The sky stretched above him, black and empty as a dead man's eyes.
Cel tilted his head back until his neck ached, searching every corner of the heavens. Nothing. Not even a sliver of silver, not the faintest glow where the moon should hang. The darkness was absolute, wrong in a way that made his skin crawl.
'Find the moon.'
The trial's command crashed through his mind with sudden, terrible clarity.
"No..." The word scraped from his throat like broken glass.
His hands trembled as he gripped the crumbled stone wall. This couldn't be real. The moon couldn't just vanish. It was impossible, like the sun forgetting to rise or the stars deciding to abandon their posts. Yet the empty void above mocked him with its silence.
A laugh bubbled up from his chest - high, cracked, teetering on the edge of hysteria. "Of course. Of fucking course."
The magnitude of it crashed over him like a wave. This wasn't some riddle about waiting for nightfall or searching through crystal formations for a hidden trinket. The moon was gone - stolen, hidden, destroyed - and somehow, he had to bring it back.
How did someone restore a celestial body? How did a broken, half-starved boy reach up into the heavens and drag down something the size of mountains?
The answer lay somewhere in that glowing maze below. It had to. There was nowhere else to look, no other path forward.
Cel's shoulders sagged. Whatever waited in those razor-sharp passages, he'd have to face it. Tomorrow. Tonight, he needed what little rest he could get.
The return to the ruin proved treacherous without the moon's guidance. Shadows swallowed everything beyond the crystals' faint luminescence, turning familiar shapes into lurking threats. He stumbled twice on loose stones, his heart hammering each time his foot found empty air.
Inside the ancient walls, darkness pressed against him like a living thing. The fire had long since died to cold ash, leaving only the memory of warmth. Violet crystals that had grown through cracks in the ancient stone cast their faint glow across the ruins, offering the only relief from the suffocating black.
Cel sank to the uneven ground, his back against the rough wall. The stones bit into his spine, but the discomfort was nothing compared to what he'd endured in that cell. Hard surfaces, cold air, the gnawing ache of an empty stomach - these had become his companions over the past year.
When sleep finally claimed him, it brought no mercy.
The dining hall materialized around him with perfect, merciless clarity. Golden morning light streamed through tall windows, casting everything in warm hues that made the scene more beautiful and more terrible. His family sat frozen at the breakfast table, motionless as death.
"Father!" The word tore from his throat, bright with hope and desperate joy. "I had the Calling! I've been chosen!"
Every fork paused. Every breath held. His father's knife stopped mid-slice, a thin piece of meat balanced on its edge.
Cel's dream-self couldn't stop the words from spilling out. The endless ice. The silver moon. He watched his father's expression shift from mild interest to cold disgust. Even though he knew what was coming, he couldn't change a single word.
"Show me the mark."
Four simple words that had destroyed everything.
His nightshirt came away sticky with sweat. The mark blazed across his back - beautiful, terrible, divine. His mother's sharp intake of breath cut through the morning air like a blade.
"Get out."
The words were barely whispered but sharp as winter.
"Father, please—"
"GET OUT!"
The roar shook dust from the rafters. But Cel couldn't leave, couldn't run. The dream held him fast as his father's fist connected with his jaw, as pain exploded across his vision, as his family watched and did nothing, nothing, nothing—
Cel jolted awake with a strangled gasp, his hands clawing at the stone beneath him. Sweat soaked his ragged clothes despite the cool air. His heart hammered against his ribs like a war drum.
The nightmare always left him like this - raw, broken, hollow. But beneath the agony burned something else, something that had kept him alive through a year of hell.
Hatred. Pure and sustaining as forge fire.
Cel's hands clenched into fists. The anger felt good - clean and purposeful compared to the helpless terror of the dream. It reminded him why he had to survive this trial, why he had to become strong. Not for glory or divine favor.
For revenge.
Blood-red light spilled across the sky as the four suns clawed their way above the horizon.
The violet crystals dimmed as daylight touched them, their ethereal glow fading to dull purple glass. Now. While the formations were blind and the heat hadn't yet turned lethal - now was his chance.
He spotted the two leather bags near the dead fire pit - the same ones he'd noticed yesterday, forgotten in his shock over the missing moon.
The first bag sloshed when he lifted it. Water. His parched throat ached at the thought of drinking. He lifted it to his lips and took a careful sip, the cool liquid soothing his hroat.
The second bag crinkled under his fingers. He loosened the drawstring and froze.
Strips of roasted meat lay inside, golden-brown and properly prepared. No mold. No crawling things. No stench of decay that had become the signature of every meal for the past year.
Cel's hands shook as he lifted one piece. Real food. Actual, honest food that wouldn't make him vomit blood afterward. He couldn't taste it - that sense had died months ago in the cell - but his body recognized the difference. The texture of something meant for human consumption rather than rot and filth.
