Chapter One
Kasper
Time and centuries flowed like the leaves that fell around the maze, each one a reminder of time’s passage.
The world outside had changed, but within these hedges, I remained a prisoner of my own making, a fragment of the boy who had succumbed to the chill of an October night long forgotten, to a disease that wasn’t yet studied or had a cure.
I hovered in the dimness of twilight, my senses sharpened by the weight of time. The maze, once a labyrinth that had ensnared me in life, was my companion in death. An extension of my very soul. It pulsed with my history, my downfall, my…becoming.
The past wove itself in its stalks and the magic from the university that was still pulsing with life created what the maze and I are now.
While I was no longer among the living, I was the specter of a forgotten Hallows’ Eve, a haunting in the night, a whispered telling in the halls that the students still attended. Dead? Yes. Gone? Not quite.
The years passed and the world beyond the maze had evolved.
The old Bartholomew University that was once a cluster of stone and shadow had transformed into a sprawling campus, its ground hosting students who knew of its dark history and relished in it.
It had birthed some of the most wicked contenders in past years and their antics never ceased to entertain me, or the maze.
They knew some of the school's dark history, but did they know that my blood enriched this soil?
That my blood was why the maze remained, a relic of the past but untouched by time's relentless pursuit, carved in this school's bloodthirst. It demanded payment, and since I was the first, I was now the maze’s collector.
I hovered in this place, dead but among the living to seek its price.
A life for a life.
Tonight, as the moon hung low and full, a shiver of excitement swept through the grounds I was responsible for.
I felt the familiar sensation of the maze stirring beneath me, the deadened leaves that hung rustled and stirred even though it was still, they played a sinister melody, a prelude of what was to come- the annual reaping.
The melody sang to the pathways and they began to shift and curl, twisting into new forms, hunting for what it sought. Anticipation swirled in its movements and I felt the earth pulse beneath me in anticipation. The maze was eager, the earth was waiting, and they had found our next victim.
“Gwendolyn…” I murmured, the name a ghostly whisper that rang from somewhere deep inside my subconscious.
The oddest feeling overtook me. My heart, if I still had one, seemed to race with a thrill that surged through me.
Interesting. The thrill of the chase that came around each year usually intrigued me as it was different from the monotonous tone of every other day, but this was different. This was something else entirely.
The maze continued to reshape itself, creating paths that twisted and turned into a vortex, and I felt a surge of power.
The overgrown and unkept edges danced with mechanical glee, eager to ensnare their price, just like they had me.
Suddenly, I was no longer just a spectator, I was a participant in the dark game, the one I never asked to be a part of but was in essence.
The one that would collect the payment owed.
“Come to me, Gwendolyn,” I whispered into the abyss, my words carried in the chilling breeze of the night. “The maze awaits you. Your fate is sealed, just like mine.”
The hunt was beginning, the exhilaration of drawing in another soul to join the ranks of those lost within this place.
A life for a life.