The black iron door swallowed him.
There was no fall.
No sound.
No sensation.
Just
Impact.
Not against his body.
Against his mind.
The ticking the one that once echoed in clocks, walls, and skulls now pulsed directly within his chest.
It became his heartbeat.
It was his heartbeat.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
And then
The world changed.
Not a world, exactly.
A ruin.
Charred. Cracked. Breathing smoke instead of air.
It smelled like burnt pages from books no one would ever read again
Things lost, but still mourned.
Ash drifted in slow motion.
A soft snow of obliteration.
And at the center of it all
A girl.
Standing alone in front of a ruined house.
Familiar. Too familiar.
Long hair.
Bare feet.
A torn dress that might've once been white.
Ivy.
But not the Ivy he remembered.
Not the one who laughed.
Not the one who reached for him in kindness or light.
This Ivy turned to face him
and her eyes...
Her eyes remembered everything.
The betrayals.
The promises broken.
The loops repeated.
The pain unspoken.
She didn't blink.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't soften at the sight of him.
She judged.
Tick.
Tick.
A crack opened in his heartbeat.
Hale stumbled forward
each step pulled by guilt dragging behind broken bones.
"Ivy..." he whispered.
His voice didn't echo.
Didn't carry.
It barely existed.
The girl tilted her head.
Not like she recognized him.
Like she recognized the thing that had been wearing his skin for far too long.
She didn't speak.
She simply raised her hand.
And the sky
split open.
Not with lightning.
With memories.
Above them, like torn film reels, moments unraveled:
Hale dragging her through collapsing timelines.
Hale erasing her memory, forcing her to stay.
Hale carving the very first Room Room 1 into reality, sealing her fate with his own hands.
They weren't visions to punish her.
They were judgments meant for him.
He dropped to his knees.
"No," Hale breathed, choking on the truth.
"I—I didn't mean to "
But Ivy didn't move.
Didn't speak.
The air around her pulsed like a second heartbeat
each throb peeling another lie away from his soul.
Another memory:
Hale standing over her lifeless body choosing himself instead of saving her.
Hale begging the fabric of time to make her remember him, even if it meant splitting her soul in two.
Hale building Room 9. The trap. The loop. The prison.
His chest twisted violently.
Pain and memory became indistinguishable.
He reached for her.
She stepped back.
Not out of fear.
Out of finality.
"You're not supposed to be here," she said quietly.
Not with hate.
Not with sorrow.
Just truth.
Behind her, the house collapsed into ash.
A life. A home. Gone.
Hale screamed.
Not a name. Not a plea.
Just a raw, broken sound—the only shape sorrow could take.
"I'd fix it," he whispered. "I swear I would. I swear—"
But the world didn't listen.
The ruin didn't care.
And Ivy
she just watched.
Tick.
Tick.
The sound in his chest grew heavier, like the seconds themselves no longer wanted to move forward.
There was a choice in the air.
Not visible.
Not spoken.
But present.
He crawled to her feet
forehead pressed to ash.
"I'm sorry."
"I know," she said.
And the second floor
shattered.
He reached for her again
but Ivy was already slipping away.
Not disappearing.
Not vanishing.
Just dissolving into the kind of memory too old to hold onto.
And in the silence she left behind, a voice rose.
Not ALP.
Not the mark.
Something older.
Something worn down to bone.
"You survived her once."
"Now you'll survive yourself."
"One memory for every Room you built."
"Eight floors of promises you were too afraid to keep."
The ground beneath him trembled.
The sky fractured.
And Hale finally understood
This wasn't just another loop.
It was everything she had suffered
everything he had forced her to endure
stitched together into eight impossible floors.
Each one more wrong than the last.
And this time?
There would be no Ivy left to forget him.
He fell
not through time.
Not through space.
He fell through himself.
Through every wound he ever disguised as love.
Through every lie he ever called mercy.
Through every memory he tried not to remember.
The ticking slowed.
And far below
waiting like judgment carved into stone
FLOOR 3.