Chapter 9: The Threshold of Madness
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Chapter 9: The Threshold of Madness
The silence inside the chamber was not the kind that comforted. It was the kind that swallowed thoughts, where even the softest breath felt like a trespass. Erevan stood at the threshold, staring at the obsidian gate that pulsed with crimson veins—like the heart of something ancient and long buried, trying to remember how to beat again.
Behind him, the others hesitated. Even the boldest of the challengers who had survived the last trials faltered here. This gate wasn't like the others. It wasn't made of stone or metal—it was made of remembrance. A living thing crafted from echoes of forgotten deaths and broken resolves. A monument to those who tried and failed.
"This is where it begins," Erevan said quietly, not turning back.
"Aren't we already inside the Tower?" one of the newcomers muttered.
Erevan smiled, humorless. "No. That was the prologue."
He stepped forward.
The moment his fingers touched the gate, pain lashed out like a whip of liquid fire. A scream crawled up his throat but didn't escape. His skin flashed with swirling constellations as his body instinctively adapted to the sentient assault. The gate recognized him—and that was the problem.
You.
The word wasn't spoken aloud. It bled directly into his mind.
You have returned.
Erevan gritted his teeth. "Open."
Do you remember what you did, traitor?
Not yet. But fragments flickered in the edge of his thoughts—her voice, the warmth of trust, and the betrayal that shattered it all. The hidden stat, Remembrance, stirred in him again. Not enough to clarify, just enough to hurt.
The gate swung open with a shuddering moan, revealing a corridor of spiraling glass and mirrored steps. The architecture warped and bent around itself like a dream trying to hold its shape.
One by one, the others followed, drawn by courage or stupidity. Most wouldn't make it to the end. Erevan didn't care. He hadn't come for them.
The corridor tested perception. It whispered doubts in their own voices, reflected fears in the mirror walls—faces twisted by failure, paths not taken, loves lost. For Erevan, it did worse.
It showed him himself.
The him before the Tower. The idealist, the rebel. The one who thought the system could be broken with enough fire and conviction. The one who believed he could save everyone—before he learned that some systems weren't meant to be broken.
They had to be overwritten.
One of the challengers ahead started screaming, clawing at their face. "She's here! She's still here! I left her! I LEFT HER!"
They ran into the glass wall. It didn't break.
Erevan passed them without slowing. He didn't have time for ghosts. His own haunted him plenty.
At the corridor's end stood a massive door with a sigil—a serpent devouring its own tail, surrounded by glyphs in a language not even the Tower itself had fully deciphered. It was a key and a warning.
This was The Labyrinth of Names.
Behind it was the trial that broke champions. Not with monsters. Not with flame. But with identity.
Erevan laid his hand on the door. It asked nothing. It simply opened.
The space beyond defied shape. Rooms folded into each other, stairs led downward into sky, and the concept of "up" dissolved as gravity decided to become optional. Every step was a question, every breath a decision.
A voice greeted him. Familiar. Cold.
"Welcome back, Erevan."
She stepped out from nothingness—a woman cloaked in violet flames, her eyes hollowed stars.
"Hello, Ysera," he said, voice tight.
The others couldn't see her. Only him. Because Ysera wasn't real.
Or maybe she was too real to exist here anymore.
"You never told them, did you?" she asked, tilting her head. "Why you truly came back."
"They wouldn't understand."
"You mean they'd hate you."
He didn't answer.
Erevan's eyes scanned the shifting maze. The walls whispered old names—Ryloth, Seran, Kaelin, Father… each a thread leading back to the person he used to be. The Labyrinth didn't test strength or skill. It tested truth.
One wrong lie, and it would erase you. Not kill. Erase. Like you had never been.
"I know who I am," Erevan muttered, more to himself than her.
"Do you?" Ysera whispered.
He stepped forward, deeper into the twisting chaos. Each chamber held a version of him—one who ran instead of fighting, one who stayed behind with her, one who accepted the Tower's deal and became their pawn. They all tried to sway him.
He walked past them.
"Why won't you just feel it?" Ysera's voice screamed now, crackling through the air like static. "Why won't you admit that you loved me?! That you sacrificed me for this damned war!"
Erevan paused.
The others—those few who remained—watched him, confused. To them, he was speaking to air.
And for the first time in a long time, Erevan spoke the truth aloud.
"I didn't sacrifice you, Ysera. I destroyed you."
Silence. Heavy. Honest.
He turned and faced her, or whatever fragment of her still lived in this place.
"And I'll destroy everything else that stands in my way. Because I can't undo what I did. But I can finish it."
The path cleared.
The Labyrinth shifted and reshaped, revealing the spiral steps leading upward—to the next floor. To the deeper secrets.
To the center of the system.
Ysera's specter vanished, but her echo lingered in the air.
"Then climb, Erevan. Climb, and become what you fear most."
He did not flinch.
One step at a time, he climbed the stairs of madness—toward the truth only monsters could bear.
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