“Wow,” Ahmad breathed. “It’s like a handful of sunlight.”

He raised it up over his head.

“Yikes!” Winnie covered her eyes. “Put that away from my face, please!”

“Oh. Uh. Sorry.”

Ahmad lowered the lantern and hoisted the knapsack back on his shoulder.

“Okay. Let’s see where this takes us.”

They tentatively stepped through the door, inching their way down another alleyway.

“You know, as creepy as this is,” Winnie said, her voice a near-whisper as her hand trailed along the nearest wall, “it’s also beautiful.”

“Yeah,” Ahmad agreed softly. Under their feet, the cobblestones glimmered as though they contained veins of precious gems, pulsing with electric reds and deep purples. It was some sort of futuristic version of the Yellow Brick Road.

There was an odd, static hum in the air too.

But what did it all mean, and where was it going?

“Are we sure this is not just a glitch?” Winnie asked anxiously. “Doesn’t this remind you a bit of Lailat?”

“There was nothing left of Lailat to compare it to,” Ahmad snarked back, but without much heat to his voice. For the first time since this whole game had started, the darkness felt reassuring rather than suffocating. It was as though they were venturing deeper into a cave, and sooner or later, they would stumble into the lit grotto where they would find a hidden jewel of a lake, or a special treasure, and everything would make sense.

There was a sudden shift in the shadows in front of him, and Ahmad gasped.

“What was that?”

“What?” Winnie asked wildly. “What did you see?”

Ahmad panted, his heart pounding. “I guess it was one of those . . . shadow things again.”

“Does anything seem to be changed?”

The kids peered anxiously into the dark. The last times the shadows had appeared, buildings had shifted from sleek paneled sides to old carved stone, and sellers’ awnings billowed out from slick nylon into threadbare silks. Now, though, Ahmad couldn’t tell if anything had actually changed.

It made him even more nervous.

What were those things? More ghouls?

The wall nearest to them crackled and popped like rice cereal, and Winnie inched closer to him nervously. “I don’t trust it. It has to be a glitch. How long is this thing?”

Ahmad was about to reply, but he stopped short.

“Oh. Oh, wow.”

They had indeed found their way to a cavern, and it was ablaze with light from one central source: a maze. It rose up as a multicolored cube, walls towering toward the dark Paheli sky, which still bore the silently scrolling timer numbers.

“It looks like it belongs at the Met,” Winnie whispered, and stepped forward to lay a hand against one of its sides.

“Winnie, don’t!” Ahmad interjected, but her palm was already flat against the obsidian-colored wall.