Liam slowly removed his hands from his ears; he had covered them to block out Isabelle's persistent cries.

‘Is it finally over?’

Hearing only the wind and rustling of branches, Liam breathed a sigh of relief. The sound of nature felt refreshing after being exposed to Isabelle’s voice.

‘I’ve never really appreciated how nice peace and quiet is.’

Liam followed the tree-lined cobblestone path up to the castle entrance. The leafless trees, gray sky, and eerie silence created the ambiance one expected in a horror movie, all that was missing were cawing crows.

Liam arrived at the castle’s entrance. Stopping briefly to admire the lofty mahogany wood double doors, he shook off his hesitation and pulled them open. Immediately, he was met with a burst of warm air. The temperature difference between inside and outside was significant.

Liam quickly stepped into the foyer, tightly shutting the door behind him. He opened and closed his hands, trying to get the blood moving towards the tips of his numb fingers. As his cold body slowly warmed, he took in his surroundings.

There wasn’t a speck of dust in sight. From the elaborate paintings on the walls to the glistering pieces of silver, everything was in pristine condition. Unbefitting of the room’s era, it was brightly lit without candles or torches. Instead, a seemingly artificial light shone down from the ceiling.

Liam didn’t waste much time focusing on the room’s décor; he was too busy assessing the three dark hallways in front of him.

‘Which way should I go?’

The light from the foyer was only strong enough to reveal a few feet into each. Visually each path was identical. The only difference between them was the direction they pointed – right, left, and straight.

After everything he’d been through today, he wasn’t optimistic enough to believe these were ordinary corridors. If he had to guess, a man-eating monster or deadly trap was at the other end. Whichever it was, it was probably going to kill him. With that thought in mind, he decided to think of this as choosing which way he wanted to die. Given a choice between a slow death or a swift one, he preferred the latter. Of course, there was the third option of not going down any hall.

‘If only staying here was an option…’

Eventually, Liam would need food and water to survive. Having already spent hours searching the city, he knew there was no food or water to be found out there. Venturing further into the castle was his only choice.

After taking a few more minutes to warm up, Liam finally approached the hall on the left. Even if he had accepted his fate, he was planning to gather as much information as possible before making his choice. If he couldn’t rely on his vision, then he would have to make do with his other senses.

At the opening, Liam closed his eyes and listened – it was silent. He took a step back and stared down the dark hall; it was like staring into an abyss. Was there an end?

Liam pushed the thought out of his mind and quickly checked the other halls, but it was the same result. No matter how long he listened, he couldn’t hear a single sound in any of them. It was unnatural.

Finding himself right back where he stared, Liam racked his brain, trying to come up with another idea. The best he came up with was yelling down the halls and listening for an echo; that way, he could estimate how long each one was. After thinking it over, he decided not to. Yelling down the halls would also reveal his presence to anything living in the castle, and he didn’t feel like dealing with any more surprises today.

Choosing at random, Liam entered the center hallway. As he moved further in, the light from the foyer faded, and he was surrounded by darkness; he couldn’t even see his own feet, let alone where he was going. Placing his hand along the wall, he used it as a guide before eventually bumping into a hard surface.

“Ouch…”

Liam rubbed his forehead before feeling the surface in front of him. It was a door. Finding the handle, he pulled it open.

Creeeaaak...

A wave of disappointment washed over him, seeing it was pitch black on the other side. Liam sighed and carefully walked through the door.

‘What?’

As soon as Liam entered, his eyes were blinded by a bright light. He squinted allowing his eyes to adjust. The lights hadn’t turned on when he entered; they were already on. He looked behind him and became confused.

‘How is this possible?’

Behind him, on the other side of the door frame, the hall was pitch black, no light leaked into the hallway; he couldn’t even see the foyer he had come from. Immediately, Liam recalled the invisible wall from outside. It seemed similar, the only difference, this time instead of blocking monsters, it blocked the light.

‘So, then like before, I can pass through.’

