Paedyn begins the final Trial knowing she may not survive. After an Imperial guide leaves her at one entrance to the shifting hedge maze, the king signals the start, and Paedyn runs inside. In the darkness and damp, she makes quick choices at each turn, repeatedly hitting dead ends as the crowd’s noise fades behind the walls.

The maze suddenly shifts around her, and a corridor begins closing fast enough to crush her. Because Paedyn is claustrophobic and unarmed, the moving hedges terrify her, but she sprints for an opening and dives clear at the last second. Her left foot is trapped in the fused branches and thorns, and she has to tear it free by force, shredding her flesh and losing what remains of her boot.

After a brief recovery, Paedyn rips fabric from her tank to bandage the wound and forces herself onward, limping deeper into the maze. She keeps choosing directions at random while thinking about the true prize at the center: if she gets there first, she will be expected to take a prisoner’s life. Her fear returns when the hedges start closing again, and she initially believes the king has simply decided to kill contestants with the maze itself.

Instead, the walls stop with only shoulder-width space left in the corridors. Paedyn realizes the maze has been deliberately tightened to force contestants into narrow, one-body paths where direct confrontation is unavoidable. A distant scream confirms that fighting has already begun, and moments later an unseen contestant comes up behind her and says they were worried they would not get the chance to kill her before the Trials ended.