Extra To Protagonist

The hoofbeats were too steady to belong to anything wild.

Each strike landed with mechanical weight, not rushed, but chosen. Ground bit back with every step. The dirt didn't scatter. It cracked. Like something old walking through something older.

Merlin didn't move from the edge of the fire's reach.

He didn't have to.

Nathan stepped half a pace left. Elara mirrored. Seraphina shifted her stance to quarter-guard, blade low, breath quiet.

Dion tensed without moving. Mae reached for her side before remembering she'd been stripped of a weapon three trials ago.

The figure kept coming.

Closer now.

The thing it rode wasn't a horse. Not really. Equine shape, yes, but the silhouette flickered in the gaps between torch and starlight.

Plates of armor along its sides flexed like ribs. Its eyes weren't eyes. Just two pale circles of constant light.

The rider wore no insignia.

But they wore command like a skin.

Their face was obscured by a half-mask. Not metal. Not cloth. Something in between, woven like wire across the lower jaw, etched with lines that didn't glow but still caught every flick of firelight like veins under stretched skin.

They stopped five meters out.

Didn't speak.

Didn't dismount.

Just watched.

Mae took a step back.

Merlin didn't move.

He could feel it, on the edge of his vision, where the system flickered once like a breath held too long.

[The Judge with No Mouth waits.]

[The Crownless Mother closes her eyes.]

[The Smiling Witness leans forward.]

The figure reached into their cloak.

No threat. Just motion.

They withdrew a scroll.

Thick. Wax-sealed. No insignia visible.

And they dropped it.

It hit the dirt with no ceremony. No message attached. Just fell.

Then the rider turned.

No word.

No flare of power.

Just a single tug on the reins, and the beast turned with them, silent but heavy, like the ground had never questioned its place beneath them.

They vanished back over the ridge without ever having said a word.

The group didn't relax.

Not immediately.

Dion was the first to break posture. He stepped forward, crouched low, and picked up the scroll.

Held it.

Didn't open it.

Just looked at Merlin.

"This yours?"

Merlin stepped forward slowly.

He took the scroll.

Turned it once in his hand.

Felt the seal, not wax. Something harder. Smoother. A compound that didn't belong in Titanos.

He didn't open it.

Not yet.

Mae was frowning. "What the hell was that?"

Elara's eyes didn't leave the ridgeline. "Scouting?"

"No," Seraphina said. "Not military."

"Too calm," Nathan added. "Too deliberate."

Dion crossed his arms. "You think they've been watching us this whole time?"

"Yes," Merlin said.

He unsealed the scroll.

The wax broke like breath. The paper inside unfolded without effort—crisp, untouched. As if it had never been meant to hold a message at all.

Because it didn't.

It held a map.

Just one.

No name. No coordinates. No north-point.

Just a ridgeline. A stretch of terrain they hadn't yet crossed. And a single red circle marked across it.

No instructions. No time limit.

Just a point.

A choice.

Nathan looked at it, then at Merlin.

"You're going, aren't you."

It wasn't a question.

Merlin folded the map again.

Tucked it into his coat.

"We all are."

[The Devourer stirs.]

[The Nameless Clockmaker adjusts the sand.]

[The First Lawkeeper does not object.]

The fire snapped again, louder this time.

No one argued.

Because the moment had passed.

And the path had changed.

—

They didn't speak much when they broke camp.

No command given. No map passed around. Just movement.

Nathan put out the fire with one boot and a fistful of dirt, grinding the last glow into ash. Seraphina packed fast, sharp. Dion tied off a binding strap without needing to be told. Mae adjusted her coat twice, neither time for warmth.

Elara lingered.

Not delaying. Scanning. One last sweep of the ridge before falling in behind.

Merlin walked first.

Not out of leadership. Just because the path had been drawn for him, whether he liked it or not.

They moved southeast. Slopes turned rougher, angles steeper. The stone changed too—less dust, more broken shale. Titanos had different moods, and this one was made of teeth.

They didn't stop.

The red mark on the scroll wasn't far. But distance in wilderness didn't care about scale. It bled time in small, sharp hours. Every bend in the trail looked like a repetition. Every valley like a trick of memory.

The wind shifted as they descended past the third rise.

It smelled like copper.

And salt.

Merlin slowed once. Briefly. Just to look up.

The sky was clean. No clouds. No sun yet either. Just a sick pale grey that stretched wide enough to hide anything above it.

He kept walking.

Because something else had started pressing behind his thoughts.

Not magic. Not threat.

Time.

He hadn't counted the days since they'd entered the labyrinth. No one had. Because time inside that place didn't follow clean rules. Some rooms had been minutes long. Others… felt endless. Especially the last one.

But now, on open ground, his body remembered.

The stiffness in his knees wasn't just fatigue. It was age. Slight. But present.

He rubbed at one wrist absently. Still bruised from restraints back at the outpost. Not painful anymore. Just… marked.

'How long were we in?'

He hadn't asked the soldiers. Hadn't dared.

Because if it had been more than days, if it had been weeks or months, that changed things.

Not for him.

For the gods.

[The Smiling Witness is still watching.]

[The Devourer hums.]

[The Crownless Mother turns a page.]

They were watching for follow-through now. Not survival. Not cleverness. Just intent. What he'd do with the road, now that he'd been handed one.

