The corridor ahead was a dead end. Somewhere behind him, a wall had shifted, sealing off the path he’d come through. He was boxed in. The moss on the walls glowed a sickly, fading green.

Two figures stepped into the corridor’s mouth, blocking his retreat. A swordswoman. A spearman. They’d been shadowing him for several turns now, ever since the chamber of pillars, waiting for the ground to turn against him. It finally had.

"Kane." The swordswoman’s voice was flat. "You’ve been moving pretty fast. Almost like you know where you’re going."

The spearman grinned. His knuckles were white on the haft of his spear. "Share the route. Or we take you out right here."

Dominic’s lungs burned. His right arm felt like it was full of sand. He’d lost count of the fights. The Dark Hounds that had cornered him. A sentinel he couldn’t dodge, only block, and the impact was still humming in his elbow. His mana reserves were a shallow puddle he was scraping the bottom of. He looked at the two fighters, then at the blank stone behind him. His mind, usually a clean flow of Florence’s drills and tactical pathways, was a scrawl of static.

"Last chance." The swordswoman raised her blade. The spearman dropped into a low stance, the point of his spear fixed on Dominic’s sternum.

Suddenly Wobbly launched itself from his shoulder. One moment it was a warm weight against his neck, the next it was a smear of translucent blue, crossing the gap before the swordswoman could flinch. It hit her face. Spread and sealed. Her scream was a wet, muffled thing, lost in the gel as it clamped over her mouth and nose. She clawed at it. Her fingers sank in, the membrane stretching but never breaking. She dropped to her knees, then her side, her struggles slowing, her mana bleeding away. Her arms went limp.

Dominic just stared. The thing that had been his companion for three years, the little blob with a pink bow tilted on its head, had just swallowed a person’s face. And it had worked.

The spearman’s nerve broke. He turned and ran, his boots slapping against the stone, the sound of his retreat swallowed by the dark.

Wobbly peeled itself off the woman with a slick, sucking sound. She lay still, chest rising and falling shallowly. Alive. Drained. Wobbly flowed back up Dominic’s leg, onto his shoulder. The pink bow settled tilted. It wobbled once, a small, proud satisfactory movement.

Dominic was still staring at the unconscious woman. His feet, operating on some deeper, more practical instinct, were already moving, carrying him out of the dead end.

***

He heard her voice.

"Dominic. Please. I don’t know where I am."

The sound of it stopped him dead. His heart seized before his brain could catch up. The corridor ahead was dark, the moss barely reaching it. The voice came from that darkness. Her voice. A voice he hadn’t heard in eight years.

Nicole.

"Please. It’s so cold here. I can’t find the way out." 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Wobbly trembled against his neck, a frightened hum, pressing flat as if trying to hide from the sound. It didn’t understand. It couldn’t know that the voice belonged to a sister who had vanished when Dominic was only eleven, who might be dead or alive in captivity, who he had spent years trying not to think about because thinking about it didn’t help.

But Dominic’s mind was already somewhere else. Eight years ago. The night before she vanished. She’d packed a bag, told him to keep it under his bed. "If I’m not back by morning, you take this and you go to Mrs. Hendricks. You don’t look back." She’d kissed his forehead. Her hands were shaking as she went away.

"You came back for me. I knew you would. Please, Dominic. I’m scared."

Dominic closed his eyes. His hands were shaking. He knew it wasn’t her. What ever was in there had pulled a voice from the deepest part of his memory, the part that still wondered, the part that had never gotten an answer. But knowing didn’t make it easier. The voice was exactly right. The same cadence. The same warmth. The same slight tremor she’d had when she was scared, which was often, because she’d spent her last years in that house watching everything fall apart.

She’d been eighteen. He’d been eleven. She’d tried to protect him.

"I can’t do this alone," her voice said from the dark. "Dominic. Little brother. Please."

Little brother. She’d called him that. He’d forgotten.

Wobbly burbled, a low, urgent sound to continue moving.

Dominic opened his eyes. He looked at the dark corridor. He listened to his sister’s voice calling for help.

"I’m sorry," he said quietly. Then he walked past it.

The voice followed him. Pleading. Crying. His name, over and over, until it faded into the stone. Wobbly’s trembling eased.

Dominic kept walking. His hands were still shaking. They didn’t stop for a while.

Behind him, in a different part of the maze, another fighter heard a familiar voice. His mother, dead three years, calling for help. He followed it into a dead end. The walls groaned and closed in. His dot went dark.

***

The corridor was wrong. Dominic knew it was wrong before he understood why. The moss was too bright, a burning gold that hurt to look at, and the light it cast didn’t fall right. The shadows bent. The walls breathed. His feet were moving but he couldn’t feel them.

He couldn’t feel much of anything. His thoughts were loose, drifting, untethered from the moment. He was walking but he didn’t remember deciding to walk. He was cold but he couldn’t remember what warm felt like.

Small figures lined the walls. Pale. Childlike. Their faces were smooth and blank except for their eyes, dark hollows that pulled at the light and pulled at him.

They whispered. Sounds in the shape of words, the rhythm of a language that didn’t exist, but the cadence was familiar. Almost lullaby. The cold had texture now. Velvet on his skin, then wet silk, then the sensation of a hand on his spine that vanished when he tried to flinch. His mouth filled with the taste of rust and snow. He’d been looking at them. He couldn’t remember when he’d started looking. He couldn’t remember how to stop.

His almost empty mana pool was draining. He could feel it leaving him, a slow spiral like water running out of a cracked cup, but the feeling was distant, happening to someone else. His limbs were heavy. His thoughts were slurry. The frost on his sleeves was beautiful. The way it caught the gold light. The way it sparkled.

Wobbly pressed flat against his neck. A vibration. Urgent. Insistent. It wasn’t telling him to keep moving. It was telling him something else. A sharp, repeated pulse against his skin, over and over, making the same urgent noise over and over.

Don’t look. Don’t look at them. Look away.

Dominic blinked. His eyes were dry. He’d been staring at one of the children for he didn’t know how long. Its hollow eyes stared back, pulling, pulling.

He wrenched his gaze down. The floor. The stone. The moss blazing between his feet. The cold still pulled at him, but the fog in his head thinned. His thoughts clicked back into place one at a time, rusty and slow. The children were still there. He could feel them watching. But he wasn’t looking at them, and that was the trick. That was the only trick.

He walked. Eyes fixed on the stone. Wobbly pulsing against his neck in time with his steps, a steady rhythm. Don’t look. Don’t look. The cold gnawed at his bones. His breath plumed white. His legs shook with every step. The children’s hollow eyes tracked him, he could feel them, a physical pressure against the back of his skull, but he didn’t lift his gaze. He watched the cracks in the stone. The way the moss grew in spirals. A chip in the floor where something heavy had fallen. Anything. Anything but them.

The corridor stretched. Time went strange. He didn’t know how long he walked. He didn’t know if he was still walking or if he’d stopped and this was the memory of walking. The cold was inside him now, in his chest, in his fingers, and the stone under his feet felt like it was tilting.

Then the cold stopped.

He stumbled forward, caught himself on the wall, and the wall was just a wall. No figures. No hollow eyes. No pull at his mana. The moss was gold but normal gold, just light on stone, and his breath was coming in ragged gasps and his legs were shaking and he was through.

He pressed his forehead against the stone and stood there, breathing. Wobbly’s pulse against his neck slowed. A single, soft burble.

Good. Safe now. Move when you can.

Dominic pushed off the wall. His mana was nearly gone. His fingers were numb. But he was through. He kept walking.