James woke up in silence.
Not the kind of silence you find at night, but the deep, pressing kind-the kind that swallows sound and holds it hostage.
He was lying on the floor.
Stone. Cold. Damp.
When he blinked, the ceiling above him wasn't a ceiling at all-it was a mirror. Cracked and fogged, stretching endlessly overhead, reflecting a version of himself that seemed to move just a second too late.
He sat up slowly, every muscle sore.
The well... the voice... the creature...
"Amaka?" he called out, voice hoarse.
No answer.
The corridor around him was not the stairwell he remembered. It was a new place, though built from familiar parts-old apartment doors, broken furniture half-melted into the walls, flickering exit signs that pointed in opposite directions.
The light came from nowhere, and yet the shadows were alive-crawling across the walls like insects made of smoke.
Something was deeply wrong.
The apartment building had folded in on itself, trapping him inside its own memory.
Each door bore a name. Not numbers-names.
And all the names were familiar.
He stood and walked slowly to the first one. A wooden door, splintered at the bottom like something had tried to claw its way out.
The brass plaque read:
JULIET EDEM – ROOM 5B
James froze.
Juliet had been his first crush. Back in secondary school. She'd gone missing during a school trip. No one ever found her.
He reached for the doorknob.
It turned easily.
Inside the room was not a bedroom-but a hospital hallway.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and the walls were stained with something dark, as if water had been dripping down for decades.
On the far end of the hallway stood a bed, and on it, Juliet.
Or what was left of her.
She turned her head slowly as James stepped in, her eyes milky white. A long gash ran across her chest, stitched with barbed wire.
"James," she said softly. "You left me behind."
James stumbled back. "No... I was thirteen. I didn't know what happened to you."
Her mouth opened-and kept opening-until her jaw dislocated and her scream filled the hallway.
The walls shook, the lights burst, and hands reached up from beneath the hospital floor, grabbing at James's legs.
He ran.
Back through the door, slamming it shut behind him, chest heaving.
The plaque now read:
FORGOTTEN
He backed away, heart racing.
Every door here was someone he had known... and lost.
They were all waiting.
"James."
He turned around sharply.
Amaka stood in the center of the corridor, soaked in shadows but alive. Her eyes looked hollow, but she was real.
"Where were you?" he asked, panting.
"We were separated. The building likes to test new guests," she said. "You're in its maze now. It calls it the House of Echoes."
"What does it want from me?"
"Reflection. Regret. Submission."
James clenched his fists. "I'm not giving it anything."
Amaka looked at him, almost sad. "You already are. Every step you take, it eats the pieces you shed."
He noticed then that his reflection in the mirrored ceiling was blurry, losing detail.
"Then how do I fight back?"
She stepped forward, pulling something from her pocket. It was a small pendant-made of bone, shaped like an eye. "There are anchors hidden inside this place. Relics from before the building woke up. We need to find them. Place them at the well. Seal it."
James nodded. "Where do we start?"
She pointed to the far end of the corridor.
There, a staircase descended into red light.
"But be warned," she said, voice trembling. "Down there... is where the building keeps its memories. And some of them still remember you."
James stared into the glow.
He could feel it already-like a heartbeat pulling him forward.
He didn't know what he would find in the rooms ahead.
But something told him-whatever waited there didn't want to be forgotten.
The staircase hissed as they stepped onto it-each creaking step releasing a puff of warm, stale air, like they were descending into the lungs of something that once breathed but had long since died.
James and Amaka moved slowly, their shadows stretched unnaturally behind them, merging with the walls.
There were no handrails.
Just stone steps that spiraled downward in a slow, suffocating curve.
"How far does it go?" James asked, his voice hushed.
"As far as your guilt," Amaka replied.
They didn't speak again for several minutes.
At the bottom, the staircase ended in a vast underground gallery, lit by torches that burned with blue fire. The walls were lined with rusted picture frames-dozens of them-each containing moving images. They weren't paintings or photographs.
They were memories.
