The warmth hit him first.
It came through the portal like a wall — dry heat on skin that hadn't felt real air in days. Jake's eyes shut against it. He stood there barefoot on something that wasn't grey stone and let the sun press against his eyelids until they turned red from the inside.
Wind. Real wind. It smelled like dust and dry grass and warm rock.
He opened his eyes.
The sky was enormous. Blue straight up to the edges, deep and unbroken, the kind of blue that existed because nothing was in the way. The sun sat low and heavy near the horizon, pouring golden light across flat open ground that stretched in every direction except one.
South. South and west, the stone began.
Pale walls rose from the earth — thirty feet, forty, taller in places — running in long unbroken lines that curved and branched and disappeared into each other. The stone caught the last of the day's light and held it. From where Jake stood the walls had no visible end. They ran until they became texture against the sky, individual corridors lost to distance. The scale was geological. It looked like a mountain range that had organized itself into right angles.
Jake stared at it. His feet were warm on hard-packed dirt, and tufts of dry grass grew between flat stones. Wind moved through the grass and made it hiss.
He crouched and put his palm flat against the ground. The dirt was warm. The stone underneath was warmer. He stayed there longer than was practical, feeling the heat soak into his hand, because the last floor he'd touched had been grey and the temperature of nothing.
Vauren stepped through behind him. A breath through the nose — slow, measured. He stood very straight, hands at his sides, and faced south.
"That," Vauren said, "is not what I was expecting."
"What were you expecting?"
A pause. "Something smaller."
Kitch came through last. His head moved — left, right, up — each correction sharp and sudden, the eyes tracking independently. One locked on the stone walls. The other swept the ground around the arrival point, taking in the settlement that had grown up in the open space.
He didn't say anything for a while. One eye tracked along the wall-line in a slow sweep while the other watched a woman carrying a bundle of dried grass across the open ground.
"How many openings do you see?" Kitch said. "In the walls."
Jake counted the gaps in the stone where corridors opened outward — dark spaces between the pale surfaces, visible from here as breaks in the wall-line. He counted five. Maybe six.
"Six?"
"Nine." Kitch's head tilted. "One of them just got wider."
Jake squinted south. The walls sat in the evening light, still and pale. "The walls moved?"
"Something did." Both amber eyes came to Jake. "I want to go look at that."
"Food first."
"Food is less interesting."
"Food is the most interesting thing that's happened to me in days." Jake stood up from his crouch. His knees popped, and the sound was satisfying in the warm air. "I'm going to eat something that isn't cold and grey and think about absolutely nothing. You can stare at walls."
Kitch's feathers shifted, his eyes narrowing — his version of a laugh. "You're going to think about it the entire time you're eating."
"Probably. But I'm going to do it while chewing."
The settlement had the look of a place that had been built in layers by people who didn't coordinate. Low structures of pale stone and stretched hide clustered around the arrival point — older ones sunken enough into the ground to look like they were growing out of it, newer ones patched with salvaged wood and unfamiliar fabric. Smoke rose from cook-fires, and the smell of roasting meat drifted across the open ground.
The natives were short, wide-shouldered, with deep brown skin and broad flat features. Jake saw the same face repeated in a dozen variations — the same heavy brow, the same wide-set dark eyes, the same thick hands. The adults moved with the unhurried rhythm of people who lived here. The children ran. Two of them chased each other between the stone buildings, bare feet slapping the hard ground, laughing.
Travelers stood out. Different bodies, different species, the look of people who'd arrived from somewhere else and hadn't decided what to do next. A group of five clustered near the edge of the settlement, packs on the ground, talking quietly. A pair sat against a low wall sharing food. A woman sat alone, knees drawn up, staring south at the stone.
Dren was already moving. He'd stepped through a few seconds before Jake and walked straight toward the settlement without stopping — the long easy stride, pack up, Hauk and Mira flanking him. They moved the way they always moved. Close, covering space, a unit.
Jake caught up to him at the edge of the settlement. "Hey."
Dren slowed. He faced Jake the way he'd faced him across the grey room floor — direct, tired, something underneath the tiredness that might have been warmth if he'd had the energy for it.
"Hey."
They stood in the open air between the portal and the first buildings. The sun was on both of them, and the warm wind moved the grass.
"We're going to ask around," Dren said. "Find out what this is."
"Same."
A pause. They both turned south toward the walls. The structure sat there — ancient, enormous, indifferent to both of them.
"Good luck in there," Jake said.
