( the stairs go down, not up, like drill-bits driving into the earth, a series of dark holes scattered haphazardly in the empty room of the labyrinth; deep and dark and exuding their own pressing force. with more passages than there are people, they split up. sayaka goes down the first, the closest, lead by example (not that she's — ahaha! no, obviously!).

takes the first few turns at a run, trying to balance speed and balance, then slows, looking down into the blackness and up into the whiteness, shifting her head, closing one eye and then another — above her is pure white, below her is pure black, and try as she might she can't spot the horizon; she shakes her head and decides it's an optical illusion; takes the next few turns (when will this end?) at a run and — it reverses, and now she's heading up, up into the black, but when did it switch around? did it switch? she turns on her step (static, lightheadedness, her vision darkening in the corners; then clearing, her ears ringing) and gives a startled cry, despite herself, when she touches the railing and sticks to it, the ice of the metal reaching through her glove, the white cloth turning grey and brown from rot.

she yanks her hand away with a startled — it gives easily — and the excessive force sends her stumbling backwards, tripping and almost tumbling down; she lands hard on her bottom (it sticks, she sticks, like everything has been coated in something sticky and spilt, something filmy like hairspray and dark like mould) and finds herself breathing hard, calm down, sayaka, jeez, it's nothing, be better than this, you have to be; everything is white now, and she doesn't know which way she's come or gone. the stairs she's sitting on are the same as the stairs below her and the stairs she just came down; the bottoms of the stairs she sees above her look just like the tops; she has the sudden, certain idea that she fell to the ceiling, that if she lets go she'll fly up and up and up and up, to the floor.

stand up, she tells herself. (but she'll fall/fly.) ) Stand up! ( she orders herself, this time aloud, the word echoing thinly in the endless white space — twisting and bouncing off of nothing until it comes back. maybe it's her mind twisting on itself, maybe there is another sound, but she does stand, her cape soiled from contact, twisting around to the stairs behind (above) her. ) Who's there?