The labyrinths were the reason worlds bloomed, magic persisted, and life did not end. They were the nails keeping physical and ethereal together, hammered in by the long dead and forgotten. Its countless corridors and rooms were their locking mechanism, like a vast network of tree roots digging into the very soul of a world. All you could do was live with them. And most mages were happy to.

Sidrick carried his older sister on his back. He had his mana senses tuned as high as he could manage. Unless he wanted to burn away his reservoir, labyrinth traps were best detected by the shreds of mana they gave off. He checked every inch of the walls and floor before finally setting Layla down. There were pressure plates everywhere on this layer.

Sidrick almost collapsed as he sat next to her. Every child of House Caelum was given alchemical enhancements but he still couldn’t handle hours of carrying his sister. All her muscles made her damn heavy. He’d probably get yelled at for leaving her giant enchanted hammer behind, but honestly? It was dented to hell and half broken anyway.

Sidrick was not the greatest mage. His affinities didn’t synergize, for one. Space, ice, and soul magic all sounded better than they actually were. Spatial magic involved a ridiculous amount of calculations for all but basic spells. It was, as Layla called it, scholar-type magic. Slow, frustrating, and not suited for battle.

Ice magic was fantastic… when there was water. He needed his canteen water clean, with no monster blood or other garbage in it. Sure, an incredibly powerful ice mage could freeze someone from the inside out, but Sidrick was not that. And creating ice from nothing was so inefficient, he never learned much of it past the theory.

Soul magic was, for one, extremely dangerous if you didn’t know what you were doing. And second, it was extremely illegal in most of Yenoriha. Not even his mother, a goddamn Sovereign, could find him a teacher that wasn’t wanted for immensely horrible crimes. So, as far as Sidrick was concerned, he only had two affinities.

Well, maybe that would change in their new home. Whatever it was.

Sidrick took a healing salve from his satchel and splashed it on Layla. It soaked through her clothes and into her skin, rushing to mend all it could. That would keep her alive for another few hours. She’d been poisoned by a bright blue scorpion on the last layer. The rest of their family…

Sidrick stopped himself from thinking about it.

He suddenly heard a low hum down the corridor. He tapped into his spatial affinity and cast a basic sensory spell, a sizable chunk of mana leaving his reservoir. His senses were tuned to eleven as a wave of awareness passed over the corridor. Near the end, floating in the dark, was some kind of floating… thing. It wasn’t alive—Sidrick could tell that much—and it was the size of a wagon wheel. Golems were rare in labyrinths but it did make sense here. This layer was so dense with traps, he doubted any beasts could live for more than a day or two.

Sidrick drew a knife from his satchel. Killing the golem would probably make it drop to the floor and trigger something. A trap cascade was unlikely but Sidrick really, really hated the risk. Still, better to have a cascade at the end of the corridor than fight the bastard here.

Sidrick threw the knife with alchemically enhanced strength. It whistled through the air before embedding itself deep in the golem’s center with a loud crack. It clattered to the floor a moment later.

And nothing. No traps.

Sidrick frowned. Either he was incredibly lucky, the trap released an invisible gas, or the labyrinth gave the golem a pass. Option two meant they were dead no matter what they did, but that wasn’t “fair”. The architects designed their labyrinths to never make an impossible room, probably due to some obscure magical law Sidrick was too mortal to know.

The golems probably got free passes. He briefly considered strapping golem pieces to his feet to walk over the traps, but testing if that worked could get messy.

He sighed and adjusted himself into a comfortable sitting position as he meditated. Meditating would help get back what he spent on the sensory spell, the top up something most mages would deem unnecessary. However, Sidrick had gotten into too many fights that came down to shreds of mana. Best not to take a bet here. The labyrinth was getting easier as they ascended but it was far from what Sidrick defined as manageable.

After meditating for fifteen minutes, Sidrick stood.

“Up you go,” Sidrick said as he hefted his sister up onto his back.

He heard a few clicks behind the walls.

Voice sensors, Sidrick realized as he pushed his perception spell to its limit. The labyrinth’s odd bending of spatial law made everything spin and twist. Resisting the urge to vomit, he closed his eyes and started hopping between safe spaces. The magic guided him, feeding every small detail of the corridor to his mind’s eye. His mana reservoir rapidly drained. Soon, he was at the end of the corridor.

Just as the sound trap fully activated.

Sidrick sensed spikes starting to emerge from every floor tile that wasn’t a pressure plate. He grit his teeth and pumped mana into an ice spell. His canteen burst open as the water rushed under his foot. It froze and turned into a small platform, lifting him up as it shot forward.

He narrowly avoided the spikes exploding from the floor as he turned the corner and landed in the next corridor. He swept it with his spatial sense to figure out what bullshit he was dealing with this time. His heart almost stopped when he realized it.

Sidrick had never cancelled his spells so quickly. The ice platform dissolved into water and splashed to the floor. His mana was stuffed into his reservoir, compressed, and hidden as deep down as Sidrick could manage.

