The feeding tongues struck.
Hundreds of them.
They erupted from the ceiling all at once, black hooked tendrils snapping through the air with wet cracks that echoed throughout the living corridor.
Qaritas moved before he consciously decided to.
"Left."
Eon's voice.
Cold.
Precise.
Qaritas threw himself sideways.
Three tongues slammed into the stone where he'd been standing, the hooked barbs punching clean through rock before retracting with chunks of living wall still clinging to them.
"Duck."
He dropped.
A tongue screamed over his head close enough that he felt the wind from its passing.
It carved through a glowing mushroom taller than a house.
The towering fungus split neatly in half.
The two pieces collapsed with a thunderous crash.
"Jump."
His legs obeyed.
Another tongue burst from beneath the moss-covered floor.
It snapped shut where his feet had been only a heartbeat earlier.
Qaritas landed hard, boots skidding across slick black stone.
His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
He wasn't winning.
He wasn't even fighting.
He was surviving.
Barely.
Another chorus of clicking filled the air.
Above him.
Below him.
Inside the walls.
The entire maze seemed alive with it.
Qaritas risked a glance upward.
Instant regret.
The ceiling had disappeared beneath writhing bodies.
Hundreds of fungal creatures clung upside down like grotesque insects, their pale armored hides blending almost perfectly with the massive fungal shelves growing across the ceiling.
Not one of them hesitated.
The instant one missed—
another attacked.
The colony hunted without pause.
Without exhaustion.
Without fear.
A hooked tongue wrapped around a fallen stone pillar.
The creature yanked.
The pillar ripped free from the floor and hurtled toward Qaritas.
"Down."
He slid beneath it.
The pillar smashed into the opposite wall, exploding into fragments of stone and glowing fungus.
The impact shook the corridor.
Then something worse happened.
The corridor answered.
A deep groan rolled through the walls.
Not the sound of collapsing stone.
The sound of something...
moving.
Qaritas felt the floor shift beneath his boots.
The corridor bent.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Like a giant serpent twisting beneath the earth.
Roots burst from the walls.
Massive.
Twisting.
Thick enough to swallow entire buildings.
They coiled around one another before crashing into the floor, sealing the path he'd just escaped.
Another wall slid sideways.
A bridge folded into itself.
A tunnel that had existed moments ago simply...
closed.
The Living Maze wasn't reacting.
It was helping.
"Eon..."
"I know."
Another violent tremor.
Stone cracked.
Entire fungal towers folded like flowers closing at sunset.
A moment later they bloomed somewhere else entirely.
The pathways changed again.
The maze wasn't random.
It was thinking.
No...
It was hunting.
"It knows where we're going," Qaritas muttered.
"It is attempting to decide where you will die."
"...That's encouraging."
"I was not attempting encouragement."
A massive root exploded from the ceiling.
Qaritas barely twisted aside before it slammed into the ground hard enough to split the corridor in two.
Immediately—
the fungal creatures poured over it.
Using the root as a bridge.
"They're using the maze..."
"They are the maze."
The realization chilled him.
The colony wasn't trapped inside the Labyrinth.
The colony and the Labyrinth had learned to hunt together.
Qaritas ran.
There was no other choice.
He sprinted through twisting corridors that refused to remain the same for more than a few seconds.
Behind him—
click.
Ahead—
click.
To his left—
the wall unfolded into another hunter.
To his right—
fungal shelves burst apart as three more creatures crawled free.
Every direction became wrong.
Every escape became another trap.
One creature launched itself from the ceiling.
Qaritas ducked beneath it.
Before it even landed—
another burst from the wall directly in front of him.
Its hooked tongue lashed forward.
"Right."
He pivoted.
The tongue missed by inches.
Instead it pierced another creature charging from behind.
Neither acknowledged the mistake.
The injured hunter simply tore itself free and continued running.
Pain meant nothing.
Death meant nothing.
Only the hunt.
Qaritas's breathing grew heavier.
His legs burned.
His lungs ached.
Yet the clicking never grew farther away.
If anything...
It was getting closer.
Another corridor folded.
The floor tilted sharply.
Qaritas stumbled.
A claw slashed across the back of his coat, missing flesh by the width of a fingernail.
He spun instinctively.
Rivax's blade flashed.
Steel met fungal flesh.
One hunter's arm hit the floor.
The creature didn't even slow.
It simply kept coming.
Its severed limb twitched across the ground like a dying spider.
The wound sealed with writhing fungal growth before Qaritas's eyes.
He stared.
"They're regenerating."
"They are adapting."
Qaritas clenched the sword tighter.
Then shouted inside his own mind.
