The cavern's air was sharp with the stink of rot. Alpha dragged himself back, half-carried by sheer willpower, his legs trembling, his shoulder burning with claw marks. The Dreamstone's faint glow flickered in his palm, warm but already dimming.
The Knight did not move to help. He stood like a sentinel, flame eyes fixed on Alpha's battered form.
"You hesitate still," the Knight said, his voice the groan of old iron doors. "You flinch before the tide."
Alpha wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his arm. "And yet… I'm still here."
The Knight tilted his helm slightly, as though considering. Then he raised one gauntlet, pointing into the darkness beyond the corridor. "Then go again. The Labyrinth does not wait. It does not grow merciful."
Alpha grit his teeth, but he rose. Every bone in his body screamed for rest, but rest was nothing. Rest meant becoming carrion for the next creature that stumbled across him.
He stepped forward.
The next chamber opened like a hollowed-out cathedral, its walls slick with moss and veins of glowing fungus. The ceiling arched high above, lost in darkness. At the center, broken statues leaned like drunks frozen in prayer—faces chipped away, names erased.
And from their shadows, the Labyrinth stirred.
Two creatures shambled forth. These were not the half-rotten husks from before. Their armor hung rusted but intact, swords clutched in skeletal hands. The glow in their eyes burned brighter, steadier.
Alpha's grip on his sword tightened. His heart pounded, but he forced his breath slow. The Knight's voice echoed in his skull: 'See the signs. Read the weight'
The first skeleton moved. Its sword lifted, clumsy yet deliberate, a wide arc meant to cleave. Alpha dodged back, eyes locked on the swing. Too wide. Too slow. His blade snapped forward, striking bone—only to glance off the armor with a screech of steel.
The skeleton pressed in. Its strike had been bait, Alpha realized too late, and the second came from his flank. A blade hissed through the dark.
He twisted, parrying desperately. Sparks flew. His arms quivered under the force.
"Every death," the Knight's voice came, though the Knight had not moved, "has a pattern. Every enemy carries its end within the way it moves. Find it. Break it."
Alpha gritted his teeth, blocking another strike. His body moved on instinct, but his eyes tried to search deeper.
The first skeleton's steps dragged, always heavier on the left leg. The second raised its sword high before every downward strike, giving it a heartbeat's delay.
'There.'
The first lunged, and Alpha pivoted—not away, but toward its weak leg. His sword slashed low, severing bone where thigh met shin. The skeleton toppled with a crunch.
The second descended with a vertical strike, predictable now. Alpha braced, caught the blade with his own, and slid aside. With its arms still raised, exposed, he stabbed through its ribcage.
The glow in its eyes flickered. The body collapsed, bones scattering across the stone.
Alpha stood panting in the silence, chest heaving, sweat and blood dripping.
And then, faintly, the Dreamstone shimmer appeared again—two this time, rolling free from the remains.
Alpha knelt, clutching them. Their glow pulsed like faint heartbeats against his skin. His wounds still screamed, but something steadier rose in him: a clarity he hadn't known before.
He turned to the Knight. "Patterns of death," he muttered.
The Knight's helm inclined. "Yes. Not all see them. Most swing blindly, lost in rage or fear. But to read them is to command survival. And survival is the first blade of power."
Alpha looked down at his scarred hand, at the faint light bleeding between his fingers. For the first time, he didn't feel as though he had stumbled into victory. He had taken it.
The Knight's flame-eyes dimmed, then flared again. "The Labyrinth watches you, Alpha. It reshapes itself with every step you take. Fail to learn, and you will feed its roots. Learn its rhythms… and perhaps, one day, you will break them."
Alpha's scar burned faintly, the mark on his back shifting like restless ink beneath skin. He touched it, shuddering.
"What if I can't?" he asked quietly.
The Knight's silence stretched long. Then he spoke, voice low and grave.
"Then you will join the countless who tried. And I will be here still, to train the next who dares."
Alpha clenched the Dreamstones in his fist until his knuckles went white. His body was weak, his mind frayed, but his will did not falter.
He would not be the next to fail.
He stepped deeper into the chamber, past the broken statues, into the next waiting dark.