The moment they stepped out of the Glass Labyrinth's final chamber, Ren expected relief. He expected open air, the harsh but honest heat of the Shattered Wastes, the distant silhouette of Lorathis' ruins against the bleeding sunset.
Instead, the labyrinth changed.
The walls behind them groaned, shifting like living stone, sealing their retreat. The path ahead, which had moments ago seemed clear, now split into three narrow corridors, each lined with jagged obsidian teeth that pulsed faintly, as if breathing. The air smelled of burnt copper and something older—something that had waited centuries for prey to stumble this deep.
Mirak, her veil stirring in a wind that didn't exist, shook her head. "The Labyrinth doesn't let go. It digests."
Kaela's sword was already in her hand, her scarred face tight with tension. "Then we move. Fast."
They chose the leftmost path.
Jarek took point, his dagger drawn, his steps cautious. The corridor narrowed, the walls pressing in until they had to turn sideways to pass. The obsidian teeth lining the passage gleamed wetly, though nothing dripped from them.
Then the floor clicked beneath his boot.
Ren barely had time to shout before the walls slammed together like a vice. Jarek twisted, throwing himself backward—but not fast enough. The obsidian teeth closed around his forearm.
There was no scream. Just a wet, crunching pop as the blades sheared through flesh and bone. Jarek staggered back, his face white with shock, his left arm ending just below the elbow in a stump so clean it took a full second for the blood to fountain.
Tarek lunged forward, dragging him away as the walls retracted, the teeth now slick and glistening. Jarek collapsed against him, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "Fuck," he wheezed. "Fuck, that's—fuck."
Garrel was already moving, tearing strips from his robe to bind the wound. His milky eyes darted nervously to the walls. "They're learning," he muttered. "Testing our reflexes."
Lira was shaking, her hands pressed to her mouth. Ren grabbed her shoulder, squeezing hard. "Don't freeze. Not here."
She nodded, but her eyes were wide, glassy.
Kaela stepped over the pooling blood, her jaw set. "We don't stop."
The next trap was silent.
One moment, they were crossing a wide chamber, its floor a mosaic of shattered glass that shifted underfoot like loose sand. The next, the ground collapsed beneath Tarek and Garrel.
Tarek's bellow of alarm was cut short as he vanished into the pit, dragging Garrel with him. Ren lunged for them—too late. The floor sealed itself instantly, the glass shards knitting back together as if nothing had happened.
Silence.
Lira dropped to her knees, her fingers clawing at the unbroken surface. "No—no! TAREK!"
No answer.
Mirak yanked her back. "They're gone."
Ren's stomach twisted. Tarek, with his dead daughter's name always on his lips. Garrel, with his crumbling scrolls and hollowed-out eyes. Gone. Just like that.
Kaela's face was stone. "We keep moving."
Now there were four: Ren, Kaela, Lira, and Mirak.
The labyrinth had thinned their numbers with cruel efficiency, and the deeper they went, the more the air itself seemed to press in, thick with malice. The walls whispered in a language just beyond comprehension, the words slipping like oil through Ren's mind.
"You are meat. You are temporary."
Lira stumbled, her breath coming too fast. "I can't—I can't hear it anymore. The humming. It's too loud."
Ren gripped her arm, steadying her. "Focus on my voice. Just my voice."
She nodded, but her pupils were dilated, her wings twitching erratically.
Kaela glanced back at them, her expression unreadable. "If she slows us down, we leave her."
Ren met her gaze. "We don't."
Kaela held his stare for a long moment before turning away. "Then pray she doesn't get us killed."
The labyrinth wasn't done with them.
The next corridor was lined with mirrors—not the warped reflections of before, but perfect, pristine glass. Their own faces stared back at them, gaunt and hollow-eyed.
Then their reflections moved on their own.
Ren's double stepped forward, pressing a hand against the glass. His mouth moved, forming words Ren couldn't hear.
Lira's reflection was weeping black tears.
Kaela's had her sword buried in someone's chest—someone who looked like her brother.
Mirak's veil was gone in the reflection, revealing a face that wasn't human.
"Don't look," Mirak warned, her voice strained. "Don't listen."
But it was too late.
The glass rippled, and a hand—Ren's hand—shot out, gripping his wrist. The fingers were ice-cold, the nails blackened.
Ren jerked back, but the reflection held on, its grip crushing.
Then the screaming started.
They ran.
The labyrinth twisted around them, corridors collapsing, walls bleeding black ichor. The reflections pursued, their forms stretching, distorting, reaching.
Lira sobbed as she ran, her wings scraping against the narrowing walls. Kaela dragged her forward when she faltered, her usual ruthlessness tempered by something almost like pity.
Mirak led them, her steps sure despite the chaos. "Left!" she barked. "Now!"
They rounded a corner—and the ground fell away beneath them.
