It was dark.

So dark, and she couldn't see.

It was dark, and the only thing she could hear was the steady throb of her own heartbeat. The blackness pressed down on her lidded eyes, surrounding her.

Kaisa remembered nothing. As far as she was concerned, she had just sprung into being in this damp, dark place. Or perhaps she had always been here. Time held no meaning in this unchanging existence.

The only thing that she knew was her name.

It was dark, and she couldn't even see her own limbs as she unfolded them from their curled positions. Her sharp claws explored her own unfamiliar body, probing her existence and clicking quietly against hard scales wherever they touched.

Her furled wings lay tight against her ridged back, forced into an uncomfortable position by the round walls of what was both her prison and the end of her world. A sharp prickling at the base of her snout proved, after further investigation, to be the end her own tail, armed with short spines along the upper part.

It was dark, but she had never known light. All Kaisa had was an irresistible urge- no, a need- to escape.

She pressed her claws hard against the boundaries of her prison, scratching, biting with sharp teeth. Yet, despite all of her efforts, the walls did not yield. Kaisa might have fallen back in exhaustion, has the walls not restricted her movements to so little. With a great effort, she rammed her head against the barrier. A loud cracking noise rang through the darkness, but Kaisa couldn't be sure if it was the walls that had emitted that sound, or her own head. Again, her collapse was only prevented by the very barrier that she was trying to defeat. The enemy that she could not see, but must conquer in order to escape.

The pounding of Kaisa's heart was now accompanied by the pain throbbing through her head where she had attempted to break through the wall. Guided only by raw instinct, and granted not even the weapon of sight, she had to break down these barriers that imprisoned her. Summoning the last of her strength, she whipped her spined tail at the walls, aiming at the same place her head had hit. Another "crack" sounded, even louder than before, as the spikes lodged in the damp hardness and held fast. Kaisa didn't feel like she had the strength to pull it out anymore. It would be so easy to just give up and admit defeat right here. But something inside her demanded it, screaming at her to just give it the final push, that there could be no such thing as submitting to her unseen opponent.

As the thick spine slid out of the hole it had pierced in the walls, Kaisa's prison collapsed. The edges of her universe shattered, and a blinding light poured into her consciousness and flooded everything.