She stepped into Room 311, her long pink hair flowing behind her.
The air didn't feel right. It was too still, lacking the faint scent of the jasmine diffuser she'd left running.
[Something's wrong]
Seraphina turned around, intending to check if she'd actually closed the door, but when she pulled the handle, she didn't find herself staring at her bed. She was back in the hallway.
The same white walls. The same buzzing fluorescent lights. The same scuff mark.
"What the..." she whispered, her voice hitching.
"Having trouble with doors, sister?."
Seraphina stiffened. Neila was leaning against the wall near Room 309, her arms crossed over her pristine white uniform. But there was a slight twitch in Neila's left eyelid that betrayed her. She had been out here longer than she was letting on.
"Neila," Seraphina said, ignoring the insult. "Did you just try to enter your room?"
Neila's smirk didn't reach her eyes. "I decided the hallway had a better aesthetic. Don't flatter yourself by thinking I'm stuck."
"You're stuck," Seraphina deadpanned.
"Nu uh, someone of my caliber would never fall into a trap."
Seraphina sighed and walked past Neila toward the end of the corridor where the stairwell should be. As she rounded the corner, she stopped dead. The hallway stretched out again, identical in every way. At the far end, she could see a painting.
"It's a Zenith," Neila said, her voice dropping the facade of boredom. She walked up behind Seraphina, her heels clicking with a rhythmic, predatory sharpness. "Well at least it seems like it, chop chop Seraphina, figure out a way to get us out." She walked over towards one of the rooms, dragging a chair out and sitting down in it in the middle of the hallway.
"Huh!? Aren't you going to do anything?" Seraphina looked up at the ceiling. Just like Hoshimi had seen in his own loop, a small, digital-looking '1'.
"Nope, I'm not very good at these escape rooms."
"I thought you were supposed to be smart."
"I am smart, it's just that I'm just more of a people's person than a detective. That's the puppet's job."
"Useless," Seraphina murmured. "There must be some way that we can get out of this, some kind of condition that I must fulfill, something to do with that number."
She walked inside one of the rooms. She paced around the small room, running a hand through her pink hair as her eyes observed every nook and cranny.
She stopped abruptly. The mirror. It was cracked. A thin, jagged line ran right through her reflection's left eye. Seraphina knew, with a chilling certainty, that it hadn't been there before. She hadn't bumped into anything, hadn't dropped anything.
She reached out, her fingers trembling as they traced the hairline fracture. It felt… deep. Deeper than the glass. Like a wound in reality itself.
A low, vibrating hum began to resonate through the floor, barely audible but deeply unsettling. It felt like her bones were vibrating.
She had locked the door behind her.
But..
The door was ajar. Just a crack, barely wide enough to show a sliver of the grey hallway outside.
Seraphina's heart pounded. She hadn't opened it. She hadn't unlocked it.
A whisper, faint and distorted, seemed to drift from the crack in the door. It wasn't words, not precisely, but a jumble of overlapping voices, a chorus of distant screams and the rattling of chains. It sounded… familiar.
She grabbed the nearest object, a heavy mana-conduit rod that was used for practice, and approached the door, her mana flaring, a sharp, controlled burst of pure sound energy gathering at her fingertips.
[This seems abnormal]
She pushed the door open, ready to unleash a sonic blast.
The hallway was identical. Same chrome doors, same grey walls, same humming fluorescent lights. But at the far end, where a window should have been, there was instead a featureless, pulsating wall of black, shimmering faintly with a sickly green light. It seemed to expand and contract, slowly, rhythmically, like a monstrous, unseen heart.
"Why're you just standing there?" Neila commented, leaning forwards in her wooden chair.
Seraphina's breath hitched. "What the… hell?"
A flicker of movement caught her eye. At the other end of the hallway, near where the black wall pulsed, something was moving.
Neila looked around in her chair. "Can't I just blast through the walls?"
Neila snapped her fingers. A concussive burst of sound roared through the corridor, aimed at the door of Room 307. But instead of the wood splintering, the sound wave seemed to be swallowed by the wallpaper. The air rippled like a disturbed pond, and the sound echoed back at them, muffled and distorted, until it faded into a low, mocking hum.
"Don't be stupid," Seraphina snapped, her baby blue eyes glowing with a faint, defensive light. "You'll just waste your mana. If this is a Zenith, it operates on a 'Contract of Reality.' We have to follow the logic of the space to escape it, if only I could figure out the rules."
Neila's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me for being stupid, unlike you I'm trying everything I can."
"You're sitting down in your fuckin chair doing jack shit! We're under attack over here and I'm doing all of the goddamn work."
"Huh?" Neila stood up from her seat, walking towards Seraphina with her small stature, she stared her in the eyes. "Why the hell should I follow you around like a little puppy when I can just conserve my energy instead? We're in a who knows what Zenith we're in. Would you prefer it if we both lose our energy together?"
Seraphina clicked her tongue and looked away.
"Just follow me, I want to see something."
They began to walk.
They rounded the corner. The number on the ceiling stayed at a '1'.
They walked in silence for a moment. The buzzing of the lights was becoming a physical pressure against Seraphina's eardrums. She used her own technique, subtly vibrating the air around her head to cancel out the frequency.
"Wait," Seraphina said, stopping in front of the founder's portrait.
The old man in the painting, a stern witch from the 1800s, usually stared straight ahead. Now, his eyes were tracking them. His pupils were dilated, blacker than they should be.
"The eyes," Seraphina whispered. "They're moving."
Neila glanced at the painting and sneered. "Really?"
"Yea." Seraphina snapped her fingers, a burst of sound blasted apart the painting, the sound of the protective glass shattering filled the halls.
They walked through the hallway, their footsteps echoed. As they rounded the corner, the number on the ceiling flipped to '2'.
"See?" Seraphina said, a small spark of triumph in her voice. "We just need to find out the… let's call them oddities ."
"Yea good job." Neila rolled her eyes.
The third loop felt longer. The air smelled faintly of ozone and old, wet paper. Halfway down the hall, they encountered the 'Old Man'. He was walking past them, his slouched figure casting a shadow that didn't quite match his movements.
"Hey, you senile dried up dotard!" Neila barked. "Who the hell are you?"
The man didn't respond. He didn't even look at her. As he passed, Seraphina noticed that he didn't have a face. Where his features should have been, there was only smooth, blank skin.
As it drew closer, the impossible shape resolved itself. Its head, a horrifying collection of mismatched parts, swiveled towards her, empty sockets staring. Its arms, grotesquely elongated, ended in rusting nails that scraped against the linoleum.
It let out a low, guttural moan, a sound that seemed to vibrate directly in Seraphina's skull, cutting through her prepared defenses.
"Disgusting."
Neila's eyes glowed a deep blue, mana radiated from her fingertips like a tiny firework sparking within the palm of her hand, the air around her started to collapse, silence filled the air, then, a snap.