I spotted them the moment I crawled out of our little overnight shelter near the base of Sky Tower — still rubbing my eyes, still half-dreaming about glass jars full of sunrises. They glittered on the ground like someone had walked through a pile of crushed amethyst and then wandered off toward the eastern ridge without bothering to apologize. Each footprint was perfectly shaped, perfectly spaced, and heading in a perfectly straight line. Which already made me suspicious, because nothing in my life had ever been perfectly anything.
“Biscuit,” I said. “Come look at this.”
Biscuit emerged from the shelter with her backpack already on and a cereal bar already half-eaten, because Biscuit had probably been awake for an hour making lists. She took one look at the footprints, crouched down, and sniffed.
“Purple chalk dust,” she said immediately. “And something else.” She sniffed again. “Endstone. Definitely endstone. Which smells exactly like cold metal and slightly disappointed dreams.”
I had no idea what disappointed dreams smelled like, but I trusted Biscuit’s nose the way I trusted my own two feet — completely, even when they led me somewhere unexpected. Usually into a hole.
The footprints led us east for about twenty minutes, through a birch forest and down a mossy stone staircase that seemed too neat to have grown naturally, until we found it — a stone archway covered in purple vines, with a sign hanging above it reading: EASTERN TRAIL TO ELEGANCE DUEL REGISTRATION — THIS WAY! And below that, a second sign someone had nailed crookedly over the first: ACTUALLY, CANCELLED. EARL’S ORDERS. DO NOT PROCEED. THIS MEANS YOU.
“That’s very specifically aimed at us,” Biscuit said.
“Probably because we specifically showed up,” I agreed.
We proceeded.
Beyond the archway, the path split into six different directions. Every single sign at the fork had been turned sideways, upside down, or replaced with notes reading things like WRONG WAY, ALSO WRONG WAY, and HAVE YOU CONSIDERED GOING HOME? It was impressively thorough. I had to admire whoever had done this, just a little bit, the same way you admire a very complicated trap even as you fall into it.
Which is when I heard the voices.
Three of them, all bickering at once, coming from behind a cluster of chorus fruit plants that had no business growing this far from the End dimension. I pushed through and found three adventurers sitting in a small clearing, surrounded by their own scattered maps, looking extremely frustrated. One was tall with iron boots. One had a parrot on her shoulder who kept repeating “wrong way, wrong way.” The third was sitting on his backpack with his arms crossed and the expression of someone who had been walking in circles for a very long time.
“Oh,” said the tall one, looking up at me. “Are you lost too?”
“Not yet,” I said cheerfully. “Give me ten minutes.”
Their names were Sable, Fen, and Corin. They’d been trying to reach the Elegance Duel registration point since yesterday morning, but every time they followed a sign, it led them somewhere else — a dead end, a loop, a tiny island with nothing on it but a single mushroom and a note reading NICE TRY. Someone had systematically rearranged every path marker in the entire area, and that someone had left purple footprints doing it.
“The Ender Earl,” Biscuit said quietly beside me, flipping open her notebook. “He’s been busy.”
I’d faced Baron Blaze, who was loud and dramatic and tried to win by being impressive. I’d faced Wither Wanda, who used fog and confusion as her weapons. But as I stood in that clearing, looking at three experienced adventurers completely stopped cold without a single fight, I felt something new settle in my stomach. A careful, paying-attention feeling. The Ender Earl hadn’t blocked anyone with fire or fog. He’d just quietly moved the signs. Rearranged the paths. Made everything confusing and organized it into a trap so neat that nobody even knew they were caught.
Enthusiasm wasn’t going to untangle this one. I needed to actually think.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Biscuit. You can smell endstone.”
“Like cold metal and slightly disappointed dreams,” she confirmed.
“Can you smell which direction has the most of it?”
She went still. She tilted her head. Her nose moved in tiny careful arcs, like a compass needle finding north, and I watched her and said absolutely nothing, which is genuinely very hard for me. After twelve seconds she pointed left and slightly uphill.
“That way,” she said. “Stronger than the others.”
I looked at the sign pointing that direction. It read: DEFINITELY NOT THE REGISTRATION POINT. NOTHING INTERESTING HERE. PLEASE IGNORE.
“Right,” I said. “Everyone follow us. And if you see any scattered blocks on the path — leave them scattered.”
Sable raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because,” I said, remembering what I’d heard whispered about the Ender Earl while the rescued villagers from the fog maze had talked around last night’s campfire, “whoever arranged all of this cannot stand mess. And I have a feeling we might need a distraction.”
We set off uphill, six of us now, following Biscuit’s nose through the rearranged maze of signs and wrong-way markers. Somewhere ahead, I could feel it — the registration board for the Elegance Duel, the contest that would decide whether the entire Blocky Realm stayed colorful or went gray forever. And somewhere between here and there, an extremely organized villain with a golden clipboard and a sparkly purple cape was almost certainly writing a new rule specifically about us.
I grinned my gap-toothed grin.
He hadn’t met us yet. Not properly.
