Nida ran. She didn't look back. She couldn't look back.
Her feet moved on instinct, carrying her through the winding corridors of the rat kingdom toward the promised meeting point. The place where they were supposed to rendezvous when everything was said and done. When the mission was complete. When they'd accomplished their impossible goal.
But everything they'd done had become meaningless. They weren't able to achieve their objective. They'd killed the elite guards, who guarded that mysterious door, but they haven't even seen the inside of it. They'd infiltrated the castle. They'd fought with everything they had.
And it wasn't enough.
She felt useless. Worse than useless. They'd all acted on the premise that everything would work out in the end. That their determination and skill would be enough. That hope and desperation could overcome impossible odds.
But it didn't. Nothing worked out. Nothing ever worked out for them in this fucking place.
Benny, the one who'd given them hope to continue living, was dead. The coward who'd become brave enough to even pull them out of their misery. The man who'd discovered the Sub-Space and shown them there might be a way out of this nightmare. Gone. Left behind in a pool of his own blood, dying alone in enemy territory.
Was it foolish to hope in the face of a hopeless situation? Should they have approached this whole thing more carefully? With more planning, more preparation, more caution?
Why did they even come here in the first place? What purpose did it serve?
Nothing. There was nothing. There was no good answer.
Any answer felt wrong. The questions themselves felt wrong. They were right to try, but they were also wrong to think they could succeed. In a sense, all of this was a mistake. But at the same time, it was the only decision they could have made given their circumstances.
That was the thought racing through Nida's head as she ran through the shadows of the corridor, evading every rat man she encountered. The entire castle was on high alert now. Patrols everywhere. Guards shouting orders. The search for the intruders had intensified.
She moved like a ghost, using every skill in her arsenal to remain unseen. But she was exhausted. Wounded. Running on fumes and willpower alone.
She could only keep moving forward and hope it was enough.
---
Back at the agreed meeting place, hidden in the forest near the dimensional crack, the rest of the team waited for news. Any kind of news.
The days were fast approaching the deadline. Seven days, they'd agreed. Seven days before they would retreat to the labyrinth and assume the worst.
They were still on day five. Still no word. No signal. Nothing from their comrades Nida and Benny who'd gone inside the enemy's main base.
Anxiety crept through the camp like poison. Even those who had overcome their fears weeks ago felt them resurfacing. The waiting was torture. Not knowing was worse than any physical pain.
Gustav paced near the perimeter, unable to sit still. Meredith sharpened her blade for the hundredth time, the repetitive motion the only thing keeping her sane. Ripler stared into the distance, unusually quiet. Kael sat with his weapons laid out in front of him, checking and rechecking them obsessively.
The others dealt with the tension in their own ways. But everyone felt it. The weight of impending bad news.
Then Zy, their trap expert, was alerted by movement near the perimeter. No traps had been triggered. That meant whoever was approaching was either extremely skilled or a friend who knew where the traps were placed.
"Movement," Zy called out quietly. "Northeast approach."
Senna immediately went to investigate, disappearing into the forest without a sound. The rest of the camp went on high alert. Weapons were drawn. Positions were taken. They were ready to meet whatever came next.
Minutes passed like hours.
Then they saw Senna emerge from the trees. And she wasn't alone.
Nida stumbled alongside her, barely able to walk. She looked like she'd been through hell. Blood covered her clothes and armor. Wounds covered her body, some still bleeding. Her face was pale from blood loss and exhaustion.
It could mean one of two things. Success or failure.
Senna was supporting most of Nida's weight, helping her move toward the camp. The assassin's legs were barely functional.
Gustav stepped forward immediately, his heart in his throat. "Nida, can you speak? If not, take your time."
Nida took a moment. She bit her cracked lips, drawing fresh blood. They all saw it. That small gesture told them everything before she even spoke.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
At first, they didn't expect Benny to be with her. They had separate missions, after all. They might not have met inside the castle at all. That would be fine. He would arrive later, or he was already hiding somewhere safe, waiting for his own extraction opportunity.
Until Nida's next words shattered that hope.
"He... he is dead."
The words hung in the air like a physical thing. Heavy. Suffocating.
Gustav couldn't comprehend it at first. Who was dead? The leader of the Sub-Space? Some other enemy?
He almost reached out to shake her, to demand clarification, but Meredith grabbed his arm. "Don't," she said quietly. "Not yet. Let her tell us."
"Nida," Gustav said, his voice strained. "Who is dead?"