James stepped toward one.
Inside the frame, he saw himself-barely ten years old-running through a field, barefoot and laughing. His mother was just behind him, holding a kite. She was smiling, whole and alive.
He reached out to touch it, but Amaka grabbed his wrist.
"Don't," she warned. "It'll pull you in. These aren't just memories-they're traps. Echoes twisted by the building's hunger."
James pulled back, but the memory flickered-his mother's smile slowly stretching into a grotesque grin. Her eyes went dark. Her skin peeled back like paper burning from the edges.
The kite dissolved into ash.
He stumbled away, shaking.
"This place is evil," he muttered.
"No," Amaka said. "It's wounded. The building wasn't always like this. Something was summoned here. Fed with pain. That well was the gateway. And you were the first offering."
They kept walking.
At the center of the gallery stood a pedestal.
Upon it rested the first relic-a bronze clock, small and ornate, shaped like a heart suspended inside a ribcage. Its hands ticked backward, each second jerking violently, like it was resisting time itself.
"That's it," Amaka said. "The Clock of Hollow Hours. One of the anchors."
James reached for it.
But the moment his fingers brushed the metal, the gallery walls shuddered.
All the picture frames lit up-blazing like fire-and the whispers began.
> "Why didn't you save her...?"
"You left me behind."
"James... James... James..."
The voices weren't random.
They were everyone he had ever failed.
His childhood best friend who drowned.
His uncle who died while James ignored his calls.
A girl he once loved who disappeared after one final message.
All of them... calling out now.
"Focus!" Amaka shouted. "Don't listen to them!"
But James couldn't move.
From one of the picture frames, a black hand reached out, clutching his shoulder, pulling him toward the glass.
The memory inside was a graveyard.
It was nighttime. Rain pounded the earth.
James saw his younger self, standing beside an open grave... and inside it lay himself, older, lifeless, eyes open and staring at the storm.
And in the distance-the apartment building, burning, wailing like a wounded animal.
"Let me go!" James shouted, struggling as more hands reached for him from the surrounding frames.
Amaka sprang forward, thrusting the bone pendant into the clock's surface. It glowed bright orange-and the gallery screamed.
Every picture shattered at once.
The hands let go.
James fell to the ground, clutching the relic.
The whispers stopped.
Amaka knelt beside him. "It won't get easier."
He nodded, trembling.
"What now?" he asked.
"We take the relic to the well. It'll weaken the voice, close its grip. But we need three more. One for each pillar of the building's soul: Regret, Remorse, and Rage."
"This was... Regret," James said.
Amaka looked at him. "And the next will be worse."
They turned to leave the gallery.
But as they ascended the stairwell, James noticed something horrifying in the corner of his eye-
One frame had not shattered.
It had grown.
And inside it... was Amaka, hanging by her neck, eyes wide, still alive-staring right at him.
"Amaka-" he gasped.
She turned, seeing it too. Her face went pale.
"It's a future," she whispered. "One the building is trying to write."
James looked away, jaw clenched.
"We won't let it."
But the frame was still there as they climbed the steps. Watching. Waiting.
The stairwell back to the surface was not the one they'd descended. The building had shifted again.
James noticed it first-the steps were coated with fine ash, and the walls bled faint trails of rust, or something worse. The scent of burning old paper and rotting flowers filled the air. The architecture itself was groaning, rearranging like a giant trying to scratch an itch inside its own bones.
He clutched the relic tighter-its weight unnatural, like it wanted to leap from his hand and crawl back into the shadows.
"How far is the well?" he asked.
"Close," Amaka replied, her voice tight. "Too close."
As they stepped through a half-rotted archway, James felt the air shift again. Suddenly, the building opened into a grand hall-a space that shouldn't exist within the narrow apartment complex. It looked like a cathedral built by forgotten hands, ceilings arched like ribcages, chandeliers made from bone and melted glass, walls breathing faintly with sorrow.
At the center of the room was the well.
