Chapter 1: Ultra Violet Shadows

 

"They didn't deserve that. Why did they have to go?" Aria asked. A family banished to the Labyrinth for stealing rations. Her father with a heavy sighed, "Let it go Aria."
"NO." She shouted. Standing and jumping on her chair. She was always rebellious but not this rebellious.
With a sharp glare her mother darted at her, Aria sat back down.
"This isn't fair." she grumbled. Crossing her arms. Her mother wiping her hands on a towel walked over.
"Aria...." She spoke softly, almost whispered. Sitting next to her. "I understand he was your friend, but he couldn't have stayed here. ..He has to be with his family. "
"But they wanted him to stay! I heard them!" Aria shouted once more.
"That's enough!" her dad intervened. "Whats done is done. You can't go into the Labyrinth anyway. They probably reached the middle stage if their smart. Besides they have Mira."
"Lets go to bed honey its late, please." Her mother says, gently taking Aria's hand.

As she looked through the windows she glances at the Labyrinth. Glowing and humming, as if it was breathing. She can her it changing, shifting, through the night. Her parents can't hear it but she can. Over her mothers shoulder she looks back with determined eyes.

The labyrinth’s walls glistened with dampness, their surfaces crawling with faint glyphs that flickered like dying embers. The air was thick—too thick—and every breath carried the sting of iron and decay. Caelum wiped his brow with the back of his hand, glancing nervously at his family.

“Quit stopping, Caelum. We need to move,” Mira hissed, her voice sharp but barely louder than a whisper. She adjusted the strap of her battered survivor pack, her hand resting on the handle of a UV flare tucked into a side pouch. Her eyes darted across the passageways, scanning for the slightest movement in the shadows.

“I’m not stopping. I’m thinking,” Caelum shot back, though his trembling hands betrayed his bravado. He reached for his own pack, checking its contents again: a small vial of silver dust, a roll of insulated cable, and an emergency UV light barely larger than his palm. “We’re not ready for this.”

“Thinking gets you killed,” Arin said, his voice quiet and steady. He lingered a few paces behind, his UV flare held out like a fragile shield. Its faint bluish light carved the darkness into jagged, flickering shards, but it didn’t feel like enough. The shadows pressed closer, shifting just out of reach.

Mira snorted. “You sound real calm for someone who got us kicked out of the Core.”

Arin didn’t respond, but his knuckles whitened around the flare. None of them liked talking about why they were here, wandering the mid-layers of the labyrinth, where the walls shifted on a whim and the air carried whispers that didn’t belong to any of them. Everyone had their reasons—betrayals, mistakes, or just the bad luck of being born in the wrong place. But those reasons didn’t matter anymore. Out here, survival was all that counted.

A scraping sound echoed faintly from somewhere behind them. Mira froze, her hand darting to the small pouch of salt at her belt.

“Tell me you heard that,” she whispered.

“I heard it,” Caelum said, his voice shaky.

“Probably just the walls shifting,” Arin offered, though the look in his eyes said otherwise.

“Right. Shifting walls that happen to follow us,” Mira muttered, loosening the salt pouch’s drawstring. She turned to face them both, her jaw tight. “We need to find a choke point. Use the flare. Maybe the silver.”

“The silver didn’t work last time,” Caelum said, his words spilling out too quickly. “It just slowed it down.”

“Slowing it down is better than nothing,” Mira snapped. “We’re sitting ducks in an open tunnel.”

The scraping sound stopped, replaced by silence so heavy it made their ears ring. Then came another sound: a faint clicking, like nails tapping rhythmically against stone.

Mira’s fingers clenched around the pouch of salt. “Run.”

The three of them bolted, their footsteps hammering against the uneven ground as they tore through the labyrinth’s shifting halls. Glyphs flared weakly as they passed, their dim light illuminating the jagged edges of the stone. The air thickened around them, dragging at their limbs like invisible hands. Caelum stumbled but caught himself, his pack rattling with every step.

Behind them, the clicking grew louder. Closer.

“This way!” Mira shouted, veering toward a narrow side tunnel. The others followed, their breaths ragged and sharp in the confined space. The walls were tight, forcing them into single file, and the oppressive darkness seemed to press closer with every step.

Mira stopped abruptly, yanking the UV flare from her pack and igniting it. The flare hissed to life, its intense blue-white glow bathing the tunnel in sharp, unnatural light. She held it up like a talisman, her breathing uneven.

“Dead end,” she whispered, panic creeping into her voice.

“No, no, no,” Cole muttered, turning back toward the way they’d come. The tunnel entrance was shrouded in shadow, and the flare’s light barely reached it. “It can’t end here.”

“Quiet,” Arin said. He pressed his ear to the wall, his hand hovering over the vial of silver dust clipped to his belt. The silence was deafening, but beneath it, he could hear the faintest sound—the whisper of air displaced by movement.

The vampire didn’t attack immediately. It watched from the edges of the light, its golden eyes catching and reflecting the glow of the flare. It moved fluidly, almost lazily, as if savoring the hunt.

“Salt. Now!” Mira said, tossing her pouch to Caelum. He fumbled it, spilling a handful of grains onto the ground. The vampire flinched—not much, but enough to notice. A low, rumbling growl came from its throat.

“Keep it back,” Mira said, stepping forward with the flare. “We just need time.”

But time wasn’t on their side. The vampire darted forward, faster than any of them could react, and the salt did little to slow it. Mira flashed it with the flare, reflecting its white skin almost blindingly. Mira darted her eyes away but the image was forever burned into her retinas. Glowing eyes, baring fangs, white reflective skin...a soldier's uniform? This forced it to retreat momentarily, but the movement left her vulnerable. In the next instant, she was gone, her hand slipping though Caelum’s frail fingers…dragged into the shadows with a sharp cry.

“Mira!” Caelum shouted, panic overtaking him. He grabbed the emergency UV light from his pack, pressing its activation switch. The bulb flickered to life, casting a feeble beam into the tunnel. It wasn’t strong enough to repel the vampire, but it illuminated the creature’s form as it crouched, watching them with cold intent.

“Stay together!” Arin barked, holding up his own flare reaching desperately for Caelum. But the vampire didn’t attack head-on. It moved like smoke, weaving through the edges of their light. A tendril of darkness reached for Caelum, and in an instant, he was gone too, his screams echoing into the labyrinth.

Arin was alone now. The flare in his hand sputtered, its light growing weaker as the chemical reaction burned itself out. He crouched low, scattering the silver dust in a wide arc around him. The faint shimmer of the particles hung in the air like a fragile shield.

The vampire stepped forward, its movements slow and deliberate, its golden eyes fixed on him. The silver didn’t stop it, only made it pause, as if acknowledging the effort.

“You won’t take me,” Arin said, his voice cracking. He gripped the failing flare like a lifeline. The shadows seemed to close in around him, and the labyrinth whispered its familiar, cruel refrain.

You were always alone.

The flare went out.