III
Corin had only made it a few additional steps before feeling utterly lost.
He knew he likely would not exit through the same way he entered, his uncle had warned him of that, but he was not expecting the walls where he had started his journey to completely shift from in front of him.
Where once had been a hall leading him forward now stood a solid wall pushing him in another direction.
He glanced down both ways—left and right—and decided to go with his dominant direction.
“Right it is,” he grumbled to himself.
As he moved forward, the darkness seemed to thin more and more.
That or his eyes had adjusted to the lack of light.
The faint golden veins in the stone pulsed softly as he moved past, brightening and dimming seemingly without any pattern.
The walls curved in on themselves, corridors bending just out of sight.
His hand remained on the stone, tracing some of the veins as he continued walking, the stone cool to his touch.
He walked for what felt like hours through endless emptiness, though his body strangely had not begun to ache.
He paused after a while, taking in how his body felt.
Each limb felt fine, as if no time at all had passed.
Even his feet did not ache from the constant walking on stone.
He wanted to thank his boots for the ease of travel but knew there had to have been some other reason for the lack of pain. Some reason he didn’t want to analyze.
When he came to the first four-way cross in the path, he studied each of the pathways. There was no noticeable difference between them at first sight, which did not make the decision on where to go any easier.
He could continue straight as he had been, but that would require he momentarily lose feeling of the wall beneath his fingers. He could turn down one of the other two corridors. If he turned right, at least he didn’t have to lose feeling of the wall.
A rumble suddenly sounded from his right. He could just hear its faint groan over the beat of his own heart. Corin swallowed thickly. Panic, he knew, fed the stone. The Labyrinth did not hunt down the loudest heartbeat—it hunted an unraveling one.
He didn’t want to risk it. He lifted his fingers from the cold stone and crossed the path, only a few steps, before meeting the stone again upon making it to the other side. A deep sigh of relief erupted from him.
As he did so, the passage seemed to narrow slightly, and his shoulder brushed against a particularly sharp protruding stone. A vibration crawled up his arm and settled deep in his chest, and the golden veins flared in response.
“Sorry,” Corin muttered, the word escaping before he could stop it. His voice seemed to echo for some time through the maze. It faded away from him only to resurface past him moments later.
And then the Labyrinth responded.
Stone slid somewhere ahead, a corridor seemingly sealing shut while another opened with a grinding sigh. Dust drifted down around him like pale snow. The air shifted direction, carrying with it the scent of old iron and damp wool.
He exhaled slowly to calm his rapid heart beat.
The Labyrinth does not like apologies, he decided. Or perhaps it did. He scoffed. There was no way to tell.
He continued on, passing through alcoves filled with various debris that had collected through the ages—broken pottery, rusted blades, fragments of bone smoothed by time. Some clearly bore the marks of age, but others looked unsettlingly modern.
One piece stuck out to him: a small piece of cloth with Knossos’s distinct spirals. A piece of cloth belonging to his kingdom, the heirs. He stared at it for a few moments, wondering if it was torn from an heir’s trial or if the cloth had somehow found its way underground by itself.
He did not want to linger long enough to decide what troubled him more.
As he followed a curve in the maze, the floor dipped sharply, forcing him to brace himself against the wall. The stone warmed beneath his palm, pulsing once, twice, as though acknowledging him. Welcoming him.
A new sound drifted down the corridor then. Not quite a voice, not quite wind. A low resonance that vibrated through the walls, through his bones, and settled behind his eyes. It was enough to make his entire body ache.
Corin closed his eyes briefly, steadying himself. “I am not here to harm or disturb. I only mean to leave.”
He peaked his eyes open as the golden veins shimmered. He took that as acceptance.
Only three days and nights. That was it. He could make it through.
Time seemed to fracture inside the dark, winding halls as he journeyed.
His sense of it dulled, stretched thin until minutes and hours bled together.
The corridors seemed to repeat themselves in subtle variations—left turns that became right, slopes that dipped where he thought they had once risen.
Once, he passed the same broken vase twice, though he was certain he had not turned back.
At that, he had to reflect on his past steps to ensure he was still moving forward.
Corin’s breath fogged faintly as the air cooled around him.
It had been such a warm and comforting day when he had entered, but he supposed the air would turn cool underground.
He wished his garb offered more protection from the cool air that surrounded him, but he didn’t want to harp on that too much.
He needed to keep pushing, keep moving forward.
Then he heard something else.
A footstep.
One that wasn’t his own.
Corin froze. His hand immediately fell to grip the sword he carried at his hip.
The sound came again, slow and uneven, dragging slightly as though the stone itself resisted each step. It echoed once, twice, then stopped. It was close.
The Labyrinth’s golden veins flared brighter than before, but something in their brightness did not give him the impression that it was a warning. No, it seemed more like… recognition?
Corin tightened his grip on the blade even more and took a cautious step forward, heart pounding now despite his best efforts to remain even.
The footstep came again, seemingly directly beside him, but when he whipped his head to his right, he only saw the same stone that had been following him all day.
