There was a drip that echoed around the baron cave. It was the drip that he forced himself to focus on; that he forced himself to count between the seconds before there was another. It was all he could do to ignore it, to block out the sounds that seeped through the stone. There was no light, no warmth, no life that reached these dark caves. For so long there has only been him, and pain. Pain thrived in this place, and with it, fear. Iron scraped over stone as he shifted his weight, his eyes never leaving the bead of water that struggled to hold on to the jagged rock that hung overhead. If only he could move a little further, he’d try to catch it between his dry lips. Instead, he counted, and counted until his mind was numb and his ears deaf to everything else around him. Time did not exist, time was forever, and forever he had been here. Away from the warmth of the sun, of the light of day.