IT STARTED WITH A MAZE - Newt x Reader (F)

- A BONFIRE -

"Listen," he utters.

He's not smiling now. Just still, his features carved into shadow. I follow his gaze and try to listen harder. For a second, I think I'm only hearing the crackle of the fire and the rise and fall of voices behind us. But then there's something. Faint, low, distant. A groan. A rumble. The sound of shifting stone, the echo of something ancient and enormous grinding slowly into place.

The Maze.

I hear it. My breath catches in my throat.

"The creaking. The shifting," Newt murmurs. "It's the Maze. Changing. It changes every night."

I frown. "That doesn't make sense," I say. "It must follow a pattern."

Newt shrugs, pulling his knees closer to his chest. He takes a slow sip from his mug, then glances at me with a crooked smile, like I'm a child asking why the sky's blue. "Maybe. Who knows," he murmurs. "You can ask the people who put us in here if you ever meet the bastards." His voice is light, but the bitterness is there. Just under the surface, like a thin sheet of ice.

I shiver. Not from the cold. "Wait, but why not stay in the Maze overnight?" I ask. "To see how it changes? If it moves, track the movement."

Newt's smile fades. His gaze shifts back to the dark beyond the fire, deeper this time. Like something's lurking in the edges of memory. "No one's ever survived a night in the Maze," he says, calm as anything, but it knocks the wind out of me.

I stare. "What do you mean?"

He turns back, eyes heavy, expression unreadable. "We call them Grievers," he says. "Of course, no one's ever seen one and lived to tell about it. But they're out there."

I go cold, even with the heat of the fire warming my face. My fingers curl tighter around the edge of the log I'm sitting on. I almost ask what they do - these Grievers - but I'm scared of the answer. Newt doesn't elaborate. Just lets the silence stretch, like he's offering a quiet prayer to the dead.

Then Ben's voice cuts through the weight of it all, dragging us back to the surface. "Oi! Enough sitting in the dark," he shouts at Newt and I. "Come on, newbie. We've got a game." His tone is casual, like we hadn't just been talking about monsters in the night.

Ben walks past us with a cocky strut and a swaggering ease that seems to bend the air around him. Minho is nearby the other runner. I stand slowly, but my eyes catch something as Minho turns. A mark - no, a symbol - inked at the base of his neck. It's quick, maybe a second. But it snags in my mind like a hook. Not too big. Not too small. Just there. A branded sort of thing, maybe. Or a tattoo. I can't tell.

But just as quickly as I register it, it's gone - buried beneath his collar as he disappears toward the edge of the circle.

I take a breath that feels like I've held it for minutes. My chest is tight, but also somehow hollow, like I've lost something I didn't know I was carrying. Newt watches me go but doesn't say anything. Doesn't try to stop me, simply follows from a distance.

Ben leads me past the fire, weaving through boys sprawled out across crates and old chairs. The chatter fades as we reach the training tree. That's what I'm calling it in my head - this thick, gnarled oak with its bark worn smooth around a target carved deep into its trunk.

The firelight doesn't reach quite as well here. It flickers and fades, leaving long shadows stretched over the tree like claw marks. The ground is worn down from years of footsteps, of boys lining up and throwing blades into the wood. Ben kicks a folding stool toward me. It screeches slightly against the dirt. "Have a seat," he says. "Enjoy the show."