Corin unsheathed his blade, the metal catching a faint glimmer of the gold-veined light. “Who’s th-there?” He called out, hating how thin his voice sounded against the stone.
This time, there was no echo of his words. Only silence.
Then, he saw movement.
A figure slowly emerged from a bend ahead, half-swallowed by shadow.
It was tall, or had been once, though now its spine seemed to curve unnaturally, shoulder hunched as if the air itself pressed down on it.
Its clothes hung in tatters, fabric so worn it had lost all color, clinging to a frame reduced by time and hunger.
A cloak shredded at the hem trailed behind the figure, dragging softly across the floor as it made its way closer to the young heir.
It was a human.
A man.
He stood several paces away, not moving to greet—or threaten—Corin.
Corin took a cautious step forward as he tightened his grip on the blade, seeing the man’s eyes that reflected too brightly against the Labyrinth’s faint glow like a polished stone.
They were fixed on Corin with a sharpness that made his skin prickle.
His beard was long and matted, streaked with gray and something darker, and his face bore the slack, unsettled expression of someone who hadn’t had to arrange it properly in far too long.
Corin gulped and shuffled in place as his grip on his sword tightened even more.
If this was a monster he was meant to defeat, he was uneasy about his potential future actions.
This decaying man did not look like any monster he had seen or heard of before.
No harpy or chimera looked like this. He was just a man.
An old man who seemed to be lost in space and time.
“Ah,” the man croaked, voice rasping as though it had been unused for years. “Another one. It was close to time, I count.”
Corin did not lower his blade. “Who are you?”
The man tilted his head, studying Corin with unsettling intensity. “That depends. Are you lost yet?”
The question sent a chill through Corin’s chest.
“I’m Corin. Of Knossos,” He greeted carefully. “The heir of–”
An angry rumble echoed through the hall of the Labyrinth.
The man clicked his tongue. “Oh funny boy. You all are.” A twitch of his lips. “At first.”
“And who are you?”
The man took a step closer, clearly favoring his right leg. Corin noticed then the way his foot dragged, the unnatural angle of the ankle, the way the stone beneath it seemed to give just a little, as if accommodating him.
He grew ever closer, forcing Corin to take a few steps back. Back towards the solid walls. Back towards safety.
“The stone knows you. As it knew me. I can hear it. It’s… curious,” the man murmured.
Corin blinked. “What do you mean?”
A dry laugh escaped the man’s throat, rasping against the walls surrounding them. “Questions, questions. Only fools to ask but not know.”
Corin lifted his sword higher, pointing the tip directly at the man’s face. “Who are you, old man?”
“Is that any way to greet an elder?” The man countered with another chuckle. He shook his head slowly and lifted a skeletal hand toward the passage behind him.
Corin blinked once. Twice. “An elder?”
“Crispy, crispy!”
“What…” Corin trailed off, shaking his head at the old fool.
The man clicked his tongue again, gesturing towards his outstretched hand. “Come. I think she would like you.”
The heir stiffened despite himself. “Who?”
The man’s eyes flickered briefly towards the wall, reverent and wary all at once. “The Golden One, of course,” he whispered. “The daughter who awaits.”
This man was making no sense, Corin decided, but the Labyrinth shifted behind him, the stone jutting out suddenly and pushing Corin towards the old man. Corin forcibly stumbled forward but did not yet close the distance between them.
Following behind this figure seemed like a recipe for disaster, one he did not want to partake in. He would just need to seek out another way to travel so he could avoid this man. Though, that was easier said than done as he glanced around. The only other way to go would be backwards.
A series of roars erupted from behind Corin. He whipped his head around and cursed. So much for going backwards to avoid the man.
The sound reminded him of a Stymphalian Bird. He had faced them years ago when a few attacked an orphanage in Knossos, and he had hoped to never face them again after that.
Corin glanced back to the man who had already turned and began to walk without him. Corin could either follow this mysterious figure or risk running into a Stymphalian Bird once again, and he knew his answer easily, even if he hated the decision.
Corin followed blindly, at a much quicker pace than he had moved before this encounter. Despite the mysterious man’s limp, he moved quite quickly. Perhaps he wanted to avoid the monster just as much.
“I knew you would follow,” the man laughed. “The stone knows, and I know now. It could be great to fight a beast, but I don’t think the stone wants a fight. Not with metal. Not now.”
The man spoke as if he hadn’t had to form a proper sentence in ages, and it grated at Corin’s mind. He was willingly—well, somewhat willingly—following behind a figure that seemed mad with time, and he hated how his choices had narrowed so much in such a short amount of time in the maze.
As they hurried away, Corin’s eyes caught on the edge of the man’s cloak. It was dull, grayed with time, but clear. A spiral. Three of them.
The mark of an heir.
Elder, the man had said. This man was Corin’s elder. An heir that had been long lost to the stone.
“How long…”
“You ask and you shall know, but fear is powerful.”
Corin blinked. He wasn’t sure what to make of that statement, whether to be grateful for an answer or afraid of what it could be. “How long… have you been down here?”
The man laughed again, though it was softer this time. “Long enough to forget the sky.”