The storm rolled in like a beast awakening from slumber.
Dark clouds coiled across the twilight sky, swallowing the fading sun as lightning split the heavens in silent flashes. The sea below churned into a frenzy, waves hammering the jagged cliffs like fists of a forgotten god. The wind howled—not a natural wind, but one that carried voices, whispers buried beneath layers of cold air and rain-soaked mist.
Ashlan stood at the edge, where grass met stone and safety gave way to a deadly drop. His boots, worn and cracked from years of wandering, were soaked through. Yet he didn't move.
He couldn't.
Something held him here.
His heart thundered in his chest, but it wasn't from fear. It was recognition. As if this moment had already happened, countless times in dreams he never fully remembered. Deja vu clawed at the edge of his awareness like a half-buried memory struggling to surface.
The same cliff.The same storm.The same silence before—
"Ashlan."
He stiffened. The voice wasn't behind him. It wasn't in front of him. It was within him.
"You are seen."
The villagers had always known there was something wrong with him. Or perhaps, something right—but different. He wasn't like the others. Where they saw the world as it was, Ashlan had always felt there was more. Symbols in the stars. Meaning in dreams. He remembered things that never happened.
He'd learned to live quietly, until today.
Today, the voice called louder than ever.
The wind suddenly dropped to nothing, the storm freezing in place—as if time itself were pausing.
A figure stood behind him.
Ashlan turned, heart pounding.
She—or it—stood cloaked in a veil of silver mist, face obscured beneath a porcelain mask cracked through the middle. Her body flickered at the edges like candlelight, flickering between presence and absence. Her voice echoed inside his mind.
"So you heard it, too."
Ashlan's mouth went dry. "Who… are you?"
She tilted her head. "A remnant. A warning. A mistake."
The wind around her shimmered like heat, bending the world around her shape. Ashlan took an unconscious step back.
She pointed toward the sea, toward the edge he had stood on moments ago.
"The Labyrinth calls the Trialborn... but it does not let them go."
Ashlan's skin crawled.
"I didn't choose this."
"You never had to. You were marked the day you were born beneath the shifting sun. When the cycle cracked."
She turned her gaze upward, past the storm, as if watching something that didn't belong to this sky.
"He waits for you beneath the third veil. When the gears turn red and the echoes scream."
"What does that mean?" Ashlan asked, his voice trembling.
Her mask cracked a little more.
"Run if you can, child. But even the Architects could not escape what they built."
A crack split the earth behind him.
Ashlan spun—
—and the cliff collapsed.
The ground gave way in a thunderous roar. He plummeted—but not into the sea. Into something far stranger.
He wasn't falling.
He was being pulled.
He awoke to silence.
Not peace—but the absence of all things. The air felt too still, as if reality itself held its breath. He lay on black obsidian, surrounded by walls of shifting crystal that pulsed faintly with inner light.
Above, the constellations twisted, stars blinking in unfamiliar patterns—a new sky.
A pulse surged beneath his back. Lines of light stretched outward, circling him in radiant glyphs.
Then, a soft chime echoed like a bell from a forgotten temple.
A glowing window appeared before his eyes:
[SYSTEM BOOTING…]Initializing Core Mindlink…Welcome, Ashlan.Designation: Trialborn.Vital Signs: Stable.Labyrinth Access Granted.Prepare for First Descent.—WARNING: Anomaly Detected.
Ashlan blinked.
The last line lingered.
Then flickered.
[REDACTED TRAIT AWAKENING SUPPRESSED]
His throat tightened.
"What… is this place?"
No answer came.
Only the echo of the figure's voice, carved into the air like a forgotten hymn:
"Even the Architects could not escape…"
Ashlan rose to his feet, the glyphs beneath him fading into the floor.
He was inside.
The Endless Labyrinth had awakened.
And something—someone—was already watching him.