The chamber was still. Only Alpha's ragged breath disturbed the silence. His body ached with every twitch, his arms throbbed from blocking blows that had nearly split him apart. His chest rose and fell, sweat mixing with the grime of battle. The knight's rusted armor still lay in pieces on the floor, dust spreading in a quiet haze.
Alpha leaned against the wall, one hand pressed to his ribs. His sword wobbled in his grip, but he did not let it fall. He had learned too quickly that the Labyrinth punished weakness.
"You breathe," came the low voice, gravel scraped across steel.
Alpha turned. The Nameless Knight stood half-shrouded in the flickering glow of his dying flames. The sockets of his helm burned faint, not bright, like coals struggling to cling to life.
"That is well," the Knight said. "It means you live."
Alpha swallowed, throat raw. He wanted to demand answers — why the scar moved when his name was spoken, why the Labyrinth twisted to his past, why the Veyres window taunted him with emptiness — but he could not form the words.
Instead, the Knight spoke again, his voice lowering until it was almost a whisper.
"Do you know what ended us?"
Alpha blinked, too weary to respond.
The knight turned his gaze back to the ruined hall, as though looking through its stone, through its very time. "We called it… the End. Not an army, not a plague. Not something you can hold in your hand, nor cut with steel. The End was silence made real. A hunger with no face. We fought… but what does a blade cut, when even memory unravels?"
Alpha shivered. The words meant little, yet they carried weight. He imagined chains breaking, stars burning out one by one, a sky with no sound.
"I fought," the Knight continued. His voice trembled now, though it was not fear, but something older. Longing. "Not for glory. Not for a throne. For her. My wife. She wore a veil of silver when she smiled, and when she laughed, it sounded like—" His helm tilted, hollow sockets staring down at his gauntlets. "I cannot recall. The End took that from me, too."
Alpha lowered his eyes. The silence pressed heavy, as though the Labyrinth itself bent closer to listen.
"Before the End consumed all, there were… fragments." The Knight's tone grew sharper, more deliberate. "Worlds within worlds. Shadows of what had been. When the walls cracked, pieces fell inward. The Labyrinths you walk… they are not built. They are broken. Shards of what once was."
Alpha clenched his fists. That explained nothing, yet it made everything colder. These ruins—were they echoes of the dead world? Was he walking inside someone's memory?
The Nameless Knight shifted, his flame-eyes flaring. "But there are worse than fragments. There are Names. Creatures born when will clung too tightly to despair. Men who would not yield, women who would not forget. Their defiance twisted, hardened… into monsters. They wear crowns of bone. They command legions. Necromancers? Ha." His helm shook faintly. "They are but shadows of what the Named once were."
The thought curdled in Alpha's stomach. Monsters born from the last spark of human defiance. That was worse than death.
The Knight's gaze fixed on him then, burning brighter for a moment. "You walk as if hollow, yet something in you resists the void. Something… unbound. That is why the Labyrinth shifts for you. It knows."
Alpha's breath caught. His scar burned.
Then the Nameless Knight spoke a word that was not his, yet was carved into him. "Feylith."
Pain tore down Alpha's back. His knees buckled, his sword clattered against the floor. He gasped, clutching at his skin as the scar writhed, the letters shifting beneath his flesh like serpents alive. His vision blurred white.
The Nameless Knight did not move to help. He simply watched.
At last, the pain ebbed. Alpha collapsed forward, palms slamming the dirt, sweat dripping from his chin. The scar settled, but it felt different now — as though it had sunk deeper, closer to his very soul.
"What… did you say?" Alpha hissed, breathless.
The Nameless Knight tilted his helm, the flame in his sockets flickering dim. "Not I. The scar speaks its own truth. Feylith. You will understand, when chains find you."
Alpha shuddered. He wanted to ask more — what chains, whose voice, what it meant — but his lips refused to shape the questions. His body was too wrung out, his mind too clouded.
The silence stretched long, the fire in the Nameless Knight's eyes dying to a faint ember. Finally, the hollow voice whispered, "Rest, while the Labyrinth allows it. There will be no mercy beyond this hall."
Alpha lay back against the wall, the Dreamstone he had taken clutched in his palm, his body still trembling. He closed his eyes, but not to sleep. Only to escape the weight of the stories, the fragments, the word that now burned inside him.
Feylith.
The Fateless Shadow.
And as the dark pressed in around him, Alpha knew with bone-deep certainty that nothing in this world would ever be simple again.