“Labyrinth.”
If a maze’s purpose is to make intruders lose their way and prevent escape, a labyrinth instead draws them ever deeper inside.
Its design was both cunning and meticulous. The foliage walls towered at least twice a man’s height.
The twisted paths seemed intended to rob one of any sense of direction—but in truth, they lured people away from exit and deeper inward.
Whether maze or labyrinth, the goal remained exploration and exit. But if a hostile entity moved within the anomaly, the story changed.
The field team would need far more details in its report.
Friedrich hurried forward. All the while, the beast’s cries grew louder.
“Mr. Friedrich!”
“Silence. If that thing discovers our location, we’re both dead.”
“What do we do now?”
What indeed. Friedrich paused to think, then organized his response.
“First: identify the source of that sound. You needn’t fight it—just observe from as far away as possible. Gather its size, weapons, ferocity, and any distinguishing traits.”
“And then?”
“Second: exit here as swiftly as you can.”
“What about locating or identifying the phenomenal object—its source?”
“Still clueless? The phenomenal object is the heart of an anomaly. Without it, the anomaly cannot exist. Its source lies at the very center of this labyrinth—deep inside.”
“How can you know without seeing it?”
“Simple logic. Your heart is protected by ribs so it won’t be easily damaged. I applied the same reasoning here.”
“But to pierce through and see it, I’d have to go to the center—”
“Enough!”
Friedrich halted, and Raimund, staggering behind, managed to stop without colliding.
“One final reminder: people have only one life. Don’t recklessly risk it. Do your best—but only what you can handle.”
Only when Raimund, flustered, nodded did Friedrich move again. This bright-eyed youth might think his life had no value—such is the privilege of youth. But Friedrich, having observed and interfered in countless anomalies, had drawn one conclusion:
The dead do not return. Hence, reckless ventures were forbidden.
“Let’s go.”
As always, he would act only within his means and withdraw when the burden became too great.
This anomaly could be exited at any time by blocking the senses. Exiting posed no real problem. What mattered was—
—Caw, caw.
Amid the cawing of crows, a long, mournful roar cut through. More distinct than before.
Friedrich easily imagined a house-sized monster thrashing through the foliage. He sensed something had entered the labyrinth but lacked its precise location—fortunately. Yet their own situation was dire. The foliage walls were too high to observe beyond, and the cry only gave a vague hint of the creature’s position.
He didn’t want to risk observing it. But no better method presented itself. In a labyrinth, every path eventually led to the center—but he didn’t want to go deeper. Greater danger awaited there. The creature might notice anyone nearby and pursue.
Friedrich weighed possibilities, ready to order a strategic retreat, when he turned to see Raimund standing blankly, as if lost in thought.
“Snap out of it! Do you hear me?”
Erosion rate: 49%. A precarious figure. With no immunity to anomalies, Raimund was even more vulnerable. Friedrich snapped his fingers before Raimund’s eyes. Raimund blinked.
“Don’t you see it? Red thread—”
“What? Another person? That’s a hallucination—don’t trust your vision.”
“Not a person—a red thread.”
“A thread?”
Friedrich scanned the surroundings, but no thread—no loose fibers—were visible. The rising erosion must be causing hallucinations. Better to force Raimund out before he spoke more nonsense. Just then, Raimund muttered.
“Do you know Theseus? I keep hearing strange things.”
Theseus. Friedrich knew that. The hero-king of Athens in Greek myth. Though famed for his valor, his most famous tale concerned the Cretan labyrinth.
King Minos’s queen, Pasiphaë, gave birth to the monster Minotaur and imprisoned it there. To rescue Athenean tribute, Theseus volunteered to enter the labyrinth. The daughter of Minos fell for him and aided his escape not with armor or sword but with wisdom: a ball of thread so he would not lose his way.
Friedrich surveyed the scene: the monster’s cries, the starless sky, the infinite tangled paths, the red thread. Then he realized—
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“Over there! Something’s there!”
Raimund, as if possessed, began to run. Friedrich, unable to decide whether to follow, heard the beast’s cry again. Damn it. He swore and darted after Raimund through the narrow path.
“Theseus, over here! Come here!”
A woman’s shout struck Friedrich’s ears—strange, unfamiliar. The beast’s roar, running through the endless labyrinth, all felt oddly déjà vu. But it must be illusion—Friedrich had warned against trusting the senses. Yet Raimund, following the thread in his hand, ran heedlessly.
“Theseus!”
His stomach churned. The soft grass had become hard dirt and dust. How many had come here before him? Was that a bloodstain? No—don’t think on it. It’s hallucination.
“Theseus, hurry!”
