Late that night, the spacious courtyard on the ground floor of [ANCHOR HOUSE] suddenly lit up with an ethereal glow.

The typically warm lamplight around the plaza was overpowered by swirling ribbons of rainbow-colored fog, dancing through the air as though guided by an invisible tide.

Many residents—both seasoned survivors and recent arrivals—paused to glance at the phenomenon, but only for a moment. They had seen these arrivals before, and, jaded or resigned, they soon returned to their amusements.

Up on the second floor, Edris and his companions lingered over a quiet dinner in one of the town’s many dining areas. The tile mosaics shimmered under soft chandeliers, and a robust buffet spread tempted with sauces, soups, and carefully plated entrées.

Owein was nibbling half-heartedly on a slice of lemon loaf, his expression one of polite boredom, while Ace sipped black coffee, brow furrowed as though he found little comfort in the meal. On the other hand, Roos had found great pleasantry in the house's various drinks, investing herself in the restaurant’s cocktail tasting.

When the courtyard below erupted in a prismatic haze, Edris was the first to stand.

The dark-haired man didn’t rush to the balcony, nor did he push past any startled onlookers; he merely slid his chair back and moved, with poised ease, to the open railing where he could overlook the bright spectacle below. Owein followed at a measured pace, peering through his long lashes.

Through the mist, Edris saw the silhouettes of newly arrived survivors. They emerged from the rainbow fog—most of them visibly weary, confused, or half in awe of [ANCHOR HOUSE]’s opulent environment.

Yet, in the swirl of unfamiliar faces, Edris discerned two that made his brows crease involuntarily.

“They are…” Beside him, Owein had also caught on to the scene.

“...”

He knew it was coming, but...

Edris let out a long sigh.

There they were—the two last people he’d hoped to see here, standing and looking lost among the crowd.

Celio’s flamboyant golden hair, half-lost in a fur hat, seemed to sway as he surveyed the scene while little Ives, keen-eyed despite her exhaustion, clung to Celio’s sleeve intuitively. Although clearly shaken by the transport, they were very much here and present.

When the child’s gaze drifted upward, she met eyes with the man leaning over the balcony. Her expression shifted from wary to surprise, her round eyes lighting up.

“Mister Edris!” she called, voice echoing softly through the open air.

A handful of heads turned, but Edris stood almost motionless. Inside, a swirl of solace and unsettledness collided, but outwardly, he betrayed little more than a gentle smile.

The Labyrinths were expanding faster in the outside world than he’d expected.

The group found refuge in a secluded nook within the Anchor Bar—an intimate space where the others were unlikely to overhear. The décor was subdued: plush velvet seats arranged in a U-shape, and dim amber lighting casting flickering shadows on the polished floor. Soft music tinkled from hidden speakers, merging seamlessly with the muffled chatter from the main lounge.

Gathered there were Edris, Ace, Roos, Owein, along with the newly-joined Celio and Ives. The two youngsters sat uncomfortably, trying their best to act composed. While Ives attempted a half-smile at the familiar faces, Celio’s eyes kept darting around, like a bewildered animal at the burst of unfamiliar environment.

“Celio.” Edris lightly knocked on the table before him with the knuckle of his index finger.

At his prompting, the golden-haired boy took a shaky breath and whirled his head from side to side.

“I’m still baffled by… all of this.” He gulped, gaze involuntarily steering outwards again. “It’s like another world.”

“What Labyrinth did you come from?” Ace wasted no time getting to the point.

“Oh, about that…” Celio retracted his gaze reluctantly, hugging his arms to his chest.

“We ended up in Labyrinth 21,” Ives said, quiet but firm. “It was… surreal. A cake factory, but everything was enormous—buckets of flour twice as tall as me, sugar crystals the size of boulders…”

Beside her, Celio swallowed hard. “That wasn’t even the worst part. Our [MAIN QUEST] was to bake a perfect cake, but anyone who failed to fulfill the requirements had their [AFFINITY] points dropped, and eventually…

“They became the ingredients.”

Edris’s gaze flicked over Celio’s face, catching the micro-flicker of horror in his eyes. Ives nodded solemnly, her tiny shoulders tense.

“They turned the eliminated players into… well, some ended up as eggs or butter.” Her tone betrayed a calm maturity that unsettled the older companions. “I just pretended it wasn’t happening, but I saw it. We all saw it.”

Celio shuddered visibly, face contorting almost into a gag. “I don’t think I’ll be looking at cakes any time soon….”

“What flavour?” Roos asked.

The group turned to her, and the woman shrugged in return.

“What?” Roos, cheeks ever so slightly flushed from a lingering drink in her hand, reached out to give the boy’s arm a comforting squeeze. “Fine, fine. I can’t even imagine… At least you’re both safe now.”

Celio closed his eyes. “Thanks, I guess. At the end, we had a choice between two wells—one asked for blood, the other didn’t. We weren’t about to give the Labyrinth more information about us than it already had, so we chose the first well, just like last time.”