"Eon!"
"What?"
"Take over!"
Silence.
Then—
"No."
Qaritas nearly stumbled.
"What do you mean no?"
Another root crashed down behind him.
The impact launched fragments of stone through the corridor.
He barely escaped them.
"Eon!"
"I said no."
"Why?!"
The answer came quieter than expected.
Because...
if I continue fighting your battles...
you will never become yourself.
Another creature dropped between them.
Qaritas cut it down.
Three more replaced it.
Eon's voice remained calm.
"You are not meant to become me."
"You are meant to become Qaritas."
The words struck harder than the claws chasing him.
He wanted to argue.
To demand Eon help.
To tell him they would both die.
But somewhere beneath the panic...
He knew.
Eon wasn't refusing because he didn't care.
He was refusing because he did.
And somehow...
That hurt even more.
The corridor vanished beneath him.
Not cracked.
Not collapsed.
Vanished.
One moment Qaritas was running across slick black stone.
The next—
There was nothing beneath his feet.
His stomach lurched.
The world dropped.
Qaritas fell.
For one horrifying second, he saw the maze split open beneath him like a mouth.
A pit stretched downward farther than the light could reach.
Its walls were layered with roots, bones, broken bridges, and ancient stone passages that disappeared into darkness. Pale fungal growths clung to the sides like diseased stars.
Above him, the hunters poured over the edge.
Not stopping.
Not hesitating.
They jumped after him.
Dozens.
Then hundreds.
Their limbs folded against their bodies as they dropped, fungal crowns opening wide to taste the air around him.
Qaritas twisted in freefall.
"Eon!"
A root swung through the darkness below.
Thick as a ship's mast.
Hanging from somewhere above.
Eon answered with one calm word.
Swing.
Qaritas stared.
"What?"
Swing.
"That is not enough instruction!"
The nearest creature fell past him.
Its tongue lashed toward his ankle.
Qaritas kicked away.
The hooks tore through the edge of his boot.
The root rushed closer.
Too fast.
Too far.
He reached.
Missed.
His fingers scraped across wet bark.
For one breath, nothing.
Then his other hand caught.
Pain tore through his shoulder as his fall stopped violently.
The root bent beneath his weight.
Qaritas swung out over the pit.
The creature behind him snapped its hooked tongue toward his back.
"Release."
"What?"
Now.
Qaritas let go.
The root whipped upward.
The fungal creature caught it instead.
Its tongue wrapped around the bark.
The root recoiled.
The hunter was hurled sideways into the pit wall hard enough to burst through stone.
Qaritas continued falling.
Another root passed below.
He caught it with both hands.
This one was covered in translucent slime.
His grip slipped immediately.
"Oh, come on."
He slid down the length of the root, boots kicking uselessly through open air.
Above him, more hunters descended.
Some clung to the pit walls.
Others ran downward across the vertical stone as if gravity had simply decided not to apply to them.
One launched itself.
Qaritas swung his legs upward.
The creature passed beneath him.
Its fungal crown brushed his coat.
The pale gills inside its head trembled.
Listening.
Tasting.
It twisted in midair.
Too quickly.
Its tongue shot out.
Qaritas cut.
Rivax's blade passed through the feeding organ.
Half of it vanished.
Not severed.
Removed.
The creature convulsed.
Then disappeared below him.
No impact followed.
No distant crack.
Nothing.
The pit swallowed it without acknowledgment.
Qaritas looked down.
Darkness.
Endless.
Hungry.
"I'm beginning to miss the lava river."
That is concerning.
"It had scenery."
It tried to eat us.
"So does everything else."
The root jerked.
Qaritas looked up.
Three hunters had landed on it above him.
Their claws dug into the bark as they crawled downward.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Their heads tilted together.
One mind.
One decision.
Qaritas looked across the pit.
The opposite ledge was still too far.
Between him and it, dozens of roots hung at different heights, swaying slowly over the abyss.
A path.
A terrible one.
Eon understood before he spoke.
Move.
Qaritas drew his knees upward.
He kicked off the root.
For one suspended heartbeat, he floated over nothing.
Then caught another.
Swung.
Released.
Caught the next.
Behind him, the colony followed.
Not clumsily.
Perfectly.
One creature leapt from root to root using all four limbs.
Another ran across the underside.
A third wrapped its tongue around a branch and swung behind him like a grotesque pendulum.
Qaritas moved faster.
Root.
Release.
Fall.
Catch.
Swing.
Every motion tore at his shoulders.
Every landing jolted his bones.
The pit seemed to breathe beneath him.
Far below, something shifted.
Not one creature.
