Benji woke into noise.
Not confusion, not silence, noise. Violent, overwhelming, and immediate. Screams tore through the air from every direction, layered and jagged, some cut short mid-cry, others stretching into raw, breaking terror.
His body reacted before his mind could catch up, muscles tightening as he sucked in a sharp breath and pushed himself upright.
He didn't get a second to think. The ground beneath him was wrong, uneven, brittle. Bones. Countless bones. Skulls half-buried in grey soil, splintered ribs jutting out like broken branches, the remains of both human and something far less recognizable scattered in every direction. The air reeked of decay and something sharper beneath it.
Then the sound came.
A rapid, scraping thunder against the ground –fast, heavy, closing in. Benji turned just as it burst into view. It was massive. Nearly three meters tall at its highest point, its body arched like a grotesque mockery of a scorpion. Its chitinous shell was cracked in places, leaking dark fluid that clung to its form like oil.
One of its limbs dragged slightly, twitching with damage from a previous fight but it did not slow it much. Its tail rose high above it, segmented and barbed, the tip glistening with a viscous sheen that caught the dim light. Multiple spikes jutted along its limbs and back, each one sharp, each one carrying that same deadly promise.
And it was already charging towards him.
"No–"
He was a second too late to react. Something sharp and cold pierced his right leg, just below the knee. His whole body shuddered. The creature still loomed above him like a dark omen, carrying the stench of hopelessness and death with it.
Benji stumbled back, his injured leg nearly giving out under him as pain shot up through his body. He had not even registered the injury until that moment. There was no time to process it now. The creature closed the distance in seconds, its many legs tearing through the bone-littered ground as if it weighed nothing at all.
He could not outrun it, that much was obvious.
Military training snapped into place, not confidence, not strength, but habit. He dropped his center of gravity and scanned wildly for anything he could use. His hand closed around something solid–a long, jagged bone, thick enough to serve as a crude spear. He did not hesitate.
The creature struck first.
Its tail lashed forward with terrifying speed, the venomous spike cutting through the air where his head had been a heartbeat earlier. Benji threw himself to the side, hitting the ground hard, bones cracking beneath him as the impact jarred his already injured leg. Pain flared, but he forced himself up again, barely managing to keep his footing.
'Think. Move.'
It came again, claws snapping this time, trying to seize him. He reacted on instinct, jamming the bone forward. The sharpened edge scraped against its shell, failing to pierce fully but deflecting the attack just enough to keep him from being caught.
Too hard.
Too fast.
Too strong.
Benji's breath hitched as the realization set in. He was not like Jack. He was not like James. His arms already trembled from the strain, his movements just a fraction too slow, too heavy. The creature reared back for another strike, and faltered.
Just slightly.
One of its damaged legs buckled under its weight, its body dipping for a split second.
That was it.
That was the only opening he was going to get.
Benji lunged.
Not cleanly. Not perfectly. He pushed off his good leg and drove the bone forward with everything he had left, aiming not for strength, but for precision. The jagged tip slid between the cracks in its damaged shell, sinking deeper than before.
The creature shrieked.
A violent, piercing sound that rattled through his skull as it thrashed wildly. Its tail whipped around, catching him across the side and sending him crashing into the scattered remains behind him. The world spun, breath torn from his lungs as he hit the ground hard.
But the bone was still lodged inside it.
The creature staggered, movements growing erratic, its strength bleeding out through the wound. It tried to strike again, but its coordination failed it, its own body betraying it as it collapsed forward with a heavy, final crash.
Silence did not follow, but an unfamiliar voice inside his head did. The system Tristan had told them about.
[You have slain a Class D Shade, Venomspike Scorpion]
[Your kill count increases]
[You have received an Armor, Venomscar Carapace.]
Benji was not in the mood to listen to some system, so he lay there for a moment, staring up at the dim, endless sky, his chest rising and falling in uneven gasps. Every part of him hurt. His leg burned, his arms shook uncontrollably, and his ears still rang with the distant chorus of screams echoing across the maze.
He turned his head slowly.
The thing lay only a few meters away, motionless now, dead, and he had killed it.
Barely.
