"Okay," Renn said, ducking a flying book with teeth. "But hear me out: What if this entire Labyrinth was designed by a bored genius six-year-old on sugar rush?"
Seraphina groaned.
Caelum blinked.
Lucien sipped a suspiciously bubbling tea. Ira snorted.
"I mean, think about it!" Renn waved his arms. "We've got rubber ducks with flame cores, snack cabinets that vanish when you say 'lettuce,' sigils that loop you back if you sneeze too loud — who designs traps like that?"
Lucien shrugged. "If it were me, I'd have included more hot chocolate dispensers."
"You literally added flavor text to the exploding corridor sigils," Caelum muttered. "'Boom. But like, politely.' That's your handwriting."
Lucien held up a finger. "Allegedly."
---
They stood in Node Room 13Z, a circular chamber of cracked stone and humming glyphs. The final node. The heart of the Labyrinth. The Exit Protocol chamber.
Renn poked the center platform. It made a sad, honking noise.
"This is it?"
"It's a lock," Caelum said. "But not one person can open it alone."
A ring of five embedded sigils pulsed around the platform, each glowing a different color.
> 🔵 Spatial 🔴 Flame ⚪ Time 🟣 Chaos 🟢 Cipher
---
"Five keys, five students," Ira grinned. "What a narrative coincidence."
Caelum knelt first. His chrono-sigil etched the time signature. A stable frame of one second across every angle. "Temporal anchor, set."
Seraphina followed. Fire glyphs spiraled from her palm into the lock. The platform hissed.
Ira skipped up next. "Spatial pathways aligned!" She tossed a spinning marble into the core. It didn't bounce. It orbited.
Then Renn. Everyone paused.
"Chaos, right?" he asked.
Lucien nodded. "Just don't explode anything unless necessary."
Renn slapped the glyph with a grin. A banana fell from the ceiling.
"Perfect," Lucien said dryly.
---
Now only the green cipher glyph remained.
Lucien approached.
He didn't touch it immediately.
Instead, he whispered. "Bind thread: exclude all but self."
The sigil shimmered. The others didn't notice — they were watching a banana slip into a temporal loop.
Lucien pressed his hand to the core.
> ✅ Exit Protocol Initialized.
The room shifted. Reality bent.
A giant door of light unfolded like origami from the floor, opening into a blank white corridor.
One by one, they stepped through.
---
☁️ The Memory Wipe
A faint mist drifted through the threshold. It tingled.
> "System Cleansing: Residual Labyrinth Memories Removed."
> "Exclusions: None."
Except one.
Lucien whispered: "Override file lock. Anchor: Drex Protocol."
> "Override approved."
He kept his memories.
---
🌤 Return to Reality
The white corridor faded. The five of them emerged into a cold morning light — standing outside a sealed gate near the west tower of Arcanum Academy.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
Then Renn's stomach growled.
Lucien handed him a sesame stick. "Reward for not dying."
"Where do you get these?" Renn asked.
"Snack trap. Took a week to build."
"I want one."
"You'd burn it down."
Then Seraphina stepped forward, still singed and visibly fed up. "This is not snack time, you morons."
Lucien offered her one anyway.
She sighed. "Fine. Half."
He snapped it in two.
She took both halves.
---
🌀 Meanwhile…
Back in the Labyrinth, one sigil blinked green and gold.
A hidden file opened.
> "User: Drex" "Access Level: Black File Clearance" "Labyrinth Control Fragment Stored: COMPLETE"
Lucien had gained partial control of the Labyrinth.
---
👀 One Last Look
As they walked back toward campus, Caelum glanced sideways.
He'd seen the cipher glyph adjust itself when Lucien touched it.
He didn't mention it.
But he'd remember.
So would Ira, upside-down again, smirking like she knew every punchline before the joke.
Lucien yawned.
"Breakfast?"
"No more popcorn," Renn muttered.
Lucien smiled.
"Agreed. Let's go steal from the Headmistress's pantry."
End of Chapter 24. End of Labyrinth Arc.