Altherion's footsteps echoed against the cold stone floor, slow and deliberate, each one carrying the weight of Liesette's half-conscious body.
Her blood had dried along the side of her torn gown, her breathing shallow but steady enough to keep him moving forward, even as the temple seemed to twist and pulse with every step they took.
The corridor refused to obey the laws of geometry. Walls stretched, curved, or shrank as if reacting to their thoughts.
Ancient Trilium glyphs covered every surface, an archaic language not taught in any standard institution and the glyphs… moved. Not flickered, not glowed, moved, like living runes rearranging themselves just long enough to form incomplete messages before unraveling again.
"Don't stare too long," Liesette whispered hoarsely. "Those letters... they know when you read them."
Altherion didn't respond, but his eyes were drawn to one phrase stabilizing on the curved wall ahead:
"When the path before you is covered in thorns, the way home is locked in a memory that never was."
The words didn't just reach his eyes, they slipped into his mind, like a whisper directly into his soul, shaking something loose inside him.
:This place doesn't want us to leave," Altherion said quietly.
"It's not the place," Liesette murmured bitterly. "It's the thing behind the place."
They reached a fork in the corridor. One path led down into spiraling darkness that churned like a maelstrom. The other narrowed into a flickering corridor of pulsing light, beating in sync with something... inhuman.
"That way," Liesette said, pointing to the right. "We're not going down there. Unless you want to meet something that doesn't know what mercy is."
"I doubt it wants to meet us either," Altherion muttered, trying for humor, though his hand trembled slightly as he tightened his grip on her shoulder.
As they moved on, more glyphs crawled along the walls. Some looked like they were screaming, others like they wept. A segment of the wall split open with a sound like bones cracking, revealing a small chamber, an abandoned altar, dust thick on its surface.
At its center was a stone tablet wrapped in faded crimson ribbon. Etched on the surface:
"Every exit must be paid with one memory and one sacrifice."
Liesette inhaled sharply. "Do you know what it means?"
Altherion didn't answer. But something stirred in him, something that hadn't awakened until now. A fragment of thought, unfamiliar yet intimate. As if the tablet resonated with something buried... not beneath memories, but outside of them.
He reached toward the stone.
Liesette grabbed his wrist.
"You're going to give it, aren't you?" she said. "Your memory."
"I don't even know if I have anything left worth giving," he murmured.
Silence fell between them. Then, she released him slowly. "Then please don't trade away the part of you that still feels. You don't have to lose everything just to get out of here."
The words struck deeper than they should have. Altherion averted his eyes and turned back toward the corridor.
They passed winding halls where geometry gave up and time began to loop. Once, they saw symbols spelling out entire phrases along the floor, some stained with old blood. Remnants of others who had been here. People who may have never left.
One corridor held a massive mirror, floating without a frame. But its reflection lagged seconds behind. In the mirror, Altherion walked alone. Liesette wasn't there.
He glanced beside him, she was still with him.
He looked again.
Empty.
"Altherion…" Liesette's voice cracked. "I feel like... my body wants to walk in the opposite direction."
He gripped her arm tightly. "Stay with me. Don't look at the mirror."
They fled the corridor.
Eventually, they emerged into a vast domed chamber. The ceiling stretched like the skull of a god. In the center stood a rusted structure part clock, part organ, part... sacrifice machine. Impossible to classify.
Beneath it: stairs.
Real stairs.
Leading up.
A way out?
On the wall behind the steps, Trilium letters shimmered, aligning into a new message:
"Those who ascend will forget. Those who remain will remember. But none are truly free from the Third Orbit."
Altherion turned to Liesette. "You ready?"
She looked up at the stairs. Her lips trembled, but she nodded. "As long as you're here, I can keep climbing."
He didn't answer with words. He took her hand not to guide her, not to hold her back, just to hold it.
And they climbed.
But with each step, something shifted in Altherion's mind.
Flickers of a boy. A boy standing beneath two moons. Smiling, even as the world burned around him. His name rang like a bell from an old dream.
Arviel.
His pace slowed.
"Altherion?" Liesette asked.
He didn't answer immediately. His eyes widened as a memory fell into place, forced into place, as though some missing gear had finally turned.
Arviel had spoken of this place.
Back when they still wandered the Great Archive of Vestigar, when Altherion was barely beginning to question who he truly was.
"This temple," Arviel had said, "eats memory like breath. Stay too long, and even your name slips away. That's why no one ever comes back the same if they come back at all."
The words had sounded like metaphor then. But now...
Now they felt like prophecy.
Altherion gasped, gripping his head as waves of blank spaces rearranged themselves into broken recollections.
"Altherion?" Liesette asked again, alarmed.
"I-I remembered something," he said. "About Arviel. He... he warned me about this place. Said it steals memory. And I think... I think it already stole something from me."
"Arviel? Who?"
He stared forward, breathing hard. "But when I met that strange man outside the chamber the one playing a game... it was like something cracked. Like his presence pulled the memory back. That brief moment… it made me remember who I'm supposed to be."
Liesette was silent for a while, then whispered, "I don't really understand what you're talking about. But, hold onto it. No matter what this place tries to take."
They continued their climb.
Behind them, the Trilium script twisted and shimmered, rearranging itself into a final warning:
"Those who remember shall be hunted. Those who forget shall become prey."
But Altherion did not look back.
He held the memory of Arviel close, not like a lantern but like a blade.
***
The journey continued, if it could even be called that.
Every corridor they walked seemed to echo a previous one. The same cracked statue with a missing jaw. The same flickering brazier that refused to go out. The same stretch of wall where the Trilium glyphs bled a faint violet hue.
At first, it had felt like paranoia.
Then came the undeniable repetition.
"How long?" Liesette croaked. Her voice was thin, raw from thirst. "How long have we been walking?"
