The Labyrinth.
I knew the word. A complicated, irregular network of passages or paths, a place where one could lose themselves, where the way forward was as unclear as the way back. A maze, in essence. But this wasn't my world. The rules I knew didn't necessarily apply here. The meaning of words, of concepts, could twist into something unrecognizable.
"Labyrinth?" I echoed, my own voice feeling small against the vast, oppressive silence.
A chill ran through me, though there was no wind, no air, no temperature at all. It was something deeper—something buried in instinct, in the marrow of my bones. Fear. Not the fear of pain or death, but something more primal. The fear of standing before something far beyond human comprehension.
The shadow did not answer outright. It lingered in silence, shifting, rippling, dissolving and reforming without a single defined shape. I had the unsettling sense that it wasn't searching for the right words—it was considering whether I was even capable of understanding them. Or perhaps, whether I deserved to hear them at all.
Time stretched thin.
I had already accepted that time in this place was meaningless. Seconds and centuries blended together, indivisible. My body was tense, but my mind was still my own. And as long as I held onto that—onto my reason, my thoughts—I would not break. If I let the terror of the unknown seep too deep, if I allowed the weight of incomprehensible existence to crush me, then I would no longer be myself. I refused.
So, I stared into the void. And the void stared back.
At last, after a lifetime, it spoke.
"The Labyrinth… is a doorway. A bridge between what is and what was. A thread woven through the fabric of reality, binding worlds together in ways beyond mortal perception."
Its voice was not a single voice. It was many, layered upon each other, as if something vast and formless was speaking through countless tongues at once.
"There are infinite gates to enter, but only one path to exit. It does not follow the logic of your kind—it does not obey laws written by men or gods. It expands beyond reason, beyond time. It descends into the depths where no light reaches and stretches into the heavens where no shadow dares linger. The Labyrinth is all things, yet it belongs to no one."
The shadows swirled around me, moving in patterns I couldn't quite grasp, like the motions of something shifting just beyond the edges of reality.
"Within its corridors, there are beings of great power, remnants of those who once were, and creatures born of malice and ruin. Those who enter do so without promise of return. The Labyrinth is not a trial. It is not a game. It is the great tide, the silent pull of eternity, consuming all who step inside."
The shadow paused. I felt its attention settle on me once more, heavy as the weight of the abyss itself.
"And you, who stand at the edge, do you seek to enter?"
I thought.
Turned the words over in my mind, unraveling them thread by thread, piecing together what they meant—what the Labyrinth truly was. A connector. A doorway. A passage linking the worlds.
That meant… I could find one of these doors. I could trace a path back to my world. Back to my life.
It wouldn't be easy. The way had no map, no guidance. But it was possible. And possibility, no matter how slim, was enough.
A quiet, desperate thought crept into my mind—what if I could go back before the crash? Before I ever set out for the party? Before everything unraveled into this abyss?
I closed my eyes, letting my thoughts settle, letting them take shape. If the Labyrinth touched all things, all places, all time—then why not before?
Before it all went wrong.
Before the regret, before the numbness.
Before I lost him.
The thought lodged itself deep in my chest, an ache I hadn't let myself feel in years. My father.
Would it be possible? If the Labyrinth stretched across realities, could I step through a door and return to when he was still there? Could I fix everything? Would I even recognize myself if I did?
I could see it—an entire life rewritten. Not just my past, but me. The person I had been could be different. I could change the way I had lived. I could shape a life where I had always been present, where I had always belonged. I could know what a happy family felt like.
The thought tempted me.
Like a whisper curling around my heart, soft and suffocating.
But then, as if to cut through the illusion I was weaving for myself, the shadow's words echoed again in my mind.
"Do you seek to enter?"
The answer should have been simple. Yes. A hundred times yes. If it meant having a second chance, if it meant undoing the emptiness—why hesitate?
And yet, something inside me resisted.
Maybe it was the realization that what I truly sought wasn't return, but escape. Escape from the self I had been, from the mistakes I had made, from the hollow existence I left behind. If I returned, would I be any different? Or would I simply drift back into the same patterns, the same solitude?
Perhaps instead of changing my old life, here, I had the chance to live an entirely new one.
The thought unsettled me. And yet, it felt… right.
My fingers clenched slightly. A small action, but the first real movement I had made since coming here.
I exhaled. There was still something I needed to know.
"Do you know about the people who were with me when I died?" I asked.
This time, the answer came faster.
"Yes."
My chest tightened.
"Are they alive? Or are they somewhere in this abyss, drifting through time, speaking to a shadow such as yourself?"
I had deliberately stretched the question, forcing it to give me more than a single-word answer.
For a long moment, the darkness rippled in thought.
"No," it finally said. "They are dead."
Silence.
I stared ahead, my face unreadable, but something inside me wavered.
"They are not here. And there is no other such as myself."
There was something final in the way it said it. Absolute.
