Ansel didn't know how long he stood outside 4B.
There was no clock. No sound. Only the hallway breathing its slow, steady rhythm like a sedated animal—dormant, not dead.
He took a step.
The lights above didn't flicker anymore. They watched. Their dull yellow glow tracked him like eyes that had waited for years just to open. Every step echoed back too loud, too hollow, like he was walking across a skull.
He passed a door that hadn't been there before. It was chained shut, dozens of rusted padlocks bolting it in place. Something banged behind it, once—sharp and fast—like it heard him.
He didn't stop.
Another few paces down, the hallway forked.
He hadn't seen that before.
Left: narrow, cracked floor tiles, walls that wept dark stains like ink. Right: a red glow pulsed beneath the floorboards, like the carpet had veins.
He stood between both.
And the hallway spoke.
"Where would you hide, if even your memories hunted you?"
The voice wasn't human.
It came from everywhere. Beneath his feet. In his skull.
He didn't answer.
He turned left.
The air turned wet. Sticky. Breathing became harder—not like the air lacked oxygen, but like it had secrets in it.
He ran a hand along the wall.
It pulsed under his fingers.
And flinched.
There were voices in the walls. Not whispering now—arguing. Hundreds of them, layered over one another, old and young and monstrous. All angry. All afraid.
He moved faster.
The hallway narrowed, ceiling closing in. Soon he had to hunch, then crawl. The light dimmed to nothing, and the only sound was his own breath—and the scraping of something behind him.
Something that didn't breathe.
Didn't stumble.
Just scraped.
Always closer.
He emerged into a new space—a circular room, damp with rot, walls lined with what looked like cracked tiles.
But they weren't tiles.
They were teeth.
Not arranged neatly. Just jammed into the walls in uneven rows—some long, some short, yellowed and black and cracked. Molars. Incisors. Baby teeth.
Ansel backed up slowly, one hand to the wall.
A tongue uncurled from the ceiling above him, coiling down silently, tasting the air.
He ran.
Didn't look back. Didn't listen.
He burst through a door that hadn't been there a second ago.
And found himself in a hospital corridor.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Clean linoleum floors. White walls.
Too clean.
Too quiet.
Not right.
The smell was antiseptic. But beneath it: blood. Faint. Recent.
Down the hall, a sign:
"MEMORY WARD – Restricted Access"
Ansel walked toward it.
Because where else could he go?
The hallway extended the closer he got. Now the door was fifty feet away. Then a hundred. Then a hundred more.
The hallway was testing him.
He stopped.
Turned.
Walked the other way.
The door slammed open behind him.
He turned.
A shape stood in the doorway.
Long.
Thin.
Wearing a doctor's coat stained with something brown and dry.
No face.
Just a bandage wrapped around its head.
It raised one hand slowly and pointed at him.
Then it spoke—not with a voice, but with a memory.
His memory.
He was eight.
Alone.
In a hospital waiting room.
His father never came back.
The nurses whispered.
The lights buzzed too loud.
The doctor in the coat walked past him.
Ansel fell to his knees.
The door yawned wider.
Inside: a room with one bed.
And someone in it.
The sheet covered the shape entirely.
But it breathed.
Ansel stepped in.
Drawn.
The hallway sealed behind him.
He stood at the bedside.
A tag hung from the shape's toe, visible beneath the sheet.
He reached for it.
Read the name.
His own.
He jerked back—but the lights died.
And the shape under the sheet sat up fast.
He felt hands grab his shoulders—dozens, cold and skeletal and wet. The room tilted.
He screamed—
And fell down.
Not through a trapdoor.
Not through the floor.
Just down.
Like the building had no end. Like gravity stopped caring.
He hit solid ground hard.
Opened his eyes.
Another hallway.
But this one was different.
Wider.
Darker.
Alive.
The floor squirmed beneath him—something like flesh. The walls bled in pulses.
And ahead of him…
A figure.
Kneeling.
Face turned toward him.
Waiting.
Let the air thicken. Mira is not someone who wants to talk. But in here, everything comes with a cost. Sometimes, the only currency that matters... is truth.