The floor beneath him groaned.
Not like wood.
Not like stone.
It groaned like something ancient being forced to wake up
something that didn't want to be disturbed again.
The world twisted.
He stumbled forward
but it wasn't forward.
It was downward.
Inward.
Into himself.
Tick.
Tick.
The First Room hit him like a fist driven straight through his ribs.
A hospital.
White walls stained with shadows.
Machines humming their useless prayers.
And Ivy
lying there, chest rising in shallow, defiant gasps.
He stood at her bedside.
But he wasn't alone.
Another Hale stood there too.
Older.
Colder.
A version of himself that had long since given up on hope, but not on obsession.
That Hale didn't reach out to comfort her.
He reached out to brand her.
To carve something invisible into her memory.
A curse disguised as a kiss.
A goodbye pretending to be a promise.
Hale screamed
"Stop—"
But it was already done.
The memory cracked like brittle bone.
Tick.
Tick.
The Second Room swallowed him whole.
A tiny apartment.
Photos hung on the walls:
Him and Ivy, smiling.
Pretending.
In this version of their lives, they were married.
And even there
he still lost her.
He watched himself drink poison dressed as love.
Cling to her as she dissolved in his arms like morning fog.
And finally
he sat alone at a table.
A glass of untouched water.
Sketching her again and again and again.
Sketches that faded.
Blurred.
Erased themselves from the paper.
Until even memory forgot what her face used to look like.
Tick.
Tick.
The Third Room.
The Fourth.
The Fifth.
Each one worse.
In one, he waited too long.
In another, he looped her endlessly in the same cursed yesterday.
In another still
he broke her completely.
Not with malice.
With love that didn't know how to stop.
One version of him killed her.
Another begged her to kill him.
Another
they simply forgot each other...
and smiled at the emptiness.
By the Sixth Room, Hale wasn't sure he was breathing.
The air was made of knives.
His thoughts were razors.
Each memory a new incision.
Each echo another funeral.
He clawed at the walls.
Not to escape
just to feel anything else.
But the memories didn't stop.
They bled.
They laughed.
Tick.
Tick.
Then came the Seventh.
This one destroyed him.
He saw her.
Ivy.
Standing in front of a mirror, sobbing softly.
She didn't recognize her own reflection.
Didn't remember her name.
Didn't know why it hurt so much to forget someone she couldn't even name.
She whispered to no one
"Why can't I remember how to love him?"
Hale shattered.
Not broke.
Shattered.
He reached for her
desperately
but his hands passed through her like smoke.
He was the ghost now.
He was the one she had forgotten.
Tick.
The Eighth Room didn't wait.
It dragged him in.
No walls.
No ceiling.
No floor.
Only space.
Only versions.
Only him.
A storm of Hales
all screaming, all breaking, all reaching for a girl who never really existed the way they remembered her.
Because it was never about saving Ivy.
It was about saving himself.
About refusing to be erased.
About refusing to be forgotten.
No matter the cost.
Tick.
The final memory came quietly.
No screaming.
No betrayal.
Just a moment.
Ivy.
Smiling.
Handing him a folded paper flower.
"Even if we forget everything else...
remember this."
He fell to his knees.
Weeping like a child who finally understood why the sky never stopped falling.
Then
Silence.
Not the absence of noise.
The absence of hope.
The ticking stopped.
The breath stopped.
Everything stopped.
And Hale
sat broken
in every shard of himself he'd tried so hard not to become.
From the darkness,
a figure emerged.
Not ALP.
Not Ivy.
Him.
Another Hale.
Older.
Colder.
Complete.
A version who had already given up.
This Hale looked down at him and said
voice like stone breaking underwater:
"You thought you were the hero?"
"You were the disease."
"You were the memory time itself tried to forget."
And then
he turned.
Walked through a gate that shimmered into view.
Didn't look back.
Didn't slow.
Didn't hope.
Left him there.
Alone.
With the truth.
And from the broken sky above
a voice not born of any living thing:
"Do you still believe you deserve to be remembered?"
Tick.
And somewhere deep inside him,
a piece of Hale whispered back:
"I don't know anymore."
ALP stepped from the shadows.
No ceremony.
No smile.
Silence swallowed Hale's words.
The world didn't comfort him.
It judged him.
ALP stepped closer
not with fury,
but with a mercy so sharp it became cruelty.
His voice was steady.
Measured.
Like a scalpel finding the last beating part of a dying heart.
"You think forgetting makes you innocent?"
"You think pain justifies betrayal?"
"You mourn the people you abandoned.
You love the ones you couldn't stay for.
You break the hearts that begged to be your home
and when they finally forget you...
you call it tragedy, not justice."
"You pray to be remembered.
But you never remember the promises you made."
"You crave love
but only the kind that doesn't cost you anything."
"You call it fate when you hurt someone enough to make them leave.
You call it destiny when you ruin them and pretend they were broken first."
Hale didn't know how long he knelt there.
The silence wasn't empty.
It breathed.
It judged.
It mocked.
Inside him, the pieces kept falling
not memories.
Self-respect.
Pride.
Hope.
He was hollowed out so deeply
even regret had nowhere left to sit.
Then
he heard it.
Tick.
Tick.
Not the same ticking.
Not the mark.
Not the warning.
This was emptiness.
Marking time that he no longer deserved.
He raised his head.
All around him
shattered reflections.
Bits of Ivy's pain.
Fragments of his own sins.
Ahead
a door.
Black.
Colder than ash.
No handles.
No keyholes.
Just inevitability.
A doorway made for someone who no longer believed they deserved to walk through it.
His hands trembled.
Not from fear.
Not from pain.
From acceptance.
There would be no saving himself now.
No forgiveness.
Only walking deeper into the wreckage he made.
The floor splintered beneath his steps.
Every movement dragging the past behind him like a chain.
No speeches.
No gods.
No more lies.
Just Hale.
And the price of memory.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
And as he neared the final door, ALP's voice followed
not loud.
Not cruel.
Just... true:
"You wanted her to remember you forever, Hale."
"Congratulations.
Now she will."
Hale touched the door.
Pushed it open.
The world swallowed him.
And the next floor began.