Something too large for the darkness to fully conceal.
Qaritas refused to look again.
"Left," Eon ordered.
Qaritas reached for the left root.
A hunter landed on it first.
Its enormous claws locked around the bark.
Its head opened.
The tongue struck.
Qaritas twisted aside.
The hooks tore across his shoulder.
Pain flashed hot.
He nearly lost his grip.
The creature reeled him closer.
The tongue tightened.
Qaritas grabbed it with one hand.
The hooks bit into his palm.
"Bad idea," he hissed.
Obviously.
"Helpful."
He drove Rivax's blade into the tongue.
The entire organ vanished.
The creature pitched backward.
Qaritas swung with the force of its fall, released the root, and flew toward the opposite ledge.
For one impossible second—
he thought he would make it.
Then the ledge moved.
The maze pulled it away.
Stone slid backward.
Roots tightened.
The gap widened.
Qaritas's stomach dropped.
"No."
The ledge continued retreating.
Deliberate.
Cruel.
The maze had watched him calculate the jump.
Then changed the answer.
A root whipped past his reach.
He caught nothing.
He fell again.
Above him, the hunters clicked.
Not triumph.
Coordination.
The pit wall to his right split open.
A narrow tunnel appeared inside it.
Close.
Almost reachable.
Eon's voice sharpened.
Blade.
Qaritas drew Rivax's weapon back.
Then threw it.
The absent edge struck the wall beside the tunnel.
A section of stone vanished.
The opening widened.
Qaritas reached it.
His fingers caught the broken edge.
He slammed into the wall, ribs taking the impact.
For half a second, his grip held.
Then the stone beneath his fingers softened.
Living tissue.
The maze began swallowing his hand.
Qaritas cursed and hauled himself upward.
The wall flexed around his wrist.
Roots tightened like tendons.
A hunter dropped toward him.
"Move," Eon said.
"I am attempting that!"
The creature's tongue snapped down.
Qaritas pulled one leg into the tunnel.
Then the other.
The tongue struck the opening behind him.
Hooks scraped sparks from stone.
Qaritas rolled deeper into the passage.
The creature tried to follow.
The tunnel contracted.
Not to stop it.
To force it through.
Its shoulders folded.
Armor cracked.
Bones rearranged.
The hunter compressed itself into the narrow space with wet, efficient movements.
Qaritas stared.
"That is unfair."
Run.
He ran.
The passage sloped upward.
Behind him came the scrape of claws.
Then another.
And another.
The entire colony was entering.
The tunnel pulsed around him.
Walls tightening.
Floor shifting.
The maze was funneling them into a single path.
A kill corridor.
Qaritas felt it.
Eon did too.
It is leading you somewhere.
"Somewhere good?"
No.
"Worth asking."
The tunnel widened without warning.
Qaritas burst into another section of the maze.
A vast web of bridges hung above the pit.
Stone platforms connected by roots and narrow fungal walkways.
Far below, darkness remained.
Far above, the ceiling twisted with luminous vines.
For one moment, he had room.
Then every bridge began to move.
One rotated vertically.
Another folded in half.
A third retracted into the wall.
The entire structure rearranged around him.
Stone scraped against stone.
Roots snapped taut.
The maze shifted like the inside of a lock.
Qaritas sprinted across the nearest bridge.
Behind him, the hunters spilled from the tunnel.
They spread immediately.
Some followed.
Others climbed beneath the bridge.
Several disappeared into openings along the walls.
Trying to surround him.
The bridge beneath Qaritas tilted.
He adjusted.
Kept running.
A root lashed across the path.
He jumped it.
Another rose at chest height.
He slid beneath.
The bridge rotated farther.
The floor became a wall.
Qaritas's boots lost traction.
He fell sideways, caught a hanging chain, and swung beneath the structure.
Above him, hunters raced across what had once been the floor.
One stabbed its claws through the stone.
The tips emerged inches from his face.
Qaritas swung harder.
The chain groaned.
He reached the next platform and released.
Rolled.
Came up running.
Then the first support root snapped.
The sound shook the entire chamber.
Qaritas looked back.
The bridge dropped.
Dozens of hunters fell with it.
They clawed at one another.
At roots.
At stone.
Anything.
The bridge vanished into the pit.
Again—
no impact.
Only darkness.
Then another root snapped.
And another.
The collapse spread.
Not accidental.
The maze was discarding the entire section.
Stone platforms tilted.
Fungal towers split from the walls.
Roots thicker than buildings tore free and fell, dragging entire corridors with them.
Qaritas ran.
Behind him, the world came apart.
A bridge collapsed sideways.
He jumped the widening gap.
