Chapter 1

Ben was bored—as always.

He sat on the edge of an ornate circular fountain, tracing the cracks in the white marble with his thick finger. Water bubbled from the flower-like spout at its center, spilling into the basin in a steady trickle. Once, he had found the sound enchanting. Now it was nothing but background noise.

He looked up at the walls—already repaired after last night’s outburst. The holes he had smashed in frustration were gone, the cracks sealed. Even the thick vines he had ripped down had returned, their tendrils creeping back across the pale stone as though nothing had happened.

It was always the same. No matter how many times he bloodied his knuckles, broke his bones, or bashed his head against the walls, there was no escape. He had been here so long he'd stopped counting the years, his hope of leaving long dead.

Ben was the guardian of this fountain—of the maze that surrounded it—set within a vast dome at the heart of the Labyrinth. He could not die, not even of boredom.

Once, this place had been designed as a test of strength and courage. One that he had conquered. He and his brothers in arms had slain the fearsome Minotaur who had guarded this fountain and then he’d drunk from its waters.

The blessing he had sought was his. Eternal life, incredible strength—he had won his hard-fought boon.

But what none of the tales warned, what no hero knew, was that this blessing came with a price.

The cost to Ben was himself. As soon as the water passed his lips a pit formed in his stomach, and he knew something was wrong. The next hours were torture, his body slowly breaking and reforming, shaping itself into something else. He lost his humanity that day, sacrificed it for great strength and an endless life—

—as the new Minotaur. Forced to remain locked here forever as guardian of this fountain.

For when someone entered the Labyrinth, the walls themselves guided them toward the dome. Led them to him. And while the thought of a companion, someone to talk to, was something he wished for daily—that wasn’t allowed.

***

The walls shift to admit the next fool seeking the fountain’s blessing—and with them, Ben’s mind slides loose. His consciousness—his very spirit, perhaps—peels away from his flesh and silently drifts above it.

Helpless, he hovers in the air, a silent specter, a prisoner within his own punishment, while the body below moves without him.

He watches as muscles tighten and flex, steam huffing from wide nostrils at the end of his brown muzzle. Hooves paw the stone, sharp and restless. Hands clench into fists. His head lowers, red dyed horns angling forward, ready to gore. Every motion unfolds without his command, every sensation absent—as if the Labyrinth itself grips the strings to his body now, guiding him like a puppet.

The wall parts, an opening yawns. This time it’s a small party: two men and a woman. All three wear leather armor. One carries a sword and shield, another a spear, while the woman lifts a staff crowned with a bound stone.

They enter and spot the fountain and advance recklessly—heedless of the danger here. They rush forward, seeking the blessing of the magical waters without so much as a glance towards the eight foot tall beast of muscle, sinew, and horn glaring at them with eyes of liquid void.

But Ben’s body knows this dance all too well. Once all three cross the chamber’s threshold, it charges. He can only watch as it hunts them, corners them, butchers them.

Its horns lead the charge, fists slamming into armor, into flesh. The adventurers fight—they struggle. A sword slices into his side, a spearhead bites deep into his thigh, the woman screams and a light flares at the end of her staff… just before Ben’s body crushes her ribcage with a quick kick from a hooved leg.

And then it’s over—quickly, as it always is.

They are no match. None ever are. Pleas for mercy echo off the cold stone and die unheard. Desperate bargains are met with brutal kicks. The shifting walls drive them here—as they have countless others—and once they crossed the threshold, once their eyes found the fountain, their fates were sealed.

When it ends, the walls scrape and reform as if a passage was never there. Ben anticipates this part, yearns for it. For each time he defends this place, he gets a moment—a brief respite from the interior, just before his spirit is once again locked behind his cursed flesh.

The ceiling of the dome seems to fade, granting him a fleeting glimpse of the world beyond—the world he once belonged to but can never return. He relishes it, though it comes with such a damnable price, and each time he dreads the inevitable pull back into his body.

From his disembodied vantage above, he sees a distant mountain crowned with storm clouds, its peak flashing with lightning. Thunder rolls through the charged air—a sound, a sensation, he dearly misses.

He turns and beholds the city of Knossos pressed against the maze’s edge. Larger now than when he last walked its streets, yet still bright, still alive. And beyond it…the Aegean Sea, glittering beneath the setting sun.

Clouds blaze in hues of orange and purple, streaked with flares of brilliant yellow light. A rare vision. But any glimpse of the world beyond this dome is a mercy. They keep him sane. Or as sane as a soul can be in an endless prison violence and death.

