The descent was silent.
No wind. No sound of footfall on the spiraling thread-road beneath her. Only the faint sound of her heartbeat and the occasional twitch of the obsidian needle still glowing in her hand. It pulsed like a metronome in her chest, keeping time as the path narrowed and narrowed, until it was no longer a road, but a thread itself—narrow as a whisper, sharp as betrayal.
The sky above had vanished. Darkness was no longer a veil, but a pressure—a memory pressing in.
Then came the door.
It stood alone in the void, suspended in midair, formed of wood blackened with age. It bore no handle, no lock, no hinges. Carved into its surface were a hundred names. Some were etched clearly, others were slashed through or fading like forgotten ink. But one name glowed at the center:
Aurora.
As she stepped closer, the door responded to her presence. The names began to murmur.
"I was the smiling one…""I died in the fire…""He never loved me…""She chose him…""I was the first…"
Her hand hovered over the wood.
The murmurs turned to voices. Then screams.
"DON'T OPEN IT—"
But Aurora pressed her palm to the door.
It opened inward.
And the house swallowed her whole.
It was a library made of mirrors, yet none of them reflected her. Bookshelves arched like vertebrae, stacked with journals bound in human thoughts, sealed with sorrow. The air smelled like smoke and lavender, like burned letters and forgotten lullabies.
There were no candles, yet the space glowed. Not warmly—surgically. Each corner of the room bled memories like steam.
Aurora moved through the aisles, and with each step, a new version of herself flickered into view within the mirrors.
One laughed with golden hair and wore a crown.
Another wept over a broken music box.
Another stood drenched in blood, crown of thorns digging into her skull.
"What is this place?" she whispered.
A book fell from a high shelf and landed at her feet.
She picked it up.
There was no title.
Only a cover of white velvet and the embossed word:
"Aurora 13.7"
Inside were pages written in her own handwriting, describing a life she had never lived. A life where she had never been cursed. Where her parents loved her. Where she was never hidden away. She lived and laughed and aged and died.
A full life.
"Why don't I remember this?"
The voice behind her was soft and childlike.
"Because you weren't her."
Aurora turned.
A young girl stood there, no older than ten, with pale eyes and short black curls. Her dress shimmered like thread. Her mouth was sewn shut with gold wire, just like the Weaver's, but her voice came clearly.
"This is the place where the discarded Auroras go. The ones that didn't get chosen. The ones who died early. Or never existed."
"Are you one of them?" Aurora asked.
The girl smiled—bitter, broken.
"I was the first draft."
She walked along the shelves and dragged her fingers over the spines.
"The curse doesn't just freeze time. It forks it. You—'our' story—splintered a thousand ways. In some, we never woke. In others, we woke… wrong."
She gestured to the mirrors. Now, they began to move, showing Aurora versions of herself turning into thorns. Into crows. Into queens with hollow eyes and lovers made of shadow.
"They called us monsters," the girl said. "Or erased us."
Aurora felt the weight of it—the grief of lives unlived pressing down on her like the hand of a sleeping god.
She clutched the obsidian needle tighter.
"Then what am I?" she whispered.
"You're the Threadbreaker. The one who wasn't supposed to wake."
Suddenly, the entire house shuddered.
A mirror exploded—glass slicing the air.
From the crack in the void, something entered. A presence that smelled of roses, of iron and sleep. The girl's stitched mouth trembled.
"She's coming."
"Who?"
"Elara. The Dreamthief. She wrote the first curse, and now she wants to finish the last."
Aurora turned. From the shadows, a woman emerged—elegant, tall, wearing a crown of nightshade and veil of glass. Her eyes glowed violet. Her smile was cold.
"I wondered which version would crawl here," Elara purred.
Aurora didn't back down.
"You cursed me."
"I made you," Elara said. "From ash and longing and mother's regret. You were supposed to sleep forever. You were peace."
"You're a lie."
Elara tilted her head.
"Perhaps. But lies outlive truths, child. And dreams? Dreams control the living."
She raised her hand. The mirrors shattered—every version of Aurora screaming, crying, clawing from within. The House began to collapse, devouring its own shelves.
Aurora fell to her knees.
The needle in her hand pulsed once.
Then again.
And she understood.
You don't fight the curse by running from it.
She stood.
And stabbed the needle into her own palm.
Her blood hit the ground—silver, not red.
The world howled.
Elara recoiled.
And from every broken mirror, every discarded version of herself, a whisper rose.
"We remember."
The House of Hollow Names fell. But Aurora did not.
She rose from its ashes, holding the bleeding needle, no longer afraid of what she was… or who she could become.
She was all of them.
And the war was only beginning.