Chapter 2: Veil of Compliance, Whispers of truth

 Aria lay motionless in the cold, sterile chamber, her wrists bound with metal restraints. The light was blinding, reflecting off the silvered walls, creating a suffocating glare. She could feel the buzz of machinery all around her, low and incessant, as if the room itself was alive and watching. Her breath hitched as a fine mist sprayed down from the ceiling, stinging her skin. Decontamination. A necessary precaution, they said, for someone who had survived the labyrinth.

Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears as she sat under their relentless gaze. Only their voices reached her—cold, clinical, and devoid of empathy.

A bright light beaming through her eyelids not only confused and dazed her, but also created a sharp pain. A ringing in her head.
“She doesn’t seem to be infected sire” a voice on an intercom buzzed.
“Check again” a raspy voice sharply replied. This voice was much closer, she snapped to the direction of that voice.
“In...ffec..ted? W-where am I? W-where’s Cae..l..um?” She nods back off.
“Little girl...”Looking through documents. “Aria was it? Do you know how incredibly lucky you are?”

In the aftermath of her harrowing escape from the labyrinth, Aria spent three weeks in recovery. Her body bore the marks of the labyrinth’s merciless embrace: the slash across her face permanently altered her reflection, a stark reminder of her survival. The salt-laden air had left her lungs raw, her hands bruised and scraped from the labyrinth's jagged walls. The medical teams treated her with quiet efficiency but offered no comfort, their gazes filled with veiled curiosity and fear of the labyrinth’s mysteries.

“Vitals are within parameters,” one of doctors said, his tone detached.

“No visible signs of infection or mutation,” another added, her voice carrying the weight of clinical authority. “Proceed with the rehabilitation.”

Rehabilitation. The word hit her like a blow, but she didn’t flinch.

The tests had been invasive, violating. Needles piercing her veins, machines scanning every inch of her body. And then there had been the interrogations, lasting for hours—an endless barrage of questions about the labyrinth, the glyph, and the creature. Each time she spoke the truth, they dismissed her with a cold glare. Shadow creatures didn’t exist, they told her. The only threat she had encountered were the salt-scarred outcasts, savage humans who had turned their backs on civilization.

The days that followed were a blur of forced smiles and hollow reassurances. The Core moved on without her, the people around her unaware of the ordeal she had endured. But Aria couldn’t move on. At night, her dreams were haunted by glowing eyes and shifting walls, by the creature’s snarl and the flash of the glyph’s light. During the day, she hid her shaking hands beneath the table, her chest tight with unspoken words. They grilled her relentlessly, interrogating every detail of her journey into the depths. How had she survived? What had she seen? Who had helped her? The Council’s interest wasn’t in her safety but in her knowledge. Her answers would dictate her freedom—or the lack of it.

She had screamed at them, protested the lie, but they hadn’t listened. Instead, they pushed a vial of something cold and metallic into her veins, a substance that turned her thoughts sluggish and her defiance mute.

“Repeat it back to us,” one of the councilors demanded, his voice sharp.

“It was…” Her voice faltered, her chest heaving as cold sweat dripped down her back. “It was outcasts,” she whispered, the words foreign on her tongue.

“Good. Outcasts. And what did they do?”

“They—” Her mouth moved of its own accord, the truth choking in her throat. “They… attacked me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she gasped, her head pounding.

She didn’t believe her own words. But it didn’t matter. The Council would ensure that this version of events was the only one that remained.

Once her body and mind had some sense of normalcy, the true trial began—detainment.

Eight weeks under the watchful eyes of the Core’s enforcers felt more isolating than even the labyrinth’s shadowed halls.

Her scar hadn’t fully healed. The angry red slash across her cheek caught every stray glance, a reminder of her survival that she wished she could erase. She avoided mirrors, but the reflection was everywhere: in the glass of the Core’s towering buildings, in the polished steel of the city’s infrastructure.

Still, the questions wouldn’t leave her.

Where was Caelum? What had happened to him and his family? Had the labyrinth, or worse – that thing claimed them entirely?

When she returned to her family it had been nearly 6 months. She was a completely different person. The little girl her mother knew was know scarred and emotionless...or so they thought.

Her father watched her closely, his concern growing each time he caught her staring at nothing, her eyes distant and hollow. He didn’t ask again about the Council, but she could feel his questions lingering in the space between them. And she knew that someday, somehow, she would have to find the answers he sought.

Even if it meant returning to the labyrinth. Returning to that thing.