The sharp clatter echoed off crystal walls, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Cel's heart stopped mid-beat. His knuckles went white around the crystal shard. Perspiration stung his eyes as the rising heat mixed with his terror.
Silence returned, broken only by the maze's eternal hum - that bone-deep vibration that made his teeth ache. Cel's chest burned as he held his breath, straining to catch any hint of movement, any whisper of what had made that sound.
Nothing.
His lungs finally demanded air, forcing him to exhale in a shaky rush. The sound seemed thunderous in the crystalline chamber.
'Standing here like prey doesn't help.' The urgent need to act blazed through his paralyzed thoughts.
Cel forced himself to move, examining the chamber more carefully. The crystal walls seemed solid, their refracting surfaces playing tricks with light and shadow. But as he circled the perimeter, something caught his eye - a gap so narrow it was almost invisible, hidden between two twisted formations.
He crept toward the opening, carefully placing his steps between the scattered crystal fragments. Each footfall felt like a bell tolling his location to whatever lurked in the maze's depths.
The passage was barely wide enough for his shoulders. He squeezed through sideways, crystal edges scraping against his back. Fire blazed across his shoulder blades as the razor surfaces carved shallow furrows through his tattered rags and into his flesh. He bit back a cry, feeling warm blood begin to seep down his spine.
He pressed on and emerged into—
Nothing made sense anymore.
The corridor stretched ahead - and there, carved into the violet surface, was one of his marks.
Cel's blood ran cold. He'd never been in this passage before. He was certain of it. The narrow gap he'd squeezed through had led somewhere new, somewhere deeper into the maze.
But the crude gash in the crystal wall told a different story.
The maze had folded around him once already, trapping him in a chamber filled with his own marks. Now it was happening again - passages connecting in ways that shouldn't be possible.
If his marks could appear anywhere, if passages could lead to places he'd already been without him realizing it, then every step forward might be a step backward. Every turn might deliver him to somewhere he'd sworn he'd left behind.
'How do you navigate a maze that keeps shifting?'
The passage stretched ahead, violet walls refracting light in patterns that hurt to follow. But was it the same passage he'd just seen, or had the maze already shifted while he wasn't looking? His eyes darted to the walls, searching for some anchor point, some way to know if he was moving forward or being led in circles.
Every shadow felt like a threat - not just because something might be hiding there, but because he could no longer trust what he was seeing.
Cel took a tentative step forward, then another. The ground felt solid beneath his feet, but that meant nothing. The floor of that circular chamber had felt solid too, right up until the walls closed around him like teeth.
But standing still wouldn't solve the problem.
He pressed forward, the jagged shard trembling in his grip. Each step felt like a betrayal of his better judgment, but paralysis could mean death. The maze might be unpredictable, but at least movement offered the illusion of progress.
Minutes crawled by, the maze's constant hum his only companion. The familiar thrumming began to work on his nerves in a different way - maybe the clattering had just been a loose shard falling from the walls, disturbing the crystalline song.
Just as his shoulders started to relax a flicker of motion shattered his fragile calmness.
Cel's blood turned to ice. He turned toward a shadowed alcove where sunlight barely reached, his mind already screaming warnings. Was it real? Had it been there before?
At first, only darkness met his gaze.
Then, movement flickered in the gloom again.
A gasp tore from his throat before he could stop it. His feet stumbled backward, nearly sending him sprawling onto the razor-sharp ground.
Something pale gleamed in the darkness.
Cel's eyes struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. White shapes emerged from the violet shadows - curved, organic forms that definitely weren't crystal. Something that caught the light with a dull sheen.
Bone.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. He took another stumbling step backward as more details resolved from the shadow.
A ribcage curved beneath something that might have been flesh once but was now crystalline shell. Leg bones jutted at impossible angles, twisted by crystal growths that had no respect for anatomy. The thing emerging from the shadows had been human once - the basic structure was still there, warped beyond recognition but unmistakably human.
Jagged formations erupted from its bones like twisted thorns, each shard pulsing with that familiar inner light. More crystals had pierced through the skull, creating a crown of violet death that blazed with stored sunlight.
Cel's breathing came in short, panicked gasps as his gaze traveled upward to where a face should have been.
Empty sockets fixed on him. Not hollow - that would have been a mercy. Worse. Much worse. Clusters of crystal filled the spaces where eyes had been, multifaceted surfaces that caught and reflected his own terrified face back at him in fractured fragments.
The creature stood motionless as a statue, but Cel could feel its attention like a weight pressing against his chest. Waiting. Watching.
A soft clatter broke the silence - bone against crystal. The sound made Cel's skin crawl. The skull tilted with mechanical precision. A bony finger twitched, crystals scraping together with the sound of breaking glass.
Then the shadows beyond began to move.
More of them.
Skeletal forms emerged from crevices and alcoves he hadn't even noticed - a dozen crystal-encrusted horrors that had been watching him stumble through the corridors. Some crawled along the walls like spiders, their limbs bent at impossible angles where crystal growths had fused joints together. Others shuffled forward on legs that clinked and rattled with every step.
Pain lanced through Cel's torso - phantom agony from claws that had torn him apart in the Ashlands. His hand flew to his chest, fingers finding unmarked skin where he remembered gaping wounds. The creature with obsidian scales flashed through his mind: amber eyes blazing with intelligence, massive forelimbs ending in death, the crushing impact as he was hurled into darkness.
He'd been dying there. Actually dying. And now more creatures wanted to finish what the first had started.
Terror flooded his veins like liquid fire.
Cel spun on his heel and bolted.
