Some students clutched their bags tightly. Others scanned the walls with darting eyes, already searching for hidden traps. Whispers broke out around me. I felt like there was far more important things to worry about than shallow gossip, namely the giant gates in front of us.
For a long moment, no one moved. We stood pressed together, staring at the giant labyrinth. The walls loomed high above, blotting out the sky.
Then a voice crackled to life overhead.
"Your first examination begins now. Ahead of you is the Labyrinth. Reach the end, and you will continue. Fail, and you will not be admitted."
A pause.
"The rules are simple. Far simpler than anything will be later on. Find your way out."
And then the voice was gone.
The gates groaned open.
For a moment, nobody moved. We all hesitated, waiting for someone else to make the mistake first. Then one boy surged forward. Tall and with a confident look on his face, he broke out running. Another group followed quickly, clinging together, whispering plans. Then more students began to enter different parts of the maze, until the silence of the courtyard was broken by the scrambling of footsteps.
I was impressed. How did they become a group so fast? I suppose they could've just met up with the people they met on the bus, but I still couldn't help but envy them.
So it begins, I thought. This was not going to be easy whatsoever.
The walls weren't blank. Murals stretched across the stone, men with spears angled differently each time. Some students crowded around them, arguing amongst themselves.
"The spear's pointing right. That's the way," one student said, voice shaking.
"Fucking idiot, it's not going to be that easy," another shot back.
Whilst others where bickering, I noticed a faint breeze across my cheek. It was cold. A draft suggested an exit. Or bait. Another group noticed it too. They moved toward the breeze, whispering to each other.
This was useful. They could take the risk first, reveal whether the path was safe. If they survived, I'd know. If they didn't, I'd know that too.
That's when I noticed scratches on the walls. Hard to see, repeating in groups. They had to mean something. Another variable to track.
I kept walking, keeping distance from the wind-chasers. Their voices echoed ahead, then turned into screams. Silence followed.
Gone. All of them.
I stopped, my stomach tightening. Was that fear, or relief? I couldn't tell. If the wind was the answer, they'd still be here. Either they missed something, or the draft itself was bait.
Up ahead, about twenty meters, a giant hole blocked the corridor. Two meters deep, no way around. They wouldn't have simply fallen. Not all of them. It had to be a trap floor.
"Had the group ahead of me taken a wrong turn?"
There's no way. The people who joined this aren't idiots. This way must just not work.
I decided. The air wasn't the answer.
That left me with the murals or the scratches.
As I retraced my steps, I forced myself to slow down and look harder. The murals weren't random. Every spear angled forty-five degrees further than the last. Again and again. Over and over.
The scratches puzzled me. I stared at them until my eyes ached. They came in batches, long ones and short ones, no pattern I could follow. Every time I thought I'd spotted a sequence, the next wall broke it. It was chaotic. Too messy. Too irregular for a normal person like me to understand.
It felt like I was just running into a wall repeatedly. Was I just too stupid to figure it out? Or wasting more time, like with the air vents?
Hours slipped away.
Eventually, I found myself back at the starting plaza. The crowd was thin now. Most people had already chosen a path and vanished into the maze.
I scanned the choices. At least twenty openings. Each one was essentially coin flip.
One caught my attention. A corridor stretching straight, so long I couldn't see the end. The stone floor there was worn down, trampled by dozens of feet. The obvious path.
I hesitated. Anywhere else, I would've assumed it was just an obvious ploy to eliminate the fools, but they didn't waste space, and I was running out of options.
I stepped onto it.
The farther I walked, the more the murals lined up. Spears still turning, forty-five degrees each time. However, there was a break. The sixteenth mural had no spear at all. Just a soldier with empty hands. Four full rotations. Then again. And again.
It couldn't be random. There was no way. I knew this school didn't make mistakes.
Four.
What did four mean?
My mind jumped back to the courtyard. The statues. Four Roman gods. Juniper, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo all looming over us, covered in ivy and moss. Why Roman? They could've chosen anything. Greek. Egyptian. Even statues of their founders. But they decided to use Roman.
Four. Roman.
