Cordelia, V, Ten, Fractal, Wallace, Basarioel—even Sven—were all gathered in the basement. The walls were lined with old supplies, sealed crates, and dim magical lanterns that flickered like candlelight. The folded cube rested at the center of a large table, nestled between aged tomes and diagrams I'd sketched throughout the day.
I drew a long breath, letting the stillness hold for a moment before speaking.
"All right," I began. "My labyrinth is ready."
A few eyes lit with curiosity. Others narrowed with focus.
"For those of you newer to all this," I said, resting a hand on the cube, "I had a path. A solid, simple one. Machina Master. Mage. Archer. Classic. Predictable. Efficient. But… Gin threw that off course."
A few heads tilted. Cordelia nodded slowly. Ten crossed her arms. V yawned, obviously already bored.
"Now, I have two skillcubes that changed everything. [Paper and Pencells], and [The Ruined World]. Together, they don't just give me tools. They give me a labyrinth—a place I command completely. My own world. And to use it properly, we need more than just plans and roles. We need trust. And understanding."
I paused, watching each face carefully.
Cordelia inclined her head in approval, lips pressed in a firm line. She understood the theory and the stakes. Wallace gave his silent, stoic nod. Fractal beamed, perched at the edge of the bench like she was attending a theatre performance. Basarioel, not quite grasping the tone of the meeting, was too busy crunching crackers in my shoulder bag, purring between each bite.
"This," Sven said, his voice edged with skepticism, "I understand. But why am I here?"
He folded his arms, eyeing the cube like it might explode. "This sounds more… battle-oriented. I deal with numbers. Trade routes. Agriculture."
I turned to him.
"Because," I said firmly, "if you're going to be my steward, I expect you to know how to use my strength, not just catalog it. I expect you to locate treasures not only for me to devour—" I tapped the side of my neck where the strange hunger stirred when I used that particular skillcube "—but also skillcubes that expand this system. That strengthen this labyrinth. This is our home. Our territory. And you, as steward, are expected to defend it as much as manage it."
Sven blinked, lips parting as though he wanted to argue—but he said nothing. Only gave a slow nod, his thoughts clearly racing behind his mask of restraint.
"Well said, Your Grace." Wallace's voice was gravel and steel. "By Bastian law, a steward must be able to not only hold a pen, but a shield. If he cannot defend a demesne, then he does not deserve to call it his."
Fractal reached out and gave Sven a reassuring pat on the arm. "You'll do fine. You've read all of his ability logs twice already."
"That's not the point—" Sven muttered, but didn't finish the sentence.
"Right," V suddenly drawled. "And what about me, then?"
He leaned back on his stool, feet kicked up, arms behind his head.
"I'm a trapmaster, not a maze-rat. I deal with terrain, not folded pop-up nightmares. So again: why am I here?"
Before I could even respond, Ten scoffed hard enough to almost fall off her seat.
"You salt-brained barnacle," she snapped, dragging the word out with extra venom. "You're literally the person who fills the labyrinth with traps. You set the terrain. Just like how I'm going to turn these stupid narrow halls into my personal bowling alley. You're here because without your traps, his labyrinth's just a bunch of folded paper with attitude."
"I—well—I knew that," V mumbled.
"No, you didn't," Ten shot back, pointing a toe in his direction. "Don't lie to the prince of the paper palace."
"The title could use some work," Cordelia muttered.
Wallace stepped forward, his armor creaking faintly. "Regardless, we're here to serve and support. And this—this cube—may be one of the most powerful things in our arsenal. A territory that shifts with Alexander's mind? That sings with his Truth? There's nothing like it."
Fractal was practically bouncing now. "Can we go inside it yet?"
"Soon," I promised. "It's stable. But it's also reactive. Like…a mirror. The more chaos or precision we bring in, the more it reflects. Right now, it's a ruined city. A version of Pendell I burned into ash. So be careful. It's not just folded paper anymore."
Ten raised an eyebrow. "So it's got memory?"
"It has something deeper than memory," Cordelia murmured, voice low. "It has identity."
V sighed. "So if I accidentally set off a trap in it and it hates me forever, do I get a second chance?"
"No," I said flatly.
"Harsh."
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Wallace leaned in slightly. "How do we proceed?"
I placed the cube in the center of the room, letting it pulse. The folded layers shimmered faintly, like heat off metal. I could feel it—responding. To us. To me.
"We enter it. Not physically—not yet. But mentally. Cordelia, you'll anchor everyone with your Psyche skillcubes. Just enough to project them inward. I want everyone to walk it. See what I see. Learn its rhythm. If you can't feel the city, then you won't be able to fight inside it."
Fractal clapped her hands. "We're doing a labyrinth test run!"
"Training," Wallace corrected.
"Playground," V added.
"Punishment zone," Ten offered with a smirk.
"Home," I said quietly.
There was a brief silence. A kind of reverence. Then Basarioel finished his last cracker and burped loud enough to shake the moment.
Cordelia stood, eyes closed, threads of silver light beginning to coil from her palms.
"Everyone," she said, "touch the table. Sync through me."
And so they did. One by one, they reached forward—hands, claws, bracers, bindings—linking together.
My cube pulsed again, soft as breath.
"This is your world," Cordelia whispered, letting her power radiate. "Show us what your price bought."
