: The Glass Labyrinth
Wale vanished the moment Chris's fire kissed the stone floor. The inferno curled around empty space, blistering air but finding no flesh. The room pulsed, then stilled. Only the sound of their breathing and the low hiss of scorched stone remained.
"He was there," Grey growled, runeblade humming with residual magic. "How did he just—?"
"Step sideways through time," Kairo muttered. "He's rewriting the world as we speak. We're chasing ghosts written in ink that hasn't dried."
Chris extinguished her flames. "He's not just ahead of us. He's authoring our choices."
She turned to the strange book they had found. Its final page had filled itself while they fought:
"And when they struck, they found only absence, for the villain was always watching from just outside their story."
Kairo closed the book gently. "He's laughing at us. Mocking the idea of fate."
Chris's eyes burned. "Then let's show him fate can burn back."
They retreated to the Reliquary of Whispering Stones—an ancient vault beneath the surface, built by the first seers to protect relics that whispered truths too dangerous for the world above. Only the four of them could enter; their blood had carved this place into existence.
The stone walls were alive with voices, repeating dreams and memories in shifting tongues.
Grey studied the runes along the eastern wall. "He's changing the leyweb. The connections between places, dreams, and time itself—he's weaving them differently."
"Using the mirror as an anchor," Chris said.
Kairo nodded. "It's not a mirror anymore. It's a lens. And we're inside the story it sees."
Chris stepped toward a relic sealed in a crystal coffin: the Lens of Unmaking—a shard of shattered time. Dangerous, forbidden. But useful.
"I'll use it."
"No," Grey snapped. "It destroys memory. It could unravel your mind."
"Then let it," she said. "If it gives me a glimpse of where he's going next."
Kairo raised his hand. "Wait. If we go at him one by one, we'll lose. He's baiting us. We need to turn the story against him. Trick the author into reading his own footnotes."
Grey smirked. "You're suggesting we trap a time-bending memory-weaver in his own narrative?"
"Exactly," Kairo said. "But first, we have to understand the structure of the story he's writing. And that means going back to where it started."
They all turned to the book again. Page one: the manor. The mirror. The first lie.
Three days later, they stood once more before the ruin of Elarion Manor. The sky above was bruised, clouded with ink-black mist. Lightning rumbled silently across the horizon. The forest surrounding the manor had died long ago, roots brittle and air thick with ash.
The mirror was no longer shattered.
It had reassembled itself, now floating mid-air in the grand foyer, turning slowly like a coin suspended in eternity. Its surface rippled like water.
"This is a trap," Grey muttered.
"Of course it is," Chris said. "But if we hesitate, he wins."
Without another word, she stepped into the mirror.
Kairo followed, then Grey.
The world inverted.
They awoke in a corridor of endless mirrors, each stretching high into an obsidian sky. The floor was made of fractured memory—flickering scenes from their lives replaying beneath their feet. Chris saw herself on the day she buried her sister. Grey saw the moment he first killed. Kairo saw himself as a child, screaming as prophecy consumed his mind.
Wale's voice echoed around them.
"Welcome to the Glass Labyrinth. You have always been here. You simply forgot."
Chris summoned flame, but it sputtered.
Grey raised his blade. "Coward. Come face us."
"Why?" Wale's voice teased. "You wouldn't know what to do with me if I stood still. Heroes need a chase. Monsters need a myth."
A figure stepped from one of the mirrors.
It was Chris.
Younger. Bloodied. Afraid.
"She's not real," Chris said.
The doppelgänger lunged, and they fought. Fire against fire.
From another mirror, Grey saw himself emerge. A version of him twisted by vengeance, his runeblade soaked in the blood of innocents. Kairo faced a version of himself that never turned away from madness—who embraced prophecy and became its puppet.
Wale had trapped them within their own reflections.
Each battle broke something. Not just the glass, but the confidence they wore like armor. Chris hesitated when her mirror-self screamed her sister's name. Grey faltered when his double spoke truths he buried long ago. Kairo wept as his reflection prophesied his death—betrayed by flame and silence.
The labyrinth shifted as they moved, never the same place twice. Time looped. They saw moments play again, sometimes backwards, sometimes with missing pieces.
Finally, Kairo cried out, "You want us to question reality! Fine! But we're not afraid of your story!"
The mirror corridor cracked. Wale's laughter stilled.
"Good," he whispered. "Then read the ending."
A door appeared ahead.
Beyond the door lay a library built of bone and light. Shelves rose into a starless void, filled with books that hummed with voices. On the central dais was a pedestal, and atop it—The Book.
Their story.
Chris stepped forward and opened the final page. It had changed again.
"And when the heroes reached the final chapter, they saw their roles were written not in ink, but in blood. And they finally understood: this was not their story. It was his."
Wale stood behind them.
This time, he did not vanish.
He looked tired. Calm. Triumphant.
"You're not gods," he said softly. "You're characters. Beautiful, flawed lines written into a tragedy. And I? I am the silence between your words."
Chris ignited her soulflame.
Grey raised his blade.
Kairo whispered his final spell.
And Wale… closed the book.
The world exploded into white.
And the Labyrinth forgot them.