I wasn't sure why it stung. Maybe because I had so casually referred to it as a shadow, reducing it to something vague and unknowable, yet it had never once corrected me, never returned the insult. I had assumed it was indifferent, yet suddenly, I wasn't sure.
I let the thought pass. There were more important things to ask.
"Do you know where they are?"
If they were nowhere in this abyss, then where?
Another pause. Yet this one wasn't from hesitation or reluctance. The way it lingered, the way the shifting mass around me grew still—it was considering how to answer.
"They are far away."
Far away.
"Below us."
Below? The abyss had depth?
"Playing… a game."
The words struck something deep in me.
I frowned. "A game?"
Silence.
A long, stretching silence.
Then, it finally answered.
"A vicious game, unfolding somewhere inside the Labyrinth."
The shadows deepened.
"A game beaten by nobody."
A game.
The word lingered in my mind, hanging there, weightless yet heavy. It felt… misplaced.
A game?
The way it had said it didn't match the image that came to mind. A game was something trivial, something fleeting—something people played for fun.
But nothing about this place, this void, this thing before me, suggested anything lighthearted.
"What do you mean by a game?" I asked, my voice steady, but my thoughts unraveling.
It didn't answer immediately. Instead, the darkness around me stirred, curling in slow, deliberate motions, as if amused by my confusion.
"A game is a game." The words slid out, smooth, weightless.
That wasn't an answer.
I felt an odd frustration settle inside me, like I was trying to grasp something slipping through my fingers. I wanted to demand more, to force it to explain, but I hesitated. There was something about the way it spoke, the way it let me think, let me pull the threads apart myself.
A game.
Was it a test? A trial? A punishment?
Or was it something far worse—something I couldn't yet comprehend?
Before I could voice my thoughts, the shadow finally spoke again, and its next words sent a shiver through me.
"Do you want to play the game?"
A simple question. One that should have been easy to answer.
And yet, I found myself frozen.
The question lingered in the abyss, hanging between us like an unseen tether, thin yet unbreakable. Do you want to play the game?
I didn't answer immediately. I couldn't.
The word game felt almost ridiculous. Childish. A meaningless arrangement of letters, something to pass the time, something trivial. But the way it had spoken, the weight behind those words—it was anything but trivial. A game beaten by nobody. That wasn't a phrase meant to excite or entice. It wasn't a promise of adventure or discovery. It was a warning.
And yet, my mind grasped onto the idea, turning it over, searching for meaning.
A game.
Something played. Something with rules.
Something with winners.
Something with losers.
But how could I trust that this game was anything like the ones I had known? In my world, a game was an escape, an illusion of control in a life that had none. It was a world where choices could be remade, where failure was never final. But here, in this abyss, there was no reset button. No second chances.
So what was this game? Was it survival? Was it a war? Was it something beyond my comprehension?
And more importantly—was I even meant to win?
"If I play, what happens?" I asked carefully.
"You step forward. Into the unknown."
"And if I refuse?"
The darkness stirred, shifting and shifting but never changing.
"Then you stay here. Forever."
A slow chill settled in my bones.
Forever.
This stillness, this nothingness—was that really all that awaited me? No purpose, no end, just an endless existence of floating in the dark?
No.
I couldn't do that. I couldn't let that be my fate.
A thought came to me then, unbidden but sharp. Perhaps this was how every player had felt before stepping into it. Perhaps all those who had come before had asked the same question, taken the same long, uncertain pause. And perhaps, like me, they had eventually given in.
Because what was the alternative?
I thought back to my life. To the moments I had let slip through my fingers. The days spent drifting. The nights where I had watched time pass, unable to summon the will to change anything. My life had been stagnant, a still pond collecting dust.
But here I was, at the precipice of something unknown.
A choice.
Stay in the abyss, forever floating in silence, or step into the unknown.
I wasn't sure which was worse.
Maybe that was the nature of life itself. We were all playing a game we never asked to join. We were all forced to make choices without knowing the outcome. And in the end, regret belonged to those who never moved forward.
The idea of returning to my old life had been tempting at first. But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized—there was nothing to return to. Even if I could walk through one of those doors and retrace my steps, what then? Would I not become the same person who had once sat in his room, waiting for something to change? Would I not simply fall into the same patterns, the same thoughts, the same hollow existence?
No.
I had been given something rare. A choice.
I opened my mouth, but no words came at first. I let the moment stretch, let the weight of the decision settle fully before I committed to it.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I exhaled.
"I'll play."
The shadow didn't answer. It lingered. Still.
The shape of its form blurred, fractured, and reformed—an existence without definition, shifting between what it was and what it could be. And for a split second, I saw it.
A smile.
Not a smile of warmth. Not one of cruelty. Something else entirely. A knowing smile. A patient smile. The kind of expression worn by those who had long since stopped being surprised by the course of events, as if it had always been this way, as if this moment—this exchange—had already played out a thousand times before.
Something in my chest tightened.
When I finally spoke, my voice felt small against the weight of that gaze.
