He woke to the sound of something breaking.
Not stone. Not metal.
Bone.
His own? No. Not yet. But close.
The floor was wet beneath him. He could smell it. Copper. Sweat. The stench of something that had lived too long and died too slow.
His body ached. Not from sleep—there was no comfort in this place—but from the weight of time. The kind that sat inside your ribs like a second skeleton, pressing against your lungs, filling your breath with regret.
He forced himself up. His hands slipped.
Not water.
Blood.
It was pooling from the walls. Seeping from cracks that hadn't been there before. Thick, slow. The way wounds weep when they've given up on healing.
He wasn't alone.
He knew it before he turned.
The sound came first. A drag. A scrape. Something walking wrong.
His heartbeat slowed. His mind sharpened.
The Labyrinth didn't have monsters.
It was the monster.
And right now, it was breathing down his fucking neck.
He turned.
The thing in the dark wasn't a beast.
It was a man.
Or what was left of one.
His arms were too long. His spine bent like a question mark. His mouth gaped open, lips cracked, skin stretched too tight over a face that had forgotten how to be human.
But the eyes.
The eyes were still alive.
And they knew him.
"Architect."
The voice was wet. Drowned in something thicker than spit. It dripped from the thing's throat like oil.
He didn't answer. Didn't move.
Recognition was a fucking weapon. You let the enemy know you knew them, and they knew they could still hurt you.
The thing shuddered forward. Bare feet slapping wet stone.
"You built this."
A laugh. A sick, peeling sound, like rust being scraped from iron.
"You built this and you don't even know why."
Something deep in him cracked. A wall inside his own mind, a corridor locked behind centuries of dust and denial.
He had built this place.
He had laid the stones, measured the angles, set the paths.
But he hadn't designed an exit.
Because there wasn't meant to be one.
The thing tilted its head, something almost like pity twitching in its ruined face.
"The King lied."
The words hit harder than a blade.
He clenched his fists. "Tell me."
The thing smiled.
Not with lips. With teeth.
And it charged.