The finishing blow never arrived.

A desperate whine brought Christopher's mind from the brink of unconsciousness. He struggled to lift his head, surprised the wolf’s blow hadn’t broken his neck.

Through a sliver of his vision, he watched the monstrous wolf backing off, terrified. Its body trembled uncontrollably, and an ever-growing pool of clay-red blood spread at his feet, fed by a bloody stream dripping from all his orifices.

Whatever that stake had done, it was terrifying.

The wolf trashed on the ground, cancerous tumors sprouting like wildfire through his body, and the once terrifying beast rapidly mutated into a grotesque pile of flesh.

A bloody smile formed on Christopher’s face as he watched its struggle.

─ ⴵ─

Christopher crawled blindly through the swamp, barely conscious, palpating his way around the sharp rocks.

Orange blood tears fell down his face, and weakness seethed through his bones. His movements dragged and slow, only getting slower over time.

Christopher was a mess. His chest was crushed, and his right arm was bent at a weird angle. On his left hand, which he used to drag himself forward, black, cancerous growths were spreading rapidly.

He stopped and tried to look ahead, but the dark shadows had grown and now obstructed most of his vision.

He tried using Crimson Proof as a last-ditch effort, but it was in vain. He fell unconscious and woke up an undetermined time later.

Christopher was scared. He didn’t know where he was going but knew he had to keep moving until he found a shelter.

Find the exit.

His mind was full of blanks. Every now and then, he would wake up startled, face down in the filthy mud, before resuming his march.

Christopher’s mouth was dry and filled with the sickening metallic taste of blood. Oh, how much he regretted following the bloody trail; if only he had gone in the opposite direction.

He didn’t know how much time had passed since his mortal fight with the vicious four-eyes monster—maybe one hour, maybe one day—but at some point, he couldn’t hold on any longer. The hunger, the thirst, the weakness, and the pain were too much for anyone to endure.

She lives.

Dear sweet Cristine, how he would like to hold her tiny hand again, pinch her cute, freckled cheeks, and hear her joyous laugh.

Christopher crawled through the muddy ground and approached one of the fetid puddles. He couldn’t see, but the smell was unmistakable.

He buried his face in the murky, disgusting water and drank it thirstily in heavy gulps.

A wave of nausea rose from his stomach, and he leaned sideways, vomiting water, blood, and bile. Exhausted, he rested his back against the mud.

It didn’t take Christopher long to realize he was sinking. He struggled, trying to stop his body from slowly getting dragged into the water. But his strength was completely drained. Finally, he stopped trying.

He remembered the fog that had once tried to erase his existence. He wished it would return, erase him once and for all, so he could rest in peace.

I’m a coward. Christopher thought before breaking into a snarky, hideous laugh.

“I’m sorry, Cristine. I’m sorry, Dad.” He apologized with a raspy voice.

In his last moments, Christopher broke down into a sob as orange tears ran down his face. Slowly sinking into the puddle, he repeated that sentence one last time.

She lives.

─ ⴵ─

Life at Aeymenchuk prison was pretty dull. Maybe it was different for the Authors and dwellers who worked inside the facility, but it was the same old boredom for Jack, whose job was to sit on the centermost tower, watching over the crossroads.

Occasionally, a famous Author or an heir from a well-known family would enter the Labyrinth, causing a commotion. However, such events were rare, and to Jack, who had been doing this job for almost seven years, they were hardly worth noticing.

It's not that he was complaining, though. Going down the Labyrinth was not for him, and even the thought of faring against the terrors on the first five floors was enough to make him sick.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Luckily, he came from a well-off family—not a renowned powerhouse, but wealthy enough to secure him this job. Those who worked at Aeymenchuk were exempt from fulfilling the mandatory extermination quotas.

Jack yawned.

He usually dozed off during his turn. He had somehow mastered a technique where he could keep his eyes open but not really pay attention to what was happening. He wasn’t there yet, but his goal was to master the art of sleeping awake. It was a safe, peaceful goal that in no way required him to risk his life.

That is why, on that day, he took so long to react to the commotion down at the crossroads.

The guards at the prison gate were the ones to wake him from his stupor. They screamed and shouted, waving their arms in the air, and once they finally got Jack’s attention, they pointed towards the crossroads while cursing Jack in a foreign language.

