The next day they decided to moved forward they unexpectedly encounter a tunnel they decided to entered the tunnel.The air inside the tunnel thickened as Kael pressed deeper, every step feeling heavier than the last. It wasn't exhaustion — at least, not entirely — but something stranger, as though the very walls leaned inward, watching him. The flicker of his lantern sent quivering shadows racing ahead, and for a moment he thought he saw movement in the black.
The woman followed silently, her breathing slow and controlled. She carried herself differently now, more alert, her earlier wariness sharpened into something like anticipation. It was unsettling.
They walked for what felt like hours until the tunnel widened into a chamber. The walls here were carved, but not by any tool Kael recognized — no chisel marks, no signs of human handiwork. Instead, they curved in strange, smooth arcs, like the inside of a seashell. The stone shimmered faintly, as if a thin layer of frost clung to it.
Kael ran his fingers over the surface.
Cold. Too cold for a place so far underground.
"What is this place?" he murmured.
The woman tilted her head, her eyes tracing the strange spirals etched faintly into the stone. "It's older than the Labyrinth."
That caught him off guard. "Older? You mean… this isn't part of it?"
A faint smile touched her lips, the kind of smile that carried no warmth. "The Labyrinth is just the shell. What you're looking at now is what was here before."
Kael's skin prickled. The idea that something existed here before the Labyrinth — something the Labyrinth was built around — made the space feel suddenly smaller, like the walls might close in at any moment.
At the far end of the chamber, a narrow archway stood framed in the same frost-slick stone. Unlike the rest of the chamber, it wasn't carved with spirals. Instead, a single mark had been burned into it — a deep, jagged cut, blackened at the edges as though made by lightning.
Kael's breath clouded in the cold. "That mark… it looks recent."
The woman's eyes narrowed. "It shouldn't be there."
A sound interrupted them — soft at first, like a whisper, then a low, rhythmic hum that seemed to rise from the very stone. The floor vibrated faintly under Kael's boots.
He turned toward the sound, but it wasn't coming from any one direction. It was everywhere, seeping through the walls. A dull, unearthly pulse.
The woman's voice dropped to a whisper. "We shouldn't stay."
She turned sharply toward the archway, motioning for him to follow. Kael hesitated — the hum was unnerving, yes, but there was also something compelling about it, as if it was calling him. Against his better judgment, he took one more step into the chamber, his lantern casting light across the spirals.
And then he saw it.
In the center of one curve, barely visible unless the light caught it just so, was a symbol — not carved, but somehow embedded within the stone itself, like a shadow trapped beneath the surface. It was circular, but broken in places, as if incomplete.
The hum grew louder, almost impatient.
Kael reached out, not quite touching it, when the woman grabbed his wrist. Her grip was iron.
"Don't," she said sharply. "If you wake it, there's no putting it back to sleep."
The words made no sense, yet they landed in him with a weight that tightened his chest.
Without another word, she pulled him through the archway.
The space beyond was a narrow hall, the walls lined with tall, thin slabs of stone that leaned slightly inward. Kael realized with a jolt that they weren't part of the architecture — they were markers. Graves, perhaps. Each bore the same broken circle symbol, though faint, eroded by time.
Some of them had been defaced, deep claw-like gouges running across their surfaces.
Kael's unease deepened. "What happened here?"
The woman didn't answer, but her pace quickened.
After several turns, they emerged into a smaller chamber. Here, the walls were plain, the air warmer. A single stone door stood opposite them, sealed with a heavy iron bar.
The woman let out a long breath, her shoulders easing slightly. "We can rest here. The pulse can't reach this far."
Kael set down the lantern and sat against the wall, though his mind was anything but at rest. "You're going to tell me what's going on, right?"
She sat across from him, her eyes unreadable. "Not all at once. You wouldn't believe it. But… I will tell you this — the Labyrinth wasn't built to keep people out. It was built to keep something in."
Her words seemed to echo in the small space long after she'd spoken them.
Kael stared at her, trying to read her expression, but the flicker of the lantern only cast more shadows across her face.
Somewhere in the stone beyond that door, faint and far away, the hum still pulsed.
It was patient.