The third day of the trial was the day the dimension stopped playing fair.
They had crossed a rival kingdom and a horde of glass, and the world had taken the measure of them, and now it changed its methods. The landscapes ahead were no longer merely strange. They were hostile, built with intent, each one a hand reaching out to pull the crossing to a halt.
The first of them was the maze.
It began as a canyon of pale stone that funneled the whole army inward, and by the time anyone realized it was more than a canyon, the walls had already closed behind them, sealing the way back. The stone shifted when no one was looking, corridors folding into new shapes, paths that had been open a moment ago sealing into blank walls.
