The Labyrinth was strange, fundamentally. But then again, it was a labyrinth—it was never meant to be normal.
Its walls rippled like water, and the pathways shimmered between fluidity and crystal—like frozen rivers pretending to be corridors.
"Thales Miray, are you prepared for what you are about to witness?" Evward Gibbon spoke softly behind him. "No one meets the same memories in this twisting maze. I hope they remember you."
"Mr. Gibbon, no offense," Thales said with a glimmer of arrogance. "But I believe this will be a cakewalk. I've already seen good and bad—ugly and beautiful. I want it all. I don't mind anything, in spades."
Gibbon only smiled.
"Have a nice flight," he said—and shoved Thales from behind.
"Huh—?!"
"Ahhhhh!"
Thales screamed as he plummeted into darkness, falling vertically with alarming speed. Burning books flew at his face, making him flinch and cry out in pain. The watery walls of the maze swallowed him, then spat him out again.
He wasn't alone.
Wingless birds swirled around him—Kazuo-Ōe. He remembered them from a book. Now, they fell with him.
And then suddenly—he didn't fall at all. He was upright. Still. Like the descent had never happened.
The Kazuo-Ōe circled around him, their cries layered and haunting.
"And let the show begin," Thales muttered, exhaling.
This had to be a trial. The envoy hadn't followed. Whatever this was, surely it was an opportunity—he could use it to strengthen his cultivation.
The air felt oddly salty. Water rushed in from every direction, but Thales had no counter-curse or defence. He braced for impact.
Then he realized: he was already underwater. But he could breathe. He could see. He felt no pressure. It was like he had become a fish.
Yet… this wasn't water.
It was something deeper.
Something darker.
Eldritch.
Primordial.
He saw it—a crystalline scale, beautiful beyond comprehension, shimmering in that dark ocean. Regal. Absolute. A presence that made you kneel before it—and then crushed you for your audacity.
Thales saw the heavens reflected in the eye of the ocean.
The sea stretched out infinitely in every direction—eternal and perfect.
And then came the storm.
It swallowed him.
In that moment, Thales realized—he was inside a cosmic egg.
A fragment of time itself.
But not time as in seconds or centuries.
Time as in the pure, eternal instant—chaos incarnate.
He was born into it.
But colour drained from his form.
His body vanished.
He was a concept, void of substance.
He wasn't even sure he existed.
"What the fuck am ( ) why can't ( ) say my own identity—"
A voice echoed through the antediluvian waters, ancient beyond words.
It spoke in a language not meant for mortals.
But Thales understood.
"Nu-dumu-ĝu-me-en. Ú-šè eš-bar-ra i-ba-ši-gi₄, nu-teš-te na-ĝa₂-ĝa₂-gin₇-a."
The meaning echoed through his skull like thunder wrapped in silk.
"None of the gold is mine. To look upon the golden kingdom—and be denied even the right to walk its steps. To be aware, to perceive, and yet be barred from being. To define the self? Not for me. Divine right, not for me. Not even a worm… only the shell of an innate ruler."
The voice of his mother.
A being so ancient, so unknowable, her name burned the mind.
She shrivelled his very sense of being. Even pity was wasted on him.
He was a dragon.
And he broke.
Symbolic? Actual?
It didn't matter.
He was nothing.
A bastard in the throne of his birthright.
Laughed at by perfect monsters of the oceanic abyss.
His brother, Regin, spat fire that burned all memories of light from the void.
Thales tried to gather his memories, spilling from him like cracked glass.
And then—he stopped.
He laughed.
Madness? Maybe. But it was a laughter that pierced the storm.
"Ah, yes. Perfection—that's right. Mere illusion.
"I do not need to know where I came from—only what I ought to be. And though that too is locked away from me, I don't care.
"I defy the majesty of nature and the heavens. I will be the ruler in my story. A king of myself.
"This is Thales Miray's story.
"In the play of The Mystery, even dominators seem flawed. As flawed as the lowest life form.
"But I won't collapse under the weight of existence.
"I don't need name. I don't need praise. I bury the desire to be blessed.
"And my flawed craving for The Mystery?
It shines.
Just for a moment.
Like a shooting star.
And that moment… is mine.
This is my history."
He sat in a lotus position, calm as a river under moonlight.
Time stabilized.
He didn't drown. He wasn't devoured.
Madness bowed to his will, if only for a second.
He had entered a temporary perfection.
And temporary was all it needed to be.
His cultivation… rose.
The ocean faded.
He stood once more inside the ever-shifting Labyrinth of Echoes.
"What wit must I use now?"
"What path must I calculate forward?"
The paradise had passed.
But absence only makes room—for growth.
For his own heavenly delusion.