Samsa heard the slab scrape along the stone floor and air seep into the room when the wretch tumbled backwards as the vine snapped, his feet sliding out from under him. Stumbling as he stood upright again, he found the women had slithered away through the narrow crack. His arms fell to his sides. The last shall be last. 

He was not quite alone, however; the green giant had wedged himself in the crack, preparing to force it open with his legs. The wretch rushed to his side, his baggy clothes swirling around his bony body, and joined him. As the hulking slab yielded to his (and the giant's) collective strength, he noticed strength in his lower body that he did not have before. His upper body was also stronger, proving itself a moment earlier. When the slab gave way to a wide enough opening for the man in green to pass through, Samsa let him by, and followed in after him, eager to find the exit. 

The wretch marveled at the stretching hallway, departing from the man in green. He took his time to study the walls; if a giant slab of stone obstructed the exit, how did he ever get here? How did anyone carry him here? He couldn't make sense of it; he had known one place for most of his life, and after some unsettling dreams he awakes in another one. He continued feeling the walls and looking at the torches, which looked nothing like what he was used to. 

He noticed a couple torches that were likely extinguished by the opening of the stone slab. He removed the stick from its sconce, longer and thinner than the ones "back home." A lump of ashes slid off the burnt stick and fell to the ground at his bare feet; tossing the stick to the side, he buried his hands in the ash pile. It all seemed too strange to be real; the warming sensation of the ashes told the wretch that it was. Not a guard or prisoner stalked the halls of the tower. The ashes drained through his fingers, except that which clung to his hands. He rubbed his hands together, trying to get them off, but they would not leave him. Nothing but ashes. 

His pace hastened as he saw the broken fragments of natural light scatter the halls, piecing together a complete blanket of warm, welcoming sunlight. He was a at a jog when he saw the outside, which brought his eager trotting to a halt. The air brushed against his sun-wrapped skin. The scent of the sea was thick in the air, and the sounds of the waves shoving against the immobile tower, erect midst the open ocean. His loose clothing again swirled around his thin, and now visibly pale, frame. He was almost outside; in the real outside, not confined to the yellow grass inside a stone wall. However, he was not free yet; he yearned to feel living grass in his toes and life beneath his heel. He was still trapped on this stone spire in the middle of the sea; sea which was nowhere near the landlocked prison he was used to. Furthermore, he saw walls surrounding the ocean, confining this tower and everyone in it to the black pond in which it rested. Perhaps it was not truly ocean, but who or what could make such a great body of water themselves? Perhaps the same thing that built such an imposing spire. 

He could see a rusted door, thick and daunting, slightly open; to Samsa, it was gaping. Living in a prison, one sees many doors, and one knows which doors were carelessly left cracking and which ones were sneaked into and hastily left gaping. Someone walked in, and it was likely the other girl that was with them. In all of his dawdling, he found himself behind the other two, and had been for a while now. The green one and orange one were off to the rusted door, and Samsa was behind them; the wretch eyed their vibrant colors: green, a lively, youthful color, and orange, a gentle shade of sunshine. He looked down at himself and the nothingness around him. He started with nothing before he came to this strange world, and he had nothing here. Still following the two, he looked down at his ash covered hands. Ashes to ashes.