The house was quiet.
Too quiet.
Like the silence after a scream — not peaceful, but empty. Hollow. A silence that felt like holding your breath for too long.
I stood in the center of the ballroom, surrounded by broken glass and melted candlewax. The ghostly brides had disappeared. The mirrors were cracked and dark. And Mirror Alya? Gone. Nothing left but a silver smear where her body had shattered, as if the house had swallowed her remains like sugar.
And yet…
The house still breathed.
I could feel it in the walls.
Like it was waiting for something.
Or someone.
"Aaryan?" I called out, already knowing he wouldn't answer.
The boy who once offered me tea and truths had vanished the moment Mirror Alya cracked. I hadn't seen him fall. Hadn't seen him leave. It was as if he'd dissolved into smoke.
But I felt him.
Somewhere in this place, he was still here.
Still watching.
Still trapped.
So I went looking.
The house changed while I searched.
Corridors twisted. Doors appeared in places that used to be windows. The staircase on the west wing curled like a seashell now, leading upward into pitch black. I didn't go up. My gut told me the heart of the house was below.
So I went down.
Past the kitchen.
Past the cellar.
Into the sub-basement, a place I didn't know existed.
The air was colder here. Sharper. Like breathing through crushed ice.
The walls weren't made of stone anymore.
They were made of mirror.
Shattered pieces.
Taped together with grief.
And in the center of it all stood a door — jet black, carved with swirling patterns, as if someone had pressed their nightmares into wood.
No knob.
No lock.
Just a single phrase carved into the center:
"Speak the name you wore before the house rewrote you."
I blinked.
What name?
I was Alya. Always had been.
Right?
But my hand trembled as I raised it to the door. Somewhere, buried deep, something whispered.
Not Alya.
That was the name the house had given me.
The one the mirror had repeated.
But before all this?
Before Nightfall?
Before the reflection?
I hadn't heard it in years.
But I remembered.
Barely.
I pressed my palm flat against the door and whispered:
"Amara."
The door opened.
It wasn't a room.
It was a memory.
It looked like a classroom, long abandoned.
Desks cracked in half.
A chalkboard with words smudged to ash.
And at the front — him.
Aaryan.
Sitting alone on the teacher's desk. Legs swinging like a boy. Staring straight ahead at nothing.
I stepped in slowly.
The air here didn't feel like the rest of the house. It felt still. Like time had frozen.
He didn't look up.
Didn't blink.
Didn't breathe.
"Aaryan?" I whispered.
He tilted his head slightly, like a puppet on loose strings.
"Who gave you that name?" he asked.
I froze.
"What name?"
He blinked slowly. "Alya. Who gave it to you?"
I swallowed. "The house. But it's not my name. You knew that, didn't you?"
He didn't answer.
I stepped closer. "Do you remember me?"
Silence.
Then, softly: "I remember… someone. She used to hum old songs. She had ink on her fingertips. She always looked like she was about to run, even when she was standing still."
"That was me," I said. "Before this place."
He looked up then.
Eyes not glowing. Just… tired.
Empty.
"Amara," he said softly. "You're not supposed to be here. The house erases the ones who fight it."
"I broke the mirror."
"No," he said, "you cracked the surface. But the root is deeper."
He stood up.
Walked toward the blackboard.
Drew a circle with chalk.
Inside it, he wrote: "A.R.Y.N."
I stared.
"What is that?"
"My real name," he whispered. "The house took the vowels. Took the softness. Left me sharp. A-A-R-Y-A-N was never mine. It was a mask."
I felt something inside me ache. Like two puzzle pieces finally fitting.
"We're not who we thought we were," I whispered.
He looked at me, eyes flickering like candlelight.
"And that's why the house hates us. We're not blank enough."
The floor shook suddenly.
A deep growl rippled through the memory.
A warning.
The house knew where we were.
And it wasn't pleased.
Aaryan grabbed my wrist.
"We need to leave. Now."
"Back to the house?" I asked.
He shook his head.
"No. Deeper."
He led me through a doorway that hadn't been there seconds ago.
It led to a corridor of obsidian glass, the walls reflecting not our bodies but our thoughts.
I saw myself — as a child. Crying in a bathroom stall.
I saw Aaryan — curled on a rooftop, screaming into the stars.
I saw the first bride. The second. The third.
Each one forgotten.
Each one still here.
He turned to me. "The house feeds on versions. But it fears originals. And it fears one more thing."
I stared at him.
"What?"
He grinned, a flicker of mischief returning.
"Two originals together."
We came to a final door.
Simple.
Wooden.
Cracked.
The kind of door you'd find on a child's closet.
It was shaking violently.
"Behind this is the core," he said. "The place where the house keeps its heart."
"What do we do?"
"We remind it."
"Of what?"
He looked at me with something soft. Something real.
"That we existed before it."
As he placed his hand on the doorknob, I saw something glow across his fingers.
Cracks.
Just like mine.
But instead of bleeding light, his shimmered with ink.
The house wasn't just trying to erase us.
It was rewriting us.
One word at a time.
Unless we beat it to the punch.
Unless we wrote ourselves back.