A shaky breath escaped him, something between a laugh and a choke. There was no triumph in it. No pride. Just relief,and the creeping realization of what that fight had taken out of him.
"This… is bad," he muttered weakly.
Forcing himself upright, Benji grabbed hold of another bone, this one shorter, sturdier, and used it to steady himself as he stood. His injured leg protested immediately, forcing him into a limp he could not hide.
Around him, the graveyard stretched on endlessly, merging into distant fields and towering walls that marked the boundaries of this impossible world.
Somewhere out there… Jack and James were alive.
They had to be.
Benji tightened his grip on the bone, swallowing the pain as he took his first uneven step forward into the maze.
Behind him, the corpse of the scorpion-like abomination lay still among the countless others.
Ahead of him, the screams continued.
And this time, he was walking straight toward them.
***
Benji didn't get far before the maze answered him. At first, it was subtle. The screams shifted. Not louder. Not closer. Just… different. Like a current in the air had changed direction. The cries that once scattered across the distance began to align, drifting toward a single point somewhere ahead,as if something was gathering them.
Drawing them in.
Benji slowed.
His grip tightened around the bone in his hand, knuckles whitening as his breathing steadied into something more controlled. Pain pulsed through his injured leg with every step, but he forced himself forward anyway, dragging it through the brittle ground. The graveyard thinned as he moved, bones giving way to patches of dying grass, then to uneven earth carved by countless footprints—human and otherwise.
People had passed through here.
Recently.
A flicker of hope sparked in his chest.
"Jack… James…" he muttered under his breath, voice hoarse. "Where are you?"
Then he saw it.
Beyond a low rise in the terrain, where the maze walls converged into a narrow corridor between towering stone, movement erupted. Figures, dozens of them, were running. Some stumbled, some screamed, some didn't even look back. They were all heading in the same direction, funneled between the colossal walls like prey driven into a trap.
And behind them, something followed.
Not one. Not a few.
A swarm.
Shapes poured into the corridor from multiple directions, their movements erratic but unified in purpose. The same creatures? No, different. Smaller. Faster. Too many to count at a glance. They flooded the space, cutting off escape routes, closing in with terrifying efficiency.
Benji's breath caught.
"A kill zone…shit!" he whispered.
His soldier's mind snapped into place despite the fear clawing at his chest. The walls were not just boundaries, they were tools. Whoever–or whatever designed this place understood movement. Understood fear. It herded people, forced decisions, created choke points where survival depended on seconds.
This wasn't random.
It was controlled.
A scream tore through the air as one of the fleeing figures was dragged down, vanishing beneath the mass. Others tripped over him. The corridor erupted into chaos.
Benji's first instinct was to move, to run, to do something, but his leg screamed in protest the moment he shifted his weight. Reality hit just as hard.
He would not make it in time.
And if he tried, he would die with them.
His jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. Every part of him rejected the idea of turning away. But instinct, training, and cold truth forced him to stay where he was.
Then–
A sound cut through the chaos.
Not a scream, a crack.
Sharp. Precise. Controlled.
Benji's head snapped toward it. At the edge of the corridor, just before the swarm could fully close, one of the towering walls shuddered slightly, not breaking, not collapsing, but reacting. Dozens of figures stood there, barely visible against the stone, moving with purpose. Fast, efficient,
fighting.
Not running.
Something in Benji's chest tightened. That was not panic, that was discipline.
The figures drove forward into the narrowing space, using the wall to limit the creatures' approach, striking in controlled bursts, never overextending, never hesitating. It wasn't enough to stop the swarm, not completely–but it was slowing them. Creating space, buying time.
For others.
For a moment, just a moment, the flow of the hunt broke. Benji stared, heart pounding, something unfamiliar rising through the exhaustion and fear. Hope.
"…No way," he breathed.
His grip tightened around his makeshift weapon as he shifted his weight forward again, ignoring the pain this time. If someone was still fighting, really fighting, then this was not over, not yet.
The maze was not just a graveyard, it was a battlefield. A battlefield where you fight for not for not only survival, but also freedom.
And power.
Somewhere within it, his comrades were still alive.
Benji took another step, then another, limping faster now despite the strain. This time, he was not just moving toward the screams.
He was moving away from them.