My mind raced. Gods? No. History? There's no way they would choose something so particular.
Then it hit me.
Numerals. The Romans had numerals.
Four. IV.
IV. Ivy.
It wasn't coincidence. It was a message.
I stopped, my heart beating like crazy, breath caught somewhere between relief and dread. This had to be it. Unless I was wrong again. Unless I'd just talked myself into another dead end, or even worse, my elimination.
Still, it was something.
I turned back. This corridor lacked ivy. I assumed it was simply there to make me aware of the rule and pattern.
Eventually, I made it back to the plaza. Out of the twenty different paths, only three had ivy on them. This was good. I'd already narrowed it down to just three possibilities.
The first ivy path ended almost immediately, the vines vanishing after only a few meters. A false lead.
The third was the same.
Which left only one.
The second corridor stretched on, ivy twisting along its walls as far as I could see.
That had to be it.
I ran, never losing sight of the ivy. A couple of students spotted me and chased after me, assuming I had found the way out. Others stayed behind, held back by their own hesitation.
And then I saw it.
The exit.
I made it. I should have felt relieved or impressed with myself, but I didn't. It wasn't that I didn't want to—it was that I couldn't.
Instead, I focused on what was happening currently. I counted quickly. There were fewer people than before. At least a hundred were either eliminated or still trapped in the maze.
Whispers carried throughout the group.
"The air currents worked. We followed them straight through."
"We split up, left marks on the moss, and then reconnected at the plaza. What did you do?"
"We climbed. We could see the exit from the top."
I listened, confused. I'd thought I'd found the answer. But there were dozens of them. Mine was only one path out of many. It made sense though. I shouldn't have expected any less from them.
The men in suits encircled the courtyard, silently watching. I heard a few people murder something "about observers" I guess that's what they decided to call them.
No recognition or congratulations for our efforts. Just blank stares. I could see the others angry faces. I didn't understand them. Why did they expect recognition? Why were they so hurt?
I didn't have time to dwell on that though, because one of the men observing us started speaking. He wore a blank expression, alongside a red badge, signifying his status as one different from the rest of the observers.
"You have passed the first part of the entrance exam. Congratulations to all 180 of you."
The red-badged observer didn't explain anything else. In his place, another observer walked forward, presumably to continue explaining. To be completely honest, I didn't get why they got him to just say a couple words before leaving, but I assumed I wouldn't be getting an explanation anytime soon.
Instead, I focused my eyes on the observer who took the red-badged observer's place.
He quickly explained that we would be sleeping and spending the rest of the night out in the courtyard, and that we would be receiving individual tents so, presumably, we wouldn't freeze to death.
Looking around, I realized something.
This is typically the time when your supposed to go socialize. I probably wouldn't have earlier, but I got a bit of a wake-up call from the first exam—I'm not special here—no I never was.
Looking around at the vast amount of people around me, I noticed a few things that caught my eye. First was the insane amount of people who were already talking.
"Guess I need to step up my game" I whispered silently under my breath—no one else heard.
They likely wouldn't have cared—everyone here was focused on their own success. They may falsify their compassion, but they were only doing so to help themselves succeed. Nobody would willingly help someone weaker than them unless they were receiving something in return.
"Oh well." I muttered.
I needed to stop dwelling on the meaning of life and go make some allies.
With that thought in mind, I wandered over to a lone person standing around. They had dark brown hair and looked to be around 5'10--above average for our age.
"Yo." I said.
He glanced at me, cautious. I wonder if I was the first person he'd talked to here.
"You get through the maze the normal way?" I asked.
"Normal?" he repeated.
"Following the crowd," I said. "Wind. Murals. Whatever else."
He hesitated.
"Never mind," I added. "You don't have to say."
He frowned.
"I climbed."
I nodded, like that confirmed something I already knew.
"Oh nice" I said
he waited like he expected me to say something else.
"Is that all?" he asked.
"Yeah, I guess so. Good luck."
"You too" he replied.
With that, I left, replaying the conversation once more in my mind before letting it go.
Nothing had come of it, at least nothing useful. I didn't even learn his name.
I decided to find somewhere more comfortable to wait.