Thump.

  Danger.

  Jania knew now. But, where?

  Clink. An unsettling scrape echoed through the hall.

  Jania felt her heart jump, and thought, nope. She decided she had to get out of there. She twisted the doorknob. The door opened, and she stepped inside, closing it quickly behind her with a sharp exhale. She leaned against the door. Her pulse still hammered in her ears, the sensation lingering long after the creeping chill of danger had passed. Scanning the new environment, she did a quick danger assessment.

  No time to panic. Focus.

  Suspended objects. Ceiling. High. Walls. Holes. No immediate danger. No other escape routes.

  She leaned her weight into the door and gripped the doorknobs hard so that it wouldn’t twist. As she steadied herself, she tried to listen for the source of that noise.

  Cnk. Clink.

  This time it was closer.

  Jania held her breath, listening intently. It sounded like it was moving slowly. Metal pieces shifted and scraped against each other. Clink. Cnk. Even if the sound got closer, she kept her position and watched the room around her.

  A tense moment passed.

  The scraping stopped. The silence stretched on, stretching her nerves thin.

  Jania waited until the sounds grew fainter, finally dissolving into the distance.

  It’s gone.

  You have gained 5 EXP.

  Huh, what? Experience points for what? Encountering a creature? Jania blinked at the notification, but the thought barely settled before reality pressed in again. The sensation of the cold lingered on her skin, but the danger... for now, was gone. She pushed herself off the door, straightening her back with an exhale that she barely noticed. While she looked around, her fingers tingled as she wiped them on her pants, still feeling the residual cold that had seeped into her skin.

  The spacious room, a chamber, was bathed in an unnatural brightness, its light seeming to emanate from nowhere in particur. Weird, Jania commented in her mind and tried to commit everything to her memory. The walls were pale yellow, aged like old parchment, with faint streaks of white running through them, almost like veins of ivory. Strange thin golden lines snaked across the surface, connecting square holes, which had hovering opaque marks, embedded into the walls and floors. Jania thought they resembled the unique keyholes that the doors of the Arrival Hall had.

  Strange objects drifted through the air. Jania took a cautious step forward, switched off her phone fshlight, and slipped it into her bag. Her gaze swept across the room, absorbing the sight of floating objects.

  At first gnce, all items, generally, looked the same. They all looked like small rectangur blocks with different colors and some of them had a strange symbol at the center.

  She went closer to inspect them, but not too close. Touching them might trigger something, and Jania didn’t want to deal with any more surprises today.

  Upon closer inspection, she saw that the bck blocks were about the size of her index finger, their surfaces smooth and polished. Every side of the block had a strange golden symbol. Two concentric circles, encasing a box. Inside, another set of concentric circles etched with a rectangur shape; its left side extended unnaturally long downwards, while the bottom horizontal line stretched outward. It also had an unfamiliar script. The one that she usually saw around the Arrival Hall.

  As she examined the top, she saw a hexagram symbol etched delicately into the surface. She tilted the block to inspect the bottom, and there it was again, another hexagram.

  Jania stepped back and wove her way around to look at the other blocks near her. Some had perfectly measured 4x4 grids containing foreign letters. Others had triangles and a finger. For the top and bottom marks, she could only see hexagrams, and another simirity between all of them was the consistent concentric circles. Hexagrams were associated with multiple things, but Jania wasn’t sure what it would entail here.

  However, she was sure this pce wasn’t the Prologue Gallery. Maybe, the Luminarium, then? She raised her left arm close to her face and brought her thumb and index finger together, the familiar gesture grounding her as she ran them lightly back and forth, the friction almost soothing as she analyzed.

  The blocks. The holes.

  The blocks are obviously the keys, she thought, almost certain of it now. She had to pce the right one in the right hole that had the same mark as the block, but what would happen once she did? Should she try it now? The symbols marked on them... what did they mean? Jania tilted her head, thinking. Too unpredictable.

  Jania’s train of thought stopped.

  Her mind was momentarily bnk as a sudden familiar chill crept to the back of her neck, seeping into her bones. Her hand faltered, the comforting friction between her thumb and index finger slowing as her attention shifted elsewhere.

  No way. The thing back there didn’t come back here, right? She didn’t hear the doors open. Or was it one of those that had special abilities, or like the Attendants that were great at moving with silence? Or—no.

  Without thinking, she turned her head, her gaze snapping to the wall across the room. There was a sculpture meshed with the wall, its form blending seamlessly with the surface.

  Jania took a step back, unconsciously, but she was locked on its wooden form, intricately carved, almost lifelike in its craftsmanship. Its hollow head, shaped like a helmet, had a single rge, regur keyhole at its center and another one on its torso. She continuously took slow steps back without hitting any key blocks. The cold fear crept up her spine; a chill that tightened around her chest. Her hands, stiff at her sides, twitched with the urge to clutch something, anything, but she kept them still.

  Her thoughts scrambled faster now, each one more frantic than the st. Hadn’t it been empty? The room had been silent, still. But now the sculpture was there, looming, half-embedded in the wall. Its top half jutted outward as though it were still in the process of entering the room.

  Jania kept moving backwards cautiously, resisting the urge to turn her back. One wrong move and it felt like something might change. She had to get to the door. Get out. Get out now.

