_*]:min-w-0 !gap-3.5">The hedge walls twisted and rewove themselves for the third time that morning, completely rearranging the pathways around the team. What had been a T-junction moments before was now a straight passage continuing deeper into the maze.

  "That's it," Alexander said as the grasses settled back into their new configuration. "I'm starting to see the pattern."

  For two days, they'd been venturing progressively deeper into the Grass Hedge Trials, returning to their base camp each night. The maze's constant reconfiguration had initially seemed like an insurmountable obstacle, but Alexander was nothing if not persistent.

  He'd been tracking wind patterns on a makeshift chart, correting them with the resulting maze changes. Now, kneeling in the dirt, he sketched a simple diagram for the others.

  "Look, it's not just random. Strong northerly winds cause the east-west passages to reconfigure. Westerly winds affect the north-south paths. And when the wind shifts between directions, that's when the major junctions change."

  Riva studied his diagram. "So we could actually predict when specific sections will change?"

  "Not just when, but how," Alexander replied. "The patterns repeat. Same wind, same reconfiguration."

  Valeria was already updating her mapping interface. "If I add wind data to my star-based coordinates, we can create a dynamic map that predicts configuration changes."

  Alexander nodded enthusiastically. "Exactly. Instead of fighting the changes, we use them to our advantage."

  "Like riding the currents," Riva said, catching on. "If we position ourselves in specific sections before a wind change, we could essentially let the maze carry us to where we want to go."

  As they discussed strategy, Elijah had grown quiet, his head slightly tilted as if listening to something. His eyes traced the tops of the hedge walls where the thinner grasses swayed gently.

  "Wind's changing," he said suddenly, looking northwest. "Coming from that direction now."

  Alexander checked his wind gauge. "I don't see any—" He stopped as the lightweight indicator gradually shifted, pointing exactly where Elijah had indicated. "How did you know that?"

  Elijah shrugged. "Just felt it. The sound changes first, before you can actually feel the wind."

  Minutes ter, the hedge walls began their now-familiar unwinding and reweaving process, confirming Elijah's prediction. Alexander gave his brother a curious look but said nothing.

  With their new understanding, they ventured deeper into the maze, navigating through increasingly complex sections. Rather than backtracking when they encountered dead ends, they'd sometimes wait for the next wind shift, knowing it would likely create a new path.

  In mid-afternoon, they encountered a new type of puzzle. A circur clearing held five different flowering pnts arranged in a star pattern. At the center sat a small pool of water and a simple cup.

  "Another puzzle," Alexander said, studying the setup. "But no animals this time."

  Riva examined the flowers, which were currently closed tight buds of different colors: red, blue, yellow, green, and purple.

  "The petals look like they're ready to open," she observed. "And there's water here. Maybe we need to water them?"

  Elijah took the cup, filled it from the pool, and poured water on the red flower. Immediately, the bud began to unfurl, revealing brilliant crimson petals that glowed slightly in the green-tinted light of the maze.

  "That's one," Alexander said. "But I'm guessing the order matters."

  They tried different sequences, watering each flower in turn. When they chose incorrectly, all the flowers would close again, resetting the puzzle. After several failed attempts, Valeria noticed a subtle pattern in the soil coloration around each pnt.

  "The soil's darker where water has soaked in before," she pointed out. "Like these pnts have been watered many times. And look—the pattern of darker soil goes from yellow to green to blue to purple to red."

  They followed this sequence, and as the final red flower bloomed, the wall behind it unwound, revealing a passage to a new section of the maze.

  "Nice catch," Alexander told Valeria. "Keep an eye out for simir environmental clues. Nothing in this maze is random."

  As they navigated through this new section, Alexander continued refining his wind prediction system. He noticed that certain cloud formations preceded specific wind patterns, giving them even earlier warning of upcoming changes.

  "If those ft clouds appear to the west, we can expect a southerly wind within twenty minutes," he expined, updating his notes.

  Elijah, however, seemed to need no such visual cues. Three more times that afternoon, he warned of wind changes before any observable indicators appeared. Each time, he was precisely right about both direction and timing.

  "Seriously, how are you doing that?" Alexander finally asked as they took a water break in a small circur clearing.

  Elijah looked uncomfortable with the attention. "I don't know exactly. It's like... I can hear it coming before it gets here. Like a whisper just ahead of the actual wind."

  "Whatever it is, it's working," Riva said pragmatically. "Gives us a good two-minute warning before the shift indicators even show up."

  By te afternoon, they'd navigated through several major sections of the maze using their combined strategies: Alexander's wind pattern forecasting, Valeria's star-based navigation, Riva's analysis of the hedge material properties, and Elijah's inexplicable but reliable early warnings.

  They encountered more animal herding puzzles, which Elijah continued to excel at solving, and additional flower sequences with increasingly complex patterns. Some required watering in specific rhythms, not just sequences, creating musical tones as the petals opened.

  "This isn't just a maze," Valeria observed as they solved a particurly complex flower sequence. "It's a multi-yered puzzle system. Every section tests different skills."

