SCREAM!!!

6. The Glass Labyrinth 2

The mirror beside her flickered. Her reflection stepped out, identical but colder, sharper. It smiled. It reached for her face, and before she could escape, pulled her into the glass. Her scream echoed, folding in on itself, dissolving into smoke. Then it was gone.

Cedric felt bile rise in his throat. He could feel Kevin trembling beside him, arms wrapped around himself. “It’s… it’s taking them,” Kevin whispered. “They… vanish.”

“Yes,” Cedric said, voice low, trembling. “We have to… we have to play the rules.”

The reflections grew bolder. Some mimicked movement before the survivors did, anticipating their actions. Some whispered promises in voices just loud enough to hear, voices that sounded like their friends or loved ones. One mirror along the corridor showed Cedric’s mother, reaching out for him. His stomach twisted; he almost ran toward her. But the figure flickered, became monstrous, eyes black as oil, teeth elongated. He stumbled back, heart hammering, and Kevin grabbed him.

“Don’t—don’t fall for it!” Kevin hissed.

The floor under their feet shimmered. Some sections appeared to drop into nothing, black holes of reflection waiting to swallow someone who misstepped. Others rippled with red light like blood, pulsating in rhythm with the maze itself.

Cedric’s hands shook as he guided Gina and Kevin through the corridor. Each step was calculated, slow, careful. The labyrinth was testing them, sensing their fear.

A reflection jumped from the wall ahead, a perfect copy of Cedric, grinning, eyes glowing faintly red. It lunged. Cedric felt himself paralyzed for a moment. Kevin shoved him to the side just as the duplicate’s hand passed through where he had been, shattering into shards that drifted like black ash.

“Focus!” Cedric hissed, heart hammering. Sweat poured down his face. The reflections were everywhere now, following, mocking, distorting reality. The maze had become a living nightmare.

After what felt like hours, the trio reached another junction. The left tunnel pulsed with shadow, the right with an eerie green, the middle still glowing blue. Cedric closed his eyes for a second, breathing through the terror.

“The middle’s a trap,” he whispered. “We go right.”

Gina nodded, though her hands trembled violently. Kevin swallowed, eyes wide with fear, but he followed.

As they entered, the walls shifted again. The maze wasn’t just a place—it was alive, aware, responding to them, to their fear, to their guilt. They could hear faint screams echoing from other tunnels, some alive, some already consumed. Every sound twisted inside Cedric’s mind like a knife.

And then they heard it: a whisper in his own voice, coming from every mirror simultaneously.

“Why did you bring us here?”

Cedric’s knees buckled. He swallowed, gagging. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this…”

The whisper repeated, louder, closer. The maze itself was speaking.

Kevin grabbed his arm. “Move!”

Cedric forced himself forward. They ran. The tunnels narrowed, widened, twisted. Shards of mirrors shifted to block exits, forcing them deeper, into the center of the labyrinth. Reflections continued to attack, to mirror their fears, to haunt them with the image of the people who had died in Round One.

Every corner they turned, every step they took, the labyrinth pulsed, feeding on their terror. The red mist above seemed to drip closer, suffocating, filling the hallways with a sense of inevitable death.

Finally, a faint light appeared ahead, a shimmer of silver that didn’t pulse. Cedric’s heart jumped. It was the exit—or at least, it looked like one.

“Almost there,” he whispered. His voice cracked. “Just… keep moving.”

But the maze wasn’t done with them yet. From the walls, the reflections surged forward, forming human shapes—students they recognized, twisted and grinning, with glass shards for teeth. One reached for Kevin. Cedric grabbed a shard from the ground and hurled it. The reflection shattered, screams echoing, and the labyrinth pulsed in anger.

The exit was close now, shimmering, static. Cedric forced his legs to move, ignoring the nausea, the screams, the growing terror in every corner. Gina clung to him, Kevin just a step behind.

And then, they stepped through—and the world snapped into a different nightmare entirely.