"When a writer lies to the page, the page lies back."
– Manual of the Crimson Script, p. 5
---
There was no right answer.
Ren knew that.
This wasn't about truth.
It was about consistency - deciding which version of himself he could carry forward without shattering.
The reflection in the mirror still mouthed the words: Kill me.
A plea or a trap?
It didn't matter.
The Labyrinth wasn't built to measure morality. It was built to test whether you could live with the weight of your own choices.
Ren stepped closer and pressed his fingertips to the glass.
Cold, not like ice - more like the memory of bone that had forgotten how to be alive.
The mirror pulsed.
And then -
Shatter.
Not the glass.
Not the room.
The image.
The reflection collapsed inward, folding in on itself like a dying star retreating into its own memory. A silent implosion, leaving only darkness where his other self had stood.
The other mirrors blinked out.
For a moment, the air in the chamber held still. Not the calm of completion, but the pause before something remembers what was supposed to happen next.
Ren stayed in place, eyes locked on the space where the reflection had been. In its absence, he felt a faint pull, like the gravity of something that wasn't visible but still insisted on drawing him nearer.
The floor beneath his boots quivered—barely a vibration, more like a muscle twitch deep below the stone. In that stillness, the pen in his hand grew warm again. Not urgent, not demanding. Curious.
A thin shadow, thinner than the width of a thought, moved along the curve of the chamber wall. He followed it with his eyes until it disappeared behind one of the darkened mirrors.
He knew better than to chase it.
The Labyrinth didn't need him to run after what it wanted him to see. It would bring the thing to him, when the time was right—or when it could hurt the most.
Ren turned his head back toward the empty mirror frame. The edges of the glass shimmered faintly, as if resisting the fact that it was now hollow. A low hum filled the chamber, too low to be sound, pressing against his ribs instead of his ears.
And then it stopped.
Abrupt.
Like the chamber had just made its choice.
And in the void behind the broken image, a seam appeared.
---
It started as a thin line, then widened into a narrow passage lit from below in a shade he had never seen before - somewhere between rust and regret.
Ren stepped through.
No hesitation. Hesitation was a luxury for people who still believed someone might come for them.
---
Something moved behind him.
Not footsteps—more like the brush of thought against thought. A presence testing the edges of his awareness, trying to determine how much of him it could occupy without permission.
He didn't turn.
Instead, he took one more step forward into the passage. The light from the mirror room didn't fade in the normal way light recedes—it folded back on itself, becoming an absence that carried weight.
A faint reflection slid along the wall to his right, out of place in the narrow space. His own shape, but elongated, stretched thin as if drawn in a hurry. The image slowed when he slowed, but it lagged half a second behind.
Ren let it follow.
Half a second was enough time to be rewritten without realizing it.
The warmth in his coat pocket deepened. The pen pulsed twice. It wasn't warning him away. It was... listening.
The corridor beyond was tighter. Not physically, but in the way it pressed against him. The walls didn't close in; he was the one expanding, pushing against them, feeling their resistance like a living thing measuring his outline.
Something was following.
Not footsteps. Not shadow.
Pressure.
Familiar. Feminine.
Not threatening. Not yet.
You lied.
The voice didn't arrive through the air but settled directly in his chest, like guilt disguised as stone.
Ren didn't stop walking.
"Define 'lie,' " he murmured.
You chose the version of you that wasn't honest.
"I chose the one I could still carry."
That's not the same.
The light above dimmed. The only illumination came from thin red lines under his feet, pulsing like veins in a creature too stubborn to die.
He didn't answer. The voice wasn't a stranger's. It was a memory. One that might have belonged to someone who had trusted him once - or worse, someone he had failed.
---
The path curved sharply and opened into a circular space without a ceiling. Glass walls surrounded him, stretching outward into an endless reflection.
Himself, again.
This time without distortion, each copy moving in perfect unison with his breath.
It should have felt open, even safe. Instead, the brightness was sterile, the kind that bruised the edges of sight.
This wasn't judgment.
It was preservation.
A beauty worn thin under the weight of being constantly observed.
And in the center—
A single chair.
A single table.
A single file.
---
Ren approached.
The folder was worn, its corners softened by time, its paper yellowed and curling at the edges. No name on the front.
He opened it.
> SUBJECT: REN (UNCONFIRMED – ANOMALOUS SCRIPT ACCESS)
Status: Untrained. Predisposed to creative manipulation. Noncompliant with Control Tier doctrine. Initiated reflection breach during Module 1-A. Exposure to mirrored self beyond safe limit. Potential vector of narrative collapse.
Recommendations:
Surveillance through embedded loops.
Memory pruning if divergence exceeds ±2 iterations.
Do not allow contact with [REDACTED].
Ren's eyes stopped on the final line.
There was a second page beneath.
Blank.
Not blank in the way of absence, but in the way of something scrubbed clean - not erased with ink, but with authority.
---
The chair moved.
Not scraping. Pivoting, slow and deliberate, until it faced him like an open palm.
He didn't sit.
He took out the pen and wrote on the back of the report:
I read nothing today.
The air in the dome stilled.
The file didn't vanish.
Crimson Script didn't care about the act alone.
It required belief.
And belief demanded sacrifice.
Something shifted in the reflections. Not the obvious movement of a body, but a subtle misalignment in the timing of his own mirrored gestures.
One copy of him, far to the left, tilted its head before he did.
Another breathed when his chest was still.
And one—at the very edge of his sight—had stopped moving entirely, watching him without the mask of mimicry.
Ren's grip tightened on the pen.
He was being measured here—not by action, but by variance. The Labyrinth wasn't checking for lies; it was watching for deviations from the self it thought it owned.
That meant this was more than a test.
It was a scan.
A census of his possible selves, and a cull of the ones it couldn't control.
The realization tasted metallic.
It always came to this in the rooms that looked the most harmless.
Not blood.
Not violence.
Just the quiet weight of someone—something—making a list of who you could be, and deciding which versions deserved to keep walking.
His nose began to bleed. A slow trickle down to his lip.
He wiped it with his sleeve.
---
When he looked back up, the reflections had changed.
Someone was standing behind them.
A silhouette. Slim. Tall. Shoulders sharp. Hands behind her back, the way soldiers stood when trying to hide a tremor.
She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
He recognized the echo.
He just didn't know when it belonged to.
We're not supposed to meet yet.
The words brushed across the glass.
And she was gone.
---
The dome cracked.
Not just in the glass, but in the concept of its shape.
Fractures split outward, delicate as frost across possibility.
At his feet, new words appeared, cut into the floor without hand or tool:
The system sees you. The script has no god. Only editors.
Ren pocketed the pen.
And waited for the next room to decide what to make of him.
---