The maze pulsed.

  Your set alarm will go off in 5-4-3-2-1-beep

  The light in the chamber shifted—only slightly, just enough to make the waiting door feel more awake than before. It stood exactly where it had always stood, plain and unremarkable, which somehow made it worse.

  None of the three moved toward it.

  They lingered instead, hovering in the space between intention and delay, as if standing still long enough might convince the Maze they had forgotten about the door altogether.

  Level Two came back to them in fragments.

  The unibrows, first of all. Thick, friendly, laughing in a way that was immediately entertaining. The progressed, uncapabe of hitting a wall in a maze but still they progressed.

  Other opponents who were brutal and cruel. The monks, the reptiles, the goth Harlada.

  Blows that have ended things. the carnage of level 2 was so much greater than level 1.

  Bert shifted his weight and rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen muscles that had already decided not to cooperate. “If the unibrows made it through,” he said, nodding to himself as if this were settled logic, “then so can we.”

  Harlada snorted softly. “That’s not comforting,” she said. “That just means the Maze lets idiots through sometimes.”

  Bert frowned. “They weren’t idiots.”

  “They were lucky,” Harlada replied. She glanced at the door. “And luck doesn’t scale. I expect more broken parties from here on out. People who thought they were ready.”

  She paused. “Us included, eventually.”

  The Maze did not react.

  Leo hadn’t looked away from the door since the pulsing stopped. His eyes traced its outline again and again, like memorizing it would make what lay beyond less real.

  “This is suicide,” he said.

  Both of them turned to him.

  “Level Two nearly killed us,” Leo continued, voice tight. “And that was supposed to be manageable. That was the tutorial, wasn’t it?” He laughed once, sharply. “If that’s the warm-up, I don’t want to see the rest.”

  He took a step backward. Then another.

  “We could stay,” he said quickly. “Here. Level Two. We know it. We understand the rules. We survived it.” His breathing sped up. “We can keep surviving it. Over and over. That’s allowed, right? The Maze didn’t say we have to go on.”

  Harlada opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  Leo’s back hit the wall. He slid down until he was sitting, knees drawn up, hands pressed flat against his thighs like they might anchor him.

  “I don’t want to go through,” he said. His voice cracked on the last word. “I don’t want to find out what comes next.”

  The air felt thinner now. Leo sucked in a breath and immediately regretted it. His chest tightened, each inhale smaller than the last, as if his lungs were negotiating terms and losing.

  Bert crouched in front of him. “Leo,” he said carefully. “Look at me.”

  Leo didn’t.

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  “I can’t,” Leo whispered. “If it’s worse. If it’s worse—”

  Harlada stepped closer, arms crossed, gaze flicking between Leo and the door. “It will be worse,” she said. “That’s kind of the Maze’s whole thing.”

  Leo let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.

  The Maze hummed.

  Not threatening. Not reassuring. Simply present.

  The door remained closed.

  Waiting.

  ***

  They sat for a while.

  Long enough that the silence stopped feeling urgent and settled into something heavier. The Maze hummed at a frequency that suggested patience—not infinite patience, but more than any of them had.

  Leo’s breathing evened out, eventually. Not calm, exactly. Controlled. His hands still trembled, but they stayed in his lap now instead of clawing at his knees.

  Harlada broke the silence first.

  “Do you want to escape the Maze?” she asked.

  The question was simple. Too simple. It landed with a dull weight.

  Leo didn’t answer right away. He stared at the floor, following the faint lines in the stone until they blurred together.

  “Yes,” he said at last.

  Bert shifted. “Do you think that can happen,” he asked, “if you stay here?”

  Leo looked up at him.

  For a moment, it seemed like he might argue. That he might try to build a version of the Maze where staying was safety and repetition was survival.

  Instead, he shook his head.

  “No.”

  The Maze pulsed, once.

  Harlada nodded, as if that settled something internal. “Then we go through,” she said. “Carefully. The first few runs, we observe. No heroics. No pushing forward just because the door is open.”

  Bert grunted. “I can barricade it,” he said. “The door, I mean. Once we’re through. We don’t rush. We don’t let the Maze rush us.”

  Leo watched them. The two of them already planning, already adapting, already assuming he would be there.

  He pushed himself up from the wall. Slowly. Like standing was a negotiation with gravity he wasn’t sure he’d win.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was quiet, steadier than before. “For… that.”

  Harlada shrugged. “You panicked.”

  Bert nodded. “It happens.”

  Leo managed a thin smile.

  He stepped toward the door.

  Up close, it was still nothing special. No markings. No warning. No promise of anything on the other side.

  Leo placed his hand on it.

  The Maze did not speak.

  The door opened.

  ***

  “Wait.”

  Bert held up a hand just before anyone could set foot on the stairs.

  Leo stopped mid-step and looked back, a smile tugging at his mouth. “What?” he said. “You’re panicking too?”

  His smile faded far too quickly.

  “Well, no,” Bert said, glancing around the chamber. “I need to pee.”

  Harlada frowned. “Well. Yes. Me too.”

  Leo blinked. Then smiled again—this time sincerely. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “I think this is the first time.”

  “We haven’t found a bathroom yet,” Bert said. “And I can’t reasonably expect a lady like Harlada to pee in the bushes.”

  “That is a point,” Harlada said.

  She scanned the chamber, then paused. Then she laughed.

  “This is insane,” she said, “but it will probably work.”

  Leo looked at Bert. Bert raised his shoulders.

  Harlada cleared her throat and addressed the air. “Maze,” she said. “Where is the bathroom?”

  The Maze pulsed.

  three doors appeared in the wall.

  One bore the image of a knight.

  The second, a mage.

  The third was a small door with a gnome on it.

  Bert squinted at them. “Wait,” he said. “Which one am I supposed to take?”

  The Maze pulsed again.

  Due to previous complaints, bathrooms are now gender- and race-neutral.

  ...Except the smaller one that is gnomes only…They insisted.

  Harlada nodded. “What a modern Maze.”

  She opened the door with the mage and went inside.

  The other two headed for the knight door—Leo because he had no interest in earning Harlada’s wrath, and Bert because he wanted to see whether the toilets followed a knightly theme.

  The Maze hummed.

  Patiently.