Someone urged him—someone calling Raimund’s name, though he barely knew it. No—he did know it, yet denied it. A name he had tried to forget. A lure, a seductive plot, the thread woven from deceit, a monster, a blue wave ready to drown him on a foreign shore. An arrow of a goddess piercing ■■’s chest? Artificial rain in Sector 5? Abandoning sleeping ■■ and fleeing? Was it Fioni? Or someone else? Memory pointed one way: he had abandoned ■■. But ■■ was not as precious as his homeland. No, that wasn’t me. I’ve never done that. I don’t know such people! My head spun, nausea overwhelmed him. Guilt—like a snake—coiled at his heels: only the unpunished feel such sin.
He knelt and vomited again, his breakfast defiling the grass.
Beep, beep, BEEEEEP.
He tried to check his wrist display but the world blurred, splitting into doubles and triples of images.
“Open your eyes!”
Why? To see what? The bleeding heart he’d left in shambles—was he to behold it and feel guilt?
When he lifted his head, at last the end of the labyrinth lay before him.
A hidden garden at its heart—reachable by all yet reached by none.
The foliage was parched and skeletal, branches stabbing the sky like claws. No leaves remained; instead, red threads draped between branches and trunks, thousands or tens of thousands, hanging like crimson autumn. Bloodstink lingered in the air.
The thread-draped garden was morbidly eerie. Faint lights embedded in the ground had nearly extinguished, waiting for someone to arrive.
And at the center of the labyrinth:
A cocoon woven of bright red thread. What lurked inside, no one could say. For a moment Raimund envisioned the cocoon splitting open to release a being of dazzling radiance:
Wings iridescent, antennae pearlescent, slender, sharp legs clicking softly. Beautiful—how beautiful to find such a creature imprisoned thus.
His wrist display began its alarm again.
“Don’t be fooled! Don’t trust your senses! You’re seeing the phenomenal object—fire Justitia!”
Justitia? The phenomenal object? That which hides at the deepest core of an anomaly—its very source.
Raimund shook his head. His focus wavered, unable to discern real from hallucination. Someone forced something into his hand—but it was all he knew.
Then the beast, alerted to the presence at the labyrinth’s center, roared close at hand.
“Do you hear me? Can you feel it? Pull it. Just aim at that spot.”
He would shoot—what lay in his grasp. The alarm on his wrist shrieked shatteringly. Clinging to that sound, his last shred of reason urged him to reject his senses. Yet an instinctive yearning to offer himself to the sleeping form inside the cocoon—wanting to feed and be fed upon, to race forth on rainbow wings—gripped him.
Behind him, Friedrich saw a black shadow crash through the foliage. He drew his silvered pistol and took aim.
Thud, thud, thud.
The beast’s charging hooves shook the ground. Its massive horn pierced the green walls. Its hide, white as milk, sloughed like melting ice. The startled crows fell silent at its bellow.
At last revealed in full, the labyrinth’s guardian appeared: a monstrous amalgam of bovine forms melted and fused together. Its sewn-shut eyelids blocked sight, forcing it to rely on smell to detect intruders. Its muscular arms could crush anything.
A curse to those seeking escape, a blessing to the lost, a monster that must die, yet a humiliation eternal for some.
Friedrich fired warning shots skyward. Gunpowder bloomed, and the beast charged toward the muzzle flashes.
“Now!”
Friedrich vanished between the foliage. The white monster, confused, followed the scent of smoke. As leaves and twigs rattled down, Raimund, curled in agony, fought to move his trembling fingers.
At last he managed to pull the trigger—
—Click.
Nothing. No thunderous blast. Why? Why? Raimund collapsed face-first in the grass. He wanted to give himself to that thing—to be devoured, to nourish it, to feel its thin, shimmering wings flutter against his flesh. To touch, taste, bite, be torn apart. To see with his own eyes the dream slumbering inside that cocoon. Who was he? What was his name? Who had he been?
Beep—BEEP. The alarm rang again. The red number flickered: Erosion rate 79%, climbing past 80, 81, 82, 83.
He shouted at the gunfire behind him, at the beast smashing foliage, at the self fading so completely he forgot who he was. And in his ear:
“Shoot it.”
A phantom voice. Delirium. Hallucination. Thunderous headache, nausea, vertigo, despair, rage, guilt, suicidal urges, desire for escape, sorrow, hypocrisy, craving, exhaustion, impotence, loathing, tears, saliva, agony. His sole remaining weapon in the storm of madness in his skull.
The Foundation Union’s guidelines had urged him:
Your Justitia flies toward the phenomenal object. Justitia will aid its user. Do not regret your final decision. Values balanced on the scales carry no cheap or exorbitant weight. Justitia will aid its user. Only Justitia.
Between two colliding consciousnesses inside him, the victor emerged:
The Justitia clasped in Raimund’s hand. Erosion rate 87%—Justitia’s activation threshold met.
Only Justitia
Will aid the user.
A single shaft of white light pierced the labyrinth toward its buried source. The labyrinth seemed to expand, then shrink to a pinpoint—at least that’s how Raimund perceived it.
At that moment, all peripheral reality was expelled beyond the anomaly’s boundary. The distant entrance receded; rusted grates slammed shut, and a single name shone briefly before fading.