Liam tried to put his hand through the doorway, but it wouldn’t pass. There was a hard-invisible wall blocking it. It was the same as barrier from before except now, his and the dog’s positions were reversed – and he was the one locked out.

“Shit…”

There was no turning back. Being trapped wasn’t exactly what he had hoped for, and it didn’t give him a good feeling. Resolving himself, he continued forward.

The hall stretched endlessly, and everything was made of the same stone blocks, making him wonder if he was stuck in an infinite loop. While it was brighter than before, the brightness was equivalent to a light’s dimmer set to the lowest setting; barely bright enough to make out the shapes of objects around you. As Liam was growing tired of the unchanging scenery…

Click.

“Huh?”

A strange sound rang out as Liam stepped forward, and then…

“FUUUUCKK!!”

An intense pain shot through his arm. Liam instinctively grabbed his upper arm and felt the wooden stick that had lodged into it, an arrow. The barbed tip had pierced through his shirt, lodging itself deep within the muscles in his arm. Blood ran down his arm, dripping onto the floor as he clenched his teeth, fighting the pain.

‘What the hell just happened!?’

Until now, the journey down the hall had been uneventful. There hadn’t even been the slightest hint of danger. Quickly, Liam looked in the direction the arrow came from – there was nothing there. It was a normal wall; there wasn’t even a hole or gap that an arrow could pass through.

‘How is that possible? An arrow can’t just appear out of thin air… Wait, no, I’m thinking about it wrong. I’ve seen stranger things today… Magic. I don’t know how it works, but…’

From the previous barriers, he had noticed three principles about how they worked. First, they allowed certain things to pass through while blocking others. Second, they can have different visual appearances. Finally, when specific conditions were met, the barriers changed. That was what had happened when Liam stepped through the doorway and could no longer pass back. Using these principles as a guide, he began to evaluate what had just happened.

‘The wall is either a barrier with the appearance of a wall, or the entire wall is an illusion. Either way, there’s no way to see where the arrows are going to come from. That doesn’t matter, though. What’s important is the trap was triggered when I stepped on something. If I can figure that out, then I can avoid it. But first…’

As Liam looked at his arm, a chill ran down his spine. If the arrow had hit a few inches higher, it would have pierced through his neck.

‘Fuck the crazy bastard who made this place!’

Liam inspected his wound. The arrow was stuck deep into the upper part of his arm, a little above his bicep. It hadn’t gone straight through, so the arrowhead was still embedded.

Liam decided to leave the arrow alone for now. If he carelessly tried to pull it out, he might do more harm than good. Not to mention, he didn’t have anything to bandage his arm after the arrow was removed. His clothes were covered in dirt, so wrapping them around his arm didn’t feel like a good idea. Liam cupped one hand around his injured arm’s elbow and cradled it; he wanted to stop himself from moving it as much as possible.

Liam returned his thoughts to the trap.

‘Damnit! Now that I think about it, even the floors could be fake! I might end up falling into a trap if I take a wrong step!’

Everything in the hallway suddenly felt suspicious. Liam didn’t know enough about magic to know its limits. For all, he knew the entire tunnel could cave in at random. He was trapped, and going forward appeared to be his only option, so he began checking the ground near where the trap had been triggered.

After closer examination, Liam discovered that a few of the stone tiles could be pressed, and when they were, one arrow flew out of the wall. He wasn’t naïve enough to think this pattern would continue, but it gave him a bit more confidence for now. Unable to find out anything else, he continued his trek.

Liam encountered many more traps; however, unlike before, he wasn’t caught off guard. The trigger for the trap stayed the same, only the quantity and direction of the arrows changed. Still, he didn’t drop his guard, and eventually, he reached the end of the hall.

Staring at the door in front of him, Liam felt nervous about opening it and began wondering if he was developing a phobia of doors after his experiences today. Starting with the first, which revealed a hungry two-headed dog to the last, which led to a hallway full of traps; it was one nightmare after another. Liam wasn’t feeling optimistic enough to believe this one would be any better. Grabbing the handle, prepared himself for another unpleasant encounter, he pulled it open.

