The rain finally ended at dawn. The air that followed it felt hollow, as if the world had been rinsed too clean.Students stepped through puddles toward the morning bell, eyes down, voices hushed. The Academy had lived a long season of storms—inside and out—and now the silence that replaced them seemed more dangerous than thunder.
From the chapel tower, the first clear chime rang. The sound did not echo; it carried, gliding like a blade through fog.
And so the new commandment arrived.
The courtyard had been swept and salted. Banners of the seven noble houses hung limp in the damp air. Every heir, magister, and priest stood waiting before the marble dais. Even the birds refused to sing.
Halvern stood at one end of the platform, jaw tight, spectacles misted. The white-lashed priest occupied the center, his robe bright as frost under the gray sun. His hands rested on a scroll sealed with gold wax.
Rowan muttered under his breath, "Whenever they polish the stone, it means they plan to bleed on it."
Mikel gave no reply. He watched the dais the way a sailor watches a cloud's edge—measuring distance, not beauty.
Celina's green eyes fixed on the scroll. Something in her curse stirred, faint heat running along her veins. Old power smells like this, she thought.
Ernest stood still. Calm. The water pooled around his boots had frozen in thin petals of ice.
When the old priest finally spoke, the world seemed to lean toward his voice.
"Children of noble blood," he began softly, "for too long your education has remained within stone walls. The gods do not dwell in classrooms. They sleep in the earth, waiting for those with courage to wake them."
He raised the scroll. Wax cracked.
"The High Council of Faith and Faculty announces the Scholastic Expedition of the Northern Reach. You will travel beyond these walls, to the valley of Kareth, where the Labyrinth of Shadows lies buried. There, under priestly and academic supervision, you shall recover relics of the First Age and measure the purity of your devotion."
A murmur rippled through the crowd—half awe, half fear.
Halvern's tone cut through it like gravel. "Teams will be selected according to performance in prior trials. Senior magisters will accompany the convoy."
Serren folded his arms, voice rough. "It isn't a lesson—it's a test."
The old priest smiled faintly. "Every lesson is."
His pale eyes swept the assembly and came to rest, inevitably, on Ernest.
"Team Two," he said, "will lead."
The silence that followed had weight. Even the wind held its breath.
Rowan's heart lurched between triumph and dread. Lead. The word tasted like both glory and trap. His pride roared to accept it before his mind could argue.
Mikel's fingers tightened behind his back. He could almost feel invisible hands placing chess pieces across a board.
Celina felt her curse flare, green veins bright against her wrist. The Labyrinth. The name resonated inside her like memory. Something waits there.
And Ernest—Ernest simply inclined his head. A nod so small the gesture might have been mistaken for breath. Yet the motion travelled through the crowd like the movement of tide beneath ships.
Halvern cleared his throat. "Departure in five days. Preparations begin immediately. Dismissed."
The heirs dispersed, buzzing like insects trapped in glass. The priests watched them go, faces unreadable.
That night, the whisper rooms below the chapel filled again.
"It is done," said the younger priest, giddy. "The labyrinth feeds on reflection. If he truly carries the Voice, it will answer."
"And if it devours him instead?" another asked.
The old priest's lashes lowered. "Then we learn what devoured means."
He traced a sigil in the air, faint gold light curling from his fingertip. "Send the acolytes ahead. Prepare the wards. And ensure the mirrors are polished."
"Mirrors?"
"Every labyrinth needs eyes."
Halvern caught Ernest leaving the evening lecture.
"You could refuse," the magister said quietly. "The decree allows an heir to decline if the family objects."
"My family will not," Ernest replied.
Halvern studied the boy's stillness, the way the lamplight turned his eyes into small eclipses. "You know what waits there?"
"A cage," Ernest said. "I will learn its design."
Halvern sighed. "Just remember that design cuts both ways."
Rowan couldn't sleep. He walked the corridor, barefoot, the floor cold under his feet. The words Team Two will lead replayed in his head until they became heartbeat.
He imagined himself before the nobles again, victorious this time. He imagined bending the labyrinth instead of light. Then he imagined Ernest ahead of him, voice calm, undoing the world with a whisper.
He punched the wall once, softly, just enough to feel pain. "Not this time," he breathed. "I'll lead beside him—or over him."
Mikel spent the night cataloguing supplies: rations, flares, charms, rope. Practicality steadied him when thought threatened to spiral.
But between lists, he drew maps from memory—lines of geography the Academy had never taught. The northern valleys, the buried rivers, the fault where old mana pooled like quicksilver. He'd studied enough to know: no labyrinth built there remained inert.
He folded the maps carefully, as if precision itself could ward off disaster.
Celina dreamed of the labyrinth before she ever saw it. In her sleep, corridors twisted like veins beneath skin, walls breathing in rhythm with her heart. Her flame lit the way, but shadows moved ahead of it, whispering in voices that were not hers.
When she woke, the candle beside her bed had burned to glass, its wick a thread of green smoke. The mark of her curse glowed faintly through the sleeve.
She whispered to it, "You remember that place, don't you?"
The pulse under her skin answered yes.
Ernest watched the horizon from the dormitory window. The storm had passed; stars hung low and sharp. He opened his notebook.
The priests extend the cage outward. They think distance will dilute control.
They are wrong. The labyrinth listens. So will I.
Team Two: ready enough. Broken enough to bend when needed.
The girl dreams ahead of time. The anchor measures the storm. The stag charges shadows.
Five days.
He paused.
Light bent. Chains obeyed. Silence held. Now walls will speak.
He closed the book. The glass of the window reflected his face beside the stars, indistinguishable from them for an instant.
By the time the fifth dawn came, wagons waited at the northern gate, wheels rimed with frost. The air smelled of iron and anticipation. Priests in traveling vestments moved among crates, murmuring blessings that sounded suspiciously like inventory.
Team Two stood apart, packs ready, cloaks dark against the pale morning.
Rowan adjusted his sword belt, pride flickering beneath anxiety.Mikel checked the compass hanging from his wrist, the needle twitching toward something it couldn't name.Celina stared at the distant peaks, her curse a dull glow under the glove.Ernest looked at the mountains and saw not stone but silence waiting to be taught.
The old priest approached, staff tapping the cobbles. "Remember," he said, voice mild, "the labyrinth reflects. What you carry within, you will meet without."
Rowan bowed stiffly. Celina said nothing. Mikel nodded once.Ernest's answer was a whisper only the wind heard:
"Then it will meet itself."
The gates opened.
The caravan rolled forward into the white of morning.
Behind them, the bells began to ring again—slow, deliberate, as though counting something that could not yet be measured.