Ren had half a second to register the yawning black pit before they were falling, tumbling into darkness.
Ren hit solid ground hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. For a moment, he lay there, gasping, waiting for the teeth, the hands, the whispers.
Silence.
He sat up slowly. They were in a cavern, the ceiling high and lost in shadow. The air was cooler here, stale but breathable.
Kaela was already on her feet, sword drawn, scanning the darkness. Lira curled into herself nearby, her wings wrapped tight around her body. Mirak stood apart, her veil miraculously intact, her posture unnervingly calm.
Ren's voice was raw. "Where the hell are we?"
Mirak tilted her head. "Where the Labyrinth wanted us to be."
Ahead, the cavern opened into a vast, ruined plaza—and beyond it, the first crumbling spires of Lorathis.
The city wasn't dead.
It was waiting.
The world dissolved into a chaos of tumbling bodies, choking dust, and Tarek's bellow of alarm, abruptly silenced. Garrel felt weightless, then brutally heavy, the impact jarring every bone as he landed not on unyielding stone, but on a steep, gritty slope that sent him careening downward in a bruising slide. Tarek's heavier frame crashed beside him, then rolled past, a grunt of pain echoing in the sudden, suffocating darkness.
They slid for what felt like an eternity, the sound of shifting sand and dislodged pebbles roaring in their ears, drowning out the faint, horrified cries from above – Lira's scream, Ren's shout. Then, abruptly, the slope leveled out, and they slammed into a solid, cold wall of packed earth.
Silence descended, thick and absolute, broken only by their ragged gasps and the frantic drumming of their hearts. The dust hung heavy, coating their tongues, stinging their eyes. Garrel's world was darkness regardless, but the quality of it had changed. The oppressive, whispering pressure of the Glass Labyrinth above was gone, replaced by a deep, subterranean stillness that felt… ancient. And watchful.
"Tarek?" Garrel wheezed, pushing himself up on trembling arms. His robes were torn, his skin scraped raw. "Tarek, are you whole?"
A groan answered him, followed by a string of muffled curses. "Whole? Feels like every bone's been rattled loose," Tarek gritted out. Garrel heard the scrape of metal – Tarek's hammer, still miraculously strapped to his back? – and the smith's pained hiss as he tried to stand. "Leg's… protesting fiercely. That damned slide didn't help the old break. You?"
"Bruised. Frightened. But intact," Garrel replied, his voice thin. He reached out blindly. "Where are we?"
Tarek's large, calloused hand found his arm, pulling him upright. "Dark. Pitch black. Feels… big. And cold." He shifted, and Garrel heard the distinct sound of flint striking steel. A tiny spark flared, illuminating Tarek's strained, dirt-smeared face for a fleeting second before dying. "Damp. Tinder's soaked." He struck again, frustration edging his voice. "Nothing."
Panic, cold and sharp, began to prickle at Garrel's senses. Blindness was his constant companion, but being blind and utterly lost in an unknown, lightless pit beneath a sentient, malevolent maze was a new level of terror. "The others… Ren, Kaela, Lira…"
"Gone," Tarek stated flatly. The word hung heavy in the dark. "That floor sealed faster than a banker's vault. We're on our own down here, scholar." He took a limping step, testing his weight. "Walls feel… rough. Packed earth, maybe? Some kind of natural cavern?"
Garrel strained his other senses. The air was cool, damp, carrying the mineral scent of deep earth and something else… faint, acrid, like old rust or dried blood. He listened intently. Beyond their breathing, there was… nothing. No drip of water, no skittering of creatures. An unnatural silence. "It's too quiet, Tarek. Like a tomb."
"Feels like one," Tarek muttered. He shuffled forward, one hand braced against the wall, the other gripping Garrel's arm tightly. "Come on. Can't stay here. Maybe there's a way out… or back up." His tone lacked conviction.
They moved slowly, painfully, through the impenetrable blackness. Tarek's limp was pronounced, each step accompanied by a sharp intake of breath. Garrel stumbled frequently, the uneven floor treacherous to his unseeing feet. The wall under Tarek's guiding hand felt consistently packed and cool. Minutes bled into what felt like hours. The oppressive silence pressed in, amplifying the sound of their shuffling steps and labored breathing. Garrel's mind raced. Where was the Glass Labyrinth leading? What lay beneath it? Garrel's fragmented knowledge screamed warnings about Lorathis' foundations being built on older, darker things.
Suddenly, Tarek stopped. "Feel that?" he whispered, his voice taut.
Garrel strained. At first, nothing. Then, a faint, rhythmic vibration thrummed through the packed earth beneath their feet, rising into the wall. A deep, resonant thud… thud… thud… It was slow, ponderous, and utterly alien. It didn't sound mechanical. It sounded… organic. Like the heartbeat of something impossibly large buried far below.
