The caravan creaked as it pushed through the night.

  Wood against wood. Iron against stone. The uneven sway made everyone huddle closer, almost by instinct, forming an improvised circle at the center of the compartment.

  I sat on the wooden floor with my back against the wall. Everyone watched me with surgical focus as I did something that—apparently—was harder for them than it was for me.

  I had ended up taking the role of teacher.

  Not because I knew more than them—because I didn't.

  Our ideas weren't that different. We followed the same reasoning, groping in the dark, trying to make sense of it all.

  Still… for some reason, I was one step ahead.

  Not a full step. Something smaller. Almost invisible—like the width of a needle. But enough that only I could move forward.

  Sitting there, I tried to assume a meditation posture—or what I thought one was. I wasn't sure. My back was too stiff, my legs uncomfortable, and I felt a few curious looks coming from the group. Someone even let out a quiet chuckle.

  I ignored it.

  At that moment, it felt like the right choice. If the Mark reacted to attention, then staying still—silent—was the closest thing to an honest request I could make.

  I closed my eyes.

  After a few seconds, nothing happened—or at least, I thought nothing had happened. My vision remained dark, as if my eyes were still closed, but when I noticed something strange in the atmosphere and moved my arms through that dimension, I realized the darkness wasn't blindness.

  It was the place itself.

  My own mind.

  In front of me, tall walls rose—made of dense shadows, almost liquid. They weren't completely black; there were subtle shades within them, as if darkness itself had depth. The path ahead split into two, then three, then many more, forming a tangle impossible to memorize.

  A labyrinth.

  There was no sky. Looking up felt like staring into something—a thick, silent void that gave the uncomfortable impression of staring back.

  The sound of my footsteps lagged behind, as if the echo needed a moment to decide whether it was worth existing. I took a deep breath, but the air had no smell, no temperature. Breathing there was habit, not necessity.

  Is this the same sea of darkness I've been diving into these past days? I wondered.

  There was barely any difference—except that in one, you could walk freely, and in the other, you only floated without will.

  After a few seconds, I realized the corridor was… smaller.

  Not abruptly. The walls crept closer little by little, almost imperceptibly. I kept walking. The space narrowed until it couldn't be ignored. When I tried to run, the ground yielded slightly beneath my feet, like damp sand.

  I stopped, The corridor returned to its normal size. I tried another path.

  This time, the ground stretched. Each step carried me less distance than the last. The end of the corridor never came closer, no matter how long I walked.

  "What the hell…?" I muttered, breathing hard.

  That was when I felt something warm brush against my back—and turned.

  Then I saw the light.

  Small, distant. Wrong—too wrong to belong there. Before I could think, my body was already moving.

  The light retreated and vanished into the darkness. I followed it like a moth blindly hypnotized by a lamp.

  The labyrinth didn't react. The walls remained still, as if that was the only path willing to accept my steps. Whenever I stopped, the distance grew again.

  The light appeared once more—faint, nearly swallowed by the shadows.

  On the ground, something awaited me.

  An egg—or whatever my mind needed it to be.

  The Mark burned beneath my skin when I touched the core.

  And the labyrinth ended.

  "Hey… hello? Wake up, man!"

  I jolted awake to the sharp sound of hands clapping near my ear. Rafe was leaning in front of me, impatience written all over his face.

  "You're not gonna tell me you fell asleep at a time like this, right? And why the hell… are you crying?"

  A tear slid down my face. Just one. From only one eye.

  I shook my head immediately and explained what had happened. The darkness. The boundless space. The path that never ended.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The light. The "egg."

  Ilen—the hooded boy—furrowed his brow before interrupting me.

  "Wait." He spoke slowly. "You're saying that… in there, there was a labyrinth made of shadows."

  "Yes."

  "A place that didn't end?"

  "Yeah."

  "But even after you realized it was a labyrinth… it had no form? You couldn't imagine its size? Not even the walls?"

  I nodded.

  "It wasn't a dream," I reinforced. "It was just… what I could comprehend."

  Ilen stayed silent for a few seconds.

  "Then… you didn't see the labyrinth." He shrugged. "You thought it."

  "I didn't understand a damn thing. I just know it felt deep." Rafe joked, as usual.

