He woke choking on copper.


    Blood.


    Not his.


    Sticky. Clotted. Caked under his nails like he''d tried to dig out his own goddamn memories.


    Stone floor. Cold. Slick. Wrong.


    It pulsed beneath him.


    Not like a place. Like a thing.


    Like a beast too big to see.


    His head throbbed like someone had hammered rusted nails into his fucking skull. Every thought was barbed wire. Every breath tasted like smoke and iron.


    No sky.


    No light.


    Just black walls and the smell of rot-fucked history.


    He moved. Legs screaming. Hands trembling. Not from fear — no — from knowing.


    This wasn’t the first time he’d bled here.


    And the Labyrinth?


    It knew him.


    A voice hit his spine like a sledgehammer.


    “You fucking forgot him.”


    He spun. Nothing. Just stone and silence and that goddamn voice echoing inside his ribcage like a second heartbeat.


    “You dropped your son like a sack of meat from the sky.”


    His breath shattered.


    Icarus.


    Wings melting. Screaming. Skin peeling off mid-flight.


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    And he watched.


    HE FUCKING WATCHED.


    He staggered down a hallway that curled like intestines, the walls twitching around him like muscle. Breathing. Mocking.


    The voice came again.


    “You built this maze to keep monsters out.”


    “Turns out you were the monster.”


    He slammed a fist into the wall. Bone cracked. Blood sprayed.


    The wall bled with him.


    It laughed.


    High. Unholy. Like something that used to be human but got fucked by time and memory until it forgot how to scream properly.


    <hr>


    He walked.


    Because what else was there?


    Death? He’d died already — when the King took his son, when the wax dripped, when the sky swallowed wings and left nothing but a splatter on the stones.


    He passed a mirror.


    It didn’t show his face.


    It showed his sins.


    Him hammering chains onto a boy.


    Him carving sigils into flesh.


    Him handing the King the blueprints and saying, “Lock me in.”


    He vomited.


    Black. Chunky. Full of teeth.


    His. Or someone else''s.


    Didn''t matter.


    He kept moving.


    <hr>


    Then — a door.


    Not stone.


    Meat.


    Veined and twitching like it hated being alive.


    He pushed it open.


    The room was a womb turned inside out.


    Walls dripping. Hooks dangling. Chains screaming in tongues he half-recognized.


    And in the center — a throne.


    Occupied.


    The thing sitting there looked like a skinless fuck-you from fate.


    Eyes glowing. No mouth. Just scars and hatred.


    Carved into its chest:


    “YOU MADE ME.”


    He stepped back.


    “You carved your son wings and handed him to the sun.”


    “You chiseled this maze and called it redemption.”


    “You don’t get to forget, you piece of shit.”


    The thing moved.


    It moved like memory — fast, jagged, unavoidable.


    And when it spoke, it didn’t use a voice. It burned the words into his fucking soul:


    “I AM WHAT YOU LEFT TO ROT.”


    And that was it.


    The scream finally came.


    Not from fear.


    Not from guilt.


    From the realization that he deserved every inch of this fucking nightmare.


    Because he wasn’t lost in the maze.


    He was the maze.