The mirror didn't shatter.
It rippled — like water disturbed by something deep beneath the surface — and pulled him through with a softness that made it all the more disturbing. There was no jerk, no slam, no gut-wrenching twist. Just a gradual loss of resistance, like the world had stopped needing him to stay in one piece.
Then it closed behind him.
There was no sound.
Just gray.
He stood in a hallway that shouldn't have existed. It wasn't a memory. Not exactly. The floor was made of ashwood, the walls lined with nameplates stripped of their letters. The air tasted like burned pages. And overhead, a single iron chandelier swung with a rhythm that didn't match his heartbeat — too slow, like it ticked for something much older.
Each door was slightly ajar.
They breathed.
It wasn't visible, but he felt it — the inhale and exhale of the hallway, like the walls themselves had lungs. With every breath, the air grew colder. Not physically. Existentially. As though something was drawing meaning out of him one piece at a time.
He stepped forward.
The anchorbone in his coat pressed against his ribs. Warm. Steady. The spiral on his wrist throbbed once — not pain, not heat, but something between. It was a signal. A reminder.
He still had a self.
For now.
The first door opened fully as he approached.
Inside was a classroom.
Empty, except for a single desk. Not the kind used by students. It was too tall. Too sharp. There were carvings in the wood — spirals, eyes, broken arrows. Atop the desk sat a book with no title. Its pages turned on their own, too fast to read. As they moved, each flip sent a whisper into the room.
"You were made to observe."
Another page.
"You were built from subtraction."
Another.
"You were not meant to remember."
He reached out.
The book slammed shut.
Not by motion. By intent.
The door behind him closed. A new one creaked open across the hall.
The second room was darker.
A kitchen, maybe. Broken tile. Dust in the corners. A kettle on the stove, long since rusted shut. There were two chairs. One had a coat draped over it — familiar. A small, threadbare scarf lay beside a chipped bowl.
He stepped in slowly.
The scarf moved.
Just a twitch, like it had remembered how to be worn. He stared at it. Nothing else in the room moved. But the longer he looked, the more he felt it — the shape of someone sitting across from him. No body. No eyes. But presence.
It felt like watching a life he might've lived.
The kind where dinner was quiet but safe.
The kind where names weren't forgotten.
He turned away before the feeling became need.
Back in the hallway, more doors stood open now.
He didn't need to look inside each one. They were fragments. Some real. Some false. Some stolen from someone else entirely. They drifted in and out of context like half-remembered dreams.
But near the end of the hallway stood one door unlike the rest.
It was closed.
Sealed, actually.
Black thread was wrapped around the handle, tight as a noose, and pinned with a spiral-shaped nail. As he stepped closer, the thread twitched — once — and the spiral on his wrist seared hot.
He stumbled.
Heat bloomed across his chest. Not pain — he didn't feel pain anymore — but a warning. A memory of what pain used to mean. The mark on his wrist throbbed, and for the first time since the communion, his knees nearly gave out.
He reached for the door.
The thread resisted.
But the spiral on his wrist answered.
It pulsed, once — hard — and the thread split like paper. The door creaked open.
Inside, there was only one thing.
A name.
Written across the wall in massive, scorched letters.
His name.
His real name.
He tried to read it.
The letters moved.
He blinked — and they blurred.
He focused harder — and the room started bleeding sound.
The name hovered on the edge of comprehension. So close. So desperately close.
And then, something whispered behind him:
"You'll forget again."
He turned.
Kesh stood there.
Or something that looked like her — face darker, eyes unfocused, spiral etched across her throat like a collar.
"They always forget. That's the rule."
"You remember long enough to walk."
"Then the Drift takes it back."
He backed away, heart racing though it shouldn't. The spiral on his wrist flared. The anchorbone in his pocket scorched his leg.
"And the Spiral never leaves empty."
The world cracked.
Not in sound.
In meaning.
And everything turned white.