The stairs behind the Whisper Door didn't make sense.
They spiraled downward far longer than they should have.
Each step felt longer than the last—stretching, bending, like time itself was folding in on me.
The air was thick, not with dust, but with something older.
Something that remembered being forgotten.
And with every step, I felt lighter.
Not in body—in memory.
At the fifth turn, I couldn't recall what day it was.
At the eighth, I forgot my phone number.
By the time I lost count, I wasn't sure if I had a family.
And when I reached the bottom…
I wasn't sure I had a name.
It opened into a vast chamber.
Circular, high-ceilinged, and filled with mirrors.
Not hung mirrors—standing ones. Dozens of them, arranged in a spiral.
Each with a small brass plaque at the bottom.
The nearest one read:
Tenant 4B — 1961 — Eliza WhittakerStatus: Broken
The mirror was cracked down the center.
Behind the reflection, I saw a flicker of a woman screaming in an empty room.
And just like that—I remembered her.
Eliza.
She was the one who carved poems into the wallpaper.
The one who wrote letters to someone who never replied.
Her mind had been hollowed.
Now she lived only in the mirror.
I walked past her.
Next: 1973 — Marcus Lorn — Status: Fading
His mirror was foggy.
I leaned in.
He stared back.
His eyes were vacant, like a man still screaming on the inside.
He whispered:
"Don't stay long.The longer you linger, the more you lose."
His hand pressed against the glass.
Then it flickered—and he was gone.
I kept walking.
Each mirror a memory tomb.
Mara was near the center.
Her plaque:
Tenant 4B — 2009 — Mara EllisonStatus: Contained
Her reflection stared at me.
But she didn't move.
Her lips were sewn shut with thread that pulsed—alive.
A chain wrapped around the base of her mirror, secured with a wax seal.
The Sun in Thirds.
And next to her…
An empty pedestal.
No mirror.
Just a nameplate that read:
Current Witness: [REDACTED]Status: In Flux
I understood instantly.
That one was mine.
Suddenly, a voice behind me:
"Most visitors don't make it this far."
I turned.
A man stood there, tall, wearing a coat that shimmered like glass in candlelight.
His face was blurry—as if memory itself refused to focus on him.
But I knew him.
Somehow, I knew.
"Alden G. Fray," I said.
He smiled.
"Still remembered, then. That's rare."
I asked him what this place was.
He gestured to the mirrors.
"This is where the tenants remain.Where the apartment stores what it cannot let go of.The Hollow Memory."
"But why?" I asked. "What's the purpose?"
He walked to Mara's mirror.
"This place isn't haunted by a ghost," he said.
"It's haunted by the act of remembering.Every tenant who sees too much, feels too much… is preserved here.So the apartment never truly loses them.They are its blood."
I shuddered.
"And the Host?" I asked.
"The Host anchors the ritual," he said. "She bears the pain. The Witness—"
He pointed at the empty pedestal.
"—makes the choice."
He stepped closer.
"You've come far. That earns you the right to choose."
I felt the weight of it press down on me.
"If I leave, what happens?"
"You forget," he said.
"All of it.Eli. Mara. The ledger.You'll go back upstairs and find an empty room, untouched.You'll sign a new lease.You'll sleep peacefully.Until the door appears again."
I swallowed hard.
"And if I stay?"
He smiled.
"You take her place."
I looked at Mara's reflection.
At her stitched lips.
Her hollow eyes.
She didn't look alive.
She didn't look dead either.
She looked… paused.
I turned back to him.
"Why me?"
Alden Fray's voice changed.
Colder. Closer to my own.
"Because you never left.You were here from the beginning."
He reached into his coat.
Pulled out a page from the original ledger.
Held it up.
I saw my signature.
Dated 1957.
"No," I whispered. "That's impossible."
"Is it?" he said. "Or have you simply forgotten?"
The spiral of mirrors began to spin around us.
Not physically—mentally.
My memories fractured.
Flickers of past lives:
A woman in 1978, whispering into a wall.
A boy in 1986, drawing the Sun in Thirds on a chalkboard.
A man in 2002, finding a hidden ledger in a floorboard.
Each of them felt like… me.
Fray leaned in.
"There's only one way to break it."
I stared at him.
"How?"
He handed me a mirror shard.
The reflection inside was my face.
But stitched like Mara's.
"You have to choose:Shatter your mirror—Or take her place.Either way, one stays.One forgets."
I looked at Mara.
I looked at my own reflection.
Then I looked at the shard.
It pulsed in my hand.
Heavy.
Final.
"I'm not the Host," I said.
"Not anymore."
And I threw the shard.
Not at my own mirror.
But at Alden Fray.
The shard passed through him like smoke.
But the room cracked.
Mirrors began to shatter one by one.
Mara's chains broke.
Her stitched lips parted.
She screamed.
Loud enough to shake the chamber.
Fray laughed—then vanished.
And the Whisper Door behind me opened again.
I ran.
Up the spiraling stairs.
Clutching what remained of my memory.
When I emerged into my apartment…
The door closed behind me.
And vanished.
Like it had never existed.
On the floor was a photo.
Of me.
Holding a mirror shard.
On the back, a single sentence:
"If you forget this,you'll be back."