Chapter 16: The Deathless Labyrinth
-----AVIN’S POV-----
It was quiet.
Not the kind of quiet you get at night when the world is just asleep —
this was the suffocating, unnatural kind. No wind, no air, no weight in my chest.
My senses felt muted, as if my head had been unhooked from my body and was just... drifting somewhere.
I knew this place. Not by sight — there was nothing to see yet — but by the feeling. This cold, numb limbo had brushed against me once before. The last time I died.
The memory crawled up my spine like an unwelcome insect, and before I could follow it to its end, the voice came again.
A woman’s voice. Soft, yet heavy with something ancient.
"Remember... Remember, Clive... your @^^#$%@^%&@%@^*#."
Just like last time...
The last words broke apart, scrambled like they’d been chewed by static before they reached my ears. My skull throbbed at the sound.
"Ah— fuck..." My own voice felt far away. I pressed a palm to my temple — or tried to.
And that’s when I realized.
A head. I had a head.
Wait...
If I had a head, did I have—?
Yes. There was the phantom echo of a torso, arms, legs. The tingling outline of a body, but no vision of it. I could feel myself, but it was as though my skin was wrapped in fog.
I forced my eyes open.
Black. Not the dim glow of a room without a candle, not the deep blue of the night sky — this was an unbroken sheet of pitch. No gradients, no hints of shape. A place where light itself had been erased.
I turned in the nothingness. My body — whatever passed for it here — drifted like a leaf in dead water.
Then I saw it.
Far away, like a lantern in an ocean trench, a pale orb pulsed softly.
It wasn’t reason that made me speak. My lips moved on their own.
"...Gaia?"
The instant the word left my mouth, the world yanked itself out from under me.
The orb shot away, shrinking to a pinprick as my body dropped — no, plummeted. The sensation was violent, stomach twisting like I’d been tossed off a cliff.
I was falling...
But there was no indication
There was no wind. No pressure, nothing
Just the feeling of gravity pulling me with its cold arms
And the fact that the orb moved further and further
—THUD—
The impact jarred through my spine.
Air scraped my lungs as I rolled onto my side. My palm met something solid. Cold, rough, and uneven — the feel of stone that had been eroded over centuries but never cared for. Old bones of a structure.
No light, not really. Only vague gradients telling me I wasn’t blind.
I pushed myself upright, brushing dust from my clothes by habit more than need, and began to turn in place. That’s when I saw them.
Symbols.
Carved into walls that loomed on either side of me, their grooves glowed with a muted green — like moss made of light. They weren’t letters, not in any language I knew. They were tiny pictures, fractured patterns. Egyptian? No... close, but older. Stranger. The kind of thing that makes you think maybe the Egyptians copied it from somewhere.
Curiosity pried me closer.
Step.
Step.
Step.
One more and I could have reached out, traced my fingers into their lines—
The ground wasn’t there.
"Oh, fuck."
Gravity ripped me down.
My arms flailed instinctively, grabbing for something that wasn’t there. The sensation jolted another memory loose — the bridge, the fall, the cold wind screaming in my ears. I almost laughed. Almost.
Instead, I just sighed.
"I’m sick of this."
I closed my eyes, inhaled like I could somehow brace for it—
—THUD—
Pain bloomed in my back, not sharp but enough to punch the air from me.
Groaning, I looked around, pushing myself up.
"...What the fuck?"
The same walls. The same glowing symbols. I was back where I’d started.
"How—?" My voice came out flat.
I stood there for a long moment, scanning every inch of the floor before stepping.
"I fell... so how?"
I edged forward again, my brain telling me not to, my feet ignoring it—
And then the sound hit.
A low, grinding growl. Mechanical. The churn of heavy gears, the clank of metal teeth meeting in rhythm. The air itself seemed to vibrate with it.
I looked up, searching for its source—
The symbols. They were moving. No— the wall they were carved into was sliding inward.
"Oh, that’s... great."
I spun, but the opposite wall was closing in too. The space between them shrank by the second.
Panic clawed up my throat. I lunged forward, jamming my hands out like I could hold back walls. My palms met cold stone, my feet planted hard—
—CRUNCH—
Nothing but darkness.
Then the drop again.
"What is happening?"
The question barely left my mouth before—
—THUD—
Back at the same spot.
This time I didn’t wait for the grinding to start. I bolted forward, lungs pulling in thick, heavy air. Each step seemed to sink into the ground more than it should have.
My chest burned by the time the ground changed beneath me. Smooth. Flat.
Tiled.
The sound came again — this time behind me. I risked a glance. The walls slammed together where I’d been standing seconds ago.
I faced forward, trying to push speed into my legs, but the tiles ended, and the texture changed.
Sand.
Each grain grabbed at my boots like it wanted to pull me down. Every step was slower, heavier. By the time I looked down, it was already swallowing my knees.
"What the—"
A shadow cut across my vision. I looked up.
It wasn’t a shadow.
It was a blade.
A massive slab of sharpened metal swinging toward me, the air whistling around its edge.
"What the hell!?"
I tried to move — the sand refused.
—SLAH—
Black again.
I exhaled through my nose in something between annoyance and disbelief.
"This is annoying."
The fall.
The ground.
The same damned walls.
-To Be Continued-