
The light hurt his eyes even from far away. He had grown too used to darkness, to feeling his way through space instead of seeing it.
The brightness felt sharp, almost aggressive, like it was pressing directly into his skull.
He stopped and turned his face slightly away.
'If I walk straight into that and go blind for even a second, I'm dead,' he thought. 'One hit. That's all it takes.'
So he waited.
He stayed at a distance and let his eyes adjust little by little. He blinked repeatedly, squinting, then opening them again.
Each time, he forced himself to look a bit longer than before. The pain eased slowly, like a stubborn headache refusing to leave all at once.
He didn't rush.
Time had taught him that rushing only made things worse. He stood there, breathing evenly, letting the light become something tolerable instead of something lethal.