CHAPTER 26: THE LABYRINTH

The wind was as dry as ancient parchment, and everything around seemed forgotten. Twisted, leafless trees rose like petrified bones against the murky sky, and the ground—cracked, brittle—seemed to crackle with every step.

The rock before them was shaped like a skull lying on its side, with deep cracks forming something that resembled hollow eyes and a shattered jaw. At the base, covered in gray moss and accumulated dust, there was a stone formation that, at first glance, seemed just a natural heap. But Eren was not there to see with his eyes.

He extended his right hand, closed his eyes for a moment, and felt.

The magic pulses... like a dormant heartbeat. A living door, locked by shame.

Kaela, right behind, sniffed the air with a furrowed brow, her body tense as if the ground beneath her feet was about to split.

"There’s something wrong with this place. Not just strange... wrong."

Nyssa trembled slightly. Even with her form contained under the cloak, she seemed smaller than usual. Translucent fragments detached from her edge and reconnected on their own, as if her body was trying to avoid... falling apart.

"I... don’t like it here. Nothing is quiet. Not even inside me."

Eren knelt, brushed the dust from the stones with the back of his hand, and saw what he expected: ancient runic marks, broken, as if someone had tried to erase the words without the courage to finish it. Circular sealing symbols, intertwined in deformed geometries. A familiar residual magical signature.

He placed his palm in the center.

[Link Detected: Host with Carnal Contract]

[Bond with Beastly Entities: Active]

[Seal Integrity: Unstable]

[Entry Request: Recognized]

The stones trembled. A low, moist sound, like breathing through flesh. The wall before them slowly retracted, revealing an opening that wasn’t there a second before. There was no door—just a corridor that shouldn’t exist, damp, pulsating, with a breeze that smelled of wet stone, iron... and ancient blood.

Eren stood up.

"This is it."

Kaela didn’t move.

"This place wasn’t made for us."

"Precisely why it’s useful," he replied, already taking the first step.

Nyssa hesitated, then followed him, sliding like a sticky shadow. Kaela growled softly but entered last, her shoulders tense as if expecting to be crushed at any moment.

As they crossed the threshold, the system flickered violently.

[Sealed Zone: Superior Source Interference Detected]

[Access to Absolute Contract: BLOCKED]

[Reason: Divine Intervention | Judgment of the Ancients]

Eren stopped instantly. His narrowed eyes stared at the empty space before him.

Blocked? Absolute Contract blocked?

[Bond Stability: Partial Interference]

[Affinity Level with Linked Entities: Temporarily Unstable]

Kaela staggered a step to the side, bringing her hand to her head. Her breathing became irregular.

"It’s... cutting me. Like something’s between me and you..."

Nyssa stepped back, the contours of her body vibrating in irregular patterns, as if her core was trying to reorganize.

"My head... I... I still know who you are, but... something else is telling me this is wrong..."

Eren clenched his fists, looking at the runes glowing on the walls. There were inscriptions. Words in a dead language, but his system—or his memory—still translated them.

"Those who used love as a shackle... were banished from Paradise."

"The sacred touch is not bargained with chains."

"The bond is a lie adorned with affection."

He walked to the wall and touched one of the inscriptions with the tip of his finger.

"This... isn’t just a labyrinth. It’s a sentence."

Kaela leaned against a living pillar—what seemed like a petrified root—and took a deep breath. Sweat dripped down her temple.

"Are we being tested?"

"We’re being undone," he replied. "And reconstructed according to someone’s vision. Or something’s."

Nyssa crouched, her eyes wide.

"This place hates the bond. Hates it with everything it has."

[System: Runic Stability – Oscillating]

[Presence of Active Judgment in Upper Layers]

[Domain: Isolation of Pacts]

Eren walked further ahead. The light was minimal. The atmosphere itself seemed to consume the flames of the magical torches. The shadows did not project—they blended into the space, as if everything there was made of liquid darkness and compressed silence.

The walls pulsed in intervals, like breathing flesh. On the ceiling, some cracks released droplets of condensed mist that crackled upon touching the ground. It was a slow, moist sound that marked time like a battered heart.

The gods banished the Absolute Contract... so what I’m doing here is a crime? Or... an affront?

Eren touched the flickering light necklace, activating a sphere that hovered by his side. The illumination was dim, but it revealed the walls with sharper details—figures of creatures imprisoned in magical circles, eyes gouged out, mouths sealed with runes of negation.

Kaela saw one of them and shuddered.

"They were trying to purify monsters... through pain?"

"No." Eren replied. "They were trying to erase the instinct."

Nyssa touched one of the figures—a relief carving that moved slightly, as if made of flesh frozen in time.

"Did they fail?"

"Not yet." Eren faced a corridor that split into three paths, all identical. "But I will ensure they do."

In the background, a new sound began. Dripping. Like very light footsteps, coming from above.

