The next day, no one looked at each other.
They didn't need to. Didn't want to. While Belial saw cannibalism as a means of survival, they saw it as a taboo. One they had broken.
Even Gilus, who once barked orders and barked louder when challenged, kept his distance from the rest.
Belial preferred it this way, really. Didn't have to needlessly socialize with people he may have to kill to survive.
The only one who tried to meet his eyes was the bald warrior. That man didn't flinch. Didn't speak. He simply looked at Belial as if weighing something in his mind.
Let him weigh it.
Belial was doing the same.
Three nights passed, and two more of the soldiers died. They were in no need of food anymore. They now only had seven people, and with rationing, they could survive off of the dead for a while.
The only source of water they had was now rainwater they filled their waterskins with, and moss they wrung the water out of. The rain had long since washed the dried blood off of them, but they no longer needed it. Not only did they have plenty of blood from the dead, but they all smelled of death even without it.
One of the men who died cut his arm on a jagged stone and died from infection a few days later.
The second, well…
He had stopped drinking, claiming the water tasted like rot. Belial covered his mouth and nose while he slept so that it looked like he died overnight.
They fed on him the next morning.
Unlike with the first dead archer, nobody cried anymore. Their eyes just dimmed with every death.
They had stopped measuring by day and night.
And then, finally, something different happened.
At a curve in the path, a smooth black stone wall almost like obsidian revealed itself, free of moss.
"Runes," said Belial, his voice hoarse from not using it.
Everyone payed more attention to the wall.
Carved into it, barely visible in the thin light, were jagged, uneven symbols. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of them, all scattered across the stone in a language he recognized but couldn't read.
The rune-etched archer stepped forward, breathing heavily as he reached out to touch the wall.
Belial reacted. "Don't."
The man paused, looking back.
"Why not?" Gilus asked, looking between the archer and the wall.
Belial didn't answer at first. He just stared at the runes. His instinct screamed at him.
"…Because it looks like it wants to be found. Maybe a trap."
The bald warrior spoke. "They're warning marks."
Everyone turned to him.
"I've seen something similar hunting around the forest. Same pattern, same spiral." He paused. "The runes are carved around wraith dens."
Gilus's eyes narrowed. "So they're close."
"Close, watching, or if we're lucky, sleeping," the warrior said.
Belial kept quiet, his eyes still locked on the symbols and the walls and floor around them.
Something felt off.
The wall was… dry. Drier than the rest of the maze. No moss, no water dripping, no signs of algae. Just that smooth, completely out of place, almost obsidian-looking black stone.
Kneeling down, he ran his finger along the floor. It was clean. Too clean. The black stone wasn't ancient like the rest of the maze—it was new.
"…We turn around. Find a different path," Belial said.
Gilus scowled. "We're not turning around. This is the first sign of something different we've seen since we entered the maze. For all we know, we could be close to the exit."
"For all we know, this could be a goddamn death trap," Belial cut in.
Their eyes met, and Belial could see doubt flickering in Gilus's eyes.
The soldiers and archers watched as Gilus and Belial's orders collided.
Belial didn't move, he just watched Gilus. Watched the decision form in his mind. Watched the exact moment when pride overtook sense, unwilling to back down because someone else told him to.
"Then you stay here," Gilus said.
He stepped forward, hand on his sword, and touched the wall.
As he did, the runes lit up with a pale blue, like the beginning of a fire.
Everyone froze.
And then, the wailing began.
High-pitched, inhuman, bone-thin shrieking invaded their ears like nails on a chalkboard.
The wraiths were awake.
"Run…" Gilus whispered. "Run!" He turned, but it was too late.
The moss around their feet blackened and melted, seeping into the cracked stone beneath them, and the sky above seemed to only get darker.
Cracks formed in the walls, and from those cracks, their thin limbs began to crawl out. Pale, long, and and bony fingers with no palms.
One of the warriors screamed as one grabbed his leg, and in less than a second, he was gone. Dragged into the wall screaming, his body twisting like no body should to fit through a crack.