All too soon, the all too familiar tug comes—and he sinks back into himself.

He opens his eyes, already knowing what sights await him. The copper tang of blood hangs thick in the air.

He looks down. A lake of red pools around his hooves. The broken remains of the humans lie strewn across the slate floor—bent weapons, splintered bones, the signs of struggle carved into the stone. He watched it unfold from above, but now he must endure the aftermath.

There… in the chest of the spearman, the same two marks that almost always mark the fallen: deep, gaping holes punched clean through by his horns.

His gaze shifts to himself. His fur is matted with sticky crimson. His eyes travel upward to the sight he knows he’ll see, yet still has to look. His horns drip with fresh blood, stained a permanent red—forever marked by countless deaths upon them.

The rivulets trail down his face and into his mouth. The copper tang is all too familiar, a taste he has grown used to over endless years—yet it still twists his stomach, still makes him long to retch. He wants to vomit, but cannot. What little he digests has long since been burned away.

Almost immediately, the compulsion seizes him. He learned long ago that resistance only brings agony—spasms wracking his body, fire burning through his veins—until he yields and obeys.

So he bends, seizes the first corpse by the ankles, and drags it away.

The dome—his prison—never changes. It has the front chamber, where the fountain waits. And the chamber behind, where the pit grows the vines. That is his destination now.

He walks with the body trailing behind, leaving a crimson smear across the stone.

The pit gapes at the anterior chamber’s center, a wide hollow with thirteen steps cut into its side. Down he goes, the corpse bumping behind him, each step punctuated by a wet thud as the head strikes stone.

At the bottom, he swings the body around and hurls it onto the bare earth. It lands with a heavy thwomp against the soil.

“Two more,” he sighs, turning back and ascending the stairs once more.

When all three bodies are gathered in the pit, Ben exhales, nostrils flaring, shoulders sagging. Then he steps forward—up onto the corpses.

The dance of destruction begins.

Stomp: Crunch—crack—squash—

He fixes his gaze upward, away from the ruin beneath him, to the painted dome above. A false heaven—blue sky smeared with crude white clouds. He stares at that lie while his hooves rise and fall, grinding flesh to pulp, until the soil itself rises to claim the fragments piece by piece.

He knows he must do it. It is the only way to survive. Yet dread and sorrow hollow him with every stomp. This is the final act of the bargain, bought with a single drink from the fountain—a price he had never known. Now the Labyrinth pulls his strings. Not only when he kills, but when it forces him to stomp.

Crunch—crack—squash—

At last, the final pieces sink into the loam, lost beneath the soil. The compulsion ebbs, leaving him trembling, empty. He climbs the thirteen stairs again, shoulders sagging, chest heaving.

“More death,” he mutters. “More fools who thought they could triumph over the Minotaur. More compost for the pit.”

He knows this routine. Once, he had even looked forward to his reward. By morning, a single fruit would hang from a branch near the fountain—his only food. It had tasted sweet once, intoxicatingly so. Now it is nothing but bland, mushy flesh—the fruit of his labors.

The pit is where the vines begin, the heart of the Labyrinth. The dead feed it. Their souls feed it. And through it, they feed him.

But in his mind, the cycle is not complete until he washes.

He trudges back to the fountain, steps over the rim, and collapses into the water. Waves slap against marble, spill across the floor. It is his way of cleansing the blood still staining the slate.

He sinks beneath the surface, smothering memory, smothering guilt. For a time, he does not scrub, does not rise. He simply floats, his bull-like bulk half-buoyant, while the water’s enchantment seeps into him.

His wounds close—but that is not what he seeks. The water numbs him. It blurs memory, softens trauma, forces his thoughts into haze. It grants him the strength to endure another day.

When his lungs burn, he slowly rises back to the surface, dragging in a heavy breath. Blood clouds the basin pink, but the discoloration vanishes swiftly through the grate below, leaving the water pristine once more.

The cycle is complete.

At least until the walls shift again.

***

Days pass. Maybe weeks. Perhaps years. Time melts together beneath the dome.

Another day. More loneliness. More boredom.

The thoughts echo endlessly through his mind, broken only by fewer and fewer interruptions. This is his life. His duty. His curse.

He is forced to remain—doing nothing, doing the same thing, day after day—until, perhaps, he is granted the chance to die.

“Maybe someone, someday, will free me from this curse. Grant me the freedom of death,” he mutters, tracing the same groove in the fountain’s marble. The stone is worn smooth, depressed from countless passes of his thick finger.