The door closed behind them without a sound.
Not with a click, not with a seal lighting up. It simply ceased to exist, as if the passage had never been there. Marikka had the instinct to turn around, but stopped mid-gesture: there was nothing left to look at.
The corridor in front of them was long, narrow, and surprisingly... normal.
Smooth stone. Uniform light. Tidy shelves. No obvious vibration.
Cedric was the first to say it. "No. This is worse."
Aurelian nodded. "A corridor that doesn't react is a corridor that hides a function."
Marikka took a few steps forward. The mark on her wrist was silent, too silent, like a wound that stops hurting not because it heals, but because it's anesthetized.
The floor beneath her feet didn't listen.
Not like the living Athenaeum did. There wasn't that subtle response, that imperceptible rebound that said I hear you. Here everything was flat, neutral. Indifferent.
"This place doesn't recognize us," she said. "It doesn't reject us... but it doesn't welcome us either."
Cedric swallowed. "Fantastic. We are officially unwanted guests of existence."
They proceeded.
After a few meters, the corridor made a gentle curve to the left. Then another. And yet another. Always the same. Same distance between the shelves. Same lights. Same temperature.
Aurelian stopped abruptly. "No."
Cedric nearly ran into him. "What's wrong?"
Aurelian pointed to a crack in the stone, thin as a hair. "That crack was there two turns ago."
The silence grew heavier.
Marikka closed her eyes for an instant, searching for a vibration. Not a guide, not an order. Just a confirmation that they were going somewhere.
She felt nothing.
She opened her eyes. "This corridor doesn't lead anywhere."
Cedric laughed nervously. "But we are walking. So... technically..."
"It just uses up time," Aurelian interrupted him. "It's passive containment."
The corridor continued to curve, always identical to itself, like a sentence repeated without punctuation. Marikka felt a pressure slowly rising, not on her body, but behind her eyes. Not pain. Disorientation.
"It's designed to make us keep going until we stop looking for an exit," Aurelian said. "Or until someone decides to come and get us."
Cedric stopped. "Okay. No. I'm not walking in circles anymore, waiting to be collected like a package."
He stepped sideways and placed his hand on a shelf.
The shelf didn't react.
It didn't vibrate.
It offered no resistance.
Cedric squeezed his fingers. "This is not a book. It's... fake."
Marikka approached. She placed her hand on the same spot. She felt something, but it was wrong: a flat vibration, like a poorly recorded echo.
"It's a functional copy," she said. "It's not for storage. It's for taking up space."
Aurelian took a deep breath. "A corridor that doesn't lead anywhere. It only serves to hold us."
A distant noise crossed the air.
Not footsteps.
Not updates.
A settling.
The corridor trembled slightly, as if someone had placed an enormous hand on the entire structure.
Cedric whispered: "Tell me it's not the Inquisitor."
"Not yet," Aurelian replied. "This is the system signaling: they are ready."
The mark on Marikka's wrist reacted with a sudden, sharp impulse. Not a command. A keen discomfort, like a jarring note.
For the first time, it wasn't reacting to the place.
It was reacting to a wrong direction.
Marikka stopped dead. "We have to go back."
Cedric's eyes widened. "Back where? The corridor is identical!"
"It doesn't matter," she said. "This place only works if we keep going forward."
Aurelian stared at her. "If we go back, we enter an unplanned area."
"Better unplanned than planned," Cedric replied instantly.
Marikka felt the mark warm up slightly, as if approving a choice the place did not contemplate. She took a step back.
The corridor resisted.
Not physically. Conceptually. As if the very idea of going back was outside the protocol.
Marikka gritted her teeth and took another step.
The light flickered.
One of the lamps went out. Then another. Not in sequence. Randomly.
Cedric held his breath. "Oh. We offended it."
Aurelian traced a quick seal, not to open, but to mark. "Keep going."
Marikka took a third step back.
The corridor yielded.
A door didn't open. A secret passage wasn't revealed. An entire section of the wall... was no longer there. As if someone had deleted a sentence, leaving a void between two words.
Beyond, there was a staircase going down.
Steep. Ancient. Uncataloged.
The air rising from below was different. Colder. Denser. More real.
Cedric looked over the edge and swallowed. "I... I don't like that staircase."
Aurelian looked at the missing wall, then at the corridor that was already trying to close itself. "It wasn't a foreseen route. It's a discard route."
Marikka felt the vibration return, faint but clear. Not an invitation. A possibility.
"If we stay here, they will take us," she said. "If we go down... I don't know."
Cedric forced a crooked smile. "Great. I always trust options that end with 'I don't know'."
A new settling crossed the corridor. Closer.
Aurelian didn't hesitate further. "Down. Now."
They slid down the stairs just as the wall behind them tried to recompose itself. The air changed abruptly, bringing with it the smell of real stone and ancient dust.
The missing section closed above them.
The corridor that didn't lead anywhere became whole again. Perfect. Harmless.
As if it had never been broken.
Cedric was gasping. "So... to summarize: we took a wrong path, went back against the system, and now we've gone down a staircase that no one uses."
Aurelian was looking down, tense. "Yes."
Marikka placed a hand on the stone railing. The vibration was strong, irregular, alive. Not of the ordered Athenaeum.
Something older.
"And this time," she said quietly, "the place wasn't expecting us."
The staircase continued down into the shadows.
And for the first time since they had fled, Marikka had the distinct feeling that they weren't avoiding someone.
They were going where they shouldn't have.