Chapter 27: A Loss in the Labyrinth!

Gwendolyn perched on Cecil’s shoulder. Her movements were lighter than usual, her paws landing almost silently. She leaned close to his ear, her voice lowered to a whisper only he could hear.

"There are too many eyes here. Stay on your guard."

Cecil did not break his stride, but he tilted his head slightly.

"I know the maze itself is dangerous," Gwendolyn went on, speaking a little faster than normal yet still enunciating clearly. "The walls won’t lie to you, but people will. When over a dozen of us crowd together, what happens if something goes wrong—whether we get lost, injured, or stumble upon something valuable? Have you thought about how we’ll handle it?"

Cecil said nothing, but he gave a tiny nod, a gesture subtle enough that only Gwendolyn could feel it.

He did not glance back at Leon and his followers, nor count how many Group‑A students and stranded stragglers trailed behind. Instead, he tucked her words away in his mind, like slipping a small blade into his boot—unobtrusive, yet always within reach.

The passage stretched ahead for roughly two minutes before it came to an abrupt end.

By "end," it meant there was no wall ahead, no corner to turn. The entire ground fell open outward. They stepped out of the narrow stone corridor onto a sprawling, suffocatingly vast plaza.

The plaza’s dome rose out of sight, the dark grey vault inlaid with glowing rune stones arranged in concentric circles, like an inverted map of the stars. The floor was a single slab of polished black stone, smooth as a massive mirror, reflecting the silhouettes of the people and spirit‑beasts standing upon it. The plaza spanned at least fifty paces across, with arched doorways set into the surrounding walls at regular intervals, each opening into a pitch‑black corridor, gaping like half‑opened mouths.

"This place is huge?" Freddy’s voice echoed across the empty plaza, bouncing two or three times before fading away. "The maze we saw outside wasn’t this big—"

"Did you really think the outside would match the inside?" Lydia knelt down and touched the ground. The black stone was cold and smooth, feeling like polished ice beneath her fingertips. "This flooring... it’s older than the walls outside. Far more ancient."

Cecil stood at the edge of the plaza’s entrance, hesitant to step onto the black stone surface at once. His intuition kicked in before his rational mind could process it, his foot halting an inch short of the stone’s edge.

Gwendolyn crouched on his shoulder, her blue eyes sweeping over the runic star map on the dome, then the shadows of the arches reflected on the ground. Her tail stiffened.

"Don’t move," she warned.

The moment the words left her mouth, a faint click echoed from the nearest archway. It sounded like a long‑stuck gear finally being pushed into motion.

Then the ground began to collapse.

It was not a full‑scale cave‑in. Sections of the black stone surface flipped downward one after another, as if countless invisible hands were yanking puzzle pieces away. Three meters to Cecil’s right, a two‑pace‑wide slab tilted sharply downward ninety degrees, revealing a pitch‑black chasm beneath. Nothing could be seen inside, only a cold, dry updraft rising from the depths. One slab after another flipped, at random intervals—sometimes consecutively, sometimes spaced several paces apart. The entire plaza floor resembled a chessboard being scrambled, shifting every single second.

"—Run!" Leon’s voice called from behind, but at the exact same moment, the first volley of projectiles rained down from between the dome’s runic star patterns.

They were no ordinary arrows. Semi‑transparent blue light shafts forged from condensed magic, they did not embed themselves into the black stone on impact, but erupted in small bursts of blue‑white sparks, leaving charred scorch marks. They streaked in from all directions with no fixed trajectory, as if dozens of crossbows were firing blindly down onto the plaza from above the vault.

One light shaft whizzed past Freddy’s ear, slamming into the arch frame behind him and showering the area with tiny embers. Freddy jerked his neck down, Turner darted out of his arms and tumbled onto the ground, his grey fur standing on end.

"Shields!" Oliver shouted. Robin spread his wings and circled low, trying to intercept the light shafts with his flight path, but the projectiles were not homing—they scattered randomly, their trajectories impossible to predict.

Edwin dropped to the ground, Rust the beetle clinging tightly to the back of his collar. A light shaft struck half a pace in front of his feet, burning a small crater into the black stone, smoke curling from the edges. "Rust, bite!" he yelled, yet the beetle could do nothing against attacks falling from the sky.

Cecil was running. He moved across the edge of the black stone, slabs flipping beneath his feet every second. Before each step, he judged whether the stone beneath him was solid or about to plunge into the abyss. His [Agility] and [Speed] were pushed to their absolute limit—the flipping slabs in his vision marked safe and dangerous paths in slow motion. He mapped a winding route in his mind, tiptoeing through the gaps between each stone’s movement.

"Gwendolyn! Frost!" he shouted.

Gwendolyn leaped from his shoulder, exhaling a burst of compressed frost mid‑air. The cold spread above their heads, solidifying into a thin ice shield that blocked three light shafts aimed at Cecil’s back. The shield shattered with a crisp, glass‑like crack, shards raining down like silver snow.

"I can only block one volley!" Gwendolyn rolled upon landing and jumped back onto his shoulder. "This drains far too much magic—"

Cecil did not slow down. He spotted a patch of ground in the plaza’s center where the slabs remained steady, several stones holding their position without flipping. He charged toward it, his feet moving like stepping stones that vanished beneath him.

"Follow me!"

The others stumbled after him. Lydia carried Ivy as she ran, Freddy clutched Turner tightly in his hand, Oliver kept Robin skimming low to avoid being targeted by the light shafts. Leon and his group were also on the move—the thunder griffin spread its wings, arcs of electricity along its golden feathers deflected two light shafts aimed at Leon, though the blast jolted it sideways, letting out an angry growl.

Cecil was the first to set foot on the stable central patch. The moment his feet touched solid ground, the flipping of the slabs behind him slowed—not stopping entirely, but at a far reduced frequency. The light shafts from the dome also diminished, shifting from a dense barrage to sparse single shots before ceasing altogether.

More than a dozen people stumbled into the central area, some collapsing to their knees gasping for breath, others leaning on their companions to steady themselves. Cecil counted heads—seventeen. Two were missing from the original seventeen who had entered.

One of the five stranded students was gone, a boy wearing short boots. His stone lizard spirit‑beast crouched alone on a slab that had flipped back into place at the plaza’s edge, whimpering softly.

"...He fell," the leader of the stranded group stared at the reset stone surface, his voice hoarse. "He slipped a moment ago—"

No one spoke.

Cecil stood in the plaza’s center, his chest heaving. Gwendolyn perched on his shoulder, her blue‑white scales dusted with grime and frost shards, her tail hanging low, yet her eyes still scanned the arches lining the plaza.

One archway after another slowly opened before them, distinct from all the ones they had seen before.

Gwendolyn stared at the arches for three seconds. The tip of her tail trembled faintly.

"...Be careful," she murmured.