  "And they're getting harder the deeper we go," Riva added.

  They also occasionally glimpsed other pyers through gaps in the hedge walls—most looking frustrated and disoriented, clearly struggling with the maze's constantly changing nature.

  "They're fighting against the changes instead of using them," Alexander noted after seeing a group backtrack for the third time from the same section. "That's why they keep getting lost."

  Near the end of their exploration day, they reached a major junction point marked by an unusually tall hedge structure. Here, seven different pathways converged, each marked with a different colored archway.

  "I think this is significant," Alexander said, studying the junction. "It feels like the center of this section of the maze."

  While Valeria updated their position on her map, Elijah wandered to the edge of the junction, examining one of the archways. It was woven with purple flowers that seemed to pulse slightly.

  "There's something different about these passages," he said. "They feel... stable. Like they don't change with the wind."

  Riva ran her analyzer over the nearest archway. "He's right. The cellur structure here is different—denser, more permanent."

  "Fixed pathways in a changing maze," Alexander mused. "That's a game-changer."

  Valeria completed her map update, looking pleased. "According to my calcutions, we've made it deeper than most pyers. That group we met this morning said no one had reached the seven-arch junction yet."

  "Not bad for two days of work," Alexander said with satisfaction. "But we should head back to camp before dark."

  "Should we mark which arch we want to try tomorrow?" Riva asked.

  Alexander considered this. "Let's check them all first, just a quick look down each one."

  They spent the next twenty minutes examining each colored archway. The paths beyond each looked distinctly different: one led to what appeared to be a water feature, another to a field of tall flowering pnts, a third to a section with unusually high hedge walls.

  "I vote for the blue arch tomorrow," Riva said after they'd checked all seven. "The water feature might offer resources we can use."

  "Makes sense," Alexander agreed. "We'll start there."

  Using Valeria's now-refined navigation system, they made good time returning to the entrance, even with two major maze reconfigurations along the way. In fact, during the second shift, Alexander deliberately positioned them to take advantage of the changing pathways, essentially "riding" the reconfiguration to skip several sections.

  "That saved us at least thirty minutes," he said proudly as they emerged from a passage that hadn't existed before the shift.

  Back at their base camp near the maze entrance, they compared notes with other pyers who were returning for the night. It quickly became apparent that their team had progressed much further than most, reaching sections others hadn't even heard about.

  "Seven colored arches? No way," said one skeptical pyer until others confirmed they'd glimpsed such a junction from a distance but hadn't reached it yet.

  After dinner, the team gathered to review their progress and pn the next day's exploration. Alexander spread out Valeria's map, which now included wind prediction factors and color-coded sections based on puzzle types.

  "We've figured out the basic mechanics," he said. "Wind patterns, maze reconfigurations, animal puzzles, and flower sequences. The seven-arch junction seems to be a major milestone."

  "I'm still working on the math for the wind prediction system," Valeria admitted. "It's not perfect yet. We're missing something that would make it more precise."

  "We'll get there," Alexander assured her. "Rome wasn't built in a day."

  "Speaking of building," Riva added, "I've been analyzing samples from different sections of the maze. The hedge material gets stronger and more complex the deeper we go. The stuff around the seven-arch junction? That's not just reinforced grass—it's almost like a completely different pnt species."

  As the others discussed technical details, Elijah sat slightly apart, absently running his fingers through the meadow grass. He'd been quieter than usual since their return to camp, still processing his strange ability to sense the wind changes before they happened.

  Alexander eventually noticed his brother's withdrawal and moved to sit beside him. "Hey, you okay?"

  Elijah shrugged. "Yeah, just thinking about today. That thing with the wind..."

  "It's pretty amazing," Alexander said. "And incredibly useful."

  "I guess. It's just weird that I can't expin how I know."

  "Does it matter? It works."

  Elijah considered this. "I suppose not. Still feels strange though."

  Alexander cpped him on the shoulder. "Look at it this way—you've got something none of the other teams have. Between your wind sense, Valeria's mapping, and our collective strategy, we're moving through this maze faster than anyone else."

  This seemed to cheer Elijah up. "The animal puzzles are getting more complicated too. Tomorrow will be interesting."

  "That's the spirit," Alexander said, rising to rejoin the others. "Tomorrow—blue arch, water features, and whatever new puzzles await us."

  As night fell over the meadow, the team settled into their now-familiar camp routine. The massive hedge maze loomed in the near distance, its outlines visible in the moonlight. Somewhere deep within its ever-changing pathways y their next challenge, but for tonight, they had earned their rest—and the satisfaction of knowing they were ahead of the curve, navigating a puzzle that had stumped many others.

  Alexander's st thought before sleep was a simple realization: they were getting better at this—not just as individuals, but as a team. Each floor had forced them to adapt and grow, and Floor 3's challenges were pushing them to new levels of coordination and problem-solving. Whatever awaited them deeper in the maze, they would face it together.