Ace, who had been silent, tapped his gloved fingertips on the edge of the table. “Like us all.” His tone carried a note of reluctant approval.

Ives lifted her chin a fraction. “It was for privacy—and a sense that the Labyrinth doesn’t deserve anything more from us.”

She turned towards Edris in anticipation. Her unwavering stare belied her seven-year-old face.

Roos regarded the child thoughtfully. “That’s… an interesting perspective. You think the Labyrinth is collecting information?”

A mild spark of intensity flickered in Ives’s eyes. “I suspect it’s testing something about us. Our morality, our adaptability. Perhaps what we may become under pressure.”

Roos’s expression softened from tipsy amusement to an expression akin to acknowledgment. She sipped from her glass, then shook her head as though trying to clear it. “You might be onto something.”

Sighing, Celio ran a hand through his tousled hair. “Both Ives and I got pulled in seconds after the teleportation occurred, so quickly that neither of us was given any time to process what was happening.”

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He plopped his legs onto the ground.

“I just pray the people back in Odeen are okay.”

A pensive hush settled over the group.

“Labyrinths are supposed to occur every three months, at the Tip of Crescent.” Owein broke the silence, his voice reflecting a careful, thoughtful tone: “But these erratic pulls, they must mean something. Like the Clan Leader always taught us, everything is driven by a course of cause and effect. These labyrinths, pulling in all these random people, maybe training for something bigger.

“Maybe a conflict we don’t see yet, or some… endgame?” Roos tilted her head, which was rested on her palm.

“Or maybe it’s more deliberate than simple training. We enter each Labyrinth with a different role, which forces us to resculpt our memories and our goals,” Owein said. “Our very identities become part of the experiment.”

He let that hang in the air. Their experiences, though strikingly different in theme—the cake factory, a clocktower puzzle, the eliminating academy—had all been meticulously designed to demand sacrifice. Each

Indeed, each Labyrinth had pitted them against unreasonable odds, and watched how they dealt with the aftermath.

“Whether it’s about war or manipulation,” Edris finally said, his voice calm yet carrying the faint edge of weariness, “we don’t know—yet.”

He did not elaborate further. Indeed, throughout the discussion, Edris kept his contributions to measured observations, letting the others fill in the color with their stories and theories. As he listened, there was a fleeting tightness around his eyes. He betrayed no open sign of pain, yet every so often, his gaze grew distant, as if drawn inward by some private battle.

Ace observed the man, saying nothing.

Roos cleared her throat, glancing around the cozy corner of the Anchor Bar. The fluorescent hum of the overhead lights drew attention to the tension etched on everyone’s faces.

“You brought up an interesting point about [AFFINITY], golden boy,” she said, swirling the remnants of her drink. “In our Labyrinth, it also served as somewhat of a cognitive check, guiding us to—well, to certain decisions. The lower your [AFFINITY], the more likely you’d slip into a Shadow state.”

At that, Celio’s eyes lit up with curiosity, nodding vehemently. “Yes, similar to ours! The lower the points, the more the Labyrinth singled you out—it wanted to turn you against yourself.”

Edris, seated with forearms resting lightly on the table, kept his expression neutral. But the mention of turning into a Shadow drew uneasy looks from the group, and the topic inevitably came around to him.

“Edris,” Owein said, tone calm but probing, “you nearly became a Shadow once. How’d you manage to keep your [AFFINITY] in check?”

All eyes turned to Edris. He paused, lips curving into the faintest of smiles.

“I’ve got my ways.”

Celio clapped his hands together, beaming from across the table. “As expected from Master!”

Ives blinked her heavy eyelids, leaning slightly against Edris’s side, as though the day’s ordeal finally caught up with her. Edris ruffled a hand to her head gently.

“That’s enough for tonight,” Edris said softly. “We’ll delve further tomorrow. The next Labyrinth pull time is still unknown, and I suspect this place—” he gestured around them, “still has many secrets to unravel.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. Rising from their seats, they headed for the seventh-floor guest rooms—a row of lush suites that seemed almost out of a dream.

Gone were the cramped quarters of past inn rooms; instead, each room spanned wide, with high ceilings, plush carpets, and delicate chandeliers reflecting off polished stone floors. The beds were canopied in gauzy, embroidered curtains, and the furniture gleamed with lacquered wood, intricately carved in swirling motifs.

Roos whistled under her breath.

“Twice as big as my hub back in Odeen, that’s for sure.”

As they prepared to part ways for the night, Roos offered a faint smile, her eyes scanning the group. “Let’s meet up tomorrow. We can plan our next move before that countdown starts moving again.”

Ace gave a curt nod. Owein inclined his head gravely in agreement. Celio and Ives exchanged glances, relief, and determination mingling in their expressions.

With a single breath, Edris drew himself upright and turned with a wave of the hand.

“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Tomorrow.”

By the time Edris woke, it was already the following midday.

