This was a nightmare.

No matter how much she tried, she just couldn’t get the door open. It had reached the point now where Lian didn’t know if the roaring in her ears was the rushing blood in her head or her own thoughts screaming with rage. Shen had gone into the labyrinth and she couldn’t follow. It was infantilising, and she hated it.

So she had locked herself in the vault.

She had brought food for two nights, just in case, but the second night’s meal lay discarded anyway. There were bounties aplenty in the vault of the Guan family, including a never-ending canteen of crystal clean water as well as a satchel that filled with warm pastries every day. Her rations had seemed irrelevant after that, so she’d spent much longer than she had planned in the strange room.

The dimensions of the place changed based on the intent and needs of the Guan family member within. Lian loved this room more than anything. She liked the connection that she felt to her family in this place. Normally, she had no love lost for that bond and the megaton weight that it had placed upon her shoulders and within her core. However in this room, which only she and her closest family could enter, she was glad to be Guan Fa Lian for once.

The vault seemed to flow around her, becoming more of a path than a storeroom. So much history in this room. Lian felt bound to that history, more than anyone else, she thought. As she passed each exhibited article of wealth, each weapon, each jewel or set of armour, her core trembled. She had needed to quell the inner noise so that she wouldn’t be distracted. She continued at a steady pace, stopping once at a smashed case. She knew intrinsically that this once held the slipstream robe, and she smiled to imagine her brother’s exaltation. He’d always liked that robe. It reminded him of his soul badge.

Lian couldn’t put her blockers up quick enough and found herself thinking of her own soul badge. She looked at it, though for the most part she ignored it like a wound. The nebula within was a facade. That was the mask which the thing within used to hide. The orange, purple and ambers of her own soul acting like a veil for the void within. Even now, she felt the revulsion rising in her throat and the rumbling in her core of a disturbed sleep.

She hated this about herself, but the mind is not always an easy thing to focus, and she intentionally dug the glass into her palm. She sucked in a quick breath, centralising her thoughts on the pain and the warmth of the blood trickling down her hand. As if in rebellion, the wound closed, but that was as far as the trouble in her core went this time. Since her time in the forest, and the confusing time that it had been since, Lian hadn’t flared her magic once.

Once she had her thoughts under control, the vault seemed to sense it too. No sooner had she bled onto the floor, just a few drips, had the trapdoor appeared before her. It would be impossible for Lian to know if she would have always found the door now or if her blood had drawn the labyrinth closer. She shivered at the thought of the gargantuan space somehow seeking her out, instead of the other way around.

Since she found the entrance, she had not strayed far. She had needed food and water, and had looked for her pack but found the canteen and pouch of warm food. Indeed, the room met every need she had, as she had the need. It would not be hard to live out the rest of her days here. Lian smiled at that thought, giving it more consideration than she would have admitted.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Still, the door below called to her.

Two gigantic stone slabs, designed by a star stage builder from her family’s ancestry. Designed specifically to stop impetuous young Guan children from trying to scurry into the labyrinth and make a name for herself. There was a relief carved into the beautiful grey stone. It depicted a great phoenix rising from the body of a man. Guan family history claimed that this was both historical fact and prophecy. Lian didn’t know how much she believed of that, historians being prone to hyperbole especially in regards to their own family. She felt a pang of jealousy as the fallen figure.

Maybe when she finally succumbed, she would return as a phoenix. Burning fury incarnate. A phoenix surely doesn’t feel pain. Her face creased into a mocking smirk. Maybe, she thought, I’m already the phoenix. Set on fire from within.

Calling to her was all the doors did though, as Lian’s strength returned to her arms and she tried - and failed - again. She knew that Shen was strong, strong enough to do whatever he wanted, but she didn’t realise how much stronger than her he was. If Lian was that strong, she could do whatever she wanted. She could leave, soul stone be damned. There came another rumble from her core at that thought.

Shut up, Lian thought petulantly.

No.

Resounding and obliterating, the response from the soul stone within her core was all that Lian could perceive. The vault, and all the wonders held within, disappeared. She did not feel the cold floor beneath her as she dropped to it. The angry pounding of her own blood was replaced with an all-encompassing roar from within her very soul, alien and monstrous.

Without warning, Lian was locked in a battle that she wasn’t prepared for. In the struggle, her control over the mana within slipped and the beast buried inside burst free from her flimsy hold on it. Like a centipede made of molten iron, a tendril of vicious agony ripped through Lian’s mana channels before congealing. It felt like a hard glove forming around her hand, the pain turning her fingers into witch’s claws.

Lian held the hand in the air, shutting her eyes as tight as she could in response to the electric sparks of pain darting around within. She tried not to, but knowing a way out of the pain made it harder not to take that path and in spite of herself slammed down her hand onto the floor. Like a bolt of lightning, jumping from the clouds to a treetop, the mana leapt from her core into the ground. It corroded and disintegrated the floor where Lian’s hand touched it, as though the rock were simply sand pressed together tightly.

This was her life. Rage and pain and desperate, unrelenting pressure from within. A cycle that Lian desired so fervently to break free from that she was willing to chase her idiot brother into the very bowels of the underworld. She didn’t shed a tear at the pain, or her own situation, that was something Guan Fa Lian had stopped doing a long time ago.

She did however get an idea. The thought had been floating in the back of her mind for days as she meditated on the issue of the immense stone slabs barring her way. Stubbornness had kept her from using her “weapon” but frustration was winning out at this point.

If the door wouldn’t budge… Well, she could just destroy the door. She didn’t do it immediately, though. She told herself that her hesitance was due to preservation. If she could think of a way around vandalising the great artwork and legacy of her elders, she would definitely prefer that. There must be something in this huge room that might give her a way in.

Turning to the large room once more, the path around the items stretched out before her. Surely one of these miraculous weapons or items would be the answer and throw the doors open wide. Annoyingly, she thought of the boy from the forest. As annoying as he had been, whatever he had done had infused her with strength like she had never felt… and stopped the pain for a while.

It wasn’t like he was going to turn up on one of the shelves, though, so Lian instead walked the path again. Her passenger had been sated and Lian now felt confident in using it, at least in this regard. Focusing a small amount of her own mana and feeding it into the soul stone, as she looked at the items as she passed them.

A description, written in a neat handwriting as though by a poet, described the effects and names of the treasures. It was a strange quirk of wielding a soul stone apparently. A known quantity. Unlike the agony, which no one thought to explain beforehand. Lian didn’t allow her thoughts to become venomous if she could help it, and this time she could. Instead of being bitter, she distracted herself with the myriad possibilities in the huge storeroom.

“There must be something.” Lian said out loud before delving into the room for something that could work as a key for the door to the labyrinth.