Beneath this place is a room that remembers too much. A place where every memory is edited, twisted until you don't know if you ever existed outside these walls at all.
They walked until the walls changed again.
The veins in the hallway faded. The pulsing stopped. The fleshy hum of the corridor gave way to something harder, like old metal and wet stone. Every step sounded heavier now, boots scraping against something ancient and unkind. The light dimmed until only Mira's cracked flashlight painted their way forward in a narrow, trembling beam.
"This part of the house is… older," she muttered, slowing her pace.
"Older than what?" Ansel asked, wary.
"Older than everything else. Before, the building had windows. Before, it had a name. Before anyone lived here, something built this. Or grew it."
Ansel didn't like the way she said "grew."
Like the house was a wound that festered itself into existence.
The hallway ended at a black iron door.
It didn't look like it belonged. Too perfect. No rust. No hinges. Just a seamless frame set into the wall, as if someone had cut a hole in reality and patched it with steel.
Mira didn't touch it.
She just stood there, staring at it with a tight jaw, breathing slow, shallow breaths.
"What is this place?" Ansel asked, the words sticking to his tongue like thorns.
"The Room That Remembers," she whispered. "It doesn't open unless it wants to."
"How do we—"
The door clicked.
Unlocked itself.
A seam appeared down the middle, like it had been waiting for someone to knock, or perhaps simply for them to arrive.
Mira backed up a step. Her face was pale. "Of course it does," she muttered under her breath.
Before Ansel could ask, the door swung inward on a breath of ice.
The room beyond exhaled cold onto their faces.
Not just temperature.
Emotion.
The kind of cold that smelled like the end of things: funerals, hospital beds, empty houses after the last box has been moved out. The weight of it settled into Ansel's bones, making his knees tremble.
The flashlight flickered once and died.
Ansel cursed under his breath, fumbling at it. Mira didn't even flinch.
"It's okay," she said softly. It doesn't like artificial light. Use your eyes."
The room was… massive.
Not wide, not tall—but endless.
It bent behind itself, folding and stretching like some strange dream.
The floor was a smooth, black reflective surface, like obsidian. Every step echoed forever into the blackness. The surrounding walls were mirrors.
But they didn't show their reflections.
They showed… other moments.
Ansel's third birthday. His mother's face glowed in the candlelight, singing off-key.
His father standing by the window, eyes hollow and disconnected.
A late night at sixteen, curled on the bathroom floor after drinking too much, the world spinning out of control.
The night he got the call about Clara.
The weight of it all collapsed into him at once.
He staggered back.
Each mirror shifted and danced as he moved, tilting slightly to follow him. Played his life like scenes from a forgotten, broken film reel.
And behind each mirrored image, a figure stood.
Watching.
Silent.
Sometimes just a shadow.
Sometimes a familiar face—warped, bleeding at the edges like a photograph left too long in acid.
Mira stood beside him, tense. She refused to look at her own mirrors.
"Don't focus on the scenes," she warned. "That's how it rewrites you. The more you watch, the more it changes what you think happened."
"But—these are my memories," Ansel whispered, throat dry.
"You think they are," she said sharply. "It knows what hurts. It shows you the cracks."
He turned to her, desperate. "What about you? What's it showing you?"
Mira didn't answer.
Her hands were clenched into fists, knuckles white. Her face was hard and empty, eyes locked on the floor.
"You okay?" he asked.
"No," she said. "And neither are you."
A mirror near them shattered.
No warning.
No impact.
It simply decided it was finished.
The shards scattered soundlessly across the floor, revealing a flat black wall behind it. On the wall, three words were carved deep into the surface:
YOU NEVER LEFT.
Ansel's heart slammed against his ribs.
"That… that's not true," he said, but his voice wavered.
Another mirror rippled.
It showed his apartment.
But something was wrong.
His body was there, slumped in the bathtub, mouth slack, eyes open and unseeing.
Skin waxy. Lifeless.
Mira grabbed his arm hard.
"Don't look."
"But—"
"IT'S NOT TRUE," she bark
ed, voice slicing through the endless space.
The entire room shivered.
The mirrors howled silently. Some laughed, a high, brittle sound. Others sobbed and cracked, leaking thin trails of black liquid that dripped onto the floor and sizzled into smoke.
"You think this place shows the past?" Mira said. "It doesn't. It shows versions. False truths. Things it wants you to believe. Because if you start questioning what's real, you'll never find your way out."
Ansel's breath came too fast, too shallow. "How do you know?"
Mira looked at him, real and raw. "Because I watched someone forget their own name in this room. Watched them believe a lie so hard they couldn't come back."
"What happened to them?"
"They became part of the wall."
Ansel's mouth dried out completely.
And then he saw it.
Behind the fractured glass of a mirror to his left—a face.
Pressed against the other side, eyes wide, mouth open in an endless, silent scream.
Not a memory.
Not a reflection.
A person.
Trapped.
Frozen in the second they surrendered everything.
"We have to go," Mira hissed. "It's watching too closely now."
Ansel hesitated.
He looked once more at the mirror that had shown him dead, submerged in cold water.
"Do you think it's possible?" he asked, voice small. "That I never left? That I'm still—"
"No," Mira said, more fiercely than before. "That's what it wants. Stop giving it what it wants."
She grabbed his hand without warning.
Her skin was colder than before—ice over bone—but her grip was sure, pulling him forward.
And then they ran.
Boots slapping against the obsidian floor.
The mirrors screamed louder.
Shards shot from the walls, slicing the air.
A piece slashed Mira's side—she staggered but didn't let go.
The door ahead began to close.
They sprinted, the world around them splintering into howling memories and lies.
At the last second, they dove.
The metal door slammed behind them with a boom that vibrated in Ansel's ribs, cutting off the room's wails.
They lay gasping on the ground outside.
The air was warmer here.
He turned to look at Mira, saw the blood staining her shirt at her ribs. She pressed a shaking hand against it but said nothing.
Neither spoke for a long time.
Finally, Ansel whispered, "I think… I think I remember less than before."
"That's good," Mira said hoarsely. "It means it couldn't change you. Not yet."
He sat up, dizzy.
"Why are you helping me?" he asked again, more earnestly this time.
Mira was silent.
Her jaw tightened.
Then, quietly: "Because once, a long time ago... someone tried to help me. And I failed them."
Ansel stared at her, the words wrapping around his ribs, squeezing
He turned toward the new hallway they had emerged into.
It was different.
The walls here were darker, rougher, almost organic. Every few feet, something like a heartbeat pulsed in the floor.
And then—
He heard it.
A voice.
Not Mira's.
Not his thoughts.
From deep down the corridor.
Calling him.
Softly.
Lovingly.
"Ansel..."
It whispered.
"Ansel... come back..."
Mira stiffened.
Ansel's breath caught.
Because the voice was familiar.
And he realized, with a jolt of horror—
—it was Clara's voice.
But Clara was dead.
Wasn't she?
Ansel took a trembling step forward before he could stop himself.
The corridor seemed to stretch longer.
Mira grabbed his wrist, tighter than before.
"Don't," she said, her voice low and urgent.
But it was too late.
The whispering grew louder.
Sweeter.
And Ansel, without meaning to, whispered back:
"…Clara?"
And something in the dark smiled