He sat on his bed, squinting to adjust to the artificially bright sunlight that seeped through the sheers.

Edris blinked.

When was the last time he'd slept like this?

Ever since the exchange with the Sacrificial Hourglass that gave him the Distributor, he'd no longer needed the same biological necessities, such as sleep or water, required from an average human.

Did the most recent sacrifice cancel out this state?

Keeping the thought to the back of his mind, Edris freshened up and promptly made his way to the twentieth floor. They had agreed upon meeting at a spacious lounge near Anchor Bar, known for its panoramic views of the pesudo-city.

Passing through sweeping hallways and ornate staircases, he found Roos, Owein, Celio, and Ives seated at a small circular table.

They were locked in conversation with another group of players—strangers to Edris but apparently not to his companions.

Celio’s face brightened the instant he noticed the dark-haired man stepping out of the corridor. He waved him over eagerly. “Mister Edris, over here!”

Edris approached, greeting the newcomers with a polite incline of his head. Roos, perched on a chair beside a red-haired youth, flashed him a casual grin.

“These folks,” she said, “have been sharing their experiences from other Labyrinths. Turns out they were from Labyrinth 11 and Labyrinth 88 before that.”

The red-haired boy offered a polite nod. “Greetings, I'm Jagon. In Labyrinth 11, we were turning into dolls, bit by bit, trying to outrun the transformation. And in 88, we lost pieces of our senses day by day.”

He paused, eyes distant. “It was… terrifying.”

Edris nodded in acknowledgment as he settled into an open seat.

Owein leaned in, tapping his staff thoughtfully against his boots. “We were cross-referencing to see if there’s any pattern. So far…”

Jagon's friend—Terrace, as he introduced himself—gave a humorless chuckle. “Number one, the next Labyrinth pulls are totally random. No guarantee we’ll be together.”

A strained silence fell over the table. Ives pressed her lips into a firm line, and Roos scowled at the thought. The notion of being scattered into the unknown gnawed at them all.

“And if we’re scattered,” Terrace continued, “how do we reunite, given that our memories might be toyed with again?” His gaze swept around, landing on Edris. “We’re thinking of leaving markers, shared phrases… or—”

Roos half-laughed, half-winced. “Or tattooing coordinates on our arms.” She lifted her sleeve, miming the act. “Not sure how easy that’d be, though.”

Terrace shrugged. “It’s better than nothing.”

Behind them, another man from the group stared blankly into the distance, arms crossed with a resigned expression. At last, he sighed. “I can’t believe we’re discussing this at all. Is there even an end? Are we stuck here forever?”

No one answered. Their unspoken anxieties thundered in the silence, heavier than any word could convey.

Edris narrowed his eyes slightly, recalling the cryptic words he’d once heard from a Shadow version of himself.

He had been called the "imposter."

Were the so-called [ROLES] they took on in the Labyrinths really just roles?

The Labyrinths had called them [PLAYER]s, after all, so the settings they were pulled into were naturally not their world.

In that case, what happens to the original dwellers of the Labyrinths once the players complete their quests and exit?

As the conversation circled around these unanswerable questions, Jagon finally pushed back his chair. “Well, that’s as far as this goes, I guess. We can talk in circles, but it won’t change anything. We have to wait for the next pull. Once it’s announced, we all go—everyone residing in Anchor House. Then, new players fill our spots.”

He gave a weary shrug.

“That’s how it’s always been.”

He and two others stood to leave. Roos lifted a hand in farewell.

“Where are you going?” she asked, curious.

Jagon barked a short, humorless laugh. “The Golden Room. Figured I might as well spend what time I have left living it up.”

At the words, Ives stiffened. Hearing about the Golden Room triggered a faint flash of recognition in her otherwise sleepy features.

“You mean the gambling hub?” she asked. “It was mentioned in the manual.”

Celio’s brow shot upward. “At a time like this?”

The man shrugged casually. “What else can we do, pinned in this limbo? The Caretaker said this whole place was for our relaxation… might as well, right?”

He glanced around the table. “You’re welcome to come,” he offered, though without much enthusiasm.

“Understandable.” Edris waved a polite hand, his voice holding its usual calm. “But we’ll pass.”

The departing players gave them mild nods and faded into the bustling corridor.

Roos shifted in her seat, eyes flicking from Edris to the rest of the group. “Now what? I’m curious about the Golden Room, sure. It’s on the seventeenth floor. We haven’t gone there yet. Who knows what we might learn…”

Edris nodded, but his gaze inclined upward, toward the highest level of [ANCHOR HOUSE].

“We’ll visit eventually,” Edris agreed as his focus grew distant.

But not yet.

Just now, he had heard a deep voice in his head. The familiar voice—Ace’s voice—was stoic yet carried an undercurrent of urgency:

— The Cocoon. Come now.

A trace of intrigue gleamed in Edris's otherwise placid eyes.

“Apparently, there's been a more interesting discovery.”