Dozens of bony limbs crawled out of the walls, their fingers scratching at the stone with sharp, dry shrieks. No full bodies, just their long limbs searching; feeling; reaching.
Some tried running, but the rope jerked them back into the group. "Cut the rope!" They screamed.
Belial didn't hesitate.
He pulled his dagger from his belt and sawed through his rope. The fibers frayed fast under the blade, and the moment he was free, he moved.
The group was in chaos. Tangled. Screaming. One of the warriors tried cutting the rope too late, and something grabbed his jaw and pulled, snapping his head back until his spine cracked like a snapped twig. His body was gone a moment later, dragged into the wall, leaving a bloody mess.
Belial ducked low, staying close to the wall opposite the runes. He noticed that the wraiths killed the loudest of the group. It couldn't see, relying on sound.
He didn't plan on testing his theory, though. One mistake, and he'd be a bloody splatter on the wall, his guts hanging out of a crack like the rest.
He just ran, his leather boots slapping wet moss as the screams behind him went quieter.
Another hand covered in excess skin shot toward him from a crack overhead, forcing him to drop and roll under it, scraping his elbow on the stone in the process, but he kept moving.
Behind him, someone shouted, "Help me! Please!" It was the rune-etched archer.
Belial didn't stop.
The archer screamed louder. "Please! Belial!"
He heard his name, but he still didn't stop.
Then the voice turned to gargled. Wet. Ugly.
After the archer died, only the shrieking of the wraiths remained.
Belial rounded a corner blindly, skidding to a stop behind the corner. He couldn't afford to make any sound, especially now that it wouldn't be drowned out by the sound of the party's screams.
His chest didn't rise, nor did it fall thanks to [Breathless].
He waited. Waited for the shrieking to die down. Waited for the crawling limbs to slither back into the walls.
It took nearly half an hour before the only sound left was the slow dripping of blood from the cracks in the walls.
He was completely alone now. The mutilated corpses near the runes were proof of that.
Crouching perfectly still and listening for the wraiths shrieks, Belial counted to three hundred. Only then did he move.
He didn't stop to look at or mourn the bodies; he just grabbed all of their rations and water skins, and attached them to his belt.
Contrary to his previous decision before the trap went off, Belial then walked forward in the direction of the runes. The stone was darker now, and the path was tighter. He could barely see the sun during the day now.
He avoided the clean spots in the black stone and stuck to the moss and algae. The maze was a damn labyrinth, but he was at least one step closer to understanding it better.
***
Two weeks passed, maybe more, maybe less. He had stopped tracking how many nights had passed.
In the first days after the ambush, Belial moved carefully, memorizing which paths had moss, and which ones didn't. He marked turns with cuts in the algae, using his dagger tip. Slicing patterns only he would recognize: A shallow X meant dead end, a long curved slash meant safe passage, a vertical line meant turn only if desperate.
He learned the rhythm of the maze; not its layout, but its behavior.
Some corridors grew colder than others. Some dripped with more water. And the water, he learned to follow it. Moisture meant rain access—rain access meant open sky—open sky meant a chance of escape or a new part of the maze.
He tested unknown paths by throwing small bits of dried flesh onto the clean stones and waited, watching. If the piece remained untouched after a few minutes, he advanced.
In a dark path with carved stone creating intricate designs, he discovered a half-buried skeleton fused into the wall, the bones warped and stretched unnaturally. Different from the wraith attacks.
Wraiths brutalized like they were tearing dolls apart. This was something else. Something smaller.
He moved faster after that.
Every few turns, he passed familiar corpses. Bits of them, at least. A fingernail here, a strip of cloth there. They were fresh enough that he could tell they were from survivors of his previous party.
Once, he even passed Gilus's sword.
It was wedged in a crack, blade cracked down the middle but held together by the walls.
The wraiths had gotten him too, it seemed. Maybe the bits and pieces of people were really just bits and pieces of him.
"You weren't as strong as I thought you were," he whispered to himself, if only to remind himself he could still speak.