"Wait." The word came out taut, panic threading through it despite her effort to stay composed.

Serena hurled the stone she’d been carrying forward.

The floor ahead of them rippled like water the second it landed.

"Quicksand," Fin said, answering everyone’s unasked question. "Good eye."

A churning expanse of quicksand opened where the path had appeared to be seconds before.

Gav stared at it. "Cool. Love that for us."

"I have this," Hyran said, stepping forward. With a decisive sweep of his hand, he tore a portal open to the far side of the trap.

Serena’s brows rose. He had never been to the opposite side, yet the portal formed flawlessly. He caught the question forming on her face and answered before she could voice it.

"If it is within visual range, I can create a portal even if I’ve never set foot there."

"I can do that as well," Maelor added, loudly enough that everyone heard.

"Congratulations," Hyran said, already stepping through.

Maelor’s nostrils flared. "That was dismissive."

"It was meant to be," Hyran called from the other side of the portal.

The group followed, and they continued down the dim corridor. Moments later, a deep rumble echoed behind them. Stone dragging against stone. They quickened their pace.

"That sound is never good," Gav commented. "In any temple. Ever."

At a glance, it appeared as though the walls were collapsing inward, but the sound was too controlled.

Serena exhaled, a quiet sigh that carried more resignation than fear.

"It begins."

Every man behind her heard it. None of them felt reassured.

"Serena, did the scroll show you this?" Hyran asked.

"Yes. It flashed a preview to me as I read," she replied.

They broke into a run. The passage split into several branching corridors ahead, and Serena veered sharply to the right without hesitation. The group followed without question. The rumbling ceased the moment they committed to the turn.

"Is this a maze?" Aeron asked, though his tone suggested he already knew.

"Yes," Serena said. "And it will shift constantly. Marking the path is useless."

Aeron, sprinting: "Are we trusting instinct or is there actual logic behind these turns?"

"Both," Serena said.

"I’ll take it," Aeron said, though his face said he wouldn’t.

Maelor looked at the walls with an expression that was half terror and half academic ecstasy. "A self-restructuring trial maze with lethal fail-states. Pre-Accord construction." He turned to Hyran. "I need to survive this so I can write about it."

"Then stay close and stop talking," Hyran said.

Serena slowed to a cautious walk, every sense sharpened, eyes scanning each shifting line of stone. The corridor seemed still. Deceptively so.

Fin moved closer to her. His hand brushed the small of her back once, brief and deliberate, the only comfort he could offer in a place that might kill them for standing still too long.

Dex noticed. Said nothing. His jaw flexed once, which was its own language. He moved to her other side, sword drawn, gold eyes sweeping every shadow.

Behind them, Gav noticed Dex noticing. He walked between Hyran and Aeron. Maelor was last, muttering ward analysis under his breath like a man reciting prayers.

Gav looked around. "This is the part where someone says ’it’s too quiet’ and then something terrible happens."

Nobody said it. Something terrible happened anyway.

Then the wall beside Serena and Fin rippled.

Before any of them could react, the stone surged outward and pulled them through, swallowing them in a single fluid motion. The surface sealed behind her at once, returning to its original unbroken form as though they had never stood there at all.

"Serena!" Dex slammed both palms against the stone. It didn’t yield. He hit it again, so hard his wrists screamed. But he didn’t feel it. He hit it a third time, and the impact rattled up through his forearms, his shoulders, his teeth. Nothing.

The wall was warm. Alive. And it had taken her the way the sea takes a body: completely, without negotiation.

Dexmon: Serena, are you okay?

He waited. No response came.

Dexmon: Serena. Fin. Respond.

"We have our answer on these," Hyran said holding up his bracelet. "Don’t die because it won’t work."

Dex pressed his forehead against the stone for one second. Then pulled back, wiped the blood from his knuckles on his leg, and turned to face the corridor ahead.

The rumbling began again. Louder than before. The walls convulsed, grinding, shifting, caving inward as though the corridor itself intended to hunt them.

"Move," Dex ordered.

They ran. The stone rearranged itself in violent waves, sealing paths behind them and forcing the maze to change shape around their every step.

Hyran tore portals open on instinct, redirecting the group through collapsing corridors with the speed and precision of a man who had done this exact thing in a war.

Maelor matched him stride for stride. Whatever rivalry existed between them dissolved in the space between one falling wall and the next. They worked in tandem, no words needed, two master mages operating at the peak of their craft while the world tried to crush them.

Aeron ran beside Gav, journal somehow still in hand. "For the record," he called over the grinding stone, "this is the greatest day of my life."

"Seek help," Gav called back.

The maze swallowed them whole.

✦✦✦

The stone released Serena into darkness.

The moment the stone swallowed Serena, her world inverted.

She found herself suspended upside down, boots fused to the ceiling as though welded there, while an impossible sky stretched beneath her feet. Gravity felt wrong. Warped. The room had been built to disorient on sight, and it was doing its job.

She hung there for a moment, keeping her breathing even, weighing her options.

She reached for her pink, then for her gold. The walls absorbed it whole, swallowing the energy with a soft, hungry shimmer.

The temple refused her power.

"Wonderful," she muttered.

The stone beside her rippled, and Fin was ejected through the ceiling with the grace of a man being spat out by a building. He landed, or rather stuck, boots fusing to the same surface Serena occupied, hanging upside down three feet from her.

He blinked. Looked at her. Looked at the void beneath them. Looked back at her.

"Serena."

"Fin."

"We’re upside down."

"We are."