Page 87 of Quarter Labyrinth

“We did the best we could.”

And yet, I couldn’t get Gunnar’s singing out of my head.

“Do you regret coming?” Clark asked.

“I don’t know. I regret things that have happened. I’ll forever wonder what I could have done to make things go differently. But I’m more determined to win now so it all had a purpose.” Aiden and Gunnar’s deaths would be a fuel within me that drove me to finish as well as I could. Even Charlotte whobecame a wolf, Barrett who surrendered, and Ivar whose quiet strength never wavered as he died—I’d keep memory of them all. I’d be thinking of them as I fought all the more for the future we envisioned. I glanced at Clark. “Do you think we should have stayed on Haven?”

“No,” Clark said with more certainty than I felt. “At least, I shouldn’t have. You were right. I needed to leave the island. If I would have stayed, I’d never become anything.”

“You were always something.”

“And yet, you only kiss me now.”

I had no answer for that. He didn’t press for a reason. He slid into the hiding place he’d made, and tucked his pack beside him.

“We’ll keep our head down from here on out and count on Delilah’s protection to get us to the end. No loud noises. No fighting. Just quietly get through as fast as we can.”

“Don’t have to convince me,” I said as I buried myself into my own prickly cove. The soil was cold under my arms and the hedges were sharp at my back, but I’d be hidden from other’s sight. I could hardly even see Clark, and I knew exactly where to look. As others ran by, they’d never find us.

“We need to move faster too,” Clark said. “The air grows cold. Autumn is almost over.”

“We will move quickly and quietly,” I promised.

“And Ren? When we get out, let’s hold a funeral for those we lost.”

Right now, I just hoped that we were both there—alive—to hold that funeral, and not saying goodbye to one or the other.

Long ago, Lawson dwelledon an island too small, too fragile to weather the vast and hungry sea.

The tides grew restless, clawing at the land, pulling it piece by piece into the deep.

Desperation drove him to gather a band of men. They ventured into the labyrinth—a twisting maw of shadow and stone—seeking the prize: a ship blessed never to sink.

Lawson dreamed of salvation.

If they tethered the ship to their crumbling home, perhaps the magic might hold, anchoring their island against the sea’s wrath.

And it might have worked.

But greed is a poison that festers in the hearts of men. The others, blind to loyalty, craved the ship for themselves. They sought to flee, to leave the island to its fate. Brother turned against brother, blades clashed in the dark,

And in the end, Lawson fell, betrayed by those he’d led.

The survivors, drunk on their hollow victory, scattered through the labyrinth’s endless halls. One by one, they died in the labyrinth. The ship was lost to them, and their island sank beneath the waves.

Doomed by the greed of those who might have saved it.

As Lawson lay dying, he called out to Dimitri for mercy.

And mercy came.

Dimitri made Lawson a Stone God, a keeper of the labyrinth, charged with guiding selfless souls to their prize. Yet grief runs deep, and Lawson’s heart turned cold. He grew weary of mortal folly, their endless grasping and loss.

Now, every four years, when the labyrinth opens its gates, Lawson hides among the stones,

A ghost in the maze he was meant to guard.

It is said he still lingers, but it is just as likely you’ll never see him.

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