The mind remembers pain like a favorite song. It hums in the background. Until someone presses play.
The mirror didn't shatter.
It bloomed.
Petals of glass spiraled outward in total silence—too symmetrical, too perfect. Each shard caught the dim light of Asher's flickering flashlight, refracting it into warped little memories. The cracking glass did not sound like destruction. It sounded like time folding back into itself.
A new room bled into reality.
One they shouldn't be able to see.
The nursery was warm. Clean. Alive.Wallpaper with cartoon animals danced softly in the breeze from a window that no longer existed. A lullaby curled through the air like smoke—sweet, fractured, and far too human for something that had no mouth to sing it.
And then it hit him—this place had never left. The fire hadn't consumed it.
It had simply been paused.
Held in the instant before the screams began.
"Asher," Quinn murmured, voice hollow, eyes swimming as her breath turned visible in the suddenly too-cold air. "Where... where are we?"
"A memory," he said, throat dry. "Not mine. Hers."
At the window stood a girl with hair like spun frost, still as death and twice as quiet. Twelve years old, dressed in the orphanage's old uniform—blue sleeves, patched knees, a name tag long faded. Her eyes were oceans with the color drained out, and the stitches that once sealed her mouth shut were gone.
She turned.
Her gaze found Asher like it always had. Direct. Expecting.
"You're late, Ash."
Two words, spoken without venom.
But they didn't need it. Guilt hung heavier than hate.
He couldn't move.
His legs locked into the floor—not the soot-choked ruins they'd walked in on, but the clean wood of the before. The smell of bleach, crayons, burnt oatmeal, and fear drifted faintly in the air.
Quinn stood beside him, but she wasn't breathing. Not from fright. From reverence. The kind you feel in cathedrals full of ghosts.
"Asha..." His voice caught on the edge of a name he hadn't said out loud in years. "I tried—"
"No," she said. Not cold. Not angry. Just final. "You ran."
The walls dimmed as if the sun itself recoiled from her words.
Then came the sound.
Not a voice. Not a growl.
It was the breath of something not made to breathe. Low. Guttural. All around them. Behind the walls. Beneath the floor. In the lullaby that still hadn't stopped.
The veil rippled.
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FLASHBACK SEQUENCE – THE RITUAL
Quinn blinked—and she was somewhere else.
The basement.
Stone walls. Damp. Cold.
Candles flickered along the edge of a symbol, a circle carved in crimson chalk that smelled like rust and ritual. A group of children stood silently in a ring, swaying, like leaves caught in a wind no adult could feel.
At the center: Asha. Strapped down to a flat altar. Eyes wide. Chest heaving. A silence so loud it made Quinn's ears ache.
And then the priest appeared.
Only it wasn't a priest.
It wore the robes. Held the book. Carried the authority. But no human stood beneath the hood. No face behind the mask. Just void, outlined by teeth that didn't fit inside a mouth.
It didn't speak. It breathed the ritual.
"I offer the flame," it intoned, from nowhere and everywhere. "Let the veil burn."
The circle ignited—not fire, but memory made flame. The smell of screaming dreams, the sound of a thousand prayers turned backward.
Quinn reeled.
She turned—saw him. Young Asher, standing frozen at the top of the basement stairs.
He was a boy of shadows. Of fear. Of guilt so heavy it would become a scar across every future.
"You saw this," Quinn whispered.
But Asher didn't answer.
Because in the memory, he never had.
He had watched.
And then he ran.
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THE PRESENT RETURNS
They were back.
The mirror was gone.
In its place stood a door—not ancient, not strange. Ordinary. Modern. Something you'd find in an office hallway. White-painted wood with a brass knob and no welcome.
It stood half-open, like it had been waiting a long time for them to notice.
But it wasn't the door that unnerved them.
It was what lay beyond it.
A corridor, impossibly long, walls etched with veins of glowing script. Runes that pulsed like they were being fed. They weren't language. They were intention. Desire carved in light.
And hate.
Quinn stepped back instinctively, bumping into Asher. Her hand gripped the sleeve of his coat. Tighter than before.
"She's still here, isn't she?"
Asher nodded, barely.
"No," he muttered. "She's everywhere."
The air behind them thickened like a cough. The door they came through slammed shut, locking them in the memory that still breathed.
Ahead, the corridor sighed—not like wind.
But like it was relieved.
Like it had waited long enough.
Then the voice came.
Not a child's voice anymore.
No longer soft. No longer hers.
This one echoed from the bones of the building itself, carried on the lullaby still playing.
"Let the ritual begin again."
[End of Chapter 36 – The Orphan's Wake]
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Next Chapter Preview: Chapter 37 – "The Veil Burns Twice"The corridor isn't just a path—it's a test. Every turn twists reality, forcing Asher and Quinn to confront what they did, what they forgot, and what they were made into. But the deeper they go, the more they realize… they're not alone. Something else is trying to get out.