"I'm here with the key," Shotaro replied, his voice as flat as a knife placed with care. "You can use it on any door in this place. It doesn't matter which one. It'll take you out. Back to your body. Back to your friends."
There was silence.
"But they're bleeding for you, by the way."
That hurt like a slap.
Fatiba stiffened. "Wh... what?"
"Yup," he said back, hands in pockets now, voice impossibly calm for one who stood in a broken psychological place. "Nightmares are coming in droves. They're holding the line. Either take the test… or leave."
His eyes intensified.
"But don't get it twisted—there's nothing that you can do to help them by staying here and doing nothing. You've got no powers. Or do you?"
Shotaro stepped closer, his presence suddenly heavier, like the sky pressing down.
"You're hiding something. Aren't you?" He asked, his voice quieter now but closer to the truth than she wanted. "You're hiding your biggest sin."
Her stomach twisted like it had teeth.
It's not redemption. People don't get that. That's a fantasy," Shotaro said, voice dead but unflinching. "What they can do." —his eyes locked on hers, steady and merciless—"is take responsibility."
And then, without another word—
He turned.
And jumped.
Off the side of the bridge.
"WAIT—SHOTARO! WAIT!!
She sprinted, feet slipping across the buckled pavement, breath caught somewhere behind her chest. She barely made it to the railing, lungs seared, heart crashing against bone—just in time to see him.
He wasn't falling.
He was walking.
Across the river, like something constructed of sunlight and abandoned dreams. Feet barely touching the surface. No splash. No sound.
She froze.
Shotaro glanced back. Once. A smile crossed his face—gentle, unreadable, as if he were privy to all and forgave all nevertheless.
Then—
He dissolved.
Into a froth of foaming wine.
Ribbons of gold and red uncoiling into the water like script.
Gone.
His voice lingered.
Etched inside her head like a whisper pinned to bone:
"Spend as much time as you want here.
You may leave whenever you want.
But if you do decide to take the test…"
Then there's no going back.
Silence.
She was by herself. Again.
She hoisted herself up onto the creaky railing of the bridge. Arms outstretched. Wind slicing across her cheeks.
"If I jump into that river," she said to herself, "do I die?" Or do I wake up? I mean… this isn't real, right?"
She stepped too far. Rolled over.
Thunk.
She came down on the footpath below with a thud.
"Ow."
She blinked up at the bridge.
Then around.
Then the textures.
The temperature.
The heaviness of the air.
Even the gravity.
It was all real.
"Wait."
Fatiba sat up, hands trembling, and planted her palm against the lamp post next to her. Cold. Damp. She ran her fingers down the rusted paint and felt the small ridges snag at her skin. She breathed in deep—wet city air, smeared with smog and stale rain. Her tailbone ached from the fall.
Her lips parted. A breath—half laugh, half gasp.
"It's, it's literally another reality."
The words spilled out before she could retract them. Her gaze swept the skyline, the twisted form of London exhaling around her like a giant in slumber. The tilt of the bricks. The curl of the clouds. The curve of everything toward her.
"A bespoke simulation," she breathed. "Made specifically for me."
She caught herself mid-thought. Wide eyes.
"Wait. If this is true—if every trial is an entire, working world" She turned slowly, thoughts splintering apart like eggs under stress. "Then this labyrinth."
Her voice fell.
"This thing's operating eight billion of these. All simultaneously."
She rose.
Looking at nothing.
Feeling everything.
"Shit," she whispered.
Then something struck her.
Soft. Delicate.
A harmonium.
She blinked. Turned. The tune didn't belong here—it sliced through the nightmare fog like sun through mist. Familiar. Homemade. Something prior."
"Song with no words," she panted, chest constricting.
She fled.
She didn't think. She just fled.
Weaving around distorted buildings. Running among people—ghosts, shadows, projections. They dissolved as she ran past them, faltering like malfunctioning holograms. She didn't stop. She didn't care.
The music grew louder.
A corner. A cross street. A side alley twisting wrong —
And then—
She saw him.
Seated on a wooden crate in a spot of late afternoon sunlight. Head lowered, fingers flying over the harmonium keys as if he was bringing life to them.
Uncle Ahmed.
Her breath suspended.
Her knees gave out.
"Uncle—" she managed, voice tearing out of her like a sob garbed in hope. "Uncle Ahmed!!"
And before her brain could even process it—her body folded. She collapsed onto the broken sidewalk like her bones remembered how to break. Hands covering her mouth. Shoulders trembling. Eyes overflowing.
Her hijab had slipped loose, hanging down her back. Her hair—long and flaxen and slick with sweat—flew out around her face. And hidden beneath the tangled locks, half-obscured in shadow, glowed the crescent-shaped scar on her forehead. The one she'd kept concealed for years. The one she never spoke of.
But he did not move.
He just continued playing.
As always.
Harmonium gentle beneath his fingers, the notes flowing like prayer.
The light was no longer cruel.
The Labyrinth was no longer a test.
It was like a memory fighting to be remembered.
"So," Uncle Ahmed went on playing, fingers gentle, eyes still not looking at hers, "what do you have?"
"I. I'm afraid."
A faint smile played about his mouth. "Good."
He looked up now.
