**Chapter 8: The Spaces Between**
Morning sunlight filtered through half-closed blinds, casting long stripes across Elias's apartment like prison bars. The coffee from earlier had gone cold on the windowsill, untouched. The smell clung to the air—bitter and burnt.
Elias sat at his desk, surrounded by papers, empty bottles of energy drinks, and a monitor still pulsing with a soft blue glow. He hadn't gone back in.
Not since the red eye in the mirror.
Not since the Architect.
Instead, he returned to work.
Not some grand secret society or elite hacker cabal—just… work. Graphic design contracts. UI/UX layouts. The occasional commission for indie devs who couldn't pay on time. Elias was talented. His portfolio was crisp. Clients loved his minimalist style, his intuition.
But lately, his designs had begun to shift.
Unintentionally.
A menu screen for a mobile RPG bore symbols he didn't remember drawing. A loading screen background resembled the ash-ringed mirror chamber from Ashen Hollow. When the client asked if the "bleeding cathedral fractal" was intentional, Elias lied and said yes.
He hadn't meant to draw it.
---
That afternoon, he went for a walk.
It was supposed to help. "Touch grass," the forums always said. Reconnect with reality. Breathe air that didn't come through a filtered HVAC system.
So he did.
He walked past children playing hopscotch on the pavement, the chalk smudged like soft glyphs under their shoes. He passed a man selling roasted chestnuts, the warm scent curling into his nose like a memory he couldn't place. His feet took him to the bookstore he hadn't visited in months.
The old woman behind the counter looked up. "Elias Vale," she said, smiling. "Back from the dead?"
He blinked. "Something like that."
He wandered the aisles with no intention to buy. His fingers brushed spines of books with titles like *The Collapse of Time* and *Through the Cracks of Consciousness*. He paused at a poetry section, thumbing open a slim volume.
> *"There is a silence between heartbeats where the world ends quietly."*
He stared at the words for a long time.
---
That evening, his friend Alex came over—one of the few connections from university that hadn't drifted off into marriage, kids, or startups.
They sat on the balcony, beers sweating in their hands. The city lights blinked below, artificial stars.
"You okay, man?" Alex asked.
Elias didn't answer right away. He watched a plane cut across the sky, its blinking light too slow, too red.
"I don't know," he finally said. "Do you ever feel like… you're dreaming? But it's not your dream?"
Alex gave him a side-eye. "You smoking again?"
"No." Elias paused. "Not the point."
Alex leaned back in the chair. "Is this about that VR game?"
Elias went quiet.
"It's just a sim, dude," Alex continued. "Does weird stuff. Gets in your head. But it's not *real*. You know that, right?"
Elias nodded.
But he wasn't sure.
Not after what he saw last night.
Not after he opened his fridge and found a piece of paper where the milk should be. A note. Written in handwriting not his own.
> _"Do not let him wake you."_
> —T
He hadn't told anyone about that.
---
That night, Elias dreamt of clocks.
They bled from the walls. Their hands spun backward, forward, stopped, and started again. The ticking wasn't sound—it was pressure. Against his skin. Against his ribs.
He stood in the middle of a train station. Empty. Abandoned. Flooded with pale green light. The walls flickered between plaster and cathedral stone. A bench turned into a pew. A vending machine melted into an altar.
The Architect stood at the far end, wings folded behind him, smiling gently.
"You can't stay away," he whispered.
Elias turned to run—but behind him was the mirror.
His reflection didn't move.
It blinked. The red eye glowed again.
---
He woke up gasping.
Morning again. Birds chirping. Ordinary light leaking into an ordinary room.
His phone buzzed.
**[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Update available for Ashen Hollow]**
> *"Patch 1.9: Memory Persistence Enhanced"*
He stared at the screen.
Then, slowly, set it down.
And walked to the mirror.
There, in his reflection—just for a heartbeat—was the faint shimmer of feathers. One black. One white.