Great. Darkness. Just what I need. The ground slants down and I walk at an angle to keep from falling. My injured leg protests the incline. I’ll be fine as long as it doesn’t give out. My eyes adjust and I can see Layla waiting in front of me. Behind her the ground falls away. My mind must be playing tricks on me. The darkness makes it seem like a bottomless pit waits in front of me. Layla takes a step forward, apparently dropping into the pit. I hurry forward. Layla is a few steps down an enormous, rickety staircase that hugs the wall of deep pit, circling downward in a spiral. What is this place?

Walking down the staircase isn’t easy. The railless stairs hug the wall. The rungs are backless with a clear view of the drop. Several of them have crumbled apart and Layla is little help. She moves with a grace my body has no ability to replicate. I’ve always been good at picking things up, but this is different. Layla jumps from stair to stair landing on her toes. There’s never a moment when both of her feet are on the ground. I try to follow her exact path, placing my feet on the least rusted patches of metal. I stumble more than once. Each time I stumble, I overreact and throw my body unto the stone wall with force. Better bruises than falling over the edge.

My nerves make the stairs endless. Finally we reach the bottom. The pit is wider here. I tilt my head up. The cavern narrows at the top, like a pyramid. “Is this the inside of the mountain?”

“Part of it,” she says. “It goes deeper than that though. Pretty soon we’ll be under neither the flats. Come on. We’re not there yet.”

There are several tunnels at the bottom of the pit, their entrances crumbling arches. One is blocked off by a jumble of stones. I follow Layla down the tunnel closest to us. It splits several times, curving backwards and then splitting again. The air is stale and dark. Something, or several something’s, are rotting nearby. Passages turn into other passages. They grow thinner, darker, deeper. Any slight differentiation in the gray rock walls stands out. Words carved into the stone. Wooden doors propped up against the wall. Broken colorful glass. Aged posters with the words condemned overlap one another. Without Layla I would be completely lost. My trusting her is no longer just a hypothetical. I’d never find my way back through this mess of tunnels. The thought makes me stick closer to Layla. She pauses at one point and I smack into her.

“Sorry,” I mutter. She just rolls her eyes at me and keeps walking.

The tunnel grows lighter and soon we pass by a torch welded to the wall. The sight is oddly comforting. Everything in the capital is electric lights. I feel the warmth of the flame as we pass by. It reminds me of home. There are more torches along the way. They aren’t organized, just stuck occasionally into the wall. The stale smell is stronger, almost palpable. Rotting food, salt and, I think, human waste. My eyes begin to sting. At the end of this tunnel, Layla stops.

“We’re here,” she tells me and points down a sharp right turn. The tunnel is wider here. It takes me a moment to realize we are longer alone. Shapes I had momentarily thought were stones or crumbled rocks are people sitting on the floor. Every few feet are fires burning in metal drums. They throw mean shadows on the walls.

“What is this place?” I ask.

“Can’t you read?” Layla points up towards the ceiling. Strung in between the two walls is a wooden sign. It hangs crookedly on a thin piece of rope. Carved into the wood is one word. Graveyard.

Layla takes my hand and pulls me forward. A day ago I’d never held hands with a girl. And now this feels almost natural, definitely recognizable. I know the warmth from Layla’s skin. I know I don’t want to let go. The thought makes me look at my feet. We walk through the tunnel, practically stepping over people who are sitting against the walls. Almost all of them are kids. Skinny, sick, angry looking kids. Most ignore us as we pass by. A few stare up vacantly. A couple nod at Layla. The smell is overpowering. Eventually, my nose seems to give up and my sense of smell vanishes. My eyes continue to water.

Stolen novel; please report.

At the end of this tunnel a maze awaits us. There are a dozen options for us to choose, tunnels climbing upwards, others plummeting down. “What is this place?” It seems impossible that I’ve never heard about it, never read it. I’ve memorized the histories of Kostos. How the Delphast was created. How the people live and work in it. Nothing about this place though, this hidden maze of stone.

“We call it the Graveyard.” Layla lets go of my hand and takes a wooden stick, a torch, from the ground. “Most of the above grounders would call it the slums. Some of the more vulgar rich might call it a gods blessed hole. The Kai calls it nothing. According to him it doesn’t exist. Some might even call it the decaying insides of a tier based mountain that has been building on top of itself for centuries and centuries. Tunnels on tunnels. Buildings on buildings.” Layla lights the torch in one of several flaming metal drums. “But me? I call it home.”

“This is where you live?” The thought is unimaginable. I don’t know how anyone could survive down here for a day, let alone a lifetime. I already feel claustrophobic.

“You get used to it,” Layla says. She holds up the torch and leads me down one of the tunnels that descends deeper. “The city is pretty packed. The poor kept getting pushed further and further down. And here we are.”

“How long has this place been around?” I ask Layla.

“When the Delphast was created the first buildings were built in a valley. Turns out the gods couldn’t have picked a worst place to build a city. Floods. Mudslides. One year the ocean just devoured the entire place. The Kais are a determined kind though. They just kept building it higher and higher until it really was as tall as a mountain. All of this was once the city. Then the layer on top was the city. Then the next.”

“Ahh,” I groan as I step knee deep into a puddle of mud I hadn’t seen Layla jump over.

“Sewers,” she says as I try to wipe the mud off. “The sewers flow somewhere around here as it goes out to sea. Sometimes it overflows. Too much crap in the capital.” She laughs at her own joke. I don’t find it quite as funny.

Every tunnel we enter is a bit different. Some are made of packed dirt and mud floors. Others look like metal buildings left to rust. Others have crumbling stone walls. We pass through big, natural caves and into thin winding tunnels. My natural sense of direction has long since abandoned me, overwhelmed by the hundreds of layers of lost I am. A single word flashes over and over in my mind, timed with the steady beat of my footsteps. Labyrinth.

“Do you know anything about the old myths?” I ask Layla, the words echoing in the tunnel.

“Do you?” Layla asks incredulously.

“A bit. This place reminds me of the labyrinth. You know it? When the gods acquired their powers from the godspool, a few went mad from the transformation. After all they used to be human. It was too much for some of them to take. Since they now had these strange abilities, the other gods had to do something to stop them for running rampant. They refused to kill their friends, their brothers, and weren’t sure if they actually could. Instead they built them a home somewhere in Kostos, the most intricate maze ever conceived. The mad gods spent their eternal lives trying to find the exit in the mass of tunnels. I guess they’re still trying to find it, if you believe that sort of thing. Not that I do,” I add hurriedly. I don’t want Layla to think I’m delusional.

Layla stops and turns around. “You’re kidding, right?”

My face flushes. “I said I didn’t believe it. Just a story.”

“Some people believe it though,” Layla says. “In fact, there are several Hillanger tribes out west who think that’s what this place is, the god’s labyrinth. They’re wrong, of course, but they believe it.” She spits on the ground. “Only men would be so wasteful. You’re full of surprises, kid. Makes me glad that I’m helping you out.”

Is that what she’s doing? I’m still not entirely sure.