"That means you're still human."
She sat beside him, her knees drawn tight into her body. She did not touch him—afraid he'd vanish if she did.
"Ne." Ahmed continued, "You've already decided. You don't want this to be that boy's job anymore. Shotaro, isn't it?"
She nodded, wiping away tears.
"But I don't think I can accept what's happening," she said to him.
Ahmed hesitated. The music stopped.
Then he let himself go to her completely. And his voice was slow when he talked—not aged, but heavy. The kind you don't fling; the kind you carry.
"Fatiba," he said to her, "people think that truth's a light. A sword. Something that cuts clean. But truth—it's a grindstone."
She looked, eyes watery.
He went on.
"Plato wrote we live in a cave—mistaking shadows for truth. But once you turn around to the fire, even though it blinds you. You don't return to the shadows on your own accord."
He placed his hand on top of the harmonium.
"Søren Kierkegaard said truth is subjectivity. That to confront the truth is not to know it but to stand within it—let it remake you."
Fatiba's breath caught.
Ahmed's eyes went gentle. "And Simone Weil—she said loving truth is to suffer. Because truth doesn't just call us to see the hurt we've endured—but the hurt we've inflicted."
He gazed down at her shaking hands.
"Do you want to live in a lie until the day you die?" he whispered. "You can. And no one will stop you from it. It'll be warm. Quiet. Cozy."
"But it won't be true."
Her voice was tiny—tattered but consistent. A whisper wrung from the interior of her ribs.
The harmonium burst forth once more. Louder. It didn't vibrate. It announced.
No longer amorphous.
Now it moved purposefully.
A rhythm. A backbone. A truth.
Reality's cruel," Uncle Ahmed told her, his fingers dancing over the keys as if he was persuading the city to breathe once more. "But even in cruelty… it's honest. And only through that honesty can we transcend the things that cause us pain."
Fatiba's lips shuddered. Her eyes closed.
And for the first time since she entered the Labyrinth—since the shadows became mirrors and every door asked her to bleed—
She allowed herself to think it:
Perhaps the pain of truth might be preferable to the ease of lies.
There was a heavy but holy silence that lasted for a long time.
Then—his voice, low, last.
"Next time, wear that hijab not to conceal that scar…"
He reached out, his fingers softly cradling her cheek.
"...but to display it."
She opened her eyes.
"Reveal what your truth is. What your identity is," Uncle Ahmed instructed, the voice like twilight settling on the soul. "You bear your past—but it does not own you."
His thumb rose, touched the glistening corner of her eye with the same quiet patience he used to clean crumbs from the corner of her cheek when she was six.
"Not everybody receives God's best angel Himself on their team," he included, voice low but full of something eternal. "Happy to leap into hell just to see if you're all right."
A silence. His breath stuck in his throat. Then a smile—the one that shatters you more than any blow—soft and full of farewell.
"But the decision was always yours."
He bent. Kissed her forehead.
Time didn't stall.
Her heartbeat did.
Her entire body went still—held together by that one touch. That final blessing.
"I couldn't say it last time," he whispered, "in that dream." But I'll say it now, before I go."
His voice trembled—not out of grief.
Out of pride.
"You've become a lovely, good person."
He gazed at her straight on now, eyes shining, and spoke the one thing she never had the courage to believe:
"And the old half—your love, your reluctance to become cruel… that's the best that happens. In every iteration of this world that contains you."
The harmonium receded behind him. One last gasp of melody.
And then—he disintegrated.
Light pierced his chest like colored glass burning. His body did not disappear—it rose. Gently, softly, he dispersed into dust, into memory, into something sacred.
Prayer.
Warmth.
And peace.
She reached out, reflexively.
But stayed back.
Because she didn't need to cling.
He had given her all he could already.
.....
She walked.
Boots against broken pavement.Head held steady.Hijab wrapped around her again—but different now. Not a shield. Not a mask.It framed her face like truth. Let the scar show, proud and unapologetic. Not shame. Not damage. Just part of the map.
With each step, the city around her unraveled—London pulling back like a dream that knew it had lingered too long. The sky bent, the bricks softened. Streetlamps turned into pillars of light that didn't flicker. There was no sound now but the rhythm of her steps and the quiet certainty blooming in her chest.
She didn't flinch.Didn't question.
She just knew.
Then—a voice behind her. Familiar. Deep. Woven with riddles dressed as wisdom and truths shaped like poems.
"Knowing things—more and more, each moment—on two roads, one carved marble, the other scorched brimstone…" it said, soft as myth, heavy as scripture. "That's mankind's ultimate forbidden fruit."
She stopped. Turned.
Shotaro stood there.Like he'd always been there.Like he would always be there.
Hands tucked into his pockets, silver hair motionless in the void where wind didn't exist. His eyes weren't glowing, weren't burning—they were watching. Fully present. Entirely human. Entirely him.
"Go ahead," he said, nodding once toward the horizon. "Eat it."
His tone didn't demand. It invited.
"For everyone who bet on you…" he paused, lips curving with that crooked, sideways sass only he could make feel holy.
"You oughta be the first gambler."
And she—
She turned forward again.And walked into the street.
Head up.Heart braced.No more doors. No more running.
Only what came next.