His vision blurred. After months of choking down putrid scraps while maggots crawled across his tongue…
He ate two strips quickly, enough to quiet the gnawing in his belly, then sealed the bag and set it back down beside the water. In the maze's tight passages with their razor-sharp edges, any extra weight could be a death sentence.
Papers rustled on the stone slab nearby, covered in symbols that appeared to writhe and twist. A part of him wanted to study them, but the suns climbed higher with each passing moment.
Cel picked his way back over the rubble-choked entrance. His attention was fixed on the nightmare spread below.
The Crystal Maze stretched beyond the horizon in every direction - a forest of violet formations that twisted unnatural angles. Between the larger structures, smaller crystals jutted from the earth like broken teeth.
And towering above it all, that massive spire pulsed with sickly luminescence. His stomach churned just looking at it. It dominated the maze like a diseased heart, visible from every angle, impossible to ignore. The logical choice would be to head straight for it - the most obvious landmark in an otherwise chaotic landscape.
Which was exactly why every instinct screamed at him to run in the opposite direction.
The spire felt wrong. Looking at it too long made his vision swim and his stomach churn with nameless dread.
Cel deliberately turned his back on the tower and faced the opposite edge of the maze. Whatever waited in that direction couldn't be worse than the malevolent presence radiating from the spire.
He started down the hillside, picking his way carefully over loose stones and crystal fragments.
The first formation rose before him like a barrier between worlds, its surface smooth as glass and twice as deadly. Cel remembered the sharp sting from yesterday when he'd barely touched one of these formations. Every surface here was a blade waiting to cut.
He stared at the towering walls that stretched in every direction, identical violet surfaces offering no landmarks, no way to tell one passage from another. In a maze like this, he could wander in circles forever - or until he died.
He picked up a fallen shard, its edges sharp enough to split hairs, and struck it against the wall. Each blow sent dust cascading to the ground and filled the air with a sound like breaking bells.
The mark he carved was crude but visible - a rough gash in the otherwise pristine surface. Cel stepped back and examined his work. It would do. At least now he'd know if he'd been here before.
He moved forward into the maze.
The walls rose around him like the ribcage of some massive beast. Overhead, strips of sky burned with four ascending suns, but the passages themselves remained dim, filled with dancing shadows.
The ground was littered with crystal fragments that had fallen like deadly snow. Each step required careful placement as he picked his way between the razor-sharp shards - one wrong move would drive a spike deep into his foot. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the early hour, and the air thrummed with that bone-deep vibration.
Another mark carved into crystal. Another turn into uncertainty.
The maze twisted without warning, passages branching in patterns that defied logic. Corridors that should have led straight bent back on themselves. The surfaces played tricks with light and shadow, creating phantom passages that vanished when approached.
The humming grew stronger. What had started as a barely perceptible vibration now pulsed through his feet, up his legs, settling in his chest like a second heartbeat. The formations were drinking in sunlight, storing it, transforming it into something else.
Soon they'd be hot enough to cook flesh.
Cel quickened his pace, carving marks with increasingly desperate strokes. The passages seemed to multiply around him - left turns that led to dead ends, right turns that led back to where he'd started.
His rags clung to his back, damp with moisture. The air grew thicker with each breath. Above, the four suns climbed relentlessly toward their zenith.
Another mark. Another turn.
A passage opened to his left that definitely hadn't been there before. Cel stared at it, his mind struggling to process what his eyes were telling him. The corridor stretched into violet-tinted darkness.
He carved a deliberate X into the wall beside the new opening, then entered the passage.
Twenty steps later, he emerged into a circular chamber he'd never seen before. Formations jutted from the walls like frozen waterfalls, their surfaces blazing with reflected sunlight. The humming was louder here, almost musical.
But it was the marks on the opposite wall that made his blood run cold.
Three rough X's, carved in the same desperate style as his own, scarred the surface.
Cel's hands shook as he approached the marks, running his fingers over the familiar gouges. These weren't old - dust still clung to their edges, fresh as the moment they'd been made.
His marks. But he'd never been in this chamber before.
The maze wasn't just shifting. It was folding in on itself, bending in ways that made navigation meaningless.
Perspiration dripped from his nose onto the ground, where it hissed and steamed. The temperature was climbing fast now. Soon it would be unbearable.
'Time to get out of here.'
He turned back the way he'd came—
And faced a solid wall of violet crystal.
Cel pressed his palms against the surface where the passage should have been. Smooth. Seamless. As if it had never existed at all.
His breathing quickened. He spun in a circle, searching for any opening, any way out of the circular chamber. But the walls rose unbroken around him, beautiful, terrible and absolutely solid.
The maze had closed behind him like a trap.
And then he heard it.
A sharp clattering sound echoed through the crystal chamber.