Now though, her eyes searched for ways out. Because exits always sat low - down where walls touched soil, near roots and cracks, close to the dirt that birthed them.
She walked.
Ahead of her, the passageway ran long and bare - perhaps a hundred yards, maybe shorter, possibly longer - the shape of the fortress bending distance in odd ways. Light faded while she moved forward, that strange glow without origin growing weak till seeing became guessing, feeling took over. Along the wet stone, her fingers on the left scraped slow; the right reached out, poking empty air, checking for anything solid in the thick shadow.
A crack in the wall caught her eye. Behind it, something waited.
A narrow doorway, built into the left wall, stood made of thick oak bound with iron, worn uneven by years. Its grip: a plain bar of metal. She reached for it. At first, nothing gave - then, slowly, the lever dropped under her hand, scraping like stone on stone, the noise bouncing between tight walls as the entrance opened toward her.
Down past that point sat a storage room, cramped under a ceiling too close to the ground, no windows anywhere. Wooden boxes crowded the floor alongside casks, while racks held rows of grimy bottles coated in dust. A heavy scent hung there - aged wine soaked into wet timber, slow and constant. She stepped inside, careful at first, letting her vision find its way through the blackness pooling in corners. Her fingers brushed crate tops - worn smooth by years, marked with symbols blurred beyond knowing in the weak glow - and moved to the barrels next, massive things locked shut with brittle wax seals. Along the back, glass containers stood like sentinels, colored deep green or dull brown; lifting one slightly, angling it toward any trace of brightness, she caught sight of paper stuck to the side, eaten away by time until just pieces remained - one number visible, 1763, plus letters forming either a grower's plot or someone long gone.
A wine cellar. That was it. Not a single way out. Across from her, just solid wall - no opening, no gap, nothing tucked behind the racks. Her fingers moved slow across each surface, feeling every crack, hunting for shifts in the stone. Each plank underfoot got pressed, listened to, examined for echo or give. Still empty.
Back down the hall she went, moving forward again.
---
Frustration built slowly, hour after hour. Each minute stretched longer than the last.
Down the sloping hallway, door after door appeared without pattern - each leading into a piece of the castle's long past. Inside one: old furniture piled high under cloths thick with dust - the outlines hinting at tables, chairs, dressers, glass-topped stands - left behind once homes grew tired of them. Another held blades and metal gear - crossbows leaning near swords, armor worn down by real work, not show, stained black from sweat and war instead of shiny upkeep. Further on stood pictures resting upright along walls, shoulder to shoulder in dim light, faces unseen due to shadow and tilt. Few steps between entries. Many eras stored within stone.
A hollow space - just bare stone underfoot, around, overhead, nothing breaking the surface anywhere, shaped like a box carved from emptiness. She stepped into the middle. It did not feel unused. More like it had once held something. Something taken away so completely that the lack of it now pressed against her skin.
No room here held an escape. Each stood without any window at all. Not one featured distant doors opening to open air, daylight, or even just another kind of emptiness - only unbroken rock beyond. She turned every handle only to face tight enclosures - an enclosed gap, a hollow shell, a tucked-away section deep within the fortress, shut off completely except for the narrow way in which also forced her back out again.
Each time she stepped out of those chambers, blinking into the hall's dim light, recalibrating her bearings - the hallway had shifted. Not always by much. Sometimes just a door where none stood before. Other times the walls leaned differently, tilting like tired shoulders. She would pause, breath catching slightly, as if caught mid-step on unstable ground. The space refused to stay fixed. Every exit brought a new arrangement. Her mind strained to redraw what it thought it knew. Distance stretched or collapsed without warning. Even the air felt rearranged - cooler here, warmer there. Familiarity slipped away each time. What was straight now bent. Where she remembered turns, there were none. Silence pressed heavier than before. Nothing stayed put - not even memory.
It did not happen in big ways. Nothing stood out at first glance. Small things shifted instead - the tilt of a surface changed just enough to notice, a doorway once seen on one side now faced the opposite direction, the hallway's slow dip upward when it should have gone down, almost as though the whole path twisted slowly around itself, like turning a cylinder by hand while she lingered in the storage room or weapons chamber or blank square space.
The castle was rearranging itself around her.
Something shifted - no motion she could see, yet everything felt off, tilted somehow, as if the air around her refused to stay still. Not just walls and stone like before, back when structures obeyed lines and angles without question. It breathed, this place, paying attention, matching each step she took with quiet precision. Her presence stirred it, much like how words shaped his replies - careful, aware, never random.
She found herself being guided along.