Dren nodded. He held out his hand the way he had after the final — open, simple, the gesture of someone who didn't do gestures often. Jake took it. The grip was brief. Dren turned and walked into the settlement, and Hauk raised a hand as he followed — slow, those heavy fingers spreading once — and then they were gone between the buildings.
Jake watched them go. Three people walking into a crowd. Then just a crowd.
Vauren appeared at his shoulder. "I would prefer not to stand in this field until dark."
"Yeah. Food."
The natives sold food from flat stone surfaces near the center of the settlement. Bread cooked on heated rock — dense, warm, slightly sweet. Strips of dried meat. A thick paste made from something that grew at the base of the stone walls. Jake traded the last of his barter goods from the platforms and came back with three portions of everything, balanced on a slab of flat stone that the seller had given him with an expression that said she'd be wanting it back.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
They sat on the ground near a cook-fire, the warmth of the flames layering on top of the warmth of the air. Jake bit into the bread. It was good. Dense, real, the taste of grain and heat. He ate another piece before the first one was finished.
"This is bread," he said.
"I can see that," Vauren said.
"No, I mean — this is bread. Real bread. Warm bread. This is the best bread I've ever eaten."
"It is adequate bread."
"It's incredible bread. Kitch. Tell him."
Kitch tore a strip of meat with one talon and tilted his head back to swallow it. "It's bread."
"You're both terrible." Jake ate another piece. The cook-fire cracked, and the settlement moved around them — voices, footsteps, the scrape of stone on stone, a child's shout in the distance. The sky was turning orange at the western edge, and the stone walls to the south had gone from pale gold to deep amber, the shadows between them filling with blue.
Jake ate and watched the settlement. A native man was repairing a hide covering on one of the older buildings, his thick hands working with the ease of someone who'd done this so many times the movements had stopped being decisions. Two travelers — tall, long-limbed, a species Jake didn't recognize — walked past carrying water in clay vessels. A native woman sat on a stone outside one of the sunken buildings, grinding something in a shallow bowl, not looking up.
He'd been in a room where ninety-four people died. He was eating warm bread by a fire. Both things were true at the same time and the bread didn't taste worse for it.
Kitch had been watching the group of five travelers near the settlement's edge since they sat down, one eye on his food and the other on the group. Jake had learned on link three that Kitch would say what he was seeing when he was ready to say it. Asking just made him take longer.
"They've been here a while," Kitch said, eventually.
The group of five were sitting together, packs on the ground, with the kind of stillness that didn't come from rest. One of them — short, broad-shouldered — was talking to a native man, and the native was shaking his head.
"Their clothes," Kitch said. "Faded on the front and sides. Clean on the back. They've been sitting against walls in the sun." He paused. "Their packs are nearly empty."
"You think they went in."
"I think they went in and came back out." Both eyes came to Jake. "And I think they can't figure out how to go in again."
Vauren set down his bread and studied the group for a long time.
"I want to talk to the natives first," Jake said. "The ones who live here. They've been watching people go in and come out for — how long? Generations?"
He stood up, brushed the crumbs off his legs, and walked toward the woman grinding something in the shallow bowl outside the sunken building.
She looked up when his shadow fell across her bowl. Dark eyes in a wide face, the skin around them creased deep by years. Her hands kept moving — the grinding stone turning in slow circles, pressing pale seeds into coarse powder.
"Sit if you're going to. You're in my light."
Jake sat, off to the side. The stone was warm. The seeds smelled sharp and faintly sweet.
"I'm Jake."
"Mm." She didn't offer one back. She tipped the ground seeds into a clay pot and scooped more into the bowl.
"How long have you lived here?"
"All of it." The stone turned. "You want to ask about the walls. Everybody sits down to ask about the walls. Go on, then, I'm not going anywhere."
"How do you get through?"
"You don't, mostly." She said it without any weight, the way she might tell him it was going to be cold tonight. "That lot over there went in three times." She didn't point; her chin moved a little toward the five travelers slumped by the wall. "They'll go a fourth. Then they'll stop."
"Why do they fail?"
"Because they watch the walls." The stone stopped a moment while she picked something out of the seeds and flicked it away. "It's the natural thing to do, watch where the walls are. But by the time you see one's moved, it's already moved, and now you're somewhere you didn't mean to be, and it does it again, and that's it. That's how it goes for most of them. They chase the walls around until they can't find the way back out."
"So how do you not do that?"
"You feel it before it goes." She tapped two fingers on the ground beside the bowl. "It hums first. Down low, through the ground. You won't hear it — it's not really a sound. But you'll feel it if you're paying attention and not stomping around. When you feel it, you go left. That's the whole of it. Hum, go left."
