Page 126 of The Amber Sunburst

Which means it leads nowhere. Which means this whole stupid journey was for nothing.

But why would someone build this amazing thing if it isn’t meant for more than sitting alone in the sea?

Or, perhaps, not totally alone. Short columns stretch in either direction under the sea. They look exactly like the ones surrounding the Republic—the ones that Alexander claims hid the city from view until he stepped through them.

She sizes up the glass in front of her, then the columns one more time, then charges right through before she can lose her nerve.

She expects to get a concussion from banging into the glass like a betta fish, but instead a static shock whispers through her body and she falls into a dark marble hallway.

Whoa.

She pushes herself off the floor and looks around. Fresco and mosaic cover the walls and the occasional window reveals dark blue water.

It’s a stunning place, but there’s something distinctly… off about it. Something that simultaneously makes her want to stay forever and also hit her head against the wall until she dies so she doesn’t have to spend one more second here.

But she can’t let it get to her. She needs to focus on what she’s here for: finding the room where the Trials are planned.

It’ll be tough to locate, she’s sure, but somewhere in this mysterious underwater complex there must be plans and maps and things. She’s about to take off searching when she notices a door just down the hall. Was that there before?

There’s a plaque on it, shimmering in gold, that reads ‘Trials.’

Satisfaction rushes through her before it’s replaced by suspicion.

Too easy, a voice in her head screams.

But maybe she’s reading into it. Why not just let things be easy for once? The Forms could be watching over her, granting her luck to stumble right upon the exact thing that she needs.

“Alright, Ophelia,” she mumbles to herself, reaching for the handle, “moment of truth.”

She’s prepared to knock out some Priestesses with the fighting training that Zeno and Eudoxia have been giving her, but instead she enters an empty room. A worktable sits in the center with a few organized papers on it, but the rest of the room is cloaked in a strange stillness. She slowly approaches the table.

The Labyrinth of Theseus, Trial III/III, reads the top paper.

Below it is a map outlining a maze with forty-seven small circles in the center—probably representing the remaining participants of the Trials. The key on the side tells her what the other symbols spread around the maze stand for: ‘Booby Traps,’ ‘Advantages,’ and the ever-ominous ‘Other.’

There are also two red lines on opposite walls of the labyrinth that aren’t labeled on the key, but have an emergency symbol next to them. A small room attached to another wall of the maze is labeled ‘KO zone’ and has the same marking inside. She can only assume they’re the exits Bios talked about.

She kind of wants to scribble some critiques down for the Priestesses. It’s nonsensical to have a ‘labyrinth’ where getting out or reaching a checkpoint isn’t your goal. As designed, the challenge is an aimless battleground with lots of turns more than anything else.

But no one cares about her awesome, correct opinions, so she just rolls her eyes and commits the map to memory. It only takes her a glance or two. She’s always been abnormally good at memorizing.

When she knows she has it down, she sifts through the other papers.

One details the exact process for triggering the emergency exits, so she gives it a focused read too. Another just says ‘Weapons,’ accompanied by hundreds of images of guns, swords, and knives, most crossed out. The last is…

Goosebumps prickle up her arms, and her spine goes ramrod straight.

Ophelia, it reads, do come outside, would you?

Oh, Forms. Oh no.

She knew it was too easy.

She doesn’t go to the trouble of reorganizing the papers the way she found them. Instead, she forces herself to approach the dark wood door a few steps away. It’s an out-of-body experience, reaching for the handle.

When she opens the door, the room she enters is not the hallway she came from. Instead she’s faced with a circular room under a low, domed ceiling covered entirely in shimmering mosaics of blue and gold and pink and silver. There’s no source of light in the room, but everything is gleaming like the sun when it dances on waves.

Is this magic? she thinks.