Lyle watched the ghoul’s corpse cautiously for a count of thirty, but no other ethereal phenomena caught his attention, so he left it behind and continued his journey into the maze. He assumed that something was causing the walls to shift, because he was positive he had come from the dead end behind him. Figuring out the mystery would let him escape.

Twice more he encountered lone undead wrapped in burlap and hungry for blood. His sickle dispatched the first easily before breaking, but he was able to replace it with another from his dead foe. Each time after the creatures’ deaths, the black mist burned white and vanished. He wondered at the phenomenon, but had no idea what was happening. Reaching out to it with his magic made him feel sick, but when it flashed white he felt a rush of energy. A pleasant warmth filled his body, slowly fading until it left nothing behind.

Aimless though his wandering was, he did his best to avoid the areas that were completely devoid of light, but the maze wasn’t so accommodating. After dispatching another ghoul, Lyle found himself trapped between a dead-end and a hallway so dark, it looked like it was filled with black fog. His eye twitched as he contemplated having to step into the unknown. The light of the torch he carried faltered as it tried to penetrate.

Lyle walked twenty feet back and inspected the newly-formed wall that prevented his passage. I could try to break it down, but I’d probably just end up breaking my wrists…

He looked up at the tops of the wall, and leapt as high as he could. It was possible he could get his arms up on the tops and pull himself up, but he needed to be sure nothing was going to slice his hands off at the wrist, or slice through his skin and poison him, first. Sure enough, his torch revealed a gleam of metal. The glance he got was too quick to be sure what it was, but he knew he shouldn’t try to get up on top of the walls. Even if he hadn’t seen anything, it would have been a risky proposition at best.

Once again, he was left with one choice: enter the darkness. He would emerge from the other side, or he would never escape the labyrinth.

Lyle inched up to the edge of the darkness. It still looked to him like it was almost material, absorbing the light from his torch and covering whatever horrors lay within. His eyes would be useless once he stepped inside. The torch flickered, and he glanced at it to find that the flame was shrinking. He pushed it closer to the darkness, and it dimmed considerably. A bit closer, and it puffed out, leaving behind a curl of smoke that dissipated quickly. A torch on the wall behind him provided the only remaining light in the hallway.

Lyle strained his ears, but there was no sound coming from within. Not the shuffling cloth, scrapes, and groans of a ghoul, and nothing to guide his way. Even from outside, it felt like it pressed in on his skin. He reached out to it with his magic, and an intense wave of nausea rolled over him, forcing him to quickly retract the light.

The nausea faded, and Lyle pushed a finger into the dark. An unnatural despair crept over him, and the pressure on his skin increased, but when he pulled it back his hand was no worse for wear. He steeled himself and took a step inside.

Lyle immediately fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. He was tiny, insignificant. It was all pointless. There was no hope he would ever escape from this place. He would die here, and the world would go on without anyone noticing his passing. Or worse. Hadn’t Tiamat said a war was coming? A war of survival, she had called it. Soon everyone would be dead, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

His muscles clenched, and he wanted to give up. A single step into the dark was all it had taken, and he had already fallen. He was so weak. Why even bother to fight? There was no difference that he could make. He would be a hindrance if he even tried. The best thing he could do was give up.

Lyle tried to push through the oppressive despair that settled over him. In the small part of his brain that was still rational, he knew it was unnatural. He could make it through this, if he could just force his body to stand up. But, try as he might, his limbs simply would not follow his commands.

He tasted blood and realized he’d bitten his tongue when he’d clenched his jaw. He focused on the radiating pain. He needed something, anything to grasp onto in the torrent of despair. He expanded the pain in his mind, focusing on it as much as he could, and it battled the despair for supremacy. The feelings pushed back and forth, but the pain couldn’t get enough of a grip to break the stalemate, and Lyle’s twitching limbs remained useless.

He pictured his mom and sister. If he gave up and died, they would wonder forever what had happened to him. Delylah would blame herself, and he couldn’t imagine what it would do to Helen, losing her other brother. He couldn’t do that to them. The despair retreated, inch by inch, but it wasn’t enough. He forced one foot underneath him, but he couldn’t push himself to his feet. An anvil rested on his shoulders, trying to crush him into the floor.

He also couldn’t give up because if he did, he would never have an opportunity to try again after hurting Emily. He wouldn’t love again, and he couldn’t stand the thought that the pain he’d given to Emily would be his legacy. For the sake of honoring her pain, and for his own sake, he needed to try again—to be better. Still it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t move forwards.

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Carson would have made it. Carson was a hero. A flare of envy ran through Lyle for his dead brother. If only Lyle’s power was like his brother’s. If only Carson hadn’t let himself be killed, and left them all alone to—

No. No, that’s not who he was. This isn’t who I am.

