The night air in the Labyrinth was heavy, almost liquid. Kael's breath misted faintly as he pressed his back to the jagged wall of an old corridor, his lantern's flame dimmed to a cautious ember. The woman—still silent, still watching him with that unshakable calm—followed close behind. Her footsteps barely whispered against the stone, though the quiet between them was loud enough to make his ears ring.
They had left the carved archway an hour ago, winding through twisting corridors that seemed to tilt and warp when he wasn't looking. Kael's hand brushed the wall, feeling its strange texture—cold, but not like stone. It was as if the surface itself absorbed heat, drinking it in greedily.
At a bend in the path, the corridor widened into a hall. Its ceiling was lost to shadow, and dozens of narrow columns lined each side. Between them hung sheets of glass—tall, perfect, flawless. The glass caught the lamplight and scattered it into faint, prism-like fragments, coloring the walls with muted shades of red and blue.
Kael stopped. He could see his reflection in the nearest pane… except it wasn't quite his reflection. The figure staring back was him, but older. Gaunt. The eyes sunken, a streak of silver in the hair. A thin scar ran across his cheek—one he had never earned.
"What is this…?" he murmured, stepping closer.
The woman came beside him. Her reflection was there too, but not as she was now. In the glass, she wore a torn dress stained dark, her hair matted with blood, her eyes empty. She inhaled sharply and stepped back, as if the glass had burned her.
Kael lifted a hand toward the pane. His fingertips hovered a breath away from the surface.
"Don't," she said, her voice sharp for the first time.
"Why? It's just—"
A whisper slid into his ears, soft and wrong, curling into his skull like smoke: It's not yours yet.
Kael staggered back, the lantern nearly slipping from his grip. The reflection in the glass smiled—a faint, tired curl of the lips—and then shifted. Now it was his face again, as it should be.
He turned to the woman. "You heard that?"
She hesitated. "…No." But the lie sat between them, thick and obvious.
They moved on, the glass panes giving way to another narrow passage. Kael didn't look back, though he could feel the pull of those impossible reflections. Each step forward felt heavier, as though the Labyrinth was tugging at him, pulling threads he didn't know he had.
The silence deepened. The lantern's light now barely pushed back the dark, and Kael had the unnerving sense that the shadows themselves were growing thicker, like fog in reverse. His boots scraped over loose grit—no echo followed.
The corridor ended at an arched doorway. Beyond it, a chamber stretched wide, lined with broken furniture and collapsed shelving. Dust motes floated like tiny ghosts in the beam of light. And in the far corner, something gleamed faintly.
Kael approached. It was a shard of glass, just like the ones they had seen, but jagged and sharp, no bigger than his hand. As he lifted it, light seemed to pour through it—not lantern light, but something else. And in its shifting surface, Kael saw not a reflection but a place.
A towering hall of doors, hundreds of them, stacked in spirals into an endless void. Figures in long, tattered robes moved between them, each carrying an object—sometimes a scroll, sometimes something alive. The air in that place shimmered with heat and cold at once.
Kael blinked, and it was gone. Just a shard in his hand again.
The woman had seen it too. Her expression had changed, tightened. "You shouldn't hold that."
"Why?"
She didn't answer, only turned away, scanning the walls. But her hands—Kael noticed—were trembling ever so slightly.
When they left the chamber, Kael tucked the shard inside his coat. Whatever the Labyrinth was, it was more than a maze. It had a purpose, an order hidden beneath the chaos, and now he had seen a glimpse of it.
And yet, as they walked on, he couldn't shake the thought that maybe the shard wasn't showing him the truth of the Labyrinth—maybe it was showing him where he was meant to end up.