Cold pressed against burned skin.
Cel's eyes cracked open. Gray light filtered through crystal formations that no longer glowed with lethal intensity. The four suns had set. Night's mercy had returned.
He'd survived - somehow.
His body hadn't moved. He was still slumped against the creature's spine, still impaled through the palm on the crystal spike. Dark blood had dried in trails down his forearm, staining hide beneath him.
The creature's breathing moved in slow, steady rhythm. It had stopped walking. Settled down to rest while he'd been unconscious.
Cel stared at the spike protruding from both sides of his hand.
He needed to move. Needed to climb down before the creature woke and while darkness still gave him cover from the heat.
But his body refused.
Every muscle screamed. His skin was burned. His lips split. His throat beyond dry. He had no strength left.
Yet his left hand twitched anyway. Fingers closed around a ridge.
He pulled.
Nothing happened.
He pulled harder.
His body shifted an inch. Then another. Pain exploded through his impaled hand as the crystal scraped against bone. But he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. Not here. Not now.
With a wet sound, his palm slid free of the spike.
Blood flowed fresh. He pressed the ruined hand against his chest and pushed himself upright with his left arm. His legs trembled beneath him, threatening to give out.
One foot in front of the other.
His left hand gripped crystal edges. His right hung useless at his side, leaving a trail of blood droplets. Pain accompanied each movement.
Finally, his feet touched solid ground.
His legs buckled immediately.
Cel collapsed onto crystal shards, his impaled hand slamming onto the ground. The impact sent a fresh wave of pain up his arm. He bit down on a scream his ruined ears wouldn't hear.
He should be dead.
The thought arrived with perfect clarity. No fever haze. No delirium. Just cold, factual assessment.
He'd been starved for over a year. Beaten and bled by cultists who used him for their twisted experiments. Forced to eat rotting meat until his sense of taste died completely. Transported to this nightmare after nearly dying in the Hollow Realms. Crossed the crystal maze under four blazing suns that permanently destroyed his hearing. Suffered burns and cuts across most of his body. Dragged into a lake of mirrors where reflections of everyone who'd tormented him nearly shatter his mind completely. Gone two days without water in killing heat. Impaled his own hand just to stay conscious while clinging to a creature that could crush him by chance, unaware he even existed.
His body should have quit a dozen times over.
Yet somehow, his heart kept beating. His lungs kept pulling air. Some stubborn piece of him - rage perhaps, or simple spite - refused to let go.
But he couldn't stand. Not anymore.
Cel pressed his forehead against the ground, blood from his split lips wetting his mouth. His chest heaved with each breath. The night air felt impossibly cold against his burnt skin, every nerve screaming at the contrast.
He knew he wouldn't survive another day in this crystal maze.
His left arm trembled as he pushed himself up. Made it to his knees before his vision grayed at the edges. He stopped. Breathed. Waited for the world to solidify.
One knee forward. Then the other. Crawling like an animal through scattered crystal fragments that bit into his palms and shins.
His right hand dragged uselessly, leaving a trail of blood across stone and crystal. Each time his weight shifted onto it, fresh agony bloomed. He learned to favor the left, to distribute his weight differently.
Progress came through painful effort. Each movement a small victory of will over flesh.
'Just keep moving. Don't think. Don't stop.'
His left palm pressed against something smooth. He blinked, trying to focus through the haze.
The ground had changed. No more scattered shards biting into his skin. The surface beneath him felt almost polished, worn smooth by something he couldn't name.
'When did that happen?'
Cel lifted his head, squinting into the gloom.
The crystal nearest him rose at least twice his height. He followed its line upward - three times his height. Four. The crystal stretched toward the sky like a cathedral pillar, its surface flawless and vast.
He turned his head left. Another massive formation. Right. Three more, each one dwarfing anything he'd seen in the outer maze. They pressed closer together too, their bases nearly touching, creating narrow gaps between them that twisted at angles his eyes couldn't quite follow.
'Just how far did that creature carry me?' The thought arrived slowly, fighting through exhaustion.
He'd been barely conscious during the journey. Had felt the creature's movement beneath him, the hours passing in fragments of awareness. But he hadn't truly comprehended the distance. Hadn't realized—
A shadow moved between the crystals.
Cel froze.
The darkness shifted.
Bone gleamed pale between the formations. A skull emerged first - violet light burning in empty sockets, jagged crystal jutting from the crown like a broken halo. Ribs came next, each one studded with crystalline growths that formed a cage around the hollow chest.