Altherion didn't answer. He didn't know anymore. Hours? Days? Time was a dead concept in this place. The ache in his legs had become numb. The darkness ahead was always the same shade of gloom.
She collapsed against the wall, sliding down slowly. "We're not getting out, are we?"
Altherion remained still. His fingers ran along the wall, tracing a thin, vertical gouge he knew he'd marked before.
Same mark.
Same place.
Again.
But this time… instead of despair, he stared longer.
Something gnawed at the edge of his thoughts. A rhythm. Not of time, but of structure. A distortion not random, but recursive. Each path they took wasn't changing, but folding like a loop in an equation with too many nested variables. He stepped back, blinking at the geometry of the hall.
"There's a pattern," he muttered.
Liesette raised her head weakly. "What?"
"This isn't a true loop. It's a-" He hesitated. "It's a pseudo-cyclic sequence. That's why it feels almost but not quite identical."
"Speak normal, Altherion."
He crouched down beside her. "Every time we reach what we think is a new corridor, we aren't retracing our steps literally. It's more like the temple reconfigures the layout based on our mental state, but it preserves a kind of internal logic. Like a nonlinear feedback function."
Liesette blinked. "That... means nothing to me."
He exhaled. "It's like… imagine solving a maze that changes slightly every time you hesitate. But if you could measure the rate and direction of the changes mathematically you could predict the next formation. Or at least map the cycle."
She gave a weak laugh. "You sound like one of those mad archivists."
"I might be," he murmured, staring at the wall again.
He stepped forward and touched a glyph one he hadn't dared touch before. The wall vibrated faintly beneath his palm. Not in response to his body, but to his intention. Not magic, not divine. Something more fundamental. Like quantum entanglement expressed through architecture.
"I think the temple functions like a recursive manifold," he said slowly, eyes wide. "A multidimensional space folded in on itself. But instead of folding based on physical coordinates, it folds based on choice. Every decision we make slightly alters our spatial coordinates inside the structure."
Liesette rubbed her forehead. "And how does that help us?"
"I don't know yet." He turned. "But if I can find a constant just one invariant pattern that survives every iteration, I can anchor us."
He moved, retracing steps they'd taken. He began to mark each turn, not with scratches, but with numbers using Trilium numerals. On the floor. On the ceiling. At intersections.
And as he moved, he spoke aloud.
"Turn right, delay 3 seconds, step over the first crack. Left. Pause. Walk forward twelve paces. Mark. Wait."
Liesette followed slowly, clinging to the walls, eyes half-lidded but trusting.
And slowly, the corridor began to change.
Not shift randomly but resist. Like a puzzle refusing to be solved.
They passed a brazier that flickered and this time, it went out.
Altherion froze.
"That's new," Liesette whispered.
He nodded, breath catching. "That's the first true change."
They stepped into a chamber unlike the others. This one was blank sterile, even. White stone. No glyphs. No statues. Just an empty square room.
On the far wall was a spiral of Trilium numbers.
Altherion stepped forward, reading it in silence. His brow furrowed.
"What does it say?" Liesette asked.
He replied slowly, translating:
"The spiral never ends, but in each turn hides a straight line. Walk the angle of doubt."
He stared at the pattern. The spiral was not perfect. It had a tiny sliver of discontinuity barely perceptible. But if mapped using prime numerical intervals...
He gasped.
"There's a hidden vector here," he said. "A trajectory not bound by the rest of the loop. An escape path hidden in irrational coordinates."
"You mean…?"
"We walk where the spiral tells us not to walk. We break the pattern."
He turned, pulling Liesette up again.
Their steps echoed through the maze of cold stone, a rhythm of weariness and restrained panic.
Time, if it could be called that had lost all meaning. They had passed the same broken pillar three times. The same bloodied tapestry twice. Even the same pool of dark water reflecting nothing above. But it wasn't a simple circle they walked.
Altherion had begun to see it. Not with his eyes, but through a deeper language, the language of numbers, of patterns repeating beneath chaos. The temple didn't obey the laws of architecture. It obeyed something older.
"This place isn't looping," he muttered, mostly to himself, though Liesette stirred at his voice. "It's... recalculating."
Liesette leaned heavily on him, her breath shallow. "You're speaking nonsense again."
"No," he said, halting as they came to yet another dead-end, only this time, he didn't curse. He looked around. Observed. Noticed how each path reset not from the entrance, but from a pivot point. "Not nonsense. Geometry. Like orbit decay. Every choice narrows the path, forcing us toward a fixed center."
Liesette squinted at him. "What kind of center?"
"I don't know," he said honestly, running a hand along a wall that rippled faintly beneath his touch. "But the temple isn't a prison, it's a system. Every corridor we walk isn't random. It's deterministic. It reacts. And we've entered its final sequence."
He turned, moving now with purpose. The dizziness was still there, the disorientation, but he had something the temple couldn't twist: understanding.
With each wrong turn, he corrected faster.
With each silence, he began to hear patterns in the stillness.
And then, the doors appeared.
Unlike the crumbling architecture before, these were smooth, seamless stone with faint metallic veins pulsing beneath the surface almost like circuitry or veins of starlight. There was no handle. No inscription. Just the feeling, deep in Altherion's bones, that this was the end of the orbit.
Liesette leaned harder against him, shivering. "Are we... finally out?"
He didn't answer.
He stepped forward, pressed his hand against the door.
It opened, not with sound, but with a sensation, as if the air itself had shifted to make space.
What lay beyond was a chamber.
Dark. Wide. Breathing.
Neither of them spoke.
Because instinctively, both understood-
They had reached the eye of the storm. The stillness behind the loop.
And whatever was in that chamber...
...was the reason they had been walking in circles.