I stared at the door.
It didn't belong here.
Not in this place of shadows and memory.
Yet... it felt right.
Like it had always been waiting.
My hand moved before I could stop it.
The wood was warm to the touch — not from fire, but from something deeper.
Something awake.
The words carved into it pulsed once more:
"Now, the choice begins."
I opened it.
No creak. No resistance.
Just silence.
And behind the door—
a long hallway, lined with mirrors.
Each one tall, old, stained with fog and time.
None showed my reflection.
Instead, every mirror showed... a version of me.
In one, I was older. Eyes cold. Holding something sharp.
In another, I was younger. Crying. Bleeding.
One showed me standing over someone.
Another — kneeling in flames.
And at the very end of the hallway, there was no mirror.
Only a black curtain.
It pulsed gently.
Just like before.
Just like the one that breathed.
I stepped forward.
Every footstep echoed with more than sound.
With memory.
With weight.
And then—
a voice behind me.
Whispering.
"You're only here because the others weren't strong enough."
I turned—
No one was there.
Just my own footsteps…
and the mirrors still watching.
I didn't answer the voice.
I couldn't.
My throat was tight, and the hallway was closing in — not physically, but emotionally.
Each mirror hummed softly now, like glass under pressure.
I reached the curtain.
It moved slightly in response, breathing in... or out.
My hand trembled as I touched the fabric.
It was cold — wet — and strangely soft, like skin left too long in water.
I pulled it aside.
And what I saw behind it wasn't a room.
It was a well.
Circular. Endless. Made of smooth black stone, with no bottom in sight.
But it wasn't empty.
Dozens — no, hundreds — of ropes hung from above, tangled and swaying.
Each rope ended in a hook.
Each hook carried a name.
I stepped closer.
The air shifted.
One rope began to move.
Slowly, it descended toward me… and as it neared, I saw the name carved into its rusted hook:
My own.
I couldn't move.
Not because I was afraid — but because I suddenly knew:
This wasn't a place of punishment.
This was a place of binding.
Choices hung here.
And once you grabbed a rope…
…you couldn't let go.
Behind me, the curtain closed on its own.
And the whisper returned.
"Choose carefully. One of them still remembers you."
The rope dangled in front of me, swaying gently, as if it was breathing with the same rhythm as my lungs.
My name—etched in deep, violent strokes—seemed to bleed into the rust of the hook.
It wasn't just a label.
It was a sentence.
I took a step back, but the ground beneath me shifted.
Not collapsing, not crumbling—
breathing.
The stone floor pulsed, like a heart beating beneath a grave.
It was alive.
It remembered.
And it didn't want me to run.
I looked around at the hundreds of other ropes.
All of them carried names I didn't recognize…
Until one caught my eye.
A name I hadn't spoken in years.
Mira.
My sister.
The name on the hook shimmered faintly, like a reflection on dark water.
But Mira was gone.
She had burned—just like the house, just like everything.
Hadn't she?
My throat tightened.
If her name was here…
What did that mean?
She had never been buried.
There had never been a body—only ashes, and silence.
The whisper returned, closer this time. Inside my head.
"Not all who burn are gone."
"Some of them wait."
"Some of them blame."
I turned toward the rope with my name again.
It had stopped swaying.
Now it hung still.
Waiting.
Waiting for my hand.
I reached for it slowly—
fingers trembling as they closed around the coarse, frayed fibers.
As soon as I touched it, something changed.
The well responded.
A groan rose from below, deep and ancient, like the stone walls themselves were waking up.
Then—
a voice.
But not the whisper.
This one was younger.
Cracked.
Terrified.
"Don't pull it, please—don't choose yet—he's not ready—"
I froze.
That voice…
was mine.
From years ago.
The night of the fire.
It echoed up from the well as if it had been trapped there all this time.
Begging.
Warning.
Suddenly, the rope in my hand pulled back.
Tightened.
I wasn't holding it anymore.
It was holding me.
The hook glowed hot.
The name on it flickered—mine—then changed, twisting and reshaping into a word I didn't understand.
It looked ancient.
Wrong.
Alive.
And deep in the well, something moved.
Something huge.
Something that remembered me.
The shape in the well stirred again.
No eyes. No face.
Just a mass of shadow and breath, rising slowly, dragging its form up the wall with long, wet sounds—like flesh against stone.
I wanted to scream, but the rope in my hand had already become part of me.
Its threads dug into my skin, threading through my palm like veins.
I couldn't let go.
I wasn't allowed to.
The hook that once held my name now pulsed with that ancient word—a language not meant to be spoken, only remembered.
Then the voice came back.
"It chose you before you chose it."
My knees buckled.
This wasn't about what I picked.
This was about who I had always been.
A crack ran up one of the walls of the well.
From it, light bled out—but not comforting light.
This was memory-light.
Raw. Blinding. True.
And through it, I saw her.
Mira.
Standing at the edge of the well.
Or maybe below it.
Or maybe in me.
Her eyes were hollow, her hands burned, and yet her voice was calm:
"You can't choose until you remember what you forgot."
I blinked, and she was gone.
But now… I remembered.
The fire.
The scream that wasn't mine.
The hand that pushed open the door…
It wasn't an accident.
It was me.
I had left her behind.
And now the well, this place, this choice—
It wasn't punishment.
It was a second chance.
But not for me.
For her.
The rope pulled harder now, burning into my skin.
And the shadow below rose to meet me.