There was no light around.
Not in the traditional sense.
Only a presence that glowed behind the eyes, soft and colorless—like perception itself had peeled open and was feeding on understanding far older than mory.
Elias did not stand on ground.
He existed inside a sphere of warped space, deep beneath the core of the Maze. A space that should not have been, and yet pulsed as if it had always existed—before the stone, before the school, before the world had drawn maps of itself.
He was inside of a pocket dinsion. A place where very people had accessed and even fewer had survived.
The Heart of the Maze.
And he was not alone.
Three beings sat lotus style before him.
They did not move. Not in any way that resembled humans or mages or lifeforms as the world knew them.
They simply were.
Their forms bent the space around them.
The first, seated cross-legged on a platform of concentric lenses, was cloaked in pale indigo light. One eye glowed with endless recursion, a spiral of sight within sight within sight.
His voice, when it ca, rang like a whisper from a dream.
This was The Seeking Sage.
"Welco, Young one." He gave a smile as though he knew everything.
The second hovered a few inches above a fractured stone dais, arms folded behind his back. Around him, dozens of small floating fragnts orbited but upon close inspection, Elias found out they were indeed very large but had been reduced to re toys— buildings, runes, pieces of long-lost gates. Space bowed to the figure, folding and creasing like obedient fabric.
This was the Monarch of Space.
"You opened the path. You brought order into distortion. That is sufficient."
The third sat on a curved arch of tallic wire. Sound rippled around him constantly — notes, tones, frequencies. His words never reached the ear by voice. They vibrated directly into Elias's mind.
The Sound Lord.
"We are the Three. And this is our prison."
Elias did not ask questions.
But his eyes remained sharp. Watching. morizing.
"You are not here to free us," said the Monarch. "That is not your burden. Your burden is to save and help as many as you can in the coming Demonic War."
"You are here to choose," said the Sage. "There is soone you must et in the future. When it is ti, your paths shall cross and you will know it."
"As for the present, You have entered the place none were ant to reach. And so we will grant you this — a shard of what we once were, as reward for you being able to access this inaccessible space." echoed the Sound Lord.
Three boxes appeared before Elias. Not summoned with spell or gesture, but revealed, as if they had always been there, waiting for him to see.
Each floated slightly, suspended by their creator's elent.
The first, a glass cube laced with fractal runes, hovered in front of the Seeking Sage. Inside it, images flickered like dreams: shifting forms, combat stances, monts of clarity and despair.
The second, a sphere of impossibly folded wood and stone, drifted in the grip of the Monarch of Space, humming softly. Within it, a twisting path of spatial compression led into an infinite core.
The third, a tal cube vibrating at an almost invisible frequency, sat in front of the Sound Lord. It was silent. But Elias felt the weight of every scream, chant, whisper and lullaby ever spoken inside it.
The Sage gestured faintly, not with hand, but with intention.
"These are mories," he said. "Yours, though you have never lived them."
"Should you choose one," the Monarch continued, "you shall inherit the understanding of how you beca the thing that dwells within it. Training. Failure. Mastery. Not essence—mory."
"They are not powers," the Sound Lord added. "They are the paths that led to power. Condensed, and offered."
A pause.
"Choose."
Elias stepped forward.
He didn't reach for the Sound Lord's cube. That one radiated sothing too chaotic, too volatile. The vibrations made his vision blur.
Nor did he choose the Monarch's sphere. The folding space… intrigued him. But sothing in him knew it would demand too much. A bending of identity. He wasn't ready to reshape himself.
His eyes fell upon the glass cube of the Seeking Sage.
And he saw sothing...
A boy, older than himself but carrying the sa face, standing in the center of a wind-struck plateau. Hours of ditation. Days of sparring. Rituals broken by failure. Over and over. Until they weren't.
Until every blink calculated essence flow.
Until combat was a conversation and reaction was irrelevant—because everything had already been seen.
He reached out.
The glass cube dissolved the mont his fingers brushed its edge.
And then—
He knew.
Not the future.
But the process.
Every failure. Every revision. Every recursive drill. Every blindfolded sequence in darkness and silence, repeated until sight was no longer eyes, but comprehension.
His breath hitched.
Then steadied.
And the three beings spoke together for the first ti.
"Your answer is accepted."
A light gathered around him. It pulled not from above, but from beneath—folding his presence up and away, like being removed from a page in a book.
"You will return to the waking test," the Sage intoned. "You will rember only what was given. No more."
"Do not seek us again," the Monarch added. "If you attempt to do so, our Jailers will seek you out."
"There is always a price," whispered the Sound Lord.
And then—Elias vanished.
In the Colosseum above, a single note rang out through the arena—high and lodic.
Soft.
Then followed by a sharp crack of arcane light from the Maze's central glyph system.
One by one, observers turned toward the sound.
Dean Godsthorn was already standing.
The glow ford first as a sphere.
Then compressed into a straight beam.
And then, slowly—very slowly—a new magic circle reappeared in the sky.
It hovered beside ElderGlow's cluster.
Elias's magic circle was back.
As though he had left a version of himself behind.
Miss Leana drew in a long breath, watching as Elias's re-ford signature pulsed steady and quiet.
No chaos.
No weakness.
Just return.
Godsthorn smiled faintly.
And sowhere, far beneath the stone and earth, three beings sat in silence once again.
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