It stood exactly as he remembered it: moss-covered stone, endless dark inside, and a faint pulse-a heartbeat beneath the world. But now, something stood beside it.
Someone.
A tall, skeletal man in a long black coat. His face was hidden beneath a mask of nails-each hammered into his skin, forming a crude, grinning skull.
He turned as they approached, and James's breath caught.
It was Mr. Olumide, the man who used to own the apartment building.
He had vanished years ago-rumored to have died in the foundations when the place was first constructed. Some said he'd gone mad.
Now he stood before them, alive, but no longer human.
"You brought back the first piece," Olumide said, his voice hollow. "Good. The house remembers now. It forgives... nothing."
James stepped forward, wary. "Why are you here?"
"I never left," Olumide said, gesturing to the well. "When I built this place, I broke the land. Dug too deep. Found something beneath. A mouth... that never closes. I fed it my shame. My guilt. And it gave me this."
He raised his arms. The shadows trembled.
"I am the Keeper now."
Amaka moved beside James. "We're sealing the well. Your time's over."
Olumide chuckled, a sound like rusted hinges and bone. "Time doesn't pass here. It just... folds. The moment you stepped inside, James, it marked you. You don't close a wound by cutting it open wider."
James raised the relic-the Clock of Hollow Hours-its backward ticking loud in the stillness.
"We're returning this to the earth," he said.
Olumide's smile widened. "Then return with it."
He raised one hand, and the floor beneath them cracked open.
From the fissures, figures began to rise-translucent, whispering things. Past tenants, their faces warped by sorrow, their mouths filled with ash.
They rushed forward.
James grabbed Amaka's hand, yanking her toward the well.
"GO!" he shouted.
They sprinted across the collapsing floor, shadows biting at their ankles, phantom hands reaching.
Olumide walked calmly behind them, each step causing the building to tremble.
As they neared the well, the relic in James's hand burned. It didn't want to go back.
But James did something unexpected-he whispered to it.
"I remember. I forgive myself."
For a split second, the Clock pulsed.
And James threw it into the darkness.
The moment it touched the bottom, a sound erupted-a chime, like every clock in the world striking at once.
The shadows reeled back, shrieking.
The well's edge glowed.
Cracks shot through the cathedral walls as Olumide screamed, clutching his head. The nails in his mask twisted, driving deeper.
"You fools! You've broken the rhythm!"
James stood tall. "Good."
But then-the well began to change.
The glow turned red.
Amaka gasped. "No... it's not closing. It's waking up."
Suddenly, the entire cathedral shook. The floor split, the chandeliers fell, and from the mouth of the well, a black root rose-pulsing, fleshy, and massive. It twisted in the air like a serpent, covered in mouths whispering secrets James could almost understand.
Olumide fell to his knees, laughing.
"You've stirred the First Voice. Now you'll hear it too."
Amaka grabbed James. "We need to go. Now."
But James didn't move.
He was listening.
Not with his ears.
With his mind.
And he realized something terrifying.
The voice inside the well wasn't just speaking to him.
It was learning from him.
Learning his fears.
Learning how to twist the building further.
He tore his gaze away and followed Amaka as the ceiling began to collapse.
They ran through a crumbling side passage as Olumide's body was dragged into the well by unseen forces-screaming, nails falling from his face one by one.
And behind them, the cathedral burned.
---
They emerged hours later-or maybe seconds-into a hallway near the original stairwell. The building was silent. Not calm-waiting.
Amaka collapsed against the wall.
"We stopped it?" James asked.
She shook her head. "No. But we wounded it. It's bleeding memories now. And that gives us time."
James looked back toward where the well had been.
"There are three more relics," he said.
Amaka nodded. "The next is hidden in the Room of Remorse. We'll need to pass through the Nursery Wing."
"What's in there?" he asked.
She didn't answer for a long moment.
Finally, she whispered, "Children who never left."
James stood up.
His shadow, he noticed, was no longer just his.
Another stood beside it.
Smaller. Quieter.
Watching.