Chapter 26: No Way Back!

The rumble of the walls sealing shut behind them had barely faded when Cecil heard another set of footsteps—denser and more orderly than their own entry. Leon and his six students squeezed one after another through the wall gap, moving far faster than anyone had anticipated.

The seven students and their seven spirit‑beasts huddled together in the narrow corridor. Leon led the way, the silver‑maned wolf pressed close to his legs, the fire‑feathered hawk folded its wings and perched on his shoulder, and a tall boy cradled the rock tortoise in his arms, heavy as a living boulder.

Cecil did not glance back at them. He kept walking forward at an unhurried pace, Gwendolyn keeping step at his feet, her small blue‑white body gliding like a drifting firefly through the dim corridor.

After roughly twenty paces, the passage turned sharply at a right angle, and the space opened up dramatically beyond the bend.

"...Good heavens." Freddy, walking second in line, came to an abrupt halt.

The space before them was not the maze they had seen from outside. It was far vaster. The towering walls stood at least twice as high as they had appeared from the exterior, draped in thick dark‑green moss beneath which a deep blue glow pulsed, as if the entire inner structure of the labyrinth had been dipped in luminous liquid and lifted out.

The passage widths also differed from what they had seen outside—some stretches were as broad as a small street, others narrow enough for only one person to squeeze sideways. Yet regardless of their width, every wall shifted slowly, like a horde of dormant giants rolling over in the darkness.

What made everyone freeze in their tracks, however, was the group of five figures standing in the corridor ahead.

Five people in tattered academy uniforms. Their grey‑blue coats were caked with dirt and moss, sleeves torn open at multiple seams, their faces a mix of exhaustion and shock. Several spirit‑beasts lay beside them, some cowering in the corners, others gasping for breath. One wind falcon had its wings scorched, the edges of its feathers curled and blackened. At the sound of footsteps, they jerked their heads up. When they saw more than ten people pouring in from the entrance, their expressions shifted from wariness to confusion, then to a near‑blank bewilderment.

"...Are you also academy students?" the foremost figure called out, his voice hoarse as if he had not drunk water in ages. "Why are more people coming in?"

Leon stood two paces behind Cecil and stopped short at the sight of the strangers. His face paled faintly beneath the blue runelight. "When did you enter?"

"Last night," the man replied, his tone heavy with dry weariness. "Three of us came to scout, thinking we’d be out in two hours. But—" he glanced back at the tangled passages behind him, where a wall was sliding slowly shut, blocking the path they had taken "—we still haven’t found the exit. We met two more people halfway, joined up, and still can’t get out."

Cecil’s gaze swept over the five strangers: four boys and one girl, all bearing Group‑A insignia on their uniforms. Two of their spirit‑beasts were injured—the falcon’s wings and a stone lizard’s tail. Their shoe soles were worn thin, and some had grime and crusted blood lodged under their fingernails.

"Did you try retracing your steps?" Oliver asked.

The man let out a bitter laugh, devoid of any humor. "We can’t find our original path. The passage we entered through shifted direction three minutes after we walked in. When we turned back, there was just a solid wall. We tried marking the walls, but the marks vanish. We carved notches with our knives, and the cuts heal themselves." He held up his dagger, its blade bent and dulled. "This place repairs itself."

Cecil turned to look back the way they had come. The walls had closed completely, the entrance hidden behind the stonework, yet the moss‑covered surface bore no cracks or seams, as if they had never entered from that spot. He glanced down at Gwendolyn. She crouched at his feet, her blue eyes fixed on a section of runes on the opposite wall, her tiny paw pressed to the ground, the tip of her tail trembling slightly.

"This place is more complex than it appears," Gwendolyn murmured, her voice only audible to Cecil. "It records the route and movement pattern of every team that enters, then scrambles and rearranges them separately."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that we’re in the same space, but our original entrance has already been dismantled. The opening you saw no longer exists as an entrance."

Cecil did not relay this explanation to the others. He simply stood at the front of his group, staring at the five people who had been trapped overnight, then glanced back at Leon, whose face had turned even paler than before.

Leon spun around to check the path he had taken to get there—it was gone. The narrow corridor he had walked through had been replaced by a moss‑covered solid wall, with no doors or gaps of any kind. He rapped his palm against the stone; it felt cold and solid, a real wall.

He pulled his hand back, leaving a pale white imprint on the surface. The mark faded slowly within seconds, vanishing without a trace like water evaporating off stone.

"The path’s gone," Leon said flatly.

The Group‑A students behind him grew restless. One muttered that they should never have come in, another stepped back two paces and collided with the wall behind him. The silver‑maned wolf tucked its tail and crouched at Leon’s feet, letting out low whimpers. The fire‑feathered hawk took flight from its master’s shoulder, circled once in the air, and landed back down, its claws tangling in his hair.

The leader of the five trapped students looked at Leon and Cecil, speaking with the calm of someone who had endured this ordeal for hours. "Don’t panic. The maze rearranges faster when you’re anxious. We’ve noticed it reacts to emotions—the more desperate you are to escape, the more chaotic it makes the paths." He nodded toward the glowing blue runes overhead. "It’s reading you."

Silence fell over the corridor.

Cecil stood motionless, feeling the faint tremors beneath his feet. The walls shifted, slow and silent as tides, reshaping the very bones of this underground labyrinth. He could hear the low grinding friction of another wall closing in a distant passage, some "door" sealing shut.

Gwendolyn looked up at him. Her blue eyes glowed bright beneath the dim runelight, like a star frozen beneath ice.

"Are you scared?" she whispered, her voice so soft only he could hear it.

Cecil stared down at her. "I am. But fear won’t help."

Gwendolyn swept her tail across the stone floor. "Then keep moving. You go farther when you’re afraid."

Cecil turned to face the passage ahead. The walls continued to shift, the layout changing at regular intervals, but with Gwendolyn at his side, every gentle tap of her tail against the ground sent a faint resonance through him—a echo from deep within the maze, guiding him which way to go.

"Move out," he said.

He stepped forward into the corridor ahead. The others fell in line slowly behind him. Leon kept his distance ten paces back, and after a moment of hesitation, the five overnight captives followed as well.

More than a dozen figures wound their way forward , like a slow‑flowing dark river.

The walls slid silently on either side of them, like a cohort of silent night watchmen.