The thirteenth bell toll echoed like a death knell across the broken remnants of the Hollow Village. The sound lingered in the air like a wound—sharp, raw, impossible to ignore. Fog thickened into near-solid walls, and the sky above dimmed, as though the Pit itself had decided to blink.
Roger, Aria, and Kai huddled beneath the crumbled awning of a watchtower, their breath heavy with tension. They had survived the first half of the village's horrors, but they all knew it wasn't over. Something deeper called to them now—something older than the whispers, more malicious than the puppets.
"This isn't just a haunted floor," Kai said quietly, eyes scanning the fog. "This is a grave."
"No," Aria corrected, her voice cold. "A prison."
Roger stood, tightening the gauntlet on his enlarged arm and brushing soot off his armor. "Either way, we're not getting out of here without finding the source."
They moved through the mist with methodical caution, following what seemed to be a central avenue—an arterial path carved through the fog. The structures on either side began to shift from ruined homes and schools to increasingly twisted and organic constructions. A house where the walls breathed. A statue that bled from its eyes. An alleyway lined with hanging cages, each occupied by a mask staring outward.
Every step made the air denser.
After nearly an hour of silent, tense travel, they came upon it: a courtyard walled in bone and soot, with a single golden doorway at its center. Unlike the rest of the village, the space around it pulsed with restrained power. Glowing runes floated faintly in the air, like ash in a fireless breeze.
"This is it," Roger whispered. "The heart."
Kai reached out cautiously, micro rune cube in one hand, the other tracing the glowing runes. "They're layered... like seals. Old. Ancient. But not... dead."
Before he could finish, the door creaked open inwardly, revealing a spiral staircase descending beneath the ground.
"Stay close," Aria said, already stepping into the dark.
---
The descent was long.
Each step down the spiral was built from different material—some stone, some bone, some carved glass. The deeper they went, the more the stairs vibrated beneath their feet, humming with a resonance none of them understood. The runes along the walls changed too—first reverent, then panicked, then pleading.
"I think the villagers... tried to seal it away," Kai murmured. "Whatever's down here."
Roger's jaw clenched. "Didn't work."
At last, they reached the bottom.
The chamber that greeted them was circular and vast, with no visible ceiling or walls—just an endless, swirling mist held back by a ring of silent lanterns. In the center was a pedestal of obsidian, and atop it sat a mask. Gold. Unblemished. Perfect.
And watching.
"Don't touch it," Aria said immediately.
"I wasn't going to," Kai replied. He clearly was.
As they stepped closer, the fog stirred. From behind each lantern, a figure emerged. Not monsters this time, but versions of themselves—blank-eyed, rune-scarred, twisted by exhaustion and madness.
Their own reflections.
Each wore a copy of the golden mask.
Roger summoned the temporal orb to his hand, mist curling off its surface like the ticking of a clock.
"They're not echoes," he said. "They're what we'll become."
The battle was immediate.
Aria blinked through space, stabbing one of the masked versions through the chest—only for it to dissolve and reform behind her. Kai activated three runes at once, only to have one of the reflections absorb the magic and hurl it back at him with amplified force.
"They learn from us faster than the last floor," Kai shouted, diving aside as his own spatial inversion rune detonated nearby.
Roger tanked a blow from his own twin that sent him skidding across the obsidian floor. "Then we stop holding back!"
They unleashed everything.
Kai's bracer flared, syncing with his micro cube, launching runes like a cascading wave of fire and gravity. Aria vanished into smoke and reappeared mid-air, stabbing through two enemies at once. Roger threw his full weight behind every blow, his gauntlet doubling his size and strength, hammering enemies into the floor.
Still, they were outnumbered, and every defeated copy reformed.
The longer they fought, the more twisted the copies became. Aria's double began to split into multiple fog-shrouded images. Kai's reflection cast unstable runes midair, runes that bent time in cruel spirals. Roger's masked self took on traits of both his teammates, fusing power and cunning into one relentless onslaught.
Fatigue clawed at their lungs. Every strike cost more. Every dodge came closer.
Until Roger, bleeding from a dozen wounds, roared and slammed the temporal orb into the pedestal.
Time snapped.
The mist froze. The golden mask cracked.
For a moment, everything was still.
Then—
With a final, echoing scream, the mask shattered, and all reflections vanished. The lanterns dimmed. The fog dispersed.
The floor was silent.
---
They emerged from the stairwell minutes later, coughing and soaked in sweat. The village above was still twisted—but quiet. At the center of the square, a new rune pulsed faintly, carved into the stone.
Kai translated it aloud.
**"Well done. You made it farther than most. This village was once a haven, until it forgot what it meant to be alive. You remembered. But don't linger. This was only the first memory."**
Roger looked around the silent village, then back at his team. "Let's move. Before it decides to remember again."
They walked forward—toward the gate leading to Floor Twelve—without looking back.