Chapter 128: The Architect
Hermes walked until the stairs bent sideways, then upward, then downward again. His knees ached though he could not say if he was climbing, descending, or running in circles. The maze shifted when he blinked, folding into shapes that belonged more to sketches in a madman’s notebook than in any real world.
It reminded him of Escher’s painting of stairs that led both ways at once, a cruel joke that repeated itself in living stone.
He pressed a palm to the wall. Cold marble. Or perhaps glass. When he pulled his hand away, it was damp, as though the wall had wept. A laugh echoed, the laugh of the little girl who called him Father.
"Always running, never asking why. Isn’t that so?" she sang.
Hermes ignored her at first. He kept walking, testing turns, tracing paths, muttering to himself under his breath. But each corridor led him back. Each staircase spat him out at the same landing. The maze was no place for reason.
Then came the first door. A plain wooden frame. He stepped through.
Inside, there were shadows of two lovers. One sat on the lap of the other, mouths pressed together. It was clumsy, tender, familiar. Hermes froze, recognition tugging his chest. Somner. The cafeteria.
That cursed potato soup with the mold that had left a green sprout clinging to his lip. Somner drunk, lunging forward, mistaking the spud for food. Their first kiss, ridiculous and unplanned.
But here, in this room, it was grotesque. Mold had overtaken their bodies. Potato spuds sprouted from cheeks, lips, eyes. Tumors of green and brown swallowed their features until there was no Hermes and no Somner—only fungi devouring the shape of love.
He staggered back, bile in his throat. "This isn’t real."
The girl’s voice chimed. "Memories rot. You still eat them."
He found another door. This time feathers littered the air.
White feathers, drifting slow as snow. In the center stood a mannequin made of ice, its hand raised, clutching a pillow like a sword. At its feet lay a figure of fire, smaller, curled, waiting for the strike. Like the painting of the angel Michael slaying the devil.
Hermes blinked, and the memory flared. Ymir, pale and sharp, standing over Magni’s bed in the hospital. That pillow crashing down on the red-haired boy’s chest with all the gentleness of a grudge wrapped in softness.
"Why are you showing me this?" he whispered.
No answer but feathers brushing his cheeks.
Then came the third room. Dark, fragrant with earth and pollen. A man knelt before another, his body covered in three-leaf clovers.
The man standing over him bore blossoms instead. Petals bright, perfumed. The walls themselves turned to paper, words scrawled in long, flowing prose, circling endlessly.
Hermes squinted, then his breath caught. The words were thoughts he’d heard before. Aphrodite’s. His strange, unashamed philosophies.
The flowers, the clovers... Apple’s musings of clovers as symbols of himself and Hermes, separate yet the same. The spread legs, the kneeling, the hunger for worship through flesh. It was all there, transcribed in lurid detail by walls that had become a diary.
Hermes shivered. "This is morbid."
A giggle rang out. "Why morbid, Father? It’s your own memories."
He could not stand it anymore. Hermes turned in the hallway and shouted. "Why are you doing this? Why show me pieces of things twisted? What’s the point?"
Silence, then the girl’s voice came soft, lilting:
"Why would Chaos need Reason? Tell me, Father. Have you ever asked why these things happen to you? What was the purpose of it all? Or do you simply accept the entropy of fate, the intricate designs that made no sense when viewed from below, and only made sense to the architect who was watching from above?"
Hermes whispered, almost by accident: "Architect."
The walls hummed, as though the labyrinth had heard its name.
"You’re not my daughter, are you?"
A chuckle. "You are the Father. Father of all. All of the Void. Void’s son. Son of the Spirit."
Hermes clenched his jaw. "Answer me. You’re not the child inside Eirwyn, are you?"
The laugh came again, lighter now, conceding. "No. Not his child."
"Then what are you?"
"Follow me."
Her voice led him through the maze, down a flight of stairs that turned sideways until he was walking on walls. Finally, another door appeared. He stepped inside.
***
A woman sat alone in a room littered with sketches. Impossible sketches: loops that turned inward, triangles that connected where no line should, shapes that twisted into infinity.
She bent over a globe, but this was no Earth. It was a sphere filled with stars, galaxies, threads of color unraveling like yarn in space.
Animals came to her. A lion with constellations in its mane. A serpent coiled from nebulae. A stag with antlers made of comets.
Each placed its head close, whispering demands. She listened, nodding, then sketched what they asked: domains, laws, realms.
Days passed. Nights too. Or what passed for them. Time folded like paper in her hands. At last, the grand design lay complete, an intricate web of laws and voids, chaos and order intertwined like conjoined twins.
But the animals were not grateful.
Their whispers turned to growls. They snapped their teeth, trampled her sketches, dragged her from her seat. Their claws ripped at her robes, their fury unmaking the architect they had begged to shape their home.
They threw her into a pit without end. Her sketches burned.
They said in unison: "The Demiurge must not change the Order that she created. So she must be buried."
The walls around Hermes shuddered with the echo of her fall.
He gasped. "The Demiurge..."
Yes. That was the word. The architect of the Void, betrayed by those she served.
Hermes’ throat tightened. He saw in her not a goddess but an intern, hunched under fluorescent lights, her work stolen, her efforts mocked, until she was discarded like trash.
He remembered the sting of carrying coffee for people who never learned his name. Of typing memos that no one read. He understood. He felt her wound in his own chest.
"Why me?" he asked softly. "Why bring me here?"
A voice, laughter rippling. "Because you understand. Because chaos begets chaos, and you are chaos walking."
"Tell me what you want," Hermes pressed. "Tell me why."
The laughter grew brighter. "Must I? Would you believe me if I did? My want is not your want. My joy is that you search. My gift is the riddle."
"Then why now?" Hermes demanded. "Why drag me from my search for Eirwyn? From my friends?"
Her voice softened. "Fun. Curiosity. Perhaps a test. Perhaps a kindness. Perhaps all. But you see me now, and that is enough. I will send you back."
Hermes closed his fists. "And what do you want me to do with this?"
Her final words lingered in the air, carved into the maze itself:
"You are Chaos, while all demand Order. Will you destroy yourself for their sake? Or will you be what you are?"
The labyrinth shivered, folding in on itself like paper swallowed by fire. Hermes felt his feet fall away, the world dissolving beneath him, until he dropped into the waking word.