The walls are stone, and they are cold, and you have been running your palm along them since the last torch went out, counting turns the way you used to count sheep, or breaths, or reasons to stay.
Left, then left again, then a straight corridor that should not exist after two lefts, and you stop pretending you understand the geometry of this place.
You have been here before. You know this because the third turn always smells like rain that never falls, and the fifth always hums, faintly, with a voice you almost recognize, and the seventh — the seventh is where you stood the last time you decided to stop walking and simply wait to be found.
No one came. You walked on.
Somewhere back there, you think, is a center — a room with an answer in it, or a monster, or both, they are so often both — and somewhere behind you is an entrance you can no longer find, because entrances, you are beginning to understand, are not built to be found twice.
You press your hand flat against the stone and feel, under the cold, something almost like a pulse.
That is when you stop looking for the way out.
Because a maze has an outside. A place the walls end. And you have walked far enough, turned enough corners, worn your hand raw enough on this stone, to know that these walls do not end — they only fold, and fold again, and every corridor you have ever run down has led you back, gently, unfailingly, into yourself.
There was never a thread to follow.
You were always both the one lost, and the one who built the walls.
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