Kaela quickly raised her face. Sniffed. Her eyes widened.

"There’s something on the ceiling."

Nyssa backed away. Her form flattened against the ground, her eyes fixed on the darkness above.

Eren pointed the light upwards.

There, among dry roots and fragments of ancient webs, a form moved. Slow. Gigantic. The body black and glossy like ancient glass. The outline of long legs. The reflection of multiple eyes—not red, but... white. Watching.

The creature did not attack. It simply moved to the corner, still as a living statue.

[??? wishes to establish contact]

[Bond Level: Nonexistent | Intelligence: High]

[Condition for approach: Not yet satisfied]

Nyssa swallowed hard.

"She... doesn’t have a scent of aggression."

Kaela shook her head, eyes fixed.

"But she also doesn’t have... fear."

Eren said nothing. He just kept walking.

The labyrinth corridors narrowed without logic. Sometimes, they spiraled and returned to the same point.

Other times, they seemed to stretch as if space were being dragged from within, distorting angles and destroying any reference. The walls... breathed.

Not literally, but in rhythm, texture, in the humid warmth they exhaled. Like petrified flesh. Like giant organs refusing to die.

The sound of footsteps was muffled. The flickering light of the magic stone didn’t fully touch the shadows, and the darkness seemed to move on its own—not threatening, but... aware.

Eren walked ahead, but his mind was divided. The system windows appeared and disappeared with a delay, as if being pulled through a thick layer of ethereal mud.

[Consulting Inventory...]

[...]

[Error: Signal of Instability | Source: External]

The lines of code floated and corrupted before his eyes. Words scrambled, numbers in the wrong positions. For a moment, Kaela’s name appeared in the upper corner of his peripheral vision—but written in broken runes, like a corrupted file.

They are censoring the system in here. This isn’t just magical interference. It’s deliberate sabotage.

Kaela walked close to the wall, touching it with open claws.

"The ground is shaking more than before. As if... something has awakened."

Nyssa flowed in silence, less dense than usual. Her color oscillated between gray and lilac, a reflection of her internal instability.

"I... heard voices. Behind me. But when I looked... there was nothing."

Eren didn’t respond. His eyes were fixed on a fork in the path ahead. Not because the path was threatening—but because there was something there that didn’t match the rest.

A wide room. Round. Perfectly symmetrical.

The first mistake.

In the center, an altar made of cracked black marble, entwined by dead roots gripping like fingers. Upon it, charred pieces of scrolls and bones, a small magic circle engraved with rustic lines, without modern runification. The remnants were arranged ritualistically, as if someone had tried to perform an enchantment... or break one.

Kaela whispered:

"This is a release altar."

Eren approached. The energy there was dense, yet... opaque. There was no flow. Only echo.

He touched one of the scrolls. The edge crumbled like ash. The central symbol, though destroyed, was recognizable.

Submission contract.

Eren narrowed his eyes.

"Someone tried to undo the bonds here."

Nyssa moved closer, looking around. The walls of this room were covered with inscriptions. But different from the previous ones. They were more recent. Written with blood. With fingers. Short phrases. Confused.

"She cried when she saw me."

"The system lied. She loved me."

"I broke the contract. But she killed me anyway."

"We are not masters. We are parasites."

Kaela growled low.

"These weren’t monsters speaking."

"No." Eren replied. "They were tamers."

[Memory Fragments Activated | Source: Residual]

The shadows of the altar shivered.

Out of nowhere, the image of a man appeared, faded, translucent, colorless. He was screaming. Not in pain. In despair. His arms flailed as if trying to prevent something—and then, behind him, emerged a creature. A winged wolf, eyes black, mouth agape. But it wasn’t the real creature. It was... the trauma left by it. The memory of the last look before it attacked.

Another figure appeared. A woman. Sitting against the wall, holding a broken rune to her chest. She repeated something in a low voice, but no sound came out. Her mouth moved quickly. When Eren read her lips, he understood.

"Sorry. Sorry. Sorry."

The wall behind her was covered in claw-made cuts.

Eren closed his eyes for a moment.

The labyrinth records everything. Every death. Every rupture. Every contract failure... as testimony. As accusation.

Kaela kneeled near one of the corners, where there was a row of small white stones lined up—like nameless graves.

"These people wanted to free the monsters... and paid with their own lives?"

"Or freed monsters that didn’t want to be free." Eren murmured.

Nyssa swallowed hard.

"But... we’re not like that."

Eren looked at her sideways. His eyes were tired, but not gentle.

"Not yet."

[System: Presence of Cognitive Anomalies Registered]

[Suggestion: Leave Echo Area]

Eren ignored it.

He approached a cleaner part of the wall and ran his index finger over an engraved name: THIERNAN. Beside it, it read:

"Three years together. Two in peace. One in terror."