The narrow corridor forced him to weave between jutting crystals, their razor edges slicing at his tattered rags. Behind him, the scrape and clatter of bone against crystal echoed off the walls - a symphony of death that followed his every step. The creatures moved with mechanical persistence, neither fast nor slow, just relentless.
His bare feet pounded against crystal fragments. The maze blurred around him - walls becoming streams of purple light. His chest burned, each breath scorching his throat.
A crystal shard bit deep into his arm as he flew around a turn. The sting snapped his attention for one fatal second - his foot caught on raised stone.
Cel pitched forward, arms flailing uselessly.
He hit the floor hard, stars exploding across his vision. Sharp fragments pressed into his palms as he struggled upright.
'Get up get up get up—'
He stumbled forward, terror keeping his water-weak legs moving until his body reached its limit.
Cel collapsed against a crystal wall, chest heaving. Sweat streamed down his face. His legs shook so violently he had to press both hands against the wall to stay upright.
The clattering had stopped. Only his ragged breathing disturbed the crystalline chorus that pounded through his skull.
Minutes passed before he looked around.
Purple walls stretched in every direction, surfaces identical as mirrors. He searched desperately for any familiar gouges, but found only smooth crystal - clear surfaces that mocked his careful planning. The maze had already shown him how it could twist passages back on themselves, making his marks appear where they shouldn't exist. In his blind panic, he'd abandoned any hope of navigation in a place where navigation was impossible anyway.
A sound escaped his throat - half gasp, half sob.
Cel pushed off from the wall and stumbled to the nearest intersection. The crystals' hum seemed louder now, more mocking. Their surfaces caught and twisted the light from the four suns above, creating a kaleidoscope of reflections that made his head pound.
He dabbed at the cut on his arm, the blood already starting to clot. The wound was shallow but served as a harsh reminder of how easily this place could hurt him. How easily it could kill him.
Cel closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. 'Think.' Panic had gotten him into this mess - but in a place that defied all logic, what could thinking accomplish?
When he opened his eyes again, something caught his attention above the maze's twisted walls.
The spire.
That massive tower of violet crystal thrust into the sky like an accusation, its peak blazing with sickly light. The same spire he'd deliberately turned away from that morning, every instinct screaming warnings about its malevolent presence.
A bitter laugh bubbled up from his chest.
The irony was perfect. He'd spent all that effort avoiding the tower, convinced it was a trap, a lure designed to draw the desperate to their doom. Now it was his only landmark in this crystalline hell - the single fixed point that might remain constant while everything else shifted around him.
Cel wiped the sweat from his eyes and oriented himself toward the distant beacon.
With no other options left, he started walking toward the thing he'd sworn to avoid.
The four suns climbed higher, their combined radiance turning the air itself into a weapon. What had been oppressive heat at dawn now pressed against him like molten lead. Sweat carved tracks through the dust on his face, each drop hissing when it struck the crystal-strewn ground.
The violet formations drank in the blazing light, their surfaces shifting from dull purple to eye-searing brilliance. The gentle hum that had lulled him to sleep now thrummed through his skeleton, each pulse rattling his teeth.
Cel raised his arm to shield his eyes, squinting through the gaps between his fingers. The maze had become a furnace of living glass, every surface a mirror that threw the suns' fury back at him from impossible angles.
The corridors twisted like the intestines of some crystalline beast. Dead ends forced him to retrace burning steps. Wrong turns led to enclosed spaces where the heat concentrated until the air wavered like water. Each mistake cost him time he couldn't afford - and in this place, he couldn't even be sure his mistakes were truly mistakes. The maze might be leading him exactly where it wanted him to go.
But it wasn't the heat that broke him first.
The humming rose like a tide, climbing from vibration to sound to something that bypassed his ears entirely. It seized his ribs, shaking them like a prisoner rattling bars. His vision fractured at the edges. The world took on a stuttering, stop-motion quality as the resonance pounded through his skull.
Cel clapped his hands over his ears. Useless.
'Keep moving.' The thought felt distant, muffled by the wall of noise. 'Just keep—'
His foot came down wrong on a crystal shard. The razor edge parted his skin like paper, sending fresh blood to join the dried streams on his legs. But he barely registered the pain against the symphony of agony already consuming him.
The suns reached their zenith.
Light exploded from every surface in a cascade of liquid fire. The maze became a cathedral of blazing glass, beautiful and deadly as a star gone nova. Cel's tears evaporated even before they could fall, his eyes burning in their sockets as he stumbled forward half-blind.
Each breath scorched his throat raw. His lips cracked and bled. The air tasted of copper and sulfur, thick as soup in his lungs.
The roar in his skull climbed higher, no longer sound but pure sensation. His head felt ready to split like heated metal. Something warm and wet traced a path down his cheek.
Cel touched his ear with trembling fingers. When he pulled them away, bright red blood coated his fingertips.
'I have to—' The thought shattered under another wave of resonance. His knees buckled, sending him crashing against a crystal wall. The surface seared his palm like a brand, raising blisters that popped and wept immediately.
He jerked back with a strangled cry, cradling his burned hand against his chest.
His legs felt like liquid stone. Each step required conscious will, conscious effort not to simply collapse and let the maze claim him. The spire wavered in his heat-blurred vision as dark spots danced at the edges of his sight.
A corner. Another dead end. But when he turned around, the passage he'd just come from had changed - wider now, with alcoves that definitely hadn't been there moments before. Frustration tore from his throat in a raw scream, swallowed instantly by the crystal chorus.
Cel dropped to one knee, his vision spinning violently. Nausea churned in his stomach. The world tilted sideways, reality becoming negotiable under the assault of heat, sound and blinding light.
"I can't..." The words dissolved before they fully formed. "I can't..."