And as their minds began to slide inward, into the folds of my ruined city, I stood still. I felt my mana, my miasma, all channel into the paper cube before me, as everything turned into blackness.
***
We stood in the middle of what was once a city square. Pendell. My Pendell. Now just a corpse of cracked stone and blistered earth, ringed in the shattered bones of towers that had once reached for the clouds.
The stench was immediate—wet iron, mold, and something sour like curdled milk left in the sun too long. The flies carried it, hundreds of them. Chimera Flies—each one shaped like a person I had known. Each one a puppet of memory and muscle, wings twitching as they hovered in slow drifts around the wreckage of a forgotten civilization. Some wore the faces of children. Some looked like soldiers. Some had no face at all, just blank, pulsing flesh.
Cordelia stepped forward, slowly. She didn't flinch, but her voice dropped into a whisper as she looked around. "So this is Pendell…"
Her tone was reverent, like she'd just stepped into a mausoleum instead of a folded maze. And in a way, she had.
V let out a sharp breath. "And this is the nightmare he lived. How long were you stuck in here?" His gaze drifted up toward a statue that had been overgrown with veins of ink, its once-proud face smoothed over by rot.
I didn't answer right away. I couldn't. The city moaned when the wind blew through the alleyways, like it remembered what it had been and was ashamed of what it had become.
"A week? A month?" I finally said. "Maybe longer. I don't know. I stopped counting once my fingers started bleeding and I couldn't tell what was ink and what was blood anymore."
Fractal moved closer to my side, her hand brushing against mine. Silent. Grounding. Even Basarioel's usual humming curiosity was hushed, his massive griffin form hunched low, wings furled tightly against his back as he sniffed the air with a predator's wariness.
"To be honest, I'm just happy this time I'm not the one getting eaten alive by flies who copy your memories, your face, your thoughts…" I trailed off. "Last time, I looked into the eyes of something that wore my mother's smile. That smile."
That made Ten shiver. She looked like she wanted to say something, but the words died somewhere between her clenched jaw and the way her bound wrists shifted restlessly.
"This place sucks," V muttered, but quieter than before. Even his usual bravado was dimmed by the sheer weight of the place. "I get now why you don't talk about it."
We passed an alley that writhed. Not visibly—no, that would have been simple—but subtly, like the stone itself was breathing, or like someone was whispering memories into the walls. A disembodied voice, broken and fragmented, repeated: "Please. Please. Please. Let me go home."
Ten glanced toward the sound, then quickly away. "So... is that the cube talking, or the city?"
I swallowed. "Both."
Cordelia bent down beside a shattered storefront, tracing her fingers along the warped frame. The glass was gone, replaced by a membrane of translucent flesh that beat like a heart. Behind it, mannequins hung suspended in a syrupy brine, their forms twisted, half-flower, half-person, their petals opening and closing in mechanical rhythm. One of them looked like Sven. Another looked like me.
"Nope," V said, turning on his heel. "Nope nope nope. This whole place is messed up. And I say that as someone who once spent a week inside a snake-worshipping sand cult that made explosives out of camel bile."
"I remember that," Ten said. "That was the one where you lost your eyebrows."
"And half my left arm. Anyway, I stand by what I said. This is worse."
We moved deeper into Pendell. Every building was angled wrong, slumping like it had melted under divine judgment. Cracks in the cobblestone revealed layers beneath—layers that didn't belong. Pages. Books. Thousands of them. My books. Burned and ink-slicked, stacked on top of each other like fossils. The farther we walked, the more they bled through the surface of reality, their words leaking into the sky in curling black script that formed clouds.
"What is this even for?" Sven finally asked. "Why build something like this?"
"Because I need a home," I said. "One that matches me. One I can defend. One I can shape." I gestured around. "I didn't choose this ruin. But it's mine now. The cube didn't sing when I drew castles or clean towers. It sang when I gave it truth. It sang when I made it pay the price I paid."
Cordelia turned to look at me then. Not in fear. Not in pity. But with something closer to understanding. "So you're not just mapping trauma. You're reclaiming it."
I nodded.
Wallace hadn't spoken until now, but when he did, his voice was firm. "Then we must understand this place well. Not just so we can use it... but so we don't get swallowed by it."
Fractal reached out and touched a wall, her eyes unfocused. "The Ink's thick here. It doesn't want to hurt us, but it remembers."
"Good," I said, watching another Chimera Fly drift past, wearing my third-grade teacher's face. "Let it remember. That's the only way it becomes real. That's how the Labyrinth accepts me as its ruler."
V let out a breath through his teeth. "Well. Guess I better get started on traps then."
"Spike pits," Ten said. "With fly bait. I'm going to see how fast I can cannon myself through a street without touching the ground."
Sven was still staring around like he hadn't quite processed it all yet. "You're... really serious about this whole 'territorial labyrinth warlord' thing."
I turned to him and smiled—not cruelly, but not gently either. "You're my steward, right? Then learn the roads. Map the ruins. And if you can't handle that? Get out."
Basarioel chirped once, loudly, and bit one of the flies clean in half.
No one argued after that.
We kept walking, into the streets I burned, into the bones of my guilt, into the silence that followed me everywhere.
Because this time, the city was mine.
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