Her steps halted when the truth hit - sudden, sharp - a weight dropping through her chest. The rough wall pressed into her hands, cool and wet beneath her skin. Air caught in her throat, thin and uneven. She stood there, still, eyes shut, silence closing around her like fog.
Each hallway she walked, each doorway she stepped through, each passage that branched ahead - however careless her turns, however much she changed her pace, however far she strayed on purpose - the palace always brought her round again. Toward the core it pulled. Upward it led. To known places it returned: shelves lined with books, the wide front chamber, where melodies used to hang - the spots Jin Yeager haunted most.
Winding corridors twisted deep inside the stone fortress. Each route, no matter which way you turned, ended at the creature waiting beneath.
---
Still moving forward, she refused to stop.
Thirteen days passed before she reached the seventeenth, counting them quietly inside her head. Waking up became a habit built around discovery - not just movement, but purpose. A fresh passage might wait behind any unopened door, maybe even an overlooked flaw in stone walls. Her steps carried her farther when daylight came, not rushing, never careless. Each turn added data: rooms without names, halls ending too soon, corners forgotten twice already. The way she checked every gap reminded her of someone once strict about records - someone long gone now. Nothing felt complete until everything had been seen again. Details stacked slowly, like dust gathering where no one walks.
Fourteen days passed before she stumbled upon the room where the staff had slept.
Over by the north edge of the castle sat several modest rooms strung together down a tight hall, splitting from the main route close to where a back stairway began. A line of doors opened into spaces bare and unadorned - walls painted white over cold rock, ceilings just high enough to crouch under, slim beds topped with threadbare padding. These quarters showed signs of people staying year after year. Mattresses sagged deeply where shoulders and hips had pressed night after night. Floor stones, trodden daily, gleamed flat from endless footsteps crossing them. Shelves held what few belongings belonged to the inhabitants - an old wooden comb left tines-up, a woolen shawl neatly folded at one corner, a chipped cup made of fired earth, also a small carving in black timber whose shape could've meant devotion or perhaps memory of something earlier than faith.
Empty rooms met her steps. Yet warmth lingered there - unlike the cold stone halls behind, unlike anything else within those ancient walls. Smells arrived next: sweat soaked into blankets, wool heavy on hooks, grease from old meals left near stoves. A trace of skin long unwashed curled through the air. Not sweet. Never clean. Still, known. This odor clung to homes where breath piles up in corners, where hearts beat low beneath ceilings touched by dust and time, where life drags on despite giants sleeping nearby.
Someone else stood beside her, quiet but there. Not just Anya. Another presence filled the space without words. Just breathing, watching. There too.
From the start, inside those stone halls, Historia carried a quiet guess - someone else moved through these corridors. Candles lit themselves only so often before fingers must have struck the match. Meals did not float up on trays without arms beneath them. Garments did not arrange neatly in closets by chance. Anya, kind as she was, bent with age and slow with breath, could never handle such labor day after day. Truth settled in the mind one way, yet seeing proof - that extra pillow dented, a second cup left near the hearth, names scribbled on paper not hers - it landed harder. Warmth rose at finding others alive. Then cold followed fast, because hidden people mean secrets thick as dust under doors.
Here, others had made their home. Not ghosts or spirits, but living humans. Workers tied to the stone walls and the one who ruled them, much like Anya. The link between them and the fortress - was it duty, magic, will, or something tangled beyond naming? Historia did not have the words for it just then.
She saw them.
She did not meet them eye to eye, nothing like the daily moments she shared with Anya. Instead they slipped by, barely there, like shadows passing just beyond sight. Their presence came in glances, half-caught, never staying long enough to name. Much like animals that stay near the tree line, moving only when no one seems to watch. You had to be still to notice them at all.
A shape slipped through the hall where staff passed - dark, like a person, darting sideways with uneven steps, vanishing just as her voice caught in her throat. After it she went, yet nothing waited ahead but stillness.
A sound crept through the dark - not quite silence, more like breath shaped into speech. Two murmurs, maybe, sliding beneath her awareness in some tongue she did not know. Words tangled tight, flowing without breaks, leaving only pieces behind: a hum of vowels, a hiss, something close to someone's name. Against the cold stone, she flattened her body, chest still, ears straining. From where it came - the corner? The hall beyond? - she could not tell. Then even that faint thread unraveled, swallowed by walls, leaving nothing.
A sharp ring of china echoed from somewhere out of sight - an everyday noise, homey almost too much, one that brought a sudden burn to her eyes. Down a tight hallway she went, moving beyond a thick doorway, arriving then in what could only be a kitchen - spacious yet low, holding within it a broad stone fireplace where flames danced (flames!