Landed on one knee.
The platform cracked beneath him.
"Up," Eon ordered.
Qaritas looked.
A root dangled overhead.
Too high.
He jumped anyway.
Caught it.
The platform beneath him broke apart and disappeared.
He climbed.
Fast.
The root writhed in his hands.
Trying to throw him off.
"No."
He locked his legs around it.
The root twisted harder.
A creature leapt from the collapsing bridge and caught his boot.
Its weight dragged him down.
Qaritas kicked.
The claws held.
Another creature landed on the first.
Then another.
A living chain of bodies formed beneath him.
Pulling.
The root groaned.
His shoulders burned.
The hunters clicked together.
Qaritas looked down.
Too many.
He drew Rivax's blade.
"Let go," Eon said.
"Of the weapon?"
The root.
Qaritas stared at the distance below.
"You need to work on your comforting tone."
Trust me.
That silenced him.
Qaritas released the root.
He dropped directly toward the creatures.
Their fungal crowns opened.
Tongues lashed upward.
At the last second, Qaritas drove Rivax's blade through the first creature's head.
Its presence vanished.
The bodies beneath it lost their anchor.
The entire chain fell.
Qaritas fell with them.
For one terrifying breath, claws and tongues surrounded him.
He kicked away from one body.
Used another as a step.
Then another.
Running downward across falling monsters.
Each touch lasted only a heartbeat.
Claw.
Shoulder.
Back.
Fungal plate.
He leapt from the last creature toward a narrow ledge in the wall.
His hands struck stone.
Held.
Behind him, the hunters vanished into darkness.
The ledge cracked.
Qaritas hauled himself up.
Then the entire wall shuddered.
A roar of collapsing stone rolled through the chamber.
Not behind him.
Above.
He looked up.
The ceiling was falling.
Enormous fungal towers detached.
Roots snapped like overstretched veins.
Entire chunks of the maze came down.
"Run," Eon said.
Qaritas sprinted along the ledge.
It narrowed.
Stone shattered behind him.
A root crashed across the path.
He climbed over it.
A massive slab struck the wall, spraying fragments around him.
One cut his cheek.
Another buried itself in his thigh.
He stumbled.
Pain flared.
Kept moving.
The ledge ended.
Ahead—
an opening.
Bright.
Blue.
Gold.
Water.
Qaritas pushed harder.
The maze collapsed around him.
The passage narrowed as roots closed from both sides.
He turned sideways.
Forced himself through.
Stone scraped his back.
Fungal tissue tried to grip his coat.
The opening shrank.
Qaritas lunged.
The walls snapped shut behind him.
He hit the ground.
Rolled.
Slid across smooth crystal.
Then stopped.
For several breaths, he lay there.
Listening.
Nothing followed.
No clicking.
No claws.
No shifting roots.
Only water.
Qaritas slowly lifted his head.
And forgot the pain.
The chamber before him was enormous.
Waterfalls poured from heights lost in glowing mist.
Beside them, rivers of lava fell in molten curtains, red-gold light spilling across crystal pools below. Steam drifted between them in pale ribbons.
Gigantic trees rose from islands of black stone, their trunks translucent, their roots wrapped around ancient ruins. Blue light moved beneath their bark like slow lightning.
Flowers larger than shields opened toward the cavern ceiling.
Their petals glowed silver.
Crystal pools reflected stars that did not exist above them.
For one impossible moment—
it looked peaceful.
Beautiful.
Safe.
Qaritas pushed himself upright.
"Tell me this place isn't alive too."
Eon did not answer.
Qaritas's smile faded.
"Eon?"
Silence.
Not absence.
Attention.
The kind that meant every part of him was listening.
Then—
Do not move.
Qaritas froze.
The waterfalls continued falling.
The lavafalls continued burning.
Steam curled through the air.
Nothing appeared wrong.
Then the ground pulsed.
Boom.
The crystal beneath Qaritas's hand vibrated.
Not an explosion.
Not a footstep.
A heartbeat.
Another followed.
Boom.
The glowing trees dimmed.
The flowers closed.
The water in the pools trembled.
A third pulse rolled through the chamber.
Boom.
Somewhere beyond the waterfalls—
something began to wake.
The heartbeat came again.
BOOM.
The crystal beneath Qaritas's boots shivered.
Ripples spread across the mirror-like pools.
The waterfalls faltered.
Not stopping.
Hesitating.
As though gravity itself had forgotten what it was supposed to do.
Even the lava slowed.
Molten rivers thickened until they resembled glowing honey spilling down black cliffs.
The chamber...
waited.
Qaritas remained perfectly still.