Confused, Jack approached the rail on the balcony and looked down. Over on the square, a dozen Authors were grouping around something.

“Hey, you! Keep moving,” Jack shouted with a commanding voice. “You know you are not allowed to stop there!”

The Authors ignored his orders, and one of them turned around and waved his arms, signaling Jack to go down.

Annoyed, he headed to the stairs and ran through the short basalt steps, arriving at the crossroads a minute later.

“Keep moving,” he shouted again and once again was ignored.

In the time it took him to arrive, more people had gathered, and there were now more than thirty. He was definitely going to get scolded if his supervisor heard about this.

Jack forced himself through the crowd, pushing the people aside while waving his spear in his right hand. Most of the Authors here could easily take him on, but they backed off once they saw the golden cross insignia on his chest.

As he approached the center of the commotion, he noticed a pile of dirty rags lying on the floor.

Wait, that can’t be right.

He stared at the pile until he realized what he was looking at. The pile was, in fact, a man lying unconscious on the ground. His clothes were filthy with blood and mud, and they were so tattered they were akin to rags.

His body was covered in terrifying wounds. Its right arm was awkwardly bent under his body, and broken ribs pierced through his chest. And yet, Jack rapidly realized the man was still breathing.

He made way for the man, pushing back the last few Authors who dared to stay on his way.

Rot and filth assaulted his senses as he approached, causing him to stagger. Jack, like all the authors on the Labyrinth, knew that smell. It was the smell of the bog.

Murmurs rose behind him, speculating on the man’s identity, but no one dared to approach him.

“Is he a dweller?” someone asked, sending a jolt of energy through Jack’s body.

He realized why no one approached him. They didn’t want to risk being seen as accomplices if he turned out to be a dweller.

“Stand back,” he ordered to the crowd.

He forced the body to roll over using his boot and immediately regretted it. A look of horror crossed Jack’s face, and his stomach churned. He quickly averted his gaze and took a deep breath, struggling to keep from throwing up.

Finally, he mustered his courage and settled his gaze on the man’s face.

A horrifying, oblique cut tore through the man’s face, severing his nose in half and exposing the bone below. The wound was festering with grape-sized tumors, oozing with putrid pus.

Something squirmed inside of those tumors, and even from this distance, Jack could hear the unsettling sound of gnawing emanating from the boy's face.

“I think he has a tale on his waist.” someone pointed out.

Jack’s reluctant eyes focused on a bulge in the man’s waist. There was definitely something there, covered in grime and mud. He cursed in his mind before using the tip of his spear to move the tale away from the body.

He tore a piece of his undershirt and used it to pick up the notebook. With the tips of his fingers, he carefully opened it.

“It’s an Author!” someone shouted, but Jack was not convinced yet. It would not be the first time a dweller tried to pretend to be an Author.

Let’s check this, Jack said to himself.

The tale had a page duct-taped to the inside of the front cover, but he ignored it. Many Authors taped worthless pages to the inside of their tales—usually for sentimental reasons.

Jack immediately noticed this tale was odd: It had very few pages. If the man was an author, he most likely had just become a fabled—either that or he had been robbed. How else would it be possible for him to have so few pages?

An oily, dark page covered in long black fur caught Jack’s attention. He had never seen a page like it before. How could a fabled get his hands on such a thing?

He grimaced with pain and reflexively withdrew his hand as a small jolt prickled his fingers – a sensation he knew too well.

What the hell?

A blob of white ink slowly moved across the ancient runes on the dark page before reforming into a small brand on the corner. Simultaneously, the thread that held the notebook whole rose and twisted, easily piercing through the page before tightly securing it to the spine.

Jack's eyes darted between the page and the unconscious body, his mouth wide open. The man was still unconscious–how could he have bound the page? And how could a fabled not have fixated the first floor already?

There was something wrong! The best course of action was to call for reinforcements and move the man into Aeymenchuk until they understood what was happening.

An author walking around the Labyrinth without having fixated on the first floor. I’ve never heard of a–

A flash of inspiration struck him.

The duct-taped page! Jack had casually moved his eyes past it, not even paying attention.

He leafed through the pages and examined the duct-taped page. His eyes opened wide as he recognized it, and he stepped away from the man, as one would run from the ruined disease.

Without even realizing it, a word escaped his lips.

“Lazarus.”