A door creaked.
Not all the doors. Just one. Room 312, three feet ahead of them on the left. The chrome handle turned slowly, deliberately, with the kind of timing that belonged in a badly edited film.
Sophia froze.
Lucy tensed, her crimson eyes fixed on the door, her split tongue pressing against her teeth as mana gathered at her fingertips. Blood pooled beneath her feet, ready to form a barrier at the first sign of danger.
The door stopped moving.
Half-open. Waiting.
"Should we-" Lucy started.
Sophia gripped onto Lucy's shirt and put her arms around her, hugging tightly around her waist. "No no no no no. In movies, when the door opens by itself, whatever's on the other side is ALWAYS worse than what you imagine. And what you imagine is already bad. So the actual thing is worse than bad, which is-"
The door creaked again. Opened another inch.
Her grip was surprisingly strong for someone who looked ready to faint. Lucy felt the mana surging beneath Sophia's skin, a vast ocean of power coiled impossibly tight, restrained by nothing but the girl's own will. [SHE"S TOUCHING ME!!]
"Okay," Sophia breathed. "Okay okay okay. We can handle this. We're witches. We're strong. I'm strong. I'm the strongest. Nothing can hurt me. Nothing can hurt me. Nothing can-"
The pale hand emerged from the darkness beyond the door.
Small. Delicate. Reaching out with fingers spread wide, as if searching for something to hold.
Sophia's grip on Lucy's waist tightened to the point of genuine pain. Her golden eyes had dilated so completely that the irises were barely visible rings around enormous black pupils.
"DIEEEE!!"
Golden light erupted from her free hand.
A focused storm of pure mana that screamed through the air with the sound of tearing reality itself. The hallway vanished in its glare. The chrome doors melted. The walls ceased to exist. Only leaving a single smoky golden spear in the hole.
The hand vanished.
The door vanished.
The counter above them ticked.
'2'
The section of hallway where they'd been standing, the one with Room 312 and its suspiciously opening door, simply wasn't there anymore. Just a smoldering crater where reality had been briefly unmade and then, slowly, reluctantly, allowed to exist again.
Sophia panted, her chest heaving, her hand still raised and crackling with residual energy.
Lucy stood frozen, her mouth hanging open, her stomach definitely bruising where Sophia's fingers were still digging in.
"That," Sophia gasped, "was a piece of cake, no trouble, yep."
They walked through the halls.
Room 312 stood exactly where it had been before.
Before Sophia had blown it,
Closed now. Innocent. Untouched.
Sophia stared at it, a tingle went down her spin down towards the soles of her feet,
"Again? Come on, another pebble" she whispered, her voice shaking.
[I'm not scared in the slightest, not at all]
Another creak.
Not the door this time.
The ceiling.
A single fluorescent light was flickering. Not all of them, just one, directly above their heads. It buzzed and sputtered, casting strobing shadows across the corridor, and in those shadows, something moved.
Sophia's hand shot up again.
"No no no no no."
Lucy caught her wrist.
"Wait."
The movement stopped. The light steadied. For a moment, everything was perfectly normal.
Then the shadow beneath the flickering light, detached itself from the floor and began to crawl up the wall.
"THAT'S NOT HOW SHADOWS WORK!"
The entire room started to shake, not from the creatures.
From Sophia.
The entire hallway was filled with blinding light, as if the sun had decided to sit down in the corridor and make itself comfortable. Lucy had to throw an arm across her eyes, the glare so intense it felt like standing too close to a forge.
Thousands of weapons manifested at once behind her with a golden glow.
Swords. Spears. Axes. Weapons Lucy didn't have names for, things with too many edges and blades that curved in impossible directions. They hung in the air like a golden storm frozen, each one humming with enough power to level a city block.
Sophia stood in the center of it all, her golden eyes blazing, her coffee-brown hair floating around her face as if caught in an unfelt wind. For a moment, she looked exactly like what she was, a goddess of war, a reincarnation of the greatest wizard who had ever lived, something far beyond human.
"I AM NOT SCARED," she announced to the empty hallway. "I AM SOPHIA MILLER. I AM THE STRONGEST. I HAVE NEVER BEEN SCARED OF ANYTHING IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. THIS IS FINE. THIS IS ALL FINE."
The shadow on the wall paused.
It seemed to consider her.
Then it slid sideways, moving along the wall like oil on water, and disappeared into the crack beneath Room 309's door.
