The cavern no longer felt like a sanctuary. Alpha's body screamed with bruises from the Knight's relentless sparring, and his mind echoed with fragments of the eerie stories of 'The End'. But rest was a luxury the Labyrinth did not allow.
The Knight did not sleep, did not sit, did not blink. His flame-eyed helm turned toward Alpha as he stirred awake.
"It is time," the Knight said, his voice heavy as rusted iron.
Alpha groaned, dragging himself upright. "Time for what?"
"To see if you live only by my shadow… or if you can survive in your own."
The Knight motioned toward the passage that curved away from the cavern. Darkness pooled like a living thing in the tunnel, its breath cold against Alpha's skin.
Alpha gripped his battered sword. His hands were blistered, his shoulders raw. He was no warrior yet. He knew it. But if he stayed here forever, he would remain nothing but a husk waiting to rot.
He stepped into the dark.
The tunnel stretched into a broken corridor, stone fractured by unseen pressure. Moss hung like wet hair, and bones littered the ground. The air grew thick, reeking of rust and damp.
Then the sound came—scraping. A hollow rhythm, like nails dragged over stone.
Alpha froze. His breath quickened, heart thundering.
From the dark ahead, a shape lurched into view. Its flesh was gray and sunken, its jaw slack, its eyes hollow pits lit by faint green fire. The Labyrinth's children: the undead.
Alpha's fingers whitened around his hilt. He remembered the first time he'd faced one—how its claws had nearly opened his throat, how survival had been nothing but a trembling accident.
Not this time.
The creature rushed forward with sudden speed, jaws opening in a silent scream. Alpha's body moved before his mind. He watched—the twitch of its shoulder, the stagger of its foot. The signs were there. He swung his sword.
Steel bit rotted flesh. The blade buried into the creature's neck, cutting deep but not clean. The undead's head lolled sideways, nearly severed, yet its body kept coming, arms clawing wildly.
Alpha panicked for a heartbeat. Then he forced himself to see. The lunge, the weight shift—he sidestepped, ripping the sword free, and struck again.
This time the head fell, rolling into the shadows. The body collapsed moments later, twitching before going still.
Alpha panted, staring at the twitching corpse. His stomach churned, but not from fear. From the adrenaline, from the grim satisfaction of knowing it had been skill—not chance—that kept him alive.
But the Labyrinth had no patience for small victories.
Shadows stirred further down the corridor. More shapes shuffled into the dim light. Four. Six. Maybe more. Their eyes glowed faintly like embers scattered across the dark.
Alpha's throat tightened. His hands ached from the single fight. Now he faced a wave.
He stepped back instinctively—only to hear the clang of armored footsteps behind him.
The Knight stood at the corridor's mouth, silent, watching.
Alpha understood: there would be no rescue. Not this time.
The first undead lunged, and Alpha met it with steel. His blade caught its arm, hacking through bone. It shrieked silently as it fell, but two more rushed in. Claws scraped across his shoulder, tearing cloth and skin. Pain flared hot, but he held his ground.
He saw the strike coming, ducked, and slammed his sword upward into the chest of one. The other raked his thigh, sending him staggering.
His vision blurred. Blood dripped down his leg. He tasted copper on his tongue.
"Don't falter. Don't break."
Another came at his blind side, and he pivoted, blade lashing wide. He was too slow. Teeth sank into his forearm.
Alpha roared, slamming the hilt of his sword into the creature's skull until the jaw cracked and bone splintered. He shoved it away, staggering back. His arm bled freely now, each pulse of blood a reminder of mortality.
But he was alive.
He fought on, every strike born of desperation and the Knight's lessons. Watch. Read. Anticipate. Each enemy moved like a storm of hunger, but storms had patterns if you looked hard enough.
He saw them.
He moved with them.
By the time the last corpse hit the ground, Alpha's legs trembled too violently to hold him upright. He collapsed to one knee, chest heaving, blood dripping from half a dozen wounds.
The silence afterward was deafening. The smell of rot clung to him like oil.
And then, faintly, something shimmered in the chest of one fallen undead. A crystal, pale and glowing faintly blue. A Dreamstone.
Alpha stared at it, his body screaming with exhaustion. Yet when he reached for it, his fingers brushed against warmth. Energy, faint but real, seeped into his skin.
Not enough to heal him. Not enough to erase the wounds. But enough to keep him upright. Enough to remind him he wasn't yet broken.
Behind him, the Knight's voice came low and measured.
"You bleed. You falter. You stagger."
Alpha lifted his head, eyes still burning. "But I live."
The Knight's flame flickered brighter, like approval hidden beneath iron restraint.
"Yes," he said. "For now."
Alpha clenched the Dreamstone in his palm, the light bleeding between his fingers. He had stepped into the maw of the Labyrinth, and though it had chewed him raw, it had not devoured him. Not yet.
And as he staggered to his feet, sword in one hand and crystal in the other, he felt a quiet, terrible truth settle in his chest.
The Labyrinth would not stop until it broke him.
And he would not stop until he broke it first.