"Memory is not a mirror. It is a maze with no exits, only echoes."
The Writings of Patient 63
Elias Wren stared at the coffee in his shaking hands and muttered,
"I'm not crazy. I just remember too much."
He wasn't talking to anyone. Not anymore. The apartment was empty, aside from the shadows and the quiet.
He hadn't slept again.
Rain smudged the windows, and the lights flickered in rhythm with the throb in his temples. Everything smelled like rot and old books. It was just another Wednesday in a life that had collapsed without a sound.
And that was when he saw it.
A letter.
Sitting on the kitchen table dead center on top of the medical files he hadn't touched in weeks. The envelope was thick, old, yellowed, as if pulled from a fireplace before the flames could claim it. His name was written across the front in sharp, precise letters:
DR. ELIAS WREN
Delinquent.
He blinked once. The word didn't change.
Elias picked up the envelope slowly, the paper soft but dry, ancient. His fingers trembled. The envelope felt warm.
Inside was a single page, folded once, and written in a tight, elegant script that seemed vaguely familiar. The ink shimmered slightly blue in the dim light like bruised moonlight.
You are summoned to the island.
The experiment must begin again.
We need what only you can unlock.
Come alone. Come quickly.
You already know the way.
Elias Wren
He dropped the letter.
He hadn't written it.
But the handwriting was his.
The ferry shouldn't have existed. The man who sold him the ticket didn't speak not a word, not even when Elias handed over the money. His eyes were pale and cloudy, like he was looking through Elias, not at him. The vessel was old, rusting, and smelled like rot masked with sea salt.
There were no other passengers.
No crew, either. Just the pale-eyed man who stared forward the whole time as the ferry glided over a sea that was too still, too black.
Elias had the letter in his coat pocket. Every so often, he touched it just to make sure it hadn't disappeared. Just to make sure this wasn't another hallucination.
He used to help people with these symptoms. Now he lived in them.
Rain returned mid-crossing, soft at first, then vicious. The sea churned not above, but below. The boat didn't rock, yet Elias felt it in his stomach, like something massive brushed beneath them.
"Almost there," the pale man said, his first and only words.
Elias turned toward him, startled. The man was still staring straight ahead. Elias followed his gaze.
Through the fog, a shape emerged sharp cliffs, jagged trees, and a single crooked tower rising above the forest like a bone jutting through flesh.
Isle Thorne.
It looked...wrong.
Not in the usual way of things being ugly or broken but impossible. The angles of the island's shape strained his perception, like the land itself had been painted by a mad hand.
A whisper brushed Elias's ear.
He spun. Nothing behind him but mist and silence.
The dock was rotted and swayed under his weight. The ferry pulled away the second his foot touched land no goodbye, no warning. He called out, once, twice. No answer.
And then... silence.
The kind of silence that had texture.
Elias stood there, soaked to the bone, staring up the muddy trail that led into the dense woods. No signs. No markers. Just the faint sound of wind brushing through dead leaves—and beneath it, something like a breath being held.
He checked his phone: No signal. No time.
The clock read 00:00.
Then 00:01.
Then 00:00 again.
His hand moved on its own, reaching into his coat.
The letter was gone.
In its place: a torn scrap of notebook paper, smeared with something dark. He could barely read the words, scrawled in a rushed hand:
Don't trust the mirrors. Don't trust your voice.
Memory is not your friend.
Follow the ash.
The bottom of the page was soaked and torn. Elias stared at it, feeling something deep in his chest tighten.
He folded the page and placed it into his journal. It was the only thing he still trusted his worn black notebook, where he recorded everything. Symptoms. Voices. Dreams. Truths, if they existed.
He began up the trail.
The forest swallowed him.
Every tree looked diseased bark split open like wounds, oozing black sap that sizzled when it hit the ground. The leaves were brittle and gray, and the wind sounded like a child trying to cry without making noise.
He found the first sign after thirty minutes of walking.
It was carved into the side of a dead oak:
WELCOME BACK
Blood. Or something thicker.
He hadn't been here before. He knew that.
He would remeber an island like this.
Wouldn't he?
His foot hit something beneath the leaves.
A doll's head. Cracked porcelain. Smiling.
He moved on.
The tower appeared at dusk.
Twisted, gothic, and ancient, it leaned slightly to one side like it was too tired to keep standing. There were no windows, only narrow slits like breathing holes. Vines wrapped its stones like veins. A large door stood at the base wood blackened with age and something worse.
A symbol was carved into it. A spiral of eyes.
Elias raised his hand to knock.
The door creaked open on its own.
Inside, the air was thick and dry, and the scent was... familiar.
Burned hair. Sterile metal. Charred meat.
Memories flashed hospital rooms. Scream therapy.
Patient 63, eyes rolled back, whispering a language no one had taught her.
He stumbled forward, into a large circular room. Dust danced in shafts of candlelight from sconces that had no fire. A single chair sat in the center. A table beside it. And on the table.
His notebook.
The same one in his coat.
He froze.
He reached into his coat his notebook was there.
He took it out.
Two identical journals. Same scratches. Same coffee stain on the back. Same torn page until he flipped open the one on the table.
It had entries he hadn't written yet.
Day Three. The tower whispers when I sleep. It tells me her name. I had a daughter once, didn't I? Why can't I see her face?
Day Five. The stairs go down forever. I met myself yesterday. He told me to stop asking.
Day Seven. The walls are watching. They blink when I turn away. I burned the mirror but it didn't help. It's not the reflections that lie. It's me.
Elias backed away.
This was a trap. Or a trick.
But part of him wasn't scared.
Part of him was... curious.
And part of him knew something else:
He had been here before.
He made camp in the tower that night. The floor creaked with each breath he took. The moon never rose, and the stars blinked out, one by one.
He dreamt of a room without doors.
Of a voice whispering his name in reverse.
Of fire, and a child screaming, and hands that weren't his holding the match.
When he woke, the notebook lay on his chest.
A new entry was written in it, in his own handwriting.
But he hadn't written anything.
Welcome home, Dr. Wren. You've been a very good sleeper.
But now it's time to remember.
Everything.
He looked up.
And the tower was no longer empty.
A figure stood in the corner.
Face wrapped in mirrors.
Mouth stitched shut.
It raised a hand and pointed directly at Elias.