The entire room was outfitted with spell sensors, Sidrick recognizing the runes along the walls. If they detected any magic above a certain level, the traps would go off. Just a bit further on the ice platform would’ve killed him.

He looked down at the puddle he was standing in. Well, no more water. Fuck.

The room was, in Layla’s terms, a punchline. They were always simple and always based on a “gotcha!” trap or monster. The spell sensors were the only type of trigger the corridor had, but for most, that was enough.

Sidrick set Layla down and started meditating. Punchlines were safe as long as you knew their trick. Layla said she had used the rooms as rest sites if the gimmick was manageable.

After half an hour, Sidrick’s reserves were back. He stared at the puddle of water and sighed. Even if he could manipulate the water and gather it, he just didn’t have…

He pulled out an empty potion vial. He had quite a few of them after splashing Layla with so much healing salve.

If his sensory spell hadn’t set off the sensors, some basic manipulation wouldn’t either. Still, he’d go slow.

Five minutes later, he had four cloudy vials of water.

Picking Layla up, Sidrick continued on.

The next corridors were easily crossed with Sidrick’s extreme caution. Six more golems had shown themselves, each one destroyed with a throwing knife. Packing extra was the right call. Still, Sidrick was worried. The golems were becoming more common.

All he could do was hope he was close to the center. Once he went up a floor, advancing would become much easier. In theory.

He rounded a corner and laid eyes on a grand hall the size of a Sovereign’s throne room. Incredible masonry decorated the entire room, a miracle of artistry. At the very end was an open book.

“Ugh. Fuck,” Sidrick muttered. A teleport pedestal. A great boon, yes, and a massive pain in the ass if you were all alone. It meant skipping a layer if you could endure a test. He looked down the corridor he came from. The fork was three corridors back, not accounting for labyrinth shifts. Sighing, he set Layla down.

Sidrick took a blue crystal from his satchel. Copper runes were woven onto its surface. Immeasurably dense and complex arrays were built into its structure, clouding the crystal. The number five shone at its center.

Sidrick took a deep breath and stabbed the crystal into the floor. The copper arrays on its surface peeled away and arranged themselves around the crystal. The Anchor was set. Now all Sidrick needed to do was win in five turns.

He took a few knives from his satchel and uncapped a vial of water. The water floated up behind his back. Layla would need another healing salve in an hour or so, he noted.

Sidrick left his satchel as he entered the grand hall. Complex spell arrays swirled in his mind’s eye as he took his time walking to the pedestal. His sensory spell swept over the hall, its cost vastly reduced now that he had time to use a proper array. Behind him, the vial’s worth of water split into three smaller orbs. He was no water mage but his ice affinity did provide a sizable overlap.

The center of the room was outfitted with a number of hidden doors, the tiles designed to fold in. Beneath them was a pit, its bottom of his spell’s range.

As he reached the pedestal, something teleported in behind him. His senses told him it was a four-armed golem, each hand holding a shining blade. It wore intricate silver armor, its helmet sitting atop a cold, expressionless face. It had a few cracks and chips from battles past.

Sidrick drew his combat knife, the other throwing knives staying at his belt. He was betting that the hidden doors would let out the smaller flying golems.

“An intruder in the throne room,” the four-armed golem said in a too-human voice.

“Destroy it, centurion,” the book said in a woman’s voice. Not a teleport book. Then what the hell was it?

Sidrick groaned. Fantastic. “Can we talk it out—”

The centurion teleported next to him, two swords already coming down.

Sidrick dodged one and blocked the other, the sword striking his knife with a resounding clang. The centurion was a bit stronger, but Sidrick could fight it if it didn’t have any tricks.

The centurion prepared another swing and teleported partway through. Sidrick felt space vibrate behind him. A split second later, the centurion appeared, his strike inches from Sidrick’s neck.

It suddenly stopped, held back by an invisible force.

Sidrick sucked in a breath as a spatial array shone in his mind’s eye. A large chunk of his reservoir went into pulling and condensing space into that single position. Spatial calculation was much easier with his sensory spell, plus the point blank range. Still horribly mana hungry, however. Better to do as much damage as he could than try for a complete win.

Sidrick whirled around and hugged the centurion. His spatial array went into overdrive. The cracks on the centurion’s stone body were flooded with space, pushing them apart and impeding the centurion's movements. It slowly aimed its swords down.

The centurion stabbed Sidrick through the back. He clenched his teeth, the adrenaline and enhancements keeping him alive. Its three other arms stabbed toward him. Sidrick froze the floating water at his back, moving it to deflect two sword strikes. He was too slow for the last one, the blade tearing through his lung.

Sidrick felt his reservoir empty as his arrays collapsed. One of the centurion’s arms fell to the ground, its sword clattering across the floor.

Vision fading, Sidrick struggled to breathe as the centurion stabbed him again. He screamed, pain tearing through him as his consciousness blinked in and out. No matter how many times it happened, he never got used to the final moments. One last breath left him as he let the Anchor scoop his soul from the ethereal.

He woke up next to his sister, the centurion having already noticed his “survival”. As it advanced, Sidrick glanced at the Anchor crystal.

The number four shone inside it.