Nida's eyes pooled with tears. For an assassin trained to suppress emotion, trained to remain cold and professional, this display meant something. It meant whoever she was crying for had mattered. Had broken through the walls she'd built around herself.
Everyone else understood immediately. It was Benny.
Yes. That was all the confirmation they needed. This whole thing was a failure. A complete and total failure.
Gustav's carefully maintained facade, the emotional control he'd buried deep within himself to remain functional as their leader, crumbled. He fell to his knees, feeling lost. There was nothing he could do. Nothing he could have done.
Benny was dead. The man who'd given them purpose. The man who'd discovered hope in a place where hope didn't exist.
Gone.
Nida felt the guilt crushing her, but she forced herself to speak. To tell them what happened. They deserved to know. From start to finish, she recounted the battle. The elite guards. The transformation. Benny's sacrifice so she could escape.
Her voice was hollow, mechanical, but she got through it. She owed them that much. She owed Benny that much.
When she finished, silence fell over the camp. No one knew what to say. What could you say in a situation like this?
Then Zy spoke up, his voice urgent. "Movement. Multiple contacts approaching from the direction Nida came from."
They were being tracked. The rat men had followed her trail. Of course they had. This was their territory. They knew every tree, every path, every hiding place.
The team wasn't given even a moment of peace to mourn.
"We're leaving," Gustav said, forcing himself to his feet. His voice was dead, emotionless, but the command was clear. "Everyone grab what you can carry. We abandon the rest. We're going back to the labyrinth. Now."
No one argued. They moved with practiced efficiency, gathering weapons and essential supplies. Everything else was left behind.
They would have to fight their way to the dimensional crack. The rat men were converging on their position. But they couldn't waste the lives they still had. Benny had died so Nida could escape. They wouldn't let that sacrifice be meaningless.
The fighting began almost immediately. Rat men emerged from the forest, weapons drawn. But the humans were desperate now. Desperate and grieving and angry.
They cut through the opposition with brutal efficiency. Every rat man that fell was payment on a debt they could never fully repay. Every enemy killed was another second bought for their escape.
Gustav fought like a man possessed. Ripler channeled his rage into devastating magic. Kael moved with cold precision, each kill mechanical and efficient. The others fought with everything they had left.
Nida could barely stand, but she still threw knives when targets presented themselves. Still contributed what little she could.
They reached the dimensional crack after what felt like hours but was probably only minutes. The portal shimmered before them, barely visible in the perpetual daylight of the Sub-Space.
"Go!" Gustav shouted. "Everyone go through it! Now!"
They dove through one by one, reality twisting around them as they crossed back into the labyrinth. Back into the darkness that had become their prison.
The last one through was Gustav. He turned back for one final look at the Sub-Space, at the battlefield they were abandoning, at the place where Benny had died.
Then he stepped through and the portal silently hummed behind him, as if nothing ever really had happened.
---
They collapsed on the other side, in the familiar darkness of the labyrinth's first floor. Eleven people instead of twelve. Reduced in numbers. Reduced back to their hopeless state.
This failed expedition had come to an end. Their attempt to strike at the heart of the rat kingdom, to find answers, to achieve the impossible, had failed.
They'd lost one of their own. Maybe the most important one. The man who'd held them together when everything was falling apart.
And they'd gained nothing. No knowledge about the dimensional crack. No assassination of the rat (queen) leader. No victory to make the loss worthwhile.
Just failure. Just grief. Just the crushing weight of knowing they'd tried and it hadn't been enough.
For a long time, no one spoke. They sat in the darkness, catching their breath, tending their wounds, processing what had happened.
Finally, Gustav broke the silence.
"We rest here for now," he said. "Then we go back to the second floor sanctuary. We regroup. We figure out what comes next."
"But, what comes next?" Meredith asked quietly. "We just lost Benny. Our numbers are down. We failed at everything we set out to do. What's left?"
Gustav didn't have an answer. For the first time since becoming their leader, he had no plan, no strategy, no words of encouragement.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I don't fucking know."
And that, more than anything else, showed how broken they'd become.
---
**VOLUME 1: THE WEAK ONE (END)**
The survivors of the failed expedition retreated into the labyrinth, carrying their grief and their wounds. Benny's death marked the end of their hope, the collapse of their plan, the failure of their desperate gamble.
But in the darkness of the labyrinth, in the depths of despair, something stirred. Not hope, exactly. But something else. Something harder. Something born from loss and rage and the refusal to let Benny's death be completely meaningless.
They would survive. They would endure. And someday, somehow, they would find a way to make this nightmare end.
Even if it killed them trying.
**To be continued in Volume 2...**