Three weeks after the collapse of the Cemetery Apartment, Amaka still couldn't sleep.
Not because of nightmares.
But because of the silence.
It was too clean, too peaceful. As if reality had been scrubbed too hard-like a stain that had bled too deep into fabric and had to be cut out entirely.
And in that hole... she felt him.
James. Or Iyare. Or whoever he was.
Her memory of him had faded like a half-remembered dream. A shadowy figure at the edge of her thoughts, without a face or a voice, yet somehow achingly familiar.
She sat now in her dim apartment-her new apartment-one she had chosen far away from the cursed building. But no matter how far she ran, the mirror in her room never quite reflected her properly.
It was slightly delayed.
Like someone else was watching from the other side.
---
At exactly 3:33 AM, she awoke gasping.
Not from a nightmare.
But because someone was humming in the hallway.
Low. Male. Melancholic.
A tune she had heard before-but couldn't place.
Her feet moved before her mind could stop them. She stepped into the hall, barefoot, the chill of the tiles crawling up her spine.
The corridor was empty.
Except-
There was a single wet footprint.
Then another.
Then another.
Leading toward the elevator at the end of the hall.
Amaka's heart clenched. "No... that's not possible."
The building she lived in had no elevator.
---
She followed the trail.
Each footprint was wrong-not in shape, but in texture. It wasn't water. It looked more like ink. Thick, black, and swirling even when still.
When she reached the elevator, the doors were open.
Inside stood a man.
Dressed in a black funeral suit, but barefoot. His head was bowed. His face obscured by shadows.
Amaka couldn't move.
The man slowly looked up.
And smiled.
Her breath caught.
Because his smile was the only part she remembered perfectly.
It wasn't James. It wasn't Iyare.
It was something between them.
A shape left behind when a soul is carved into two.
And it said, "Hello, Amaka. Did you miss me?"
---
She ran.
The hallway stretched, elongating behind her like melting taffy.
The doors to her neighbors' apartments began to open in unison.
Not to people.
But to empty rooms, each one identical to the last.
Each one with a mirror.
Each mirror filled with flickering faces-all of them hers.
Laughing.
Crying.
Screaming.
The last one she passed had a face with no eyes. It mouthed the words:
> "He's not gone. You only buried half of him."
Amaka burst into her apartment, slammed the door, locked every bolt.
She turned.
And the Smiling Man stood inside.
---
Not a crack in the door.
Not a broken window.
He was just... there.
He looked exactly like James-but his shadow didn't match him. It danced and twitched and jerked like a puppet on invisible strings.
"I told you," he whispered. "When the Apartment rises again..."
He stepped closer.
"...so will I."
Amaka grabbed the last relic from her pocket-the only one that hadn't fused with the Source's book.
The Key of Bone.
It glowed faintly.
The Smiling Man paused, his head tilting curiously.
"You still carry it," he said. "Good. You'll need it."
"I don't want this," she hissed. "You shouldn't be here. He-James-he ended you!"
The man's grin grew wider.
> "He ended himself."
> "I'm what he left behind."
---
Suddenly, the walls shifted.
Her apartment blinked out for a second-and for just a moment, Amaka stood in a long hallway lined with graves instead of doors. The lights flickered blood red.
And down the hall... a door stood ajar.
A familiar door.
Apartment 404.
She screamed and covered her eyes.
When she looked again, her apartment was back.
But the Smiling Man was gone.
Only a single message was carved into the wall, burned in deep:
> 404 IS OPEN AGAIN.
> AND IT'S LOOKING FOR YOU.
Amaka didn't sleep after that night.
The key-the Key of Bone-sat on her table, its edges glowing faintly even in daylight. She had tried to throw it out, burn it, smash it.
It always came back.
Tucked into her pocket.
Waiting.
And every night at 3:33 a.m., she would hear humming again. Sometimes from the hallway. Sometimes from inside her closet. And one night, from beneath her bed.
The Smiling Man never appeared again in full. Just flashes. A reflection in the kettle. A face behind car windows. A silhouette frozen in TV static.
But the message was always the same:
> Apartment 404 is open again.
> And you are invited.
---
She started seeing flyers around the neighborhood.
Odd ones, printed in black ink with faded gray borders.
> "Now Leasing: 404 Memorial Heights
Quiet tenants. Eternal peace. Keys included."
