Chapter 11: The Floor is Lava, the Walls are Lava, Everything is Lava

The floor vanished.

One moment, I was standing in the hall with the other candidates. The next, I was falling.

The rush of air tore at my skin. Screams filled the void, short, sharp cries that were abruptly cut off as students hit the ground below. Some managed to brace themselves with magic, slowing their descent. Others, like me, weren't as lucky.

THUD.

Pain exploded up my spine. My vision blurred, and for a moment, all I could do was lay there, gasping for air, waiting for my body to stop screaming in protest.

For the third time in two days, I found myself lying on my back, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, wondering what I had done to deserve this. I groaned, forcing myself upright. The impact hadn't killed me, which meant the real danger was just beginning.

Dim, flickering torches lined the walls, casting twisted shadows across a corridor that didn't make sense.

The walls… shifted.

Not metaphorically. Not in the way shadows dance across stone.

They physically moved.

Stone slabs slid apart, reforming in new places. Doorways stretched, bent, and vanished before my eyes.

A crackle of static filled the air. Professor Zephyr's voice echoed through the dimly lit chamber.

"Welcome to the first trial: The Collapsing Labyrinth."

His tone was impassive, uncaring.

"Your objective is simple. Reach the exit. You have two hours."

Then. Silence.

A deep, grating rumble shook the ground. The walls groaned, shifted, twisted. The corridor before me bent unnaturally, stretching farther away.

Then I heard the first scream.

And the labyrinth began to fall apart.

****

I ran.

Not because I had a plan, plans required logic, and logic had no place in whatever nightmare Arcanis had thrown us into. I ran because stopping felt like surrendering to something far worse.

Around me, chaos reigned. Students scattered in every direction, their footsteps a frantic drumbeat against the stone floor. The hallway stretched endlessly ahead, a corridor lined with ancient stone and flickering torches. At first glance, it looked normal, too normal, the kind of normal that felt like a carefully laid trap.

And then I noticed it.

The door at the far end. No matter how fast I ran, no matter how much ground I thought I covered, it didn't get any closer.

A deep chill sank into my bones.

My legs burned with effort, but the space ahead remained unchanged, stretching endlessly forward like the world itself had forgotten how distance was supposed to work. My pulse thundered in my ears. The exit was right there. Right. There.

But I wasn't moving.

A strangled cry rang out behind me. I turned, just for a second, just to see….

And the entrance was gone.

My breath caught in my throat.

The students behind me skidded to a stop, eyes wide with confusion and fear. The hallway was closing in, swallowing any trace of where we'd come from. Panic bled into the air, thick and suffocating. Some tried to run harder, faster, like sheer force of will could break the illusion. Others turned to magic, hurling spell after spell at the unmoving door.

None of it worked.

A boy slammed his fists against the stone walls, his voice raw with frustration. "What the hell is happening here??"

A girl beside him growled, magic sparking at her fingertips. She flung a fireball toward the exit with all the fury she could muster. It soared through the air, twisting, distorting, before vanishing like a candle snuffed out by an unseen force.

Another student turned on his heel, trying to run back the way we'd come.

He didn't even take a step.

His feet moved, his body surged forward, but somehow, impossibly, he was still facing the same direction. Still trapped.

There was no forward. No backward. No escape.

I swallowed hard. My chest tightened with the creeping grip of dread.

This isn't real.

It wasn't a reassuring thought. It wasn't even a comforting one. Because if none of this was real, then what the hell were we supposed to do?

I forced myself to inhale. To think. The hallway was an illusion, a deception woven so tightly into reality that even our senses betrayed us. Running wasn't the answer. Magic wasn't either.

So I did the one thing that went against every desperate, terrified instinct screaming inside me.

I stopped.

I turned.

And I walked backward.

Each step felt like moving against an unseen tide, like something enormous and ancient was pushing against my every movement, resisting me. My stomach twisted, nausea clawing up my throat as the air around me distorted, shifting like a mirage in the desert heat.

Then….

A sickening lurch.

The world bent. Warped. Reality itself folded around me.

And suddenly….

My hand was on the door.

I exhaled sharply, fingers curling around the handle, victory surging through my veins…

Then I blinked.

And I was back in the center of the hallway.

A violent shudder ran through me.

It resets. The second you blink, it resets.

I clenched my jaw, muscles locking as I steeled myself. No blinking. No second thoughts.

Just focus.

I tried again.

One step. Then another. Slowly. Carefully. I locked my eyes on the door, forcing every fiber of my being to stay awake, stay aware. My vision burned, my lungs ached from holding my breath, but I refused to let go.

