The stairwell narrowed the farther I went, stone walls pressing in like the throat of some immense beast. The torches—if that's what they were—were strange now: flickering with blue flame, casting more shadow than light, and burning without smoke or scent.
I counted steps at first. Gave up around two hundred.
This was no ruin.
It was alive.
Each footfall stirred something in the air, a static charge behind the eyes, as if memories not my own were pressing against the edge of thought. I kept walking. There was no hunger. No thirst. Only purpose, growing heavier with each step.
Eventually, the stairs gave way to a chamber that felt wrong.
The air was colder, dry, metallic. The walls were no longer stone, but a black material, smooth like obsidian but pulsing faintly beneath the surface—veins of dull red light crawling through them like blood in capillaries.
It was here I saw the first mirror.
Not a glass one. It was a panel—flat, polished to perfection—yet somehow showing not a reflection, but a version. A possibility.
My human face stared back.
Tired. Sunken. Wearing that same loose tie from the last day I remembered. But behind me in the glass… the labyrinth loomed, larger and darker than ever, and horns curled from my skull like crown and curse alike.
I looked away.
The corridor split ahead—three paths, identical in width, but each whispering something different. Not sound, but emotion.
The left path carried grief. Deep and black.
The center path felt hollow, like an open mouth waiting to devour.
The right path burned with something brighter. Rage, yes—but also memory. Familiarity.
I chose the right.
The passage curved sharply and opened into a new space—circular, domed, like a cathedral built for giants. The ceiling was impossibly high, its top vanishing into mist. Chains hung from the dark above, dozens of them, each bearing strange sigils that shimmered when I looked directly at them.
And beneath the chains—pedestals.
Three of them. Each carved from a different material: bone, crystal, and raw iron. Upon each pedestal sat a relic.
A trial.
The voice returned, closer now. Inside my head, but behind my own thoughts. Not command. Invitation.
"Choose. One grants memory. One grants strength. One binds you to the truth."
I stepped forward, hooves silent on the stone.
The bone relic was a mask—skull-white, with no eye holes. Smooth and cold.
The crystal was a vial, filled with pulsing liquid light. As I approached, I felt it humming in my bones. Power. Pure and reckless.
The iron held a chain—small, rusted, but heavy. Its links were carved with the same runes I'd seen on the walls.
I reached toward the chain.
And the moment my fingers closed around it—I remembered something real.
A woman.
Standing at a doorway. My doorway. Arms crossed, smiling despite the tension behind her eyes. She had a name—Aryn—and in that moment, it hit me with more force than any beast I'd fought.
I had loved her.
I had lost her.
The vision tore away like a scab ripped from fresh skin. I staggered, clutching the chain, gasping for air.
"Good," the voice said again, softer now. Closer. "You're beginning to see. The monster was always there. We've just given it a shape."
I looked down at my hands—huge, clawed, soaked in blood both old and new. But beneath the skin, something else was waking.
Not a man.
Not just a beast.
Something between.
The chain clinked as I wrapped it around my wrist. It locked in place, as if it belonged there.
From the far wall, a new passage opened—stone folding away like flesh pulled from a wound.
The next level awaited.
And I walked into it.