Carson was a hero. He was an inspiration. He’d made difficult choices, and he’d fought to his last breath to protect people he didn’t even know. That was what Lyle aspired to be. He didn’t want to be his brother. He wanted to be someone who cared. The darkness in his mind began to retreat, and he regained shaky control of his body.

Lyle got his other foot underneath him and took a wobbly step forwards. It didn’t matter if it was pointless to try. There didn’t have to be a point to Lyle’s efforts. It was enough to care about the people he wanted to protect, to want to restore them to their homes, and to act like the hero he wanted to be even if no one knew his name. If, like Tiamat foretold, there was a war coming, Lyle knew which side he would be on, no matter how hopeless it seemed.

Thoughts of Carson and the people like him—heroes all—who had fallen to protect their fellow man filled Lyle’s mind, and he took several more steps forward, his hand trailing against the wall to support him should he fall again. They had fought for the right cause, and it hadn’t been in vain. They had saved easily hundreds of thousands of people in New York, Las Vegas, Vancouver and other cities around the world that had fallen to tower breaks. They were martyrs to the cause of righting those mistakes and defending the innocent. Lyle didn’t need to join them in martyrdom—he was content with anonymity if it meant he could make a difference.

Step by step, Lyle pushed through the darkness. Gradually, it became easier to bear. He remembered his inspirations, and he clutched his aspirations like a lifeline. Righteous anger at the obstacles that stood in his way became another weapon against the despair. How dare it make him think that his empathy meant nothing? How dare these monsters arrive on Earth just to destroy? He would never stop fighting for his people. For all people.

Then he was out, and dim light once more shone from a torch on the wall. He stumbled as the weight was lifted from his shoulders, and a gasp of relief filled his lungs with a breath of air. Compared to within the void, the stale air in the rest of the pyramid was practically fresh, and he revelled in it. He caught himself as he stumbled, though, and he did not fall.

Lyle looked back at the wall of darkness. It had been like reliving all of his most painful experiences over again, amplified by a voice whispering in his ear that he would always fail. Carson’s death, his father’s imprisonment, watching each city fall in real time. But he hadn’t been broken then, and he wouldn’t be broken now.

I’ll get stronger with everything that’s thrown my way, he thought towards the darkness, narrowing his eyes. That’s a promise. I don’t matter for my own sake, so I’ll never give up because it’s easier. What matters is the people I fight for. They’re why I’ll never give up.

Of course, nothing was quite so simple. The tower breaks had been caused by the self-destructive behavior of some of the very people he wanted to defend. But mistakes were not unilateral condemnations. Mistakes were what taught them all to overcome their shortcomings, and reach beyond themselves.

Lyle realized his old torch and sickle were gone from his hand. He must have dropped it in the darkness. He took the one on the wall, and turned his back on the darkness. He left it behind, a second wind refilling his energy reserves.

And so he made his way carefully through the maze. The labyrinth itself played tricks on him, constantly shedding shadows and the phantom sounds of wind on him from above. It also often changed its layout, leaving Lyle nervous that all his progress was wasted, or that he would find himself trapped. He could see the staircase he’d arrived on getting further and further away, but the walls were too high to see his destination. Fortunately, his second wind kept him going, and he was becoming more and more confident in dealing with the creatures. A few drops of blood still seeped from the cut made by the first ghoul’s claws, but it was scabbing over already, and Lyle suspected it would heal within a few hours. He wasn’t forced through the darkness again, but he knew that if he was, it would not break him.

After several hours of wandering, Lyle realized that the phantom sounds and shadows above him always moved in the direction of open pathways. He switched up his strategy, and started following them as best as he could. He began to encounter more emaciated ghouls and even a couple of mummified corpses that probably wanted to eat his brain, but they fell beneath his stolen weapons and fists. When he bludgeoned the Mummies, they turned into dust under the deadly force.

The new strategy proved fruitful, and within an hour he reached the edge of the maze with only a couple more detours to avoid the dark zones. He stepped out into the light, and faced a veritable army of ghouls and mummies. They turned towards him slowly, as if confused by a human who dared to enter their sacred chamber. At their center was an altar with a glowing stone atop it, and Lyle knew that was what he needed to get to, but rushing right through them would get him maimed or worse. There were dozens of them.

A crow the size of a large man landed on the altar and shrieked at him, posturing over the stone protectively. Its eyes appeared to be made of sickly green flames, and when it flew over the wall of the labyrinth to reach its rest, the wall crumbled to sand underneath it..

“You have got to be kidding me,” Lyle muttered to himself before backing into the passage he’d just come from only to find it was already closed. “God damn it. Alright, well, come on, then!”

At his provocation, the crow took to the air with another deafening shriek and the undead swarmed him.