The labyrinth had moods.

  You could feel them shift — like an office building after dark, when all the lights go dim but the hum of the HVAC keeps whispering your name.

  Right now, it was hungry after being denied for so long.

  We’d been walking long enough that even my null field started to feel thin. The air tasted metallic, and the paper walls sweated ink. I could hear voices leaking through — faint, distorted. Names, laughter, the static-buzz of something trying to remember itself.

  Then I heard Sélis.

  “Left,” they whispered. Or maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe it was a memory pretending to be them. Either way, I followed.

  The corridor narrowed until it was barely wide enough for one person. Lily muttered something about bad feng shui. Eury said nothing — the snakes in her hair were restless, tasting the air like they sensed blood.

  At the end of the hall was a single drawer. Bigger than the rest. Heavy metal, gleaming, etched with the name SéLIS in black ink so deep it looked like a wound.

  The warhammer in my hand started to shake.

  “Daniel,” Lily warned. “It’s a trap.”

  “I know,” I said. “But it’s their trap. I owe them.”

  The drawer pulsed, faintly breathing. I reached out — half expecting a shock, half expecting her to call me an idiot for even trying.

  When my fingers touched the handle, a dozen voices whispered my name. Some were angry. Some were theirs.

  And then the drawer exploded outward.

  Paper spilled into the air, but it wasn’t just paper… it was faces. Fragments. Half-Sélises, each one with a different expression: calm, afraid, laughing, furious. They fluttered around us like bats made of confessions.

  “Don’t look at them!” Lily shouted. “They’ll latch!”

  Too late.

  One of the fragments — a version of Sélis with blood on her lips and too many eyes — landed against my chest. The paper turned liquid, and for a second, they were there, flesh and breath and motion, trying to pull themself through me.

  It was like being kissed and electrocuted at the same time.

  I felt them trying to take root — but then they hit the wall that is me: the null field. It’s the part of me that says no to magic, no to anything that wants in.

  Their form shuddered, bent backward like light hitting glass — and bounced. Straight into Eury.

  The scream that followed wasn’t human.

  Eury convulsed, bandages tearing from her eyes as golden light bled through. Her hair went wild, striking at the air. When she spoke, her voice doubled — one layer her usual honey-and-venom purr, the other fast and fragmented, overlapping like a corrupted audio file.

  “I— we— I— oh, gods— Dan? Mercer?”

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  I caught Eury before she fell. Her skin was fever hot. Every muscle in her arm was flexing in a different direction.

  Lily crouched beside me, wide-eyed. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing! They tried to— Sélis jumped— and—” I gestured helplessly. “Now they’re roommates.”

  Eury’s laugh came out wrong — two pitches, slightly out of sync. “That’s… one way to put it.”

  Her head tilted, and when her eyes focused, I saw both of them looking out at me: Eury’s gold irises shot through with Sélis’ flickering eye colors.

  “Oh,” she said — or they said — “this is new.”

  They spent a long moment marveling over the wonder that was her body.

  “Well, shit.” I declared, for lack of constructive comments.

  We moved again once the shaking stopped. Mostly.

  The maze had shifted, its tone warping. Every surface now whispered in duplicate, like it couldn’t decide which version of us it was cataloguing.

  Eury/Sélis walked ahead, shoulders tense, body twitching. I couldn’t tell if she was leading or being led.

  Lily trailed behind, “You realize,” she said flatly, “we’re now traveling with a legally distinct version of schizophrenia.”

  “She can hear you,” I said.

  “They,” Eury/Sélis corrected automatically. Then they blinked. “Sorry. Force of habit. Or habits. Gods, this is exhausting.”

  A laugh bubbled out of her that was pure Sélis — sharp and chaotic. “You’ve got too many bones, Vale.”

  “And you,” Eury snapped back, “have no concept of personal space.”

  I cleared my throat. “Okay, so you two can talk to each other by taking turns with the mouth. That’s… progress?”

  “More like a migraine,” they said together.

  Memory flash…

  Elly again — faint, flickering, overlapping the paper walls.

  “You can’t save them all, Daniel.”

  “But you’ll try anyway. That’s what gets you in trouble.”

  The sound made my chest ache. Eury/Sélis went quiet. Lily muttered something under her breath that might’ve been a prayer.

  Then we turned a corner and saw the next horror show.

  The Curator had built an exhibit.

  The hallway opened into a massive atrium lined with glass cases. Inside each one floated an image — snapshots of our lives: me arguing with Greg at the office, Eury holding her aunt’s mirror, Lily laughing in the club, and Elly working on wards.

  And in the center, there was a shattered display case labeled: THE UNFILED PROJECT.

  The glass around it was cracked, leaking black ink that pooled on the floor and pulsed with faint life.

  I felt it before I saw it: The Library Director.

  It rose from the ink, tall and angular, its body made of stacked folders and metal joints that clicked as it moved. Its face was a blank, mirrored surface, reflecting us back.

  When it spoke, the voice was a harmony of typewriter clicks and whispering pens. “Unauthorized entities detected. Please return to your assigned category.”

  Eury/Sélis hissed — and the sound came out as a chord.

  “File this.”

  She struck first, faster than either of them could alone. Her movements were a blur of grace and savagery — Sélis’ agility welded to Eury’s power. The hammering rhythm of paper feet filled the air as the Director countered, trying to grab her in an endless loop of reclassification.

  Every hit she landed made the creature flicker, like it couldn’t decide what she was. Gorgon? Dopplegeist? Null-adjacent anomaly?

  The answer, apparently, was “all of the above.”

  I jumped in when it faltered, swinging The Debt Collector in a wide arc. The hammer hit home — a dull, cosmic thud that shattered the Director’s body into raining scraps of paper.

  The fragments tried to reassemble. Eury/Sélis grabbed one, snarled, and whispered something in Greek that made the pages burn.

  Silence followed. Then — a laugh. Two laughs. The hybrid, grinning, breathless.

  “Okay,” Lily said, flicking away a speck of ash as it floated past. “That was almost hot. Disturbing. But hot.”

  Eury/Sélis tilted her head. “You would know.”

  “Bite me.”

  They smiled. “Anytime.”

  We stopped to catch our breath. The Curator’s voice drifted through the walls — soft, almost fond.

  “Do you see it now, Mr. Mercer? You collect them too. Fragments. Feelings. You call it loyalty; I call it cataloguing.”

  I spat into the dust. The paper hissed where it landed.

  “Yeah? Well, I don’t keep my friends in drawers.”

  The maze groaned, shifting again, the ground folding like pages turning. Somewhere in the distance, the faint echo of Elly’s voice:

  “Almost there. Don’t stop.”

  Eury/Sélis turned toward the sound, eyes flashing twin gold and silver. “Then let’s go bring your girl home,” they said.

  Lily sighed. “Great. We’ve got a psychic GPS powered by bad decisions.”

  “Hey,” I said, hefting the hammer. “That’s our whole brand.”

  And we walked on, deeper into the labyrinth — the three of us, one of us doubled — with the Curator’s laughter trailing behind like the sound of a drawer sliding shut.