  Thup.

  Her heel met a key block. Panic surged in her chest. She had been avoiding them, afraid that the slightest touch might set something in motion. As quickly as possible, she risked a peek over her shoulder to see a zyph wobbling slightly and spinning slowly, a gentle shift in its floating state. She turned her head back to the sculpture.

  No movements. Great.

  But, it did not ease the way her heart trembled as she continued to walk back.

  Walk slowly.

  Slowly.

  She kept her eyes locked on the sculpture, muscles coiled, waiting for the smallest flicker of change. Jania moved as the silence stretched, thick and suffocating, while repeatedly thinking. Don’t rush. Don’t make a sound. Just get out.

  Until, finally, she felt solid wood. Relief almost knocked the breath out of her. Jania’s hands trembled as she groped behind her, fingers seeking the cold metal of the doorknobs.

  Nothing.

  Her breath caught. She patted the space frantically, her palm sweeping where the handles should be. Smooth wood. Seamless. Like there had never been anything there at all. Her stomach lurched, fear turning sharp in her gut as she risked turning her back on the sculpture. The knobs were gone. The door had no way to open. She tried to push the doors open.

  Even with all her might, it did not open.

  A cold shiver ran down her spine. She whipped her head back up, back to it.

  The sculpture hadn’t moved.

  Still meshed into the wall. Still exactly where it had been.

  You have entered the Keeper’s Keep!

  Isn’t it too te to inform me that this isn’t the Luminarium? Jania thought as a wince tightened the corner of her eye. Completely frustrated with the system. She wasn’t ready to go one-on-one with any of the mysterious beings in this pce.

  Keeper’s Keep

  This esteemed chamber holds many zyphs. Upon your arrival, the Keeper will extend the courtesy of entertaining you. Only when you have met the required conditions can you earn your passage.

  The Keeper does not reward the incomplete. That which is restored will earn its passage. That which remains undone will remain behind.

  Please note: Zyphs are special keys made by the Keeper. A zyph that does not glow is either broken or linked to a space that no longer exists. Only those that light up remain functional.

  Zyphs? So the ones here are broken or something? Jania swiftly gnced at the sculpture again. It was unmoving, so she continued reading.

  Conditions. Incomplete. Restore.

  Okay. Jania’s eyes were now glued to the sculpture. At the same time, she was comprehending what she had read. Incomplete? Her thoughts snapped to the keys and holes again. Restore what? Her fingers curled against her palm. Something about this wording nagged at her. She read the message a second time, then a third, dissecting it like a puzzle.

  Not "find," not "unlock." Restore. It’s not about using a key. It’s about putting something back together. Within this expansive room, Jania had her eyes going everywhere. Although panic cwed at the back of her mind, she isoted that and held on to rationality. Whatever was missing, whatever the Keeper demanded, had to be here. Hidden among the endless keys. She looked for anything that could be different.

  After a few seconds, Jania was on the move. Straight to the center of the room, walking with caution but heavy steps. When she came close to the object she suspected, she could conclude she was right.

  It was a piece with grooves and notches, unlike the key blocks, the zyphs, as the system called them. Jania knew this shape. A dull thud echoed in her chest as recognition struck, a memory unfurling: her father’s patient hands fitting pieces together, the two of them sitting side by side, the satisfying click of wood locking into pce.

  This was a burr puzzle piece.

  If she had been panicking, she wouldn’t have noticed the piece at all. It was the same deep bck as half the things in here, blending seamlessly, occasionally obscured when a key drifted before it.

  The next question was how many pieces were there?

  Jania extended her hand but stopped cold. A tingling sensation spread throughout her body. She squinted at the sculpture, which was meters away from her, suspiciously. It hadn’t moved. At least, she didn’t think it had. She took a steadying breath, letting the cool air fill her lungs, and decided to search for the other pieces first. If there were more like this one, it was best to have them all before attempting anything. Better to find them all now and face whatever happens next on her own terms. At least then, she’d have a fighting chance. Rushing in without a concrete direction of where she was going would lead her to be entertained by the Keeper forever.

  Now that her eyes were sharper and more attuned to the subtle shifts in the floating chaos, she began to spot them.

  One floated in the northwest direction of Jania, a few feet away.

  Another hovered near the ground, moving sluggishly among the dust motes that hung in the still air.

  The third one was caught in a delicate dance with a zyph, rotating.

  The fourth piece was harder to spot. It was in the corner of the room.

  The fifth was nestled at a high height compared to the rest she found. I think I can get it with a jump? Jania thought. Just one high jump.

  All in all, six pieces, she counted, her mind already plotting a route.

  Every part of her body was on edge, anticipation thrumming through her veins like a tightly wound string ready to snap. She pnted her feet firmly against the cold, solid ground, adjusting her stance for a quick unch.

  Her heartbeat hammered in her ears, not from fear, but from preparation. She assumed touching was a trigger. The moment she touched that fragment, everything would start.

  If she was wrong, good. If not, at least, she’d braced herself for the inevitable.

  With a final steadying breath, she grabbed the first piece.

  A deep, groaning creak rolled through the chamber. The walls gave a slow, shuddering ripple. The entire room was exhaling, shifting.

  It was awake.