CHAPTER 40: ZERO-LIGHT LABYRINTH

The black ate the edges. The lantern made a small island. We kept it low. I put my left hand on the wall and counted tiles under my right boot. "Two, four, six," I said, low enough to keep breath from bouncing. Lyra marked a dot every ten. Gareth dragged his toe where the floor lip shifted. Pelham kept the rope coil high and the knot ready. Rooke listened for hums and shook his head when there weren’t any.

First junction: a T where the left breathed cool and the right smelled stale. The echo on the left came back wrong—too fast. I set the bone sapper on the floor. It tapped light, moved two steps, tapped again. Two beats short. Dead end at short left.

"No lamp talk," Lyra reminded me.

"Right," I said. We took it.

A shallow slope pulled us forward. I set my heel and let Anchor Step earn its keep. "Low knees," I said. The slope flattened. We paused. I drew a small line on the map. "Angle here," I said. Lyra penciled a note without looking down.

We reached a split where the wall hummed in a thin way. "Band," I said. Rooke held his shield toward the seam. The rune flickered a hair. "Shutter test ahead," he said.

"Warden trick," Gareth muttered. "Drops to make us hurry."

"We won’t," I said. I slid the bone pin into a crack at shoulder height, tied a quick wrap, and set Marrow against the opposite post. "On me," I said. We stepped. The slab came down. The line held. We slid under, one by one. No scramble. No panic. On the far side I eased the rope, pulled the pin, and pocketed it. The slab rose on its counterweight, disappointed.

Past that, the floor had a shine to it. "Oil," Pelham whispered.

"Boar," I said. The heavy chassis rolled up, ribs low, plate forward. We kept a hand on it and used it like a rail. Step, set, slip. No one sprawled. The oil patch ended. We pushed on.

An echo lure cried ahead, a lonely child’s voice down a shaft. Half the teams in the maze would follow it. I kept to the right-hand rule and reached for the map. Lyra’s fingers brushed mine—steady, small. We held to what we knew.

A faint light broke the dark ahead—too bright for our lantern, too narrow for a lamp. Aldric’s team had someone waving a glow strip illegally. A proctor’s voice whispered through the wall: "Cover it." Then: "Penalty."

We reached the corner where their path crossed ours, separated by a waist-high grate. Aldric’s voice sounded tight. "We’re circling," he said to someone, annoyed. "This map makes no sense."

I kept walking. At the grate I said one legal thing, level. "Short left dead. Take long right."

Silence. Then a scoff. Then Seraphine’s flat: "He’s right."

We moved on. Proctor Pierce’s chalk scratched somewhere in the wall. "Assistance: advisory, legal," he wrote into someone’s book.

The corridor bent hard and dropped into ankle-deep water. It moved slow, pulled toward a drain that hummed. Lyra placed her hands at four points and hummed a frame so the flow didn’t push us off our feet. "Posts only," she said. I pulsed into the posts when we stepped. The frame held. The water ignored us.

Next, a ledge over a silent pit. "Hands on the wall," I said. Gareth touched stone, found the good parts, and marked them with two knuckles. Pelham was the weak link here; he knew it. "Breathe," I said. "Heel, then toe. Count." He did. We crossed. No drama.

Halfway through the maze, a tube hissed and Liora’s voice came quiet and clear: "Sector C-3 shows drift. Report."

I raised the lantern a finger. The ward seam on the right wall shimmered wrong. Resin smell, faint. "Loose pin at C-3," I said. "Low. Angle wrong."

"Noted," she said. "Proceed. No one else talk."

We kept moving. The lantern’s glow shrank once, then settled. I didn’t admire it. I turned the wick a hair lower to keep our island small.

Marcus’s team met ours at a cross hall. He raised two fingers in greeting, then pointed at a faint chalk mark and mouthed, "Low lip." I nodded and lifted my toes. Ariadne’s neat dots came into view two turns later, numbered like a ledger line. We followed their numbers until our lines diverged. It felt like riding a road other hands had built to be kind to our feet.

We reached a room where the wall map waited: a grid with empty slots. Our pack had four square tiles with engraved marks. We needed to place them to match the path.

"Positions," I said. "Gareth, block that rolling door. Pelham, rope hold on the shutter. Rooke, shield to the mouth. Lyra, count dots." I lifted the first tile and slotted it into the grid. The carved lines lined up with our notes. Second tile, then third. The last one didn’t look right.

Lyra touched the edge. "Flip," she said. We did. It clicked. A bell chimed low inside the wall.

"Out," I said.

The last corridor pinched tight and then loosened. The air ahead felt bigger. "Lantern off," I said. The bone lantern dimmed to nothing. We stepped into daylight so fast the band shield warmed my skin.

Pierce stood with a slate. Liora stood with a second form. Dorian leaned on a pillar like a man counting breath.

"Cell Valcrey," Pierce said. "Clean map. Legal advisory. No panics. No running. Time good. Note added: reported drift at C-3."

Liora looked at me and nodded once. "Thank you," she said. "We found the pin."

Aldric’s team came out five minutes later, faces tight, penalties on the sheet. Seraphine’s hair was smooth, but her eyes were not. She glanced at me, then at the report line under my name. "Helpful," she said, like a knife hidden in a cloth.

"Legal," I said.

Cael’s team came out first, of course. Fast. Quiet. He gave me a small nod. "Better," he said.

"Closer," I said.

We turned in our band shields and tools. The clerk checked the lantern number against the strip and wrote "compliant." I signed. The pen didn’t scratch; the line was clean.

People talked in clusters on the grass. "He told Voss the route." "Is that allowed?" "Pierce wrote ’legal.’" "How did they hold that shutter?" "Bone pin?" "What’s a Prusik?" "Ask a climber." None of it was my job to manage.

Liora stepped close enough that only I heard. "You can keep the lantern registered for a week," she said. "No night missions planned. That’s not a promise."

"Understood."

She handed me a sealed note. The wax had the academy seal. Inside was one line in her neat hand. Gate Three smell report, east shaft, last night. Noted. Watch.

I folded it and slid it into the folder with my receipts. Seraphine was already walking my way, smile practiced, eyes sharp.

"See?" she said. "Even in the dark, you needed a voice."

"I needed rules," I said. "And people who keep them."

She tilted her head. "You’ll come to me when rules choke. I’ll be waiting."

"Change first," I said.

We stood in the open while the yard returned to normal. I didn’t give her the last word. I didn’t take it either. I left her on the grass and went to my team. "Water. Then debrief. Then food," I said.

The work wasn’t done. It never was. That was fine. We were getting better at doing it. And the resin smell wasn’t getting braver because we had started paying attention. That mattered more than any line on a board.