The pillar bloomed, releasing an ungodly torrent of green light that swallowed everything. The soul flame's pale blue glow vanished like a candle beneath a flood. The rock beneath Nova softened into a bed of grass-like blades, warm and strangely inviting. His aching body sank into it as if the world was finally, mercifully, done punishing him.
He closed his eyes.
Just for a moment. Just to rest.
Everything turned quiet.
The silence didn't feel empty—it felt sacred. As if time itself had stopped to let him breathe. He let go of the weight on his chest, the screams in his head, the unbearable pull of memory. He surrendered.
But peace is a cruel thing. It never stays long.
A flicker of light pierced the darkness behind his eyelids. He frowned, resisting. But the glow intensified, until it burned like the sun. Nova opened his eyes with a reluctant squint.
The chamber was gone.
He was now on top of an elevated mound, surrounded by a vast expanse of leaves. A maze. Living, breathing, endless. The "walls" were not walls at all, but vertical sheets of interwoven leaves, layered so thick they looked climbable. The entire structure pulsed gently, as if it were a single living organism.
Nova's heart sank.
There was no sky—only green above, below, around. The air smelled of chlorophyll and rot. Time felt wrong here.
He backed away, then stepped forward again, drawn by an irrational thought: I can climb this. I can cheat it.
He leapt at the leafy wall and climbed. For a moment, it worked. His hands found footholds. His breath quickened. He rose.
But when he looked over the edge—he froze.
What lay beyond wasn't freedom. It was more maze. It didn't stretch outward.
It stretched downward.
Layer upon layer, an abyss of leaf walls spiraling deeper than sight. It wasn't an exit—it was an illusion. The climb didn't free him. It only revealed the depth of his prison.
He slipped and fell back onto the platform, hitting the moss-covered ground hard. Pain shot through his arm, but it was drowned out by the echo in his mind:
"All you do is cheat."
He clutched his hair. "Even now," he muttered to himself. "Even in this place, this—whatever this is—you tried to take the shortcut. No courage, no work, no growth. Just cheating. Always cheating."
He sat there, trembling, eyes burning with the urge to cry, but the tears wouldn't come. They never did.
"You thought you could climb your way out of guilt?" he spat at himself. "You thought you could trick the maze? Trick your own damn mind?"
He turned his head slowly, looking across the endless green. He followed the walls, squinting toward the center.
His breath caught in his throat.
There was no center.
No finish line. No light at the end. The paths folded endlessly into themselves, recursive and suffocating. A cruel joke designed to break something inside him.
He knelt there for a long time, staring blankly, until he whispered, "This isn't real. This is just a dream. Just a hallucination. It has to be."
But the ache in his chest felt too honest. The cold moss in his palms too vivid. His doubts too familiar.
He looked at his hands.
"They're just leaves," he murmured. "It's all just leaves."
He laughed, bitter and cracked, and dropped to his knees. "If it's a dream, then wake up. WAKE UP!"
The world pulsed once.
Then it obeyed.
The green light flickered and vanished. The ground beneath him warped again, and he felt the sensation of falling—not downward, but through something.
His back hit cold stone. A circular platform. No more moss. No more grass.
He sat up, gasping.
A mist had rolled in. Tall, gnarled trees loomed beyond the fog like watchmen. The air felt wrong—too heavy. He rubbed his eyes, disoriented.
Then he saw it.
Someone—or something—stood ahead.
A humanoid figure, its body composed entirely of twisting vines, braided roots, and razor-edged leaves. Its shoulders bore jagged thorns like armor. It stood unnaturally still, as though waiting.
But it was the gaze that froze Nova's blood.
The creature had no visible eyes. Just deep, hollow sockets.
And yet—Nova felt it.
That hunting gaze.
Cold. Predatory. Ancient.
Not just watching—but analyzing.
Judging.
A single leaf detached from its wrist and spiraled downward.
The thing tilted its head slightly, like an animal recognizing something it hadn't smelled in a long time.
Then, with a slow, grinding motion of roots tearing from the stone, it took one step forward.