Minho's breathing came in ragged bursts as, before him, the blue portal shimmered and hummed with an unsaid promise. He looked back at the corpse of the twisted creature-a grotesque form now still, with vibrant ichor pooling around it. Behind him stretched the endless wasteland: barren ash and the sharp sting of sulfur. The Tower was waiting; he could feel its pull, like the tide he had fought against before.
"Just one more step," he whispered, attempting to calm his weary body and beat back the rising panic in his mind.
With that, he stepped into the portal. The world folded in on itself, light and shadow entwining until he was left with a deafening silence.
When the world pieced itself back together, it was nothing like he'd expected.
Minho stumbled, eyes wide. Beneath him lay a smooth, gleaming stone floor that reflected light as if it had been waxed for millennia. The walls were delicate webs of light and darkness interwoven, shifting with the moment yet never quite there for more than an instant. The air was still, uncomfortably cool and dry, like an ancient library untouched by time.
It was… beautiful. But it felt wrong.
He had just so many twisting, endless corridors in front of him, and the walls seemed to buckle and breathe, closing in on him, expanding, then drawing further away as if the room itself was alive. Above him, the ceiling was a tangle of shifting shapes, almost dizzying in its complexity, a soft tinkle burbling from above him, like wind chimes. Minho knew better. It was the Tower's design-twisted and unnatural.
Then he heard the voice.
"Lost already?" It was light and teasing, like an old friend, but sharp enough to cut.
Minho's hand instinctively went to the dagger at his belt, fingers tightening around the hilt. His heartbeat quickened as he scanned the emptiness around him, but there was nobody there. Not yet.
"You won't find the way out by running," the voice continued lilting, almost mocking. "This floor is about perception, not strength."
Minho narrowed his eyes as suspicion of a trick-a game, just as he had so many times been faced with in the Tower-jumped into his head. Yet this one felt.off. The air was too heavy, too.deliberate.
Who are you?" he yelled out into the quiet, his voice too loud as if it would shatter the fragile silence.
The voice did not answer, but the world around him started to shift.
The labyrinth's walls flickered once more, melting away like wax before the flame, into a new scene: a known room bathed in bright sunlight from an open window. There was a worn-out wooden chair, and something smelling of cooking was wafting through the air-soup, perhaps? Smelling of home.
A gentle laugh echoed around the room. Minho was frozen, heart racing. He knew that laugh.
"Minho," it said again, softer now, sweet, a memory he couldn't shake, crawling around him. "Come back to me. We've got so much to talk about."
A figure materialized in the room then, garbed in a simple robe and her long dark hair cascading over her shoulders. Jiwoo.
His breath jerked in his throat.
"No." His voice was hoarse, and his disbelief clashed with his longing.
Ji-woo smiled - an assuring yet soft smile that meant more mockery than consolation. She took another step forward, the smell of soup growing stronger as if the forgotten scent of her past was just wafting in the air.
"You really think you can outrun the things you've done?" Her voice, once soft, turned cold, a fine blade cutting. "You're trapped here, Minho-trapped in your own guilt, in your own mind. This is where the real battle lies."
The room shifted once more, this time darker and colder. Immediately, all the warmth of home vanished into bleakness and stifling darkness. The chair was gone, the window barred with iron, and Jiwoo's face twisted in a mix of anger and sorrow.
"Why?" Her voice cracked, and the single word came like a dagger. "Why didn't you save me, Minho?"
The room pulsed, thickening with the weight of her accusation. It wrapped around him, suffocating, pulling him deeper into the maze of his own mind. The walls twisted and stretched, and in the distance, he could see that grotesque creature from before, stalking him like a shadow.
The earth seemed to buck beneath Minho as endless corridors flickered with new faces and voices, memories. He squeezed his dagger tighter, the knuckles whitening. It wasn't real; it couldn't be real.
But the guilt, the doubt, the heavy weight of his past was real enough not to deny.
"You can't outrun yourself, Minho," Jiwoo boomed for the second time, this time loud over him. "The Tower won't let you. Not this time."
Minho moved back a step as his head was filled with all the painful memories he tried to repress: the blood on his hands, the promise he never kept, and the faces that would never disappear.
"You will never be free," echoed the voice of Jiwoo for the last time, lost in the maze.
But Minho wasn't listening anymore. He shifted his focus, eyes locked on the dark shapes surrounding him, the shifting walls, the ever-changing path.
He wasn't ensnared by his past—he was caught in the Tower's design.
"You can't make me doubt," he muttered through clenched teeth. "I won't let you."
He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the labyrinth was gone-the walls crumbling, the voices dead to silence. The only thing left that mattered stood ahead of him now: the path to what was next.
A new test lay ahead of him, and Minho prepared himself for just that.
No more noise. No more ghosts.
He moved forward once again.