No one else seemed to notice them.
She tore one down and took it home. Turned it over.
The back had a fingerprint in black ink-and a name written in a language she couldn't read but recognized from the Source's book.
A name older than hers.
Older than this city.
She looked in the mirror-and for the first time in weeks, she saw James's reflection standing behind her, not her own.
He looked exhausted.
And broken.
"I tried to keep it buried," he whispered. "But memory doesn't rot. It grows."
He reached out with a shaking hand.
"Come to 404. If you don't, others will open it. Others who won't stop it-only feed it."
And then he was gone again.
Only the humming remained.
That night, Amaka took a ride to the location on the flyer.
Memorial Heights.
But it didn't exist on any map.
She followed the roads past familiar streets, then unfamiliar signs, then no signs at all.
Until she arrived at a narrow dirt path, flanked by overgrown hedges and trees that swayed without wind.
At the end stood a new building.
Modern.
Sterile.
Six stories high, gray brick and black steel. Not broken, not haunted-looking-but empty.
No lights.
No cars.
Just one name carved above the entrance in rusted iron:
> 404.
She stepped forward, heart thudding.
The glass doors opened before she touched them.
---
The lobby was cold. Too cold for June.
A long corridor stretched ahead, flanked by elevator doors-none with floor numbers, just symbols: a hand, an eye, a flame, a mask.
And then... she saw them.
The Tenants.
Dozens of them, sitting silently in the dark. Dressed in funeral clothes, faces half-covered in shadows or veils. They didn't move. Didn't blink.
One of them turned toward her.
It was her neighbor from the old Cemetery Apartment-the old woman who used to water her plants. But her mouth was sewn shut now.
Another turned.
A man who once lived across from her. His head now tilted far too much to one side, like his neck was no longer made of bone.
They all turned.
Slowly.
Together.
As if someone had called them.
"Amaka," they whispered in unison.
> "The final door is ready. We've been waiting."
---
The elevator dinged.
Its doors opened to a dark crimson hallway.
Apartment 404 glowed faintly at the end.
The Smiling Man stood in front of it, wearing a perfect black suit, hands clasped behind his back.
Amaka stepped inside.
The Key of Bone glowed hot in her hand.
"Why me?" she asked.
"Because you were the only one who remembered," he said softly.
"James-Iyare-he gave himself up. But the Apartment left something behind. It always does. A witness. A seed."
He extended his hand.
> "Finish what he started. Or inherit it."
She stepped past him.
To the door.
404.
It wasn't wood. It was bone.
It pulsed gently, like it had a heartbeat.
She pressed the key to the lock-
And the door opened inward.
---
Inside... was not an apartment.
It was a stairwell.
Descending into darkness.
Carved from stone, but dripping with red light that seemed to leak from the walls.
The air grew colder with each step.
At the bottom, she reached a room with no floor.
Just a vast pit filled with mirrors, all suspended midair.
Each mirror reflected a different version of her life.
In one, she had never entered the Cemetery Apartment.
In another, she had died inside it.
In yet another, she had become something inhuman.
In the final mirror, she stood beside James-both of them holding relics-about to seal a door in a skyless world.
She looked away.
---
The Smiling Man appeared beside her.
"You can choose," he said. "Break the loop. Or become its new keeper."
"I'm not like you," she said.
He only smiled.
"You are. Just further behind."
Then he handed her the book.
The Source's book. Reformed. Bound in new skin.
The relics fused into it once more.
Amaka took it.
And for a moment, all sound died.
No breath.
No heartbeats.
Just choice.
She opened the book.
Pages flipped, stopping on a blank page.
A quill of bone appeared in her hand.
> "Write the final verse," the Smiling Man said.
> "Or let the Apartment write you."
---
Amaka hesitated.
Then she wrote.
Each letter bled, each word hurt.
The Apartment trembled.
The Tenants began to scream upstairs.
The building cracked.
The mirrors shattered.
The Smiling Man's grin faltered.
And Amaka-smiled back.
> "Goodbye."
She said the last word-
And the stairwell collapsed in a vortex of screams, wind, and memory dying.
---
She awoke in her bed.
No Apartment 404.
No key.
No relic.
But a scar on her palm in the shape of a door.
And behind her mirror-
James smiled.