Jasira crossed her arms. “Fantastic. A soul-trapping hedge maze.”
“It’s not just thorns,” Gideon added. “It pulls memories. Feelings. If you’ve got something buried inside, it’ll find it.”
We stood silently for a moment.
“I still believe we could get there faster,” Alaric said again, with less confidence.
We all knew this was a bad idea, but no one wanted to argue anymore. The days had worn us down. Our group moved like tired ghosts now; wary, bruised, and half-afraid to hope for peace.
I hesitated at the threshold. The vines covered not only the ground; they arched above us, forming a dense tunnel. A maze made not of hedges but of bramble, ancient and unnatural. Somewhere within, I thought I heard something moving.
“Stay close,” Erindor said quietly, adjusting his grip on his blade.
I fell beside him. “You don’t think this is a terrible idea?”
He glanced at me, almost as if apologetic. “Every idea has been terrible lately.”
And so, we stepped in.
We walked single file, since the path was too narrow for anything else. The thorn walls rose high on either side, woven too tightly to see through, too jagged to force our way back. Thebrambles pulsed faintly green, and the leaves didn’t rustle like normal ones; they hissed.
The further we went, the more unsettling it felt.
The air grew thick, sticking to the back of my throat like smoke. Light filtered oddly here, bending at strange angles as if the maze itself didn’t follow the rules of the sun. Sometimes the light came from above. Sometimes it seemed to come from the ground.
A curve. Then another. The turns came too frequently, too sharply. There were no landmarks. No sky. No birdsong. Only the wet scrape of boots, the breath, and the hissing of leaves.
The thorns didn’t stay still. They shifted. Not enough to notice right away, but I felt it in my bones—the way they leaned inward, the way they seemed to breathe. Roots curled shyly away from our feet. Vines moved along the walls like veins.
The quiet around us felt both sacred and cursed. We should have only been walking for minutes, but my throat was already dry, and sweat coated my back. Time didn’t seem real here, as if something had swallowed it.
That was the moment I heard my name.
“Wynessa…”
Ifroze, a primal instinct locking me into place as my hearthammereda frantic rhythm. “Did someone say something?”
Erindor, ahead, turned his head slightly. “No one’s talking.”
I shook my head, forcing a laugh that barely escaped. “Must’ve been the wind.”
Alaric, farther ahead, muttered something, but I didn’t catch it. Another bend in the path and—
A faint, dryscrapingsound heralded the movement of the thorns. It was subtle, almost elegant. A whisper of motion that shouldn’t have been possible. The vines on either side of me twisted inward, knitting together like closing eyes. The waybehind me sealed in seconds, then the space ahead constricted too, cutting me off. Isolating me.
“Alaric?” I called, stepping forward. “Erindor? Jasira?”
Nothing.
Then, muffled: “Wyn!”
Erindor’s voice, faint through the hedge.
“I’m here! I’m—It closed! The path closed!”
“Stay right there! We’re coming to find you!”
I stepped toward the wall of thorns that had separated us and pressed a trembling hand against it. It pulsed faintly beneath my palm, like it had a heartbeat of its own.