The moment my fingers brushed the handle, I yanked the door open.

And the illusion shattered.

The hallway collapsed back into reality, snapping into place like a broken puzzle finally reassembled.

Without hesitation, I stepped through.

****

The chamber beyond was… wrong.

Not in a way I could immediately name. At first glance, it looked like any other ancient trial room. The walls were cracked, their surfaces worn from centuries of time and torment. More dim torches flickered in their sconces, casting frail, hesitant light over the stone floor. Ancient carvings sprawled beneath my feet, their symbols half-eroded, their meaning lost to time.

A sudden rush of air for someone sprinting past me. A student, breath ragged, eyes wild with panic. His boots slammed against the stone, his focus locked on a door at the far end. Without hesitation, he flung himself toward it…

And vanished.

For half a second, relief flickered across his face. He had made it. He had escaped.

Then….

He stepped out of another entrance, back into the very room he had just left.

His face twisted in horror. He stumbled, hands trembling, before trying again. Different door. Same result. Over and over, a frantic loop of desperation. No matter which exit he chose, he always reappeared somewhere else.

The room didn't let go.

Another student let out a growl of frustration and turned to brute force. He swung his rock clad fists against the nearest wall, once, twice, the sound of impact echoing in the enclosed space. But the stone didn't crack. It rippled, bending inward like disturbed water before snapping back into place the moment his gaze shifted.

Like it had never been touched at all.

A girl hurled a lightning bolt at the window, her jaw clenched, her body rigid with tension. The glass shattered but before the shards even hit the ground, it was whole again.

A cold realization slithered down my spine.

A room that played by its own rules, ones that bent reality itself. Sight was its law. Observation was its prison.

And then I noticed it.

A single fragment of stone. Small. Insignificant. Fallen naturally from the ceiling above.

It hadn't reset.

I stared at it, my mind racing.

This place could rebuild everything, except what was already broken.

I bent down, fingers closing around the loose fragment. It was solid, real. It existed outside the nightmare logic of this space.

Which meant it was my key.

Clutching the stone tight, I took a breath, locked my jaw, and sprinted for the door.

The room buckled. The air rippled around me as the labyrinth twisted, trying to correct itself, to swallow me back into its endless cycle.

But the moment I stepped through…

The room didn't reset.

The trap shattered. The illusion cracked.

And I was free.

****

I barely had a second to breathe before the heat hit me. A force so intense it robbed the air from my lungs, stripped the moisture from my skin, and turned every breath into a battle against suffocation. My throat clenched, dry and raw, as the very air itself burned.

A jagged fracture ripped through the stone, glowing from beneath, like something monstrous awakening from its slumber. In the next heartbeat, the floor was gone. The solid ground beneath us liquefied in an instant, dissolving into a seething, bubbling sea of magma.

A boy beside me screamed.

I barely turned in time to see his boots make contact with the molten surface. His leg didn't burn. It didn't smolder. It simply ceased to exist, devoured in the same instant it touched the lava. His scream was cut short as he fell forward, body vanishing into the inferno.

Another student tried scrambling up the nearest wall, fingers clawing for any handhold. But the stone melted beneath his grip, turning to sludge before reforming as if mocking his attempt.

A girl leapt for the ceiling. She barely had time to grasp a ledge before it dripped between her fingers, cascading down like molten wax. She tumbled, flailing, then was gone.

There was no safe surface. No solid ground.

Everything burned.

The first bodies collapsed, their agonized cries turning into strangled, choking gasps as they were swallowed whole.

I wasn't going to be one of them.

I forced my mind past the terror, past the sickening horror of melting bodies and boiling stone. There had to be a way out. There was always a way out.

Then I saw them.

The pillars.

Tall, thick stone columns rising above the molten death below. They stood untouched, untouched by the flames, as if they didn't belong in this nightmare.

I lunged.

The heat licked at my heels as I pushed off with every ounce of strength I had. My fingers scraped against rough stone, slipping for half a second before locking into a desperate grip. My legs dangled, the blistering air scorching through my clothes, heatwaves distorting the space below.

The column trembled. A deep, ominous crack splintered through the stone.

This wouldn't hold forever.

And the lava was rising.

Sweat poured down my face, dripping into my eyes, but I didn't dare blink. The far end of the room loomed ahead. The exit. A single doorway, mocking me from across an expanse of burning death.

No bridges. No paths.

Only the pillars.

My chest heaved. My limbs ached. But hesitation meant death.

I gritted my teeth.

And I jumped.