"How do I play the game?"
The words echoed into the abyss, carried by something unseen, stretching outward into the nothingness. The silence that followed was vast, swallowing the sound until I could almost doubt I had spoken at all.
The shadow did not answer at once. It observed me, its form shifting, the mist of its presence folding and unfolding, breathing in the void. As if it was considering not what to say—but how much to say.
And when it finally spoke, the words were slow, deliberate.
"To play a game, one must first know its rules. And yet, what is a game but a story we tell ourselves? A trick of order imposed upon chaos?"
I frowned. That wasn't an answer. It was the first time it had said something that felt… tangential. Something entirely different from what I had asked.
"That doesn't answer my question."
The void trembled with its chuckle. A sound that didn't belong in any world I had known. It didn't just echo—it reverberated inside me, folding itself into my very being, shaking apart something in my core.
Then it spoke again, not as an answer, but as another question.
"Tell me—do you think this place is real?"
The weight of the words pressed down on me.
Real?
I opened my mouth, then closed it. The answer should have been simple.
Yet, my mind stalled, caught between the logic I had always known and the sensation of standing here, now, in this place that should not exist.
Was it real?
I could hear. I could see. I could think.
Yet… my body was not my body. My voice was not my voice. My heartbeat—did I still have one?
I felt the pressure of my own presence, the weight of awareness itself. And wasn't that enough? Wasn't perception the proof of existence?
But then, if I could doubt this place, what did that say about the life I had before?
"Then is this place not real?" I asked instead, wary of falling into a trap.
"Was the life you lived before real?" the shadow countered. "Were the moments you cherished? The regrets you harbored? The dreams you never spoke of?"
The words cut into me like an incision made with absolute precision.
I faltered.
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to answer without hesitation, to dismiss the absurdity of the question entirely.
But I hesitated. And in that hesitation, I felt the cracks in my certainty begin to spread.
What was real?
The hours I spent drifting from one thing to another, the people I passed by without a second glance, the expectations placed upon me, the way I moved through my days without purpose or meaning.
Hadn't I always felt like a ghost, even before I died? Hadn't I spent my life as though I wasn't really in it? As if I were waiting for something else to start?
Was my old life real simply because I was familiar with it? Because I had memories of it?
And if so… wasn't this place just as real now that I stood in it, felt it, breathed in its endless dark?
There was laughter now.
Laughter without warmth, without mirth—just a sound spiraling outward into the abyss, passing into the nothingness as if the void itself could mock me.
It did not stop. It rippled, endless, unhurried, as though the question I had asked had been heard before. As though my confusion, my desperation, was merely another note in a symphony that had played long before I ever existed.
And then, just as the laughter began to fade, the shadow answered.
"To play the game, you must be broken."
The words did not crash into me. They seeped, spreading like ink through water, like something inevitable.
"Only the broken, the forgotten, the deceased—souls with doubt and confusion, souls with no master—spirits and demons, kings and the fallen. These are the ones who may enter the labyrinth, and seek."
My breath caught.
"The game does not invite. It does not suggest. It does not whisper its name to those who do not belong. It must be searched for, sought by the souls of the damned."
My mind reeled, spinning in on itself, grasping at meaning. Damned?
"Where?" The shadow's voice deepened, stretching across the endless dark. "All lies lie in the labyrinth. And that is the place you belong. For nothing you see and saw, thought and experienced, met and known—has ever been real."
I staggered, though my body did not move.
"Everything you had known and had not, has been a lie and deception—except me."
The void seemed to tremble with those words, as though it had been waiting for them to be spoken.
"I am the only one who remains."
Something in the pit of my mind cracked, something foundational, something I hadn't even known I had been standing on until it was wrenched out from beneath me.
"The one who watches you when you crumble, desperate. When you watch your life—your soul—die."
No.
"I see, and I smile."
No. No, no, no—
My thoughts collapsed in on themselves, folding into a chaos I could not comprehend.
I wanted to deny it. To reject every word.
But—what did I have to deny it with?
Memories? What were memories but flickering illusions in my own mind?
Time? What was time in a place where eternity stretched into meaninglessness?
My old life—had it ever belonged to me? Had it ever felt solid beneath my feet? Or had I simply assumed it was real because I had been too afraid to question otherwise?
The foundation of everything I had been, everything I had ever known, had shattered. And now, I was left with nothing but the abyss swallowing me whole.
I didn't even realize I was falling—not physically, but deeper into my own mind—until the shadow spoke again.
"The game?" It was neither question nor statement, only inevitability.
I barely registered it. My thoughts were static, spiraling into something ungraspable.
"You will find it."
The words cut through the storm of my thoughts like a needle through fabric.
"In the labyrinth."
The void pressed in. I could feel it now. Truly feel it. The weight of endless nothing. The knowledge that I was adrift in something vast, something unfathomable.
"In your dreams."
And then—one last smile.
A final gift. Or a final curse.
"Sleep."