Nathan caught up beside him.

Quiet for a few paces. Not probing. Not performing.

Just walking.

Then—"You okay?"

Merlin didn't look over.

Just said, "No."

Nathan didn't press.

Didn't offer comfort either.

He just stayed.

And somehow, that helped more.

—

They reached the edge of the mark by second light.

The sun didn't rise on Titanos the way it did in gentler places. It dragged itself over the ridge like a wounded thing, bleeding light in waves that painted everything in rust.

The terrain flattened.

Not empty. But strange.

A shallow valley, carved more by neglect than nature. Its shape wasn't natural. The slope was too even. The rocks too smooth. As if something large had once landed, then left.

Merlin crouched at the rim.

Elara moved beside him, low. One hand on the earth.

Seraphina hung back, eyes sweeping the edge lines. Mae and Dion flanked left and right.

Nathan crouched last.

Below them, at the center of the depression, was a ruin.

Half-buried. No roof. Just a partial stone ring maybe fifteen meters wide. Some of the pillars still stood. Most were shattered or sunken sideways.

Not military.

Not modern.

It looked ancient. Abandoned before anything else they knew had been built.

Elara whispered, "That's not on the maps."

Merlin nodded.

"It's not supposed to be."

He didn't say how he knew.

He didn't say it had been circled in red by someone who didn't breathe like a human being.

The gods didn't circle ruins to give directions.

They circled reminders.

Nathan stood, slowly.

"Then let's go see what they left behind."

Merlin followed.

Because what choice was there?

The gods had stopped testing.

They were watching now.

And Titanos didn't erase ruins for no reason.

—

The first step into the ruin was not made lightly.

Stone beneath them felt different than the slope they descended. More deliberate. Not carved, not placed, but born. Like the earth itself had bent here long before people learned how to build on top of it.

Merlin stepped into the ring first.

Not quickly. Just enough to make the act unignorable.

Elara followed. Blade low. Posture relaxed—but wrong. She moved like someone expecting to lose her footing.

Nathan was beside her a moment later, not speaking. Seraphina held the back perimeter.

Dion stepped last.

He muttered, "Doesn't smell like a ruin."

Mae turned to him. "What does it smell like, then?"

He paused. "Nest."

The moment he said it, the air changed.

There was no wind.

No animal cry.

No shift in dust.

Just a slow, rhythmic sound, like silk stretching. Then retracting.

Then stretching again.

They didn't see it at first. The ruin didn't reveal its secrets quickly.

But as they stepped closer to the broken center, the place where half the stone ring had collapsed inward, the light shifted.

And something moved beneath it.

Not fast. Not sudden.

Just… deliberate.

Eight legs.

Each wider than the space between them.

Not fuzzy. Not bulbous.

Smooth. Jet-black. Joints like daggers, body low to the ground, eyes too many and too still.

It didn't hiss.

Didn't charge.

It just watched.

Merlin stopped walking.

And it spoke.

Not aloud.

Not with breath.

The words arrived like vibration. Not through ears, but behind them. Direct. Dry. Immense.

"One of you is marked."

Mae flinched.

Elara's hands moved subtly toward her hips.

Nathan didn't move at all.

Merlin exhaled once.

Soft.

Controlled.

"Marked how?"

The spider did not answer at once.

It shifted, its front legs re-anchoring against the stone with surgical weight. Not hunting.

Studying.

"Divine favor stinks more than blood."

Seraphina's blade scraped free an inch.

No threat. Just alignment.

Merlin said nothing.

He didn't need to.

Because the spider's eyes, clustered black and red and aglow, were already fixed on him.

Not Nathan.

Not the group.

Him.

"You're the one they've circled."

Elara whispered, "What the hell is that thing?"

The spider's mouth didn't move. But the words carried anyway.

"Not enemy. Not friend. Curator."

Nathan took one slow step forward. "Of what?"

"Offerings. Histories. Those who pass without seeing. Those who see without passing."

Merlin didn't breathe for a moment.

Then, steady: "Why are we here?"

The creature's legs scraped faintly across the stone. Not moving. Just… adjusting.

"Because the gods need memory. And this is where it waits."

The gods.

He felt it again.

Not as pressure.

As presence.

[The Smiling Witness records.]

[The Devourer leans forward.]

[The Judge with No Mouth writes: "Let him answer."]

Mae said it without meaning to. "What does it want from us?"

"Not you." The spider's tone didn't shift. "Just him."

All eyes turned to Merlin.

He stepped forward.

Two paces.

"Then speak."

The spider moved at last. Not fast. Not slow.

It arced back slightly, then curled downward, revealing beneath its raised torso an old, bloodstained stone basin. Empty. Cracked.

Etched in patterns not meant for human eyes.

"Give memory. Or take one."

Nathan's jaw tightened.

Dion stepped forward. "What does that mean?"

The spider turned toward him.

But didn't speak.

Because the answer was not for him.

Only Merlin.

The system pulsed.

[Trial Memory Access Point Located.]

[Decision Required.]

[Select One: OFFERED MEMORY / STOLEN MEMORY]

He didn't look at the others.

Didn't explain.

Just stepped closer to the basin.

Because he understood now.

This was no test.

This was a tax.

And every god had to be paid.