"The city…?" Garrel breathed, terror constricting his throat. "Or what lies beneath it?"
"Don't know. Don't like it," Tarek growled. He pulled Garrel away from the wall slightly. "Keep moving. Away from that."
They pressed on, the rhythmic thudding a terrifying counterpoint to their desperate progress. The air grew colder. Garrel began to notice another smell beneath the earth and rust – a dry, powdery scent, like ancient papyrus crumbling to dust, mixed with something vaguely… reptilian.
Then, Tarek hissed, pulling Garrel to a sudden halt. "Light! Faint, but… light ahead!"
Garrel couldn't see it, but he felt Tarek's posture shift, a surge of desperate hope radiating from the smith. They moved faster, Tarek's limp momentarily forgotten. The light grew slowly – a sickly, greenish phosphorescence seeping from around a bend in the passageway.
They rounded the corner and stopped.
They stood at the entrance to a vast, subterranean chamber. The walls, no longer packed earth, were carved from the same dark, glassy obsidian as the Labyrinth above, but rough-hewn, ancient. The green light emanated from thick veins of luminescent fungus snaking across the ceiling and walls, casting long, distorted shadows. The chamber was enormous, easily the size of Velispire's Maw, but instead of refuge, it held ruin.
Before them lay the shattered remnants of a city within the city. Crumbling structures, carved directly from the bedrock or built from massive, dark stones, leaned precariously or lay in heaps of rubble. Archways led into deeper darkness. Crude statues of winged, serpentine figures, their features worn smooth by time or deliberately defaced, lined a central avenue that led deeper into the chamber. The air here was thick with the dust of ages and that strange, reptilian musk.
But it was the thudding that dominated. It was louder here, echoing through the cavernous space, seeming to emanate from the very floor. The rhythmic pulse vibrated in Garrel's teeth.
"Gods below," Tarek breathed, his voice filled with awe and dread. "This… this is older. Much older."
Garrel's milky eyes seemed to stare into the depths of the chamber, but he was seeing with other senses. He felt the age pressing down, a crushing weight of millennia. He felt the echoes of immense power, long dormant but now… stirring. And beneath it all, the Devourer's whispers, previously a distant murmur, surged like a rising tide. They weren't coherent words, but waves of primal hunger, cold malice, and an ancient, fathomless rage that made Garrel's soul shrink.
"The foundations…" Garrel rasped, clutching his head. "Lorathis wasn't just built over the prison… it was built over the graveyard. The things they bound… the things they fed to the Devourer… their bones are here. Their essence. And it's… waking up."
The Devourer's whispers intensified, coiling around the rhythmic thudding. Garrel gasped, staggering. Images flooded his mind – not fragmented memories this time, but visions of the deep past: colossal, scaled forms writhing in darkness beneath a younger sun; rituals performed on blood-soaked altars beneath these very stones; the agonized screams of sacrifices vanishing into gaping maws of shadow; and the cold, alien intelligence of the Devourer itself, observing it all with detached, cosmic hunger.
"Scholar!" Tarek grabbed him, steadying him as Garrel retched, overwhelmed by the psychic onslaught. "Garrel! What is it?"
"The whispers… they're here," Garrel gasped, tears of blood welling in his blind eyes and tracing crimson paths through the grime on his cheeks. "Stronger. Clearer. It knows we're here, Tarek. It tastes us." He pointed a trembling hand towards the center of the ruined city, down the avenue lined with serpentine statues. "The pulse… it's coming from down there. Something… something is stirring."
Tarek looked down the ominous avenue, then back at Garrel's terrified, blood-streaked face. The smith's expression hardened, the lines around his eyes deepening with grim resolve. He hefted his war hammer, the heavy head scraping against the stone floor. His injured leg screamed in protest, but he planted his feet firmly.
"Alright then," Tarek said, his voice low and rough, devoid of fear, filled only with the stubborn determination of a man who had already lost too much to lose himself now. "If something's waking up down there that shouldn't be, maybe we can put it back to sleep before it gets its bearings. Or at least make enough noise that the others know where the real trouble is." He adjusted his grip on Garrel's arm. "Stay close, scholar. And try not to listen too hard."
He took a step forward, dragging his bad leg, leading them down the ancient avenue towards the source of the terrifying heartbeat and the suffocating pressure of the Devourer's awakening attention. Above them, impossibly far away, Ren, Kaela, Lira, and Mirak walked towards the sunlit ruins of Lorathis, unaware that the true horror lay not in the city above, but in the necropolis stirring to life beneath their feet, where two lost souls walked willingly into the belly of the beast. The labyrinth hadn't just separated them; it had dropped Tarek and Garrel directly onto the trigger of the apocalypse Ren's group was trying to prevent. Their desperate journey through the dark had just become the front line of a war against an ancient hunger. And the Devourer had just found two new, unexpected guests in its tomb.