My stomach drops. My knees tremble. The voice echoes off walls. The walls themselves seem to lean in.
He stares at me through every panel.
I try to speak. My throat is dry. “What… what did you do?”
He smirks, flickers, then vanishes.
The walls reset. The lights strobe. The corridor pulses.
I’m shaking.
Because it’s real.
He used my code. My skeleton. My genius, my flaws.
He’s been writingmy gamein death.
I sink to the floor, fingers pressed to my head. The noise in my skull is deafening. The world blurs.
Borzen crouches beside me. His voice is low: “We walk forward. We survive this. One piece at a time.”
Dravven kneels across, voice calmer than I feel. “He meant for you to win. Or at least to think you could. It’s part of the trap.”
I press my cheek to the cold metal floor. My tears are hot, salty. The Maze hums in response, like a living being that knows how much I’m bleeding inside.
I whisper, almost to myself: “I built this… and now it’s devouring me.”
But even in the darkness inside me, a spark remains. One small thought:If he’s using me, then I can use him back.
I look up. I see Borzen’s face, grim and unwavering. Dravven’s eyes, fierce and haunted. Behind them—corridor, shadows, the promise of more death.
If this is the climax, I’ll face it.
If this ismymaze twisted, I’ll untwist it.
I push myself up. My limbs scream. I taste iron in my mouth.
“Come on,” I rasp. “Let’s reverse this code.”
We step forward together.
CHAPTER 14
GYON
Ismell plasma before I see the light.
The stink of melted alloy, ozone, and cooked air burns the back of my throat. The Maze has shifted again—downward this time—spiraling into its own guts. I know this place. The Reactor Core.
She built this level, though she never finished it. It was in her dev files—schematics half-sketched, notes written in that sharp handwriting of hers:“Prototype only—don’t let the AI touch this section until debug complete.”
She never did. And that idiot Husker did anyway.
The heat hits me in waves as I crawl through the vent grid above the chamber. It’s massive—a cathedral of machinery, pulsing orange and red. Below, metal catwalks cross over wide gulfs of molten plasma. Fans turn lazily in the haze. The hum of the reactor is deep enough to rattle my ribs.
I drop to a lower ledge, landing hard. The metal burns under my boots. I smell my own scorched skin, hear the faint hiss of flesh searing. It barely registers.
Because I see her.