Liam’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Huh?”

In front of him was an open room with a high ceiling, similar to a grand banquet hall that appeared to be set up for a lucrative dinner party for wealthy guests. There were circular tables with white tablecloths and chairs arranged neatly around them. Atop the tables, porcelain-white plates and polished silverware for dinner service. Across the room was a stage with a single wooden podium in the center of it; behind it was a satin red curtain pulled shut, separating backstage.

Moving around inside the room were at least thirty people, ranging in age from high school students to middle-aged adults, a diverse group. Except for a few thuggish looking men, everyone was gathered near the left side of the room where there appeared to be an emergency treatment facility.

People were rushing between patients, doing their best to provide treatment despite the lack of proper medical supplies. The frantic shouts of the medics and the moaning from the patients made Liam feel as if he had stepped into a refugee camp of a war-torn country.

The condition of the patients varied. Some had only light scrapes and bruises while others suffered deep lacerations or missing limbs. Liam watched as a medic shook his head after checking a motionless patient. The patient was then lifted and carried over to a mound covered with tablecloths in a corner. The bloodstained cloth was raised, and the corpse was tossed underneath.

Liam's lips turned downward, forming a slight frown before heading over to the makeshift treatment camp. He called out to a woman in her early thirties as she briskly walked by him; she had brown hair that was tied into a tight bun, glasses, and a stern look on her face.

“Hey, can you help-”

“SHERRY, WHERE ARE YOU!?”

The shout from a medic as he dealt with a convulsing patient cut Liam off. Sherry, the woman Liam had called out to, turned to Liam and spoke curtly; her words came across sharp, but her tone was flat like someone who was exhausted after a long shift.

“If you’re here for treatment, then wait over there. If not, then get lost – I’m busy.”

She pointed at a table before rushing over to help the medic.

Following her directions, Liam walked over and sat down. On the opposite side was a man with one leg lying on his back, unmoving. His missing limb was tied off with a tourniquet, and cloths were wrapped around the stump to soak up the blood leaking out. The tablecloth was splattered with blood as if the man had been flailing around earlier. Liam began wondering if yanking the arrow out himself would be a better option; the thought of being treated by one of these random strangers was unnerving. But then, there was also the issue with his feet, so he decided to stay and at least hear them out.

After some minutes had passed, Sherry came over; the bloodstains covering her clothes made her look closer to a butcher than a medic. She looked Liam up and down once before speaking.

“Is it just the arrow in your arm?”

Her tone made it sound as if she was saying, ‘that’s it?’

“No, my feet too. I lost feeling in them a while ago, especially in my toes and the soles of my feet.”

“Okay, first, let me ask a question. Which hall did you come through? And, did you get hit at the start or the end of the hall?”

Liam didn’t understand why that mattered, but he still answered.

“I took the center hall and got shot at the beginning of the hall. It was the first trap I encountered… Is this really important?”

Sherry began examining Liam’s feet; she had an expressionless face as she spoke.

“The arrows at the end of the hall are poisoned. Everyone who got shot there died in less than an hour after showing flu-like symptoms.”

Liam’s body stiffened as he realized just how narrowly he had escaped death. He was glad he had raised his guard after being shot only once.

Sherry stood up after looking at Liam’s feet. Her expression hadn’t changed much, but there was a hint of frustration on her face.

“Is it bad?”

Sherry sighed.

“It's frostbite… Your toes have it the worst, they’ll have to be amputated, or the dead flesh will affect the rest of your feet. The soles of your feet are also bad, but I can’t say for sure if you need to have both your feet amputated. You’re not in any immediate danger, so you don’t need the amputation now... not that we have the tools to do it… For now, I’ll remove the glass from your foot and arrow from your arm.”

“!!!”

Liam’s eyes widened, hearing the words amputation. He didn't think there would be good news, but he wasn’t expecting to hear that.

Seeing the despondent look on Liam’s face as he struggled to accept the diagnosis, Sherry spoke.

“I’ll get to work on your injuries, okay?”

Liam silently nodded in response.