"Just left."
"Just left. Don't ask me why, I don't know why, my grandmother didn't know why. It's left." She went back to grinding. "That's what I've got. It's not much. It keeps you off the walls out here at the shallow end, where I've seen it work. Past that I couldn't tell you. I've never been in and I'm not going to be. I grind seeds."
"But people do get through. You said—"
"Some do. The door at the far side opens, so somebody's reaching it." She shrugged, one shoulder. "Whoever made this wanted a way through, or there'd be no door. It's further in than anything I know about. There's markings on the walls, deep in. People who've come back out talk about them. I've never seen them. I grind seeds and I keep my grandchildren off that wall and that's a full enough life for me."
The sun was low now, the light gone thick and orange, the shadows between the walls going blue.
She glanced past him. "Your friend there's been staring at me a while."
Jake looked back. Kitch was where he'd left him, both amber eyes fixed on the woman, unmoving. He didn't look away when Jake caught him.
"He does that."
"He can come stare closer if he wants. Or go look at the markings, if he's the looking kind — that's more his than mine." She tipped the pot again and reached for the last of the seeds. "Anyway. That's the walls. Go eat something before it's dark."
The fire had burned low by the time Jake got back. Kitch and Vauren had moved closer to the coals.
"She told you about the shifts," Kitch said.
"She told me a lot of things. Walk left when the stone hums. That's the one she swears by." Jake sat down, and the fire was warm on his face. "She also said to tell you to look at the carvings inside. Said it's more your thing than hers."
"She noticed."
"She said you have the right kind of eyes for it."
Kitch's feathers shifted, his head tilting two degrees. "I like her."
"The rule she gave me," Jake said. "Walk left when it hums. What do you make of it?"
Kitch was quiet for a moment, one eye tracking the dark shape of the stone walls against the stars. "It's a conditional. If this, then that. Which means the shifts aren't random — a random maze doesn't have rules that work." He paused. "On my world we have tide tables. Written by people who don't understand the ocean but have watched it long enough to know when the water goes out. Her rule is a tide table. One line of one."
"So the walls shift in patterns."
"Everything shifts in patterns. The question is how many layers the pattern has." One eye came back to Jake. "She's got one rule from her grandmother. That's the surface — what you can learn standing at the edge watching. The carvings are somebody who went further in and wrote down what they found. Those'll be the deeper layers."
Vauren spoke up. "Or the carvings are decoration and the one rule is all there is."
"Possibly." Kitch's head swiveled to Vauren. "But there's a door at the far end. If you build something this size and put an exit in it, you built it to be solved. Nobody puts a door on a trap."
"You are confident for someone who has not seen the carvings."
"I'm confident because the alternative is that this place can't be solved, and people walk out the far side, so it can. There's a system. I just have to read it."
Vauren considered this, his hands resting on his knees. "That is reasonable."
"I know."
The fire cracked. The settlement was quieter now — most of the travelers had settled for the night. A native man walked past carrying an armload of firewood, his shadow long in the low light. The two children from earlier were asleep on a hide blanket near one of the buildings, curled into each other.
Jake lay back on the ground. The dirt was still warm from the day, and the stars were thick overhead — denser than anything he'd seen on his world, denser than the canopy-filtered patches of sky back in the forest. His back pressed flat against the earth and his feet pointed south, toward the stone.
"The platforms had a top," Jake said. "The forest had a guardian. The grey room had the bunny. This one's different."
"Every link is different," Vauren said.
"I know. But the first three — you knew what you were trying to do. Get through the forest. Reach the top. Win the fights. This one—" He turned his head south. The walls were dark, and the corridors between them darker. "I don't know how to get through a place where the walls move."
"You don't have to know," Kitch said. "I'll figure it out."
He said it flat. The way he said most things — no bravado, no reassurance, just the statement. Kitch was a compact silhouette against the fading coals, head tucked slightly, one eye on Jake and one on the walls.
"Yeah," Jake said. "I think you will."
He closed his eyes. The wind moved through the grass, and the settlement breathed its small sounds around him — the creak of hide, a low voice, coals settling.
The stone hummed.
Low. Brief. A vibration that came up through the ground and into Jake's back and was gone before he could decide he'd imagined it.
He opened his eyes.
"Kitch."
"I felt it."
They looked at each other across the dead fire.
"Tomorrow," Jake said.
"Tomorrow."
The walls shifted in the dark. A low sound — grinding stone, deep and brief, felt more than heard. It lasted three seconds and stopped.
Jake listened to it with his whole body and went to sleep.