Page 32 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

He did not speak again for a long while.

At some point, his legs began to ache in earnest for the first time since he had entered the maze. The strange healing he’d been granted earlier did not seem to apply to the exhaustion that plagued him now. His breath grew shallow, then steady again as he forced it into rhythm. Step. Turn. Breathe. Step.

The darkness deepened, and somewhere ahead, too distant to identify but loud enough to reach his ears, stone shifted with purpose. Corin tightened his grip on the blade at his side and kept moving, unaware of whether the Labyrinth was leading him toward its heart or simply watching to see how far he would go before he faltered.

Corin continued on until his foot caught on something solid and unyielding. He pitched forward with a sharp curse, barely managing to twist so he didn’t land face-first on the stone. Pain flared through his palms as he caught himself. For a moment, all he could do was breathe and steady the pounding of his heart.

His hand reached out to see what had tripped him. It brushed against something solid. Steady. Hard. Something that felt a lot like…

Bone.

He froze.

Slowly, carefully, he shifted his weight and reached out again, fingers tracing the unmistakable curve of a rib and the hollow space beneath it. His breath hitched. He curled inward despite himself, ignoring the protest in his legs, and felt along the shape sprawled across the floor at his fingertips.

At that moment, the golden veins flushed to full brightness, showing clearly what was laid in front of him.

A skeleton lay there, arranged not reverently, but as though it had simply… stopped. One arm was twisted beneath the body, the other stretched forward with fingers curled as if they had once been reaching for something out of reach.

Human. It was a dead body, the dried out remains, of a human.

Corin swallowed.

The clothing that covered the body was in tatters, torn with time, but enough remained to be recognizable under the faint light. The remnants of a cloak clung to the bones, its fabric rotted thin and brittle with age. There were scraps of leather at the body’s shoulders, a belt still looped around a waist that had disappeared. Old, yes, but unmistakably familiar.

The legs were fully outstretched as if he had attempted to relax after a long walk, but its one foot was twisted painfully to the side.

“No,” Corin whispered, dread seeping into his voice.

His fingers tentatively reached out to lift the edge of the cloak with shaking fingers, searching for the mark he knew was there. It was the same three spirals, the same pattern.

Taleon.

The name formed in his mind, heavy and horrible.

This was Taleon’s body.

His long dead body.

Corin rocked back on his heels, dizziness washing over him. His thoughts scrambled, grasping for logic, for some explanation that did not make his chest feel as though it were caving inward.

He had spoken to the man. Walked beside him. Watched him laugh. Followed him through the Labyrinth.

Hadn’t he?

Yes, the man was over a century old, but time moved differently in the maze. Clearly. Ariadne had been alive for… centuries, he supposed, and she hardly looked like she had aged at all.

Corin’s gaze dropped to the skull. The jaw hung open slightly, teeth worn and uneven. The empty sockets where Taleon’s eyes used to be stared sightlessly toward the ceiling that Corin could not see.

“You were…” his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again, softer. “You were there. Here. I know you were.”

Understanding crept in slowly, like cold seeping into his bones.

Taleon had never been alive when Corin had met him. Not truly.

He had met his psyche.

Not a shade driven mad with hunger, not a vengeful spirit bound by fury, but something quieter. Lingering. Directing his kin. A fragment of will and memory that had refused to dissolve fully into the underworld.