The group rushed out of the room through the hole the bee had left behind.
They stumbled into a narrow corridor, barely large enough for two of them to walk side by side.
Han came to a stop. "Something's off," he whispered, studying the walls.
Unlike the room prior, the walls here were pale grey. Normally, this wouldn't stand out; after all, most walls were made of concrete. But in a quest room inspired by a beehive, it almost felt like there was an error... or some sort of bug.
'Even the way this corridor looks...' he thought, noting that the walls seemed to bend and bulge slightly, making the corridor look warped.
Something was definitely off about this place.
And Han could feel it in his gut.
Chul tapped his shoulder, snapping him out of his daze. "We're on a timer, remember," he whispered.
Han nodded, taking one more look at the warped corridor before reluctantly whispering, "Scent of The Sun."
Golden light shot out of his mouth, and his eyes rolled to the back of his skull.
This time, however, he was expecting the sensory overload. And prepared his mind, already filtering all the familiar scents around him.
As someone picked him up and put them over their shoulder, he began sifting through the filtered scents.
Which, even with him filtering some scents, took every bit of mental strength he had, leaving him virtually paralysed. He could not hear or see anything from the outside world. His only link with the group was scent.
And so he embraced this new world of smell.
A strong sour odour wafted beneath him; from the strength of the stench, he could tell it was Nolan who was carrying him.
He could smell Chul beside them, and Jen on the other side. From the rate their scents were wafting away, he could even measure how fast they were moving.
But he searched further than that.
He could smell the dry chalk on the walls around them, the rust of iron somewhere within them. And something... stranger, like a shifty rancidness that shouldn't be.
He tried to follow this scent, check if he could track down exactly where it was coming from...
Han opened his eyes with a start, coughing profusely.
It was like raw boiling pass had been chugged down the back of his throat, equal parts sweet, equal parts rotten. And all that was from a mere whiff of the scent's source.
Whatever it was, clearly wasn't related to the bees. It didn't have that same honey-like smell. However, what it did smell like was danger.
The sort of danger he wanted nothing to do with.
"Did you find it?" Nolan asked.
Han took a moment to catch his breath, slowly slipping himself off Nolan's shoulder.
"No."
"I think I need the bee corpse. Maybe I can track down the other bees if I memorise their scent."
He was sort of disappointed in himself for not thinking of that earlier. However, he didn't have time to beat himself up over it now. "Which way did we come from?" he asked, looking back over his shoulder.
Nolan pointed towards the corridor to the left, while Chul and Jen pointed to the corridor to the left.
The group froze, and stared at each other for a moment.
"Stop fucking around, Nolan," Jen said, pushing his hand down.
Nolan took a step back, a confused expression on his face. "Fucking around? We were moving from left to right," he shot back. "We were obviously coming from that direction."
Chul rolled his eyes. "Left to right? Who even thinks about direction in that way? Regardless, I knew something like this would happen," he interjected. "So I left little bits of chocolate wrapper behind, you know, like the thread they use in mazes."
Han nodded. Realising that this place was exactly that, a maze.
The corridor they were currently in looked identical to the one they had been in prior. Even the way the walls bulged and curved looked the same.
Following Chul's plan, the group went back down the right corridor first. However, after walking for a while, it was clear that they had gone down the wrong path.
The group turned to walk in the opposite direction, yet nothing.
For a while, they just continued walking on; every minute they stayed stuck in a loop of identical corridors, a worrying realisation set in.
Jen stopped before leaning against the wall in exhaustion. "We're trapped, aren't we?" she sighed. "We've been walking for half an hour now, and every fucking corridor looks the exact same."
Nolan was at the front and kept walking on. "Let's just take a left at the next turn. We're close, I can smell it," he said, eyes focused forward.
Jen, however, was beat. She sat down on the ground and removed her boots. Fixing her hair before massaging her feet.
Chul leaned against the wall as well, watching Jen almost a little too intently. "What do we do now?" he asked, glancing at Han for only a moment before looking back at Jen.
Han was deep in thought. The voices around him were not even registering as whispers.
'I've had the feeling we're being watched for a while now,' he thought, looking towards the end of the corridor as Nolan continued his advance. 'And I'm certain now...'
'These corridors don't just look identical. They are.'
Chul's idea of leaving wrappers behind had given Han an idea of his own. He had secretly been using his dagger to carve little arrows on the walls as they passed by the corridors.
And although Chul's chocolate wrapper pieces were nowhere to be seen, the arrows were still visible on the wall.
Which could only mean one thing.
Someone, or something, was deliberately moving the chocolate wrappers and trying to confuse them.
Right as Nolan was about to make a left turn at the end of the corridor, Han noticed a shadow on the ceiling twitch.
"Nolan, stop."
Nolan flicked a middle finger back at him. "It's just a bit further, calm..."
Before Nolan could finish his sentence... the shadow expanded, engulfing the entire end of the corridor in the blink of an eye
Han didn't even have time to react before he went missing.
No screaming, no fighting.... nothing.
"Did... did anyone see that?" he asked, eyes wide in disbelief.
Chul was massaging Jen's feet, and she was resting with her eyes closed.
"See what?"