"So..."
he whispered.
"...what exactly am I not moving for?"
Eon's answer came immediately.
"I do not know."
That was worse.
Much worse.
The First Evil always knew something.
For him to admit uncertainty...
Whatever slept beneath this sanctuary belonged to neither memory nor history.
Another pulse rolled through the earth.
BOOM.
This time Qaritas felt it inside his ribs.
Not against them.
Inside them.
His heart skipped.
Then beat again.
Trying to match the rhythm beneath the ground.
The towering crystalline trees bent.
Not from wind.
Toward something.
Every glowing flower slowly folded its petals.
The luminous insects filling the chamber dropped from the air simultaneously.
Thousands of tiny lights winked out.
Darkness deepened.
Then...
Silence.
Absolute.
No water.
No lava.
No insects.
No breathing.
Nothing.
Qaritas suddenly realized he couldn't hear himself inhale.
The world had become so quiet that sound itself felt unwelcome.
Far across the chamber...
the crystal lake began to move.
Not ripple.
Separate.
Its perfectly smooth surface split apart down the center.
The water retreated.
Slowly.
Revealing black earth beneath.
Then...
the earth breathed.
The entire chamber expanded.
Not visually.
Physically.
The walls moved apart.
The ceiling rose.
Stone groaned beneath impossible pressure.
Roots thicker than castles tore themselves from the surrounding cliffs, bowing toward the opening forming in the center of the lake.
Qaritas's fingers tightened around Rivax's sword.
"Eon..."
"I know."
"What is that?"
A long pause.
Finally—
"I believe..."
"...we are looking at the heart."
The earth cracked.
A single fissure opened.
Then another.
Hundreds spread outward through the chamber like fractures racing across glass.
Golden light poured from the depths.
No.
Not light.
Spores.
Millions of glowing spores rose from the widening cracks.
They drifted upward in complete silence.
Then every spore stopped.
Hovering motionless in the air.
Waiting.
The heartbeat came again.
BOOM.
The spores answered.
Turning.
All at once.
Toward the widening chasm.
Something enormous shifted beneath the earth.
Qaritas couldn't see it.
Not yet.
He only saw the consequences.
Entire waterfalls changed direction.
Instead of falling downward...
they curved inward.
Pulled toward the opening.
Lava followed.
Molten rivers twisted through the air like serpents before disappearing into the darkness below.
The chamber was feeding something.
"No..."
Qaritas whispered.
The realization struck him.
"It isn't eating the chamber..."
"It is breathing it."
Eon said nothing.
Because he had reached the same conclusion.
The widening fissure expanded until it resembled the entrance to another world.
Then...
a single tendril emerged.
It was the width of an ancient oak.
Pale ivory.
Layered in overlapping fungal plates.
Every few feet it split into smaller tendrils before joining together again farther down its length.
Each movement was impossibly slow.
Deliberate.
As though time itself moved differently around it.
It reached the crystal shore.
Touched the ground.
The earth pulsed beneath the contact.
Then another emerged.
And another.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Not attacking.
Anchoring.
They spread across the chamber like the roots of some impossible tree.
Only then...
did the body begin to rise.
Not all at once.
It unfolded.
Piece by piece.
The first thing Qaritas saw was armor.
Not forged steel.
Living cathedral-like shelves of pale fungal stone layered over one another until they resembled the walls of an ancient fortress.
Each plate was scarred by centuries of battle.
Yet before his eyes...
fresh growth pushed from beneath the damaged sections.
Old armor split apart.
New armor replaced it.
The creature regenerated even while standing still.
Beneath those immense plates flowed exposed crimson muscle thicker than the trunks of the glowing trees surrounding it.
Black veins pulsed through translucent membranes.
Each pulse sent clouds of shimmering spores drifting into the air.
The chamber inhaled them.
Then exhaled them again.
Qaritas slowly raised his eyes higher.
Higher.
Still higher.
The creature hadn't finished standing.
Its immense torso continued rising from beneath the earth, unfolding with the grinding of ancient stone and the tearing of living flesh.
The crystal trees that had towered over the chamber now barely reached its waist.
Qaritas finally understood why the chamber had seemed so vast.
It wasn't built around the creature.
It had grown around it.
The Hive Sovereign had never entered this sanctuary.
It had always been here.
Sleeping.
And now...
it was awake.
Inside him...
Eon spoke for the first time in nearly a minute.
His voice was quieter than Qaritas had ever heard it.
"...Do not mistake this for another monster."
Qaritas never looked away.
"I wasn't."
"No."
Eon's presence grew unnaturally heavy.
"This..."
"...is a king."