  "With all the insane stuff that's been happening, I wouldn't doubt anything the quiet guy says." Darien added.

  I hadn't slept.

  The sensation was different. There was no heavy emptiness of waking from a nap, no strange delay of the body trying to catch up with the mind.

  Time in there… had passed the same way it did out here.

  If I stayed still—quiet—breathing, the Mark reacted. If I entered that place, the world kept moving.

  The conversation continued when someone asked:

  "If everyone here is marked… can we… uh… do what he just did?"

  "…Meditate?" Ilen suggested.

  "Cultivate."

  Rafe corrected, with surgical certainty. Something no one expected from the group's clown.

  "Cultivate…?" someone scratched their head. "Oh, right. My grandma used to do that. Totally unrelated, man."

  "No, you idiots. You got it wrong."

  After an explanation—surprisingly detailed—the term finally made sense.

  All eyes turned to Rafe, filled with disbelief.

  Not just because books were priceless treasures in this world.

  But because… no one there ever doubted his lack of intelligence.

  "What!?" Rafe protested. "I like reading, okay? That's why I ended up here. I stole ite—"

  Ilen frowned.

  "…Books?"

  "Are you insane?" Rafe scoffed. "That's temple or noble stuff."

  He shrugged.

  "They were novels."

  [POV — Patrol Guard]

  I thought it was just the wind.

  While the slaves inside the caravan talked, something was wrong outside.

  I pulled the reins slowly, easing the horse's pace. The blizzard blurred everything—sky, ground, horizon. It was as if the world had been reduced to shades of white and gray.

  Then—even out of the corner of my eye—I saw it. Something crossed my peripheral vision too fast to be confirmed. Tall. Long. The kind of thing the brain tries to correct on its own.

  "Hey…" I called to the guard ahead, my voice low, controlled. "Did you see that?"

  "See what?" came the distant, indifferent reply.

  "I thought I—… Never mind. Must've been the snow."

  The other shrugged and kept going, even though the feeling hadn't gone away.

  Sweat began to form beneath my heavy clothes—and froze almost instantly. Every breath sounded louder than it should. Every movement of the horse felt exaggerated. It was as if the silence itself was listening.

  Minutes passed.

  The feeling of being watched didn't fade.

  It didn't come from a single direction. It was total. As if something existed everywhere at once, waiting only for a mistake.

  "Man…" I tried again, dropping the pretense. "I'm serious. Something is very wrong."

  "Cut it out," the other replied, irritated. "It's just the cold messing with you."

  I opened my mouth to insist.

  Then I heard it.

  A low, irregular sound. Not wind. Not snow. It sounded like chewing—wet, repetitive. Between each noise, a dry, constant crack echoed from behind, almost rhythmic.

  I wanted to turn around—but I couldn't. Not because I didn't want to, but because something inside me screamed that the moment I looked, there would be no going back.

  Fear locked my body at a primitive level. My muscles simply refused the command. The horse, on the other hand, began to panic—ears pinned back, body tense.

  "Easy… easy…" I murmured, more to myself than to the animal.

  The sound grew closer.

  I didn't want to be there anymore. Not for anything in this world.

  I dug my boots into the horse's flanks and forced it forward, breaking formation. The animal bolted—and in the same second, stumbled violently, crashing down with a scream that tore through the white air.

  The snow around us bloomed red.

  I fell with it, rolling as the impact knocked the breath from my lungs. I scrambled up, heart hammering, and crawled toward the horse as fast as I could.

  "Hey, hey… calm down…" I said, kneeling beside the thrashing animal.

  I searched for the injury, expecting the obvious—a twisted leg, a broken bone. Something that made sense.

  What I found didn't.

  The left hind leg wasn't there.

  There was no clean cut. No clear sign of struggle. Just… absence. The limb vanished beneath the snow, as if it had never existed.

  "No… no… this can't—" my voice broke.

  The horse screamed, but the terror wasn't just pain. It was fear—its body trying to flee, even without the means to do so.

  Fear made me forget. Made me stop paying attention.

  And when I noticed—

  It was already too late.

  The crack.

  Too close. Far too close.

  I didn't even look back. The blizzard kept falling in silence as the snow around us was slowly painted red.

  The screams echoed for a few seconds—loud, desperate—before being swallowed by the wind.