The skeleton's left leg dragged behind - crystal had swallowed the bone completely. The limb scraped across stone with each step, leaving trails through dust.
The skull rotated.
Violet light locked onto him.
'Shit.'
Cel's breath caught. His arms were already shaking from the crawling. His body had nothing left. The thought of standing - of running - was laughable.
The skeleton took another step. The crystal-encased leg dragged behind, slowing its approach but not stopping it.
Another step.
Cel's left arm shifted. Then his knee. He dragged himself forward - away from the approaching thing.
Too slow.
He forced himself forward another pull. His right hand screamed. His vision blurred. The skeleton closed the distance with grinding steps, narrowing the gap with each of his pitiful retreats.
'I can't… there's nowhere—'
The world shook.
Cel's arms buckled. He hit the ground hard, cheek slamming against smooth stone. The surface beneath him rippled, sending violent vibrations up through his bones. Crystal formations around him blazed brighter, their hum rising to a shriek.
He twisted his head.
In the distance - far beyond the dense forest of crystal formations around him - something caught his eye. A sliver of the great spire, barely visible between towering formations.
Its light was gone.
The violet glow that had always pulsed through its core had died completely. The structure was collapsing - its top already fractured, massive chunks breaking away and tumbling down its length. The destruction spread like infection, racing through crystal with terrible speed.
Then the fragments hit the ground.
The impact slammed through the maze. The floor heaved beneath Cel like a living thing. He flattened himself against stone as the shock wave rolled through, strong enough to make his jaw clench and his vision shake.
The skeleton stumbled, its crystal-heavy leg unable to compensate. It crashed to one knee, skull turning toward the distant destruction.
Cel didn't wait.
He dragged himself forward with desperate strength, ignoring the pain, ignoring everything except the need to put distance between himself and that thing. One arm length. Two. His muscles screamed. His vision tunneled.
His left hand reached forward and found nothing but air.
'Huh?'
Cel stopped, panting, staring at the edge that had appeared impossibly before him. A massive chasm split the maze - a wound in the earth so wide that it could easily swallow an entire city.
Behind him, crystal scraped against stone.
He twisted his head back.
The skeleton had risen. Its crowned skull was fixed on him now, violet light burning in empty sockets. It moved forward with renewed purpose, dragging its ruined leg behind, closing the distance between them.
Cel tried to crawl sideways along the chasm's edge. His arms gave out after two pulls. He collapsed flat, watching the thing approach.
Ten feet away. Eight. Six.
The skeleton loomed over him, blocking out the moonless sky. Crystal growth caught what little light remained, creating shadows that danced across its bones. Its jaw hung open in a permanent scream. One skeletal hand reached down, fingers spreading to grasp—
It stopped.
The crowned skull tilted downward. But not at Cel. Past him.
Into the chasm.
Cel's breath came in ragged gasps as he watched the thing's posture change. The reaching hand withdrew. The skeleton turned away from him, its violet gaze locked on something in the depths below.
Then it stepped over him.
Cel felt the scrape of its crystal leg against his back as it straddled his body. Felt the thing's weight shift. A moment later, it was past him, standing at the very edge of the chasm.
It jumped.
No hesitation. No pause. Just a simple, decisive leap off the edge and into darkness.
The skeleton disappeared. Swallowed by the abyss as if it had never existed.
Silence returned.
Cel lay motionless at the precipice, too exhausted to process what he'd just witnessed.
'What... what was that?'
His left arm trembled as he dragged himself forward. Just an inch. Enough to peer over the edge.
Now, it is a repetThe depths disappeared beyond sight. No bottom visible. Just endless descent into violet-lit darkness that made his stomach clench. The chasm walls were studded with massive crystal formations, each one larger than any he'd seen in the maze above, jutting outward in chaotic clusters.
But deep within - far, far below - something else glowed.
White light. Not violet.
It pulsed gently, steady and alive. The rhythm matched something in his chest, a pull he felt in his bones.
'The skeleton saw this. Saw it and jumped without hesitation.' Cel stared into the abyss, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.
The creature had carried him impossibly far - the spire had been barely visible before it collapsed. The maze had transformed around him while he'd clung to consciousness. Larger. Denser. More concentrated. As if all its power was converging on this single point.
He'd survived everything only to end up here, at the maze's deepest reaches. Too weak to crawl. Too broken to do anything but stare into depths that should terrify him.
But that light…
That light was different.
It felt almost like… hope.