The night in the Ashen Labyrinth was not like the night Kael had known beyond its borders. It wasn't a gentle darkness that came and went with the sun—it was a thing that pressed. The air grew colder, the stone walls seemed to breathe, and the fog thickened until the lantern light shivered in its glass.
Kael's boots scraped against the uneven floor as he led the woman—who still hadn't given her name—through a twisting corridor. The path narrowed here, the walls so close his shoulders brushed the cold stone. Their footsteps echoed too loudly.
They had left the faint warmth of the cave chamber hours ago, and though neither spoke much, Kael could feel her eyes on him. Not in suspicion—at least, not entirely—but as if she were quietly weighing the same question that had been growing in his own mind:
What exactly have we stepped into?
A sudden sound broke the stillness—a faint tick… tick… like metal tapping against stone. Both froze. Kael's hand went instinctively to his dagger. The woman's fingers hovered over the small satchel she carried, her knuckles white.
The sound grew louder, moving closer, then faded again, swallowed by the labyrinth's endless turns. Kael forced himself to breathe slowly. The sound could have been anything—a loose chain, dripping water—but here, where the air was so still, even the smallest noises felt like warnings.
They kept moving until the corridor widened unexpectedly, spilling them into what looked like a deserted market. Stalls sat in crooked lines, their wood long rotted, their fabric canopies sagging with damp. Kael ran his fingers over one of the counters—it was covered in a thin layer of fine ash. No dust, no dirt. Just ash, clinging like a skin.
"This place…" the woman murmured, almost to herself. "It's too intact. The Labyrinth swallows everything, but this looks like it's been here only days."
Kael glanced around. She was right. The structures were worn, but not destroyed. It was as if the market had been abandoned suddenly, the air still holding the memory of voices and trade.
He moved toward the center of the square, where a broken fountain stood. Its basin was filled not with water, but with a thick, silvery liquid that seemed to resist the lantern light.
"Don't touch it," she said sharply.
"I wasn't going to," Kael lied, pulling his hand back.
"It's not water. Not anything natural." Her voice carried a faint tremor, though her expression remained unreadable.
Something shifted in the shadows beyond the fountain—a flicker of movement, gone before Kael could focus.
And then… the whispering began.
It came from nowhere and everywhere at once. Words in no tongue Kael knew, spoken in a cadence that tugged at the edges of his mind. He could feel them, like cold fingers brushing against his thoughts.
The woman stiffened. "We need to move."
Kael didn't argue. The whispers were growing clearer now, and his heart hammered in his chest. He took one step toward the far exit—
—and froze.
On the wall above the fountain, something had been carved. It was faint, half-hidden beneath streaks of ash, but the shape was unmistakable: a door, surrounded by a spiral of symbols. And in the center of the door, an eye.
It was the same eye Kael had seen in his dream the night before.
He felt his throat go dry. "Do you see that?"
The woman's gaze followed his. Her face paled slightly, though her voice remained steady. "I see it. And we're leaving."
"What is it?"
"Not here." She turned sharply and started toward the corridor opposite.
Kael hesitated. The carved eye seemed to pulse faintly in the lantern light, as if mocking his choice to walk away. He tore his gaze from it and followed her, though the whispers followed them both until they slipped back into another narrow passage.
They didn't speak again for some time. The air was colder here, the walls closer, but Kael could still feel the weight of that symbol pressing against the back of his mind.
Eventually, the corridor sloped downward and opened into a cramped chamber with a low ceiling. It wasn't much—just four walls and an overturned table—but it was defensible.
"This will do for a few hours," the woman said, lowering herself against the wall.
Kael sat opposite her, still gripping the lantern. Its light flickered weakly.
"You're going to tell me what that was," he said finally.
Her eyes studied him for a long moment, as if deciding how much truth he could bear. "It's called the Eye of the Threshold. It marks… places where the Labyrinth is thin. Places that aren't meant to be found."
Kael frowned. "Thin? Between what?"
Her lips pressed into a line. "Between here and somewhere worse."
The words hung in the air, heavier than the walls around them. Somewhere worse. Kael wanted to demand more, but the exhaustion in her face was real, and for now, pushing would get him nothing.
Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that they hadn't just stumbled across the market by accident. The Labyrinth had shown it to them. And whatever waited beyond that carved door, Kael suspected it was already aware of him.
And that thought was enough to keep him from sleep, even as the cold stone pressed against his back and the whispers in the distance slowly faded.