Darkness.

That was the first thing he felt.

Not something he saw. Not something he heard.
Just… felt.

A suffocating, endless weight pressing down on his chest. Cold. Damp.
The ground beneath him was stone—slick with moisture, rough against his back.
And for a long, silent moment… there was nothing.

No name.
No memory.
No reason.

He wasn’t dead.
He knew that much.

A heartbeat pounded in his ears.
Then—air. Slow. Hesitant. Like he was learning how to breathe for the first time.

A flicker of light blinked above him.
Faint.
Gray.
Moving.

He opened his eyes.

Massive walls towered around him. Black stone. Cracked. Cold. Stretching up into mist he couldn’t see through. They twisted in ways that felt wrong. Endless. Inescapable.

The sky was gone.
In its place, a ceiling of shifting, writhing shadows.

It wasn’t night.
It was something worse.

It was the Maze.

He didn’t know where he was.
Didn’t know who he was.

His hand rose slowly to his chest, trembling.

“…C…Caelum.”

The name fell from his lips like instinct.
Maybe it was his.
Maybe it was all he had left.

He wasn’t alone.

Across the massive circular chamber were bodies. Dozens of them.
Teenagers. Kids. Some older. All unconscious—or waking up just like him.

Some stirred.
Some groaned.
Some didn’t move at all.

Seventy of them would come this year.
But not all at once.

He didn’t know that yet.

A scream echoed from deep down one of the hallways.
High. Sharp.
Terrified.

Then came a sound. Something wet—dragging across stone.

Caelum stumbled back, pressing himself to the wall.

His body screamed run.
But something inside him didn’t.

He clenched his fists.

The Maze wasn’t just a prison.
It was a trial.
A sick game with one rule:

Survive.

Some would try to escape.
Some would beg for death.
Some would become monsters just to keep breathing.

And only one in a thousand would ever make it out.

This is the story of the one who did.
But not without losing everything.