Elias heard it before he saw it

  A sound too soft to be a knock and too dry to be the wind. A delicate shff, like dry paper brushing across the floor. It should have meant nothing. He told himself that as he looked up from his sketchbook, pencil hovering in the air. Probably the mail. A flyer. Something ordinary.

  But something in his chest had already begun to tighten

  He sat frozen for a moment. The pencil still poised above the unfinished lines of a crumpled cathedral he had been trying to draw for weeks. His other hand lay on the table, pressed flat like he needed to hold himself steady

  The sound had come from the front door

  It had not been loud. But it had weight

  Elias stood, moving slowly. Every step across the wooden floor sounded louder than it should. The clock above the kitchen counter had stopped ticking. Had it always been this quiet in the house. The silence felt thick, like the air was full of invisible dust. Something in the stillness pressed inward

  At the door, he paused

  No footsteps had followed the sound. No fading echo. Just that one small noise. The kind that does not want to be heard again

  He opened the door

  The street outside was washed in late afternoon light. The kind that leans too hard into orange and makes the shadows stretch too long. The air was still. No wind. No birds. The trees along the narrow lane stood perfectly still, like they were watching

  Elias looked down

  A single envelope lay on the welcome mat

  Red

  No name. No stamp. No sign of delivery. Just a black wax seal, pressed with a symbol he did not recognize. Something circular. Possibly letters, but blurred into tight curves

  He crouched slowly

  The envelope was old fashioned. Thick, textured paper. Not the kind used in modern mail. The red was not festive. Not warm. It was the deep red of drying blood on cloth, faded around the edges like it had been waiting a long time

  He reached out, but his hand stopped in midair

  His fingers trembled

  A flicker of memory passed through him. It was gone before he could grasp it. The envelope did not just belong here. It belonged to him. Not in the usual sense. In the way something does in a dream. You just know, even if you cannot explain why

  He picked it up

  It was warm

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Not from the sun. Not from the porch. The paper was warm like skin. Like it had been held too long. The warmth pulsed faintly once, then cooled

  Elias closed the door and stepped back into the hallway. The click behind him echoed too loud. The envelope remained in his hand like it had always been there

  He turned it over and cracked the wax. The paper opened easily

  Too easily

  Inside were two pages

  The first was a single sentence written in shaky, uneven handwriting that bled slightly at the edges of the letters

  Welcome to Day One. The trial begins at dusk

  He stared at it until the words stopped making sense

  No name. No signature. No instructions. No hint

  His fingers curled around the second page. A map

  Circular

  Thirteen rooms, each marked with a number. Arrows connected them in a loop. The drawing was rough, hand drawn. The rooms looked like cells. Or cages

  In the center of the map was a blank space. Across it, scratched in the same ink as before, were two words

  DO NOT ENTER

  His breath caught

  He turned both pages over. Nothing else. No joke. No explanation. Just silence

  The house around him suddenly felt colder

  He walked to the kitchen and turned on the faucet. Nothing came out. No sputter. No pressure. Just stillness. He checked his phone. No signal. Not even a battery icon. Just black

  The stillness had not broken

  It had deepened

  He pressed his forehead to the window and stared out. The street looked the same. But the shadows seemed longer. The clouds hung lower. The silence was deeper still

  It did not feel like the quiet of being alone

  It felt like the quiet after something terrible

  He stepped back. His foot brushed a book lying on the floor. The scraping sound made him jump. Too sharp. Too real. Like it did not belong in this version of his house

  The map trembled in his hand

  Day One

  Dusk

  Trial

  Elias looked around the room again. It felt unfamiliar. Like it belonged to a copy of him. One that had not opened the envelope. One that still believed in the outside world

  His hands itched. Not from fear, but from expectation. Like something long buried was opening one eye

  The clock on the wall had stopped. He checked his wristwatch

  The second hand spun backward

  He stood still

  Then he went to his room, put on his coat, and took nothing else

  He did not know why

  But he did not think he would be coming back

  The road past his street had changed

  At first glance it looked normal. The rows of houses. The trees. But when he reached the end of the block, the world simply stopped

  The pavement ended in a perfect line

  Beyond that line was not dirt or mist

  It was black

  Pure black. Silent. Like the edge of the world. Like everything beyond had been erased

  Twelve people stood near the edge

  They were spaced apart like a jury. Or like they did not want to stand too close. Each of them stood alone. Watching. Waiting

  Elias recognized none of them. Yet something deep in him said he had seen them all before

  One girl, tall and around sixteen, had her arms crossed tight over her chest. Her eyes moved constantly, counting something unseen. A middle aged man stared into the void. His hands were clasped behind him. His jaw was locked

  A younger boy held a stuffed bear with one eye missing. He whispered something to it under his breath

  No one spoke

  Then something rose

  At first it seemed like the ground folded

  Stone groaned

  Then the black road cracked open without a sound. Iron bars rose from underneath. One. Then two. Then thirteen

  A gate

  Tall. Narrow. Black metal that did not reflect the sky. Thirteen rusted locks. But as the last bar clicked into place, the entire gate swung inward without resistance

  Beyond the gate stood a door

  White. Seamless. No handle

  A voice filled Elias from the inside

  Not a sound. Not a whisper in his ear. A voice within him, speaking as if reading from something old and final

  The Labyrinth begins. One room each day. One chance to remember. One chance to redeem. One chance to vanish

  Then silence

  No one moved

  The man with the hard face stepped forward and walked through the gate

  The others followed. One by one. Quiet. Careful

  When it was Elias turn, he paused. The threshold radiated heat. Or maybe memory

  He looked back once

  Not for safety

  For confirmation

  That nothing remained behind

  That the world he had come from was already gone

  He stepped through

  The hallway smelled like paper and old damp

  The wallpaper had once been gold, now faded and curled with rot. Portraits hung crooked on the walls. Faces scratched out. Eyes gone. One frame had shattered. Glass lay on the floor like a trail of broken teeth

  There was light but no source. And it flickered

  A red clock ticked backward at the end of the corridor

  The boy with the bear whispered

  There is only supposed to be twelve

  No one answered

  Elias breathed shallow. A pressure pulled at his chest. Like a memory trying to rise

  The far door opened slowly

  The room beyond was his bedroom

  But reversed

  Every detail was flipped. The dresser on the wrong side. The window facing the wrong way. The stains on the floor mirrored. All of it perfect

  And all of it wrong

  On the bed sat another red envelope

  He picked it up

  No seal this time. No name

  But when he held it under the flickering light, faint letters shimmered in the grain of the paper

  You knew this would happen. You made this

  His hands tightened

  Outside the window, the sky pulsed

  Something behind the wall exhaled

  And in the center of the Labyrinth, something opened its eyes