The stairs groaned beneath our feet like they were alive.
Each step down felt heavier than the last—not just physically, but mentally. The weight of being watched pressed against my spine, cold and intimate. I didn't want to look back. I knew if I did, the house might show me something I wasn't ready to see.
Ren moved ahead of me, his blade angled low, shoulders squared. He didn't speak. He hadn't since we left the hall. It wasn't his usual silence either. This one was raw, like something was unraveling behind his eyes.
The further we descended, the more the air thickened—moisture clinging to our skin, not quite water, not quite sweat. The walls around the stairwell pulsed faintly, like veins beneath bruised flesh. Symbols—jagged and ancient—bled in and out of visibility along the concrete.
"This place wasn't designed," I said quietly, "it was grown."
Ren didn't answer, but I saw the twitch in his jaw. He agreed.
Finally, after what felt like too many steps and no time at all, we reached the bottom.
The stairwell ended in a cavernous room with no clear edges. The light here came from above—thin, flickering threads of white that looked more like nerves than bulbs. They dangled from the unseen ceiling, twitching faintly, swaying with no wind.
In the center of the space: a dais.
On it sat a mirror.
But this was no ordinary glass.
It was a pool of mercury suspended in a perfect, upright oval—shifting and pulsing as if it breathed. Images rippled across its surface too quickly to comprehend.
"TRIAL: REFLECTION OF SELF."
"REQUIRED FOR FLUX-ALIGNED ENTITIES."
"SUCCESS: IDENTITY STABILIZATION."
"FAILURE: NARRATIVE CORRUPTION."
Ren's voice came low, gravel in his throat. "This wasn't in any of the other loops."
"Because I wasn't in any of your other loops," I replied.
He turned to me, finally. "This thing—it's not just a trial. It's a lock. It wants to trap the unstable elements before they ripple too far."
"Me," I said.
He nodded once.
The mirror pulsed in agreement.
The moment I stepped onto the dais, the world changed.
There was no sound, no movement, no Ren.
Just me.
Alone.
The space around me dissolved into white static. The mirror expanded, stretching outward until it surrounded me like a dome. It wasn't reflecting anymore. It was recording. Images burst across the walls—flashes of memory, moments I hadn't lived in this life but somehow remembered all the same.
A child crying alone in the rain.
Hands wrapped around a friend's throat.
A girl screaming in the dark, begging me not to leave.
Me leaving anyway.
Then: Ren's face.
Bleeding.
Smiling.
Screaming.
"CHOOSE THE MOMENT THAT DEFINES YOU."
Three images stabilized in front of me:
Image One: I stand over a broken player, weapon in hand. They're crying. I feel nothing.
Image Two: I drag Ren's unconscious body from a collapsing room, even as the exit closes in.
Image Three: I sit alone, watching survivors argue. I say nothing. I do nothing. The group fractures.
I stared at all three.
I hated all of them.
"I'm not any of these," I whispered.
"All are possible. All are seeds within you."
"Then I reject them."
The mirror pulsed.
"ERROR: SELECTION REQUIRED."
"No," I growled. "You don't get to label me. I'm not your villain. I'm not your savior. I'm not your silent observer."
My reflection emerged again, shifting between the three versions.
Then froze.
And smiled.
But the smile didn't feel like mine.
"Warning: External Influence Detected."
My throat tightened. "What?"
The reflection spoke this time, its voice layered and inhuman.
"You broke your alignment, Lin Yusheng. And now something else has taken notice."
Behind my mirrored self, a shape emerged.
Too tall. Wrong-limbed. Its form flickered—one moment a mass of mouths, the next a glitched silhouette wearing my skin. Its head tilted, mimicking me.
"The House is not the only thing that writes."
It stepped forward.
And the mirror shattered.
I fell.
Not metaphorically.
The ground beneath me dissolved into liquid shadow and I plummeted, my scream devoured by the dark. Cold bit into me as wind roared past. Then—
I landed.
Hard.
On concrete.
Ren was kneeling beside me when I opened my eyes.
"Welcome back," he muttered.
I sat up, dazed, aching everywhere. "What—what just happened?"
"You triggered an external sequence," he said, helping me to my feet. "The system registered a corruption signal. Something latched onto your ambiguity. Tried to overwrite you."
I turned toward the mirror—it was gone. The dais was cracked, black veins spreading from where I'd stood.
Ren met my eyes. "You weren't just unstable anymore. You became editable."
A low tremor ran through the chamber.
"WARNING: ENTITY '∆' DETECTED. UNAUTHORIZED CHARACTER BRANCHING IN PROGRESS."
Ren cursed. "We need to move. Now."
As we sprinted through the ever-shifting corridors—walls groaning and merging behind us—I asked the question that had been burning since the trial:
"Ren… how many loops have you done?"
He didn't look at me.
"Seventy-two," he said at last. "I've died seventy-two times in this house. Sometimes as a player. Sometimes as the villain. Sometimes… by my own hand."
I slowed slightly. "Then why keep going?"
He hesitated. Then:
"Because I wasn't always the antagonist either. At first, I was just someone trying to survive. Just like you. But the system needed balance—so it made me the villain. It was easier than rewriting itself."
I looked at him, heart pounding.
"So we both broke the rules."
His gaze finally met mine.
"No," he said quietly. "You shattered them. I just learned to live inside the cracks."
A screech tore through the corridor ahead.
Something unnatural.
And loud.
The kind of noise that bends your bones inside your skin.
Ren raised his blade.
I drew the coin from my pocket, feeling it pulse—almost like it was alive.
This time, it was watching me too.
Not as a player.
Not even as a threat.
But as something new.