Kaela stepped back.

"I hate this place."

"I like it." Eren replied. "It doesn’t hide what it thinks."

He turned, facing the altar one last time.

This place wasn’t made to challenge us. It was made to judge us. A sanctuary against the bond. A cell for those who insist on loving it. Or corrupting it.

The shadows began to move around them. The memories were dissipating. The temperature dropped, but the floor grew warmer. The labyrinth... responded.

Nyssa leaned against Eren.

"Let’s get out of here."

He nodded.

"For now."

The next passage was wider than the previous ones—not out of the constructor’s generosity, but out of the necessity of horror. The ceiling opened like the dome of an atrophied lung, covered with dark veins pulsing like semi-living arteries. From the floor, greenish vapors rose between fissures, and iridescent fungi spread their sickly glow along the walls, painting shapes that seemed to move when not looked at directly.

Kaela was the first to stop. Her body froze, the fur on her neck bristling. She sniffed the air and growled low.

"Blood... and rust."

Nyssa also paused. Her body slipped to the ground and spread into a flattened shape, like a living cloak trying to escape the chamber.

"Something is here. It’s... watching us."

Eren didn’t reply. He felt it too.

But it wasn’t like the other presences. There was no magical weight. No aura. No hostility status. The system, silent until then, finally blinked:

[Environment Analysis: Materialized Anomaly]

[Hostility: Not Detected]

[Intention: Undefined]

Undefined? Since when does the system admit it doesn’t know?

He raised the flickering light stone to its maximum reach, gradually illuminating the ceiling. The mist made it difficult, but soon it was possible to distinguish what was hidden up there.

First came the dull glow. Then, the outline. Finally... the eyes.

At least six pairs. All white. No pupils. Lifeless. Yet attentive.

They were embedded in the darkest corner of the ceiling — above the circular structure of the chamber, amidst dried strands of ancient web and something that looked like a wall of fossilized eggs, trapped in cocoons of stone and silk. At the center of that living stain, a creature moved slowly, almost silently.

Its limbs didn’t end in common paws but in thin segments reminiscent of needles and hooks, adapted not for walking... but for holding. The body was vast, divided by black plates that folded over themselves like organic armor. And beneath each fold, something vibrated — perhaps organs, perhaps souls.

Kaela took two steps back, eyes fixed.

"That... is not a normal creature."

Eren didn’t move. He watched in silence, but his hand was already touching the strap of the emergency bandolier.

It didn’t attack. Just watching. But why?

[??? wishes to establish contact]

[Bond Level: Nonexistent | Intelligence: High]

[Condition for approach: Not yet satisfied]

The window disappeared before he could interact.

Nyssa murmured, in an almost childlike tone:

"I feel like it’s... waiting for us to say something."

Kaela tilted her head slightly.

"It’s blind."

Eren blinked.

"How do you know?"

"The eyes don’t react to light. And the movement... is based on sound and smell. It tracks us as if by echoes... not by sight."

Eren stepped two paces closer to the center of the chamber. He didn’t raise weapons. Nor did he call the system. He simply spoke, in a firm tone:

"Are you testing us?"

The creature moved one of its legs, but didn’t descend. The silk vibrated slightly, like a harp played by claws.

Kaela growled again.

"No. It’s not a test. It’s a judgment."

"So it’s a judge," Eren said. "Or a sentinel."

Nyssa wrapped around Kaela, as if seeking instinctive protection.

"It’s beautiful. But... in a way that’s scary."

Eren looked back into the creature’s eyes.

You are here by choice. Not sealed. Not imprisoned. So you... remain.

[Divine Interference: Stable]

[Observing Entity not associated with system protocols]

[Risk of direct contact: High | Risk of attack: None]

He closed his eyes for a second.

You are not an enemy. But neither are you an ally.

Silence prolonged. The chamber walls seemed to breathe deeper. The mist accumulated at the edges, as if the very boundaries of the space were being compressed to accommodate something ancient — or unworthy.

Then, with a dry crack and a sudden pull of silk, the creature moved backward, disappearing among the cocoons, as if slipping through an invisible gap in the ceiling. No hostility. No farewell.

Nyssa murmured:

"She’s gone..."

Kaela nodded, eyes still fixed upward.

"But she’ll be back. She... knows who we are. She knows who he is."

Eren touched his chest, where the system was still trying to stabilize.

[Partial Entity Record Saved]

[Name Not Defined]

[Probability of Return: High]

He said nothing. Just continued walking, leaving the chamber, as if it had been just a checkpoint.

But in his mind, her image remained. That creature the system didn’t know. That presence that judged him in silence.

It wasn’t a beast. It was a symbol. A mirror of all that refuses submission.

She doesn’t wish to be tamed... perhaps she can’t be. But she watches.

And maybe... she’s waiting for the right choice.