Sophia stared at the spot where it had vanished.
"HAHA!! You're scared of me!! Of course you'd be, I'm the strongest, the prettiest, the best!! You're afraid of my power."
Her eyes hadn't moved from that crack beneath the door.
"Miss Sophia."
"It's fine. It's fine. It's-"
The lights flickered again.
Not one this time. All of them.
The hallway plunged into absolute darkness for three heartbeats. Lucy felt Sophia's grip on her arm tighten to the point of bruising. She heard her idol's breath catch, a small wounded sound that had no place coming from someone so powerful.
Then the lights returned.
Everything was exactly the same.
They walked.
The hallway stretched before them, identical to the one behind them, identical to every hallway they'd walked through for what felt like hours. Lucy had stopped counting the loops after the seventh reset. The counter on the ceiling had climbed to '5', then dropped back to '1' twice, then climbed again.
Sophia walked close enough that their shoulders almost touched. Her golden eyes hadn't stopped darting, hadn't stopped tracking every flicker, every creak, every shadow that moved slightly wrong.
"Miss Sophia," Lucy said carefully, "can I ask you something?"
Sophia's head snapped toward her, then away, then back toward the hallway ahead. "Depends on what it is."
"Why are you so..." Lucy hesitated, searching for the right word. "...vigilant?"
"Because something's watching us." The words came out flat. "Has been since we entered this place. I can feel it. Like an ice cube on the back of my neck."
Lucy felt a chill run down her spine. She looked around, but saw nothing. Just the same walls. The same doors. The same humming lights.
"I don't sense anything."
"Of course you don't." Sophia's voice carried no condescension for once. Just observation. "It's not hiding from you. It's hiding from me."
The statement hung in the air between them. Lucy didn't know what to make of it.
[It's sort of reassuring to have Sophia by my side, that she can sense what I can't, that just proves that she's a genius so far ahead of me that I can't even reach her. But on the other hand, it means that the creature is smart enough to avoid her]
A soft sound broke her thoughts.
Not a creak this time. Something else. Something that made the hairs on her arms stand up.
Whispering.
Multiple voices, layered over each other, speaking in a language she didn't recognize. It came from everywhere and nowhere, from the walls and the ceiling and the floor beneath their feet.
Sophia stopped walking.
Her face had gone pale. Not dramatically so, just a slight loss of color, a tightening around her eyes that most people wouldn't notice.
Lucy noticed.
"Miss Sophia?"
"That's not-" Sophia's voice caught. She swallowed, tried again. "That's not just whispering. That's….I know that sound."
"What is it?"
Sophia didn't answer immediately. Her golden eyes were fixed on the ceiling, tracking something Lucy couldn't see. The whispering continued, growing slightly louder, slightly more distinct, though the words remained incomprehensible.
The lights flickered.
Sophia flinched. Just slightly. Just enough for Lucy to see.
[I hate the dark, even with mana sensing, I can't see shit properly.]
Lucy spun around.
Nothing there.
Just the hallway. Just the doors. Just the humming lights.
"Did you hear that?"
Sophia was staring at her, golden eyes wide. "What? What did you hear?"
Lucy's split tongue pressed against her teeth.
"I didn't hear anything," Lucy said.
"Kay." Sophia's eyes softened. Just slightly. Just enough. "I was just asking."
They walked.
The hallway stretched ahead, endless and identical.
Lucy walked close to Sophia's side, close enough that their shoulders brushed with each step. She could feel the warmth of her mana.
Sophia grabbed Lucy's arm before she could step forward.
"Stop."
"What is it?"
"I've been thinking, how long have we been here anyways?"
"I don't either, usually I'd have a good sense of time but it's becoming muddy."
Sophia rubbed her temples. "This has been our 45th loop, at least it was mine."
"A day?"
"It didn't feel like it. And the caster of the Zenith wouldn't be able to maintain it this long, this Zenith is trying to break us through the passage of time, that means the time outside is probably different."
Lucy's eyes lit up. "You're really smart Miss Miller, I could have never figured this out!"
Sophia smiled and rubbed her nose as she struck a triumphant pose.
"Of course I am! I'm a genius among geniuses!"
Lucy stood beside her and clapped her hands.
Sophia's eyes wandered to the walls.
[Everything around me is low res, like an old video game]
A comically large lightbulb lit above her head.
"I get it now! The false sense of time, the low resolution, the caster has put us under a sleep spell."