Adrian's footsteps made no sound.
Not because the ground swallowed it, but because the concept of sound seemed to lose meaning here. His body moved, but the silence clung to him like a second skin, thick and suffocating. The only noise came from within—his own ragged breaths and the whispers threading through his blood.
He was no longer sure if they were inside his head or if he had simply become hollow enough for them to live inside.
The corridor stretched endlessly, narrowing until he had to turn sideways to keep going. The walls breathed against his shoulders, slick with a warmth that left wet streaks across his shirt.
When he finally stumbled into open space, his stomach dropped.
It wasn't a room.
It was an echo chamber of himself.
Dozens—hundreds—of Adrians stood in the chamber, frozen in strange poses. Some knelt. Some screamed silently. Some clawed at invisible walls. All of them had spiraled eyes, their mouths slack, their skin shifting between human and something else.
Adrian's knees buckled.
"No—no, this isn't real—"
One of the frozen figures twitched.
Its head jerked sideways, spine cracking. Its eyes locked onto his.
And in perfect unison, every version of him in the chamber turned.
---
Adrian screamed, stumbling back. The chamber filled with motion as the echoes convulsed, their mouths opening, but no words came—only the static. Deafening, endless, a hurricane of sound made of nothing.
He covered his ears, but it was inside him, rattling his bones. The Adrians began to move, crawling toward him, dragging themselves across the pulsating floor. Their bodies warped as they neared—limbs bending, torsos splitting, faces spiraling inward until they were nothing but mouths.
"You are not you," they whispered together, their voices layered, overlapping, his voice and not his voice.
"You are the pattern. You are the breach."
Adrian bolted through the chamber, shoving past his own faces, his own hands grabbing for him. The walls rippled and collapsed behind him as he ran, the echoes folding into the spiral.
---
He emerged into another corridor. This one was worse.
The floor was glass. Beneath it—spirals, infinite, writhing like serpents made of light. Every step cracked the surface, the glass webbing outward, threatening to shatter.
Adrian forced himself across, his reflection glaring up at him from below. But his reflection didn't mimic him anymore. It walked differently. It smiled. Sometimes it paused when he didn't, pressing its palm against the glass as if testing the barrier.
Halfway across, the reflection whispered:
You'll break through soon. And I'll be waiting.
The glass groaned under his feet.
Adrian sprinted.
---
On the far side, he collapsed to his knees, shaking. He was exhausted. Broken. The Dimensional was peeling him apart, thought by thought, memory by memory. He wasn't sure how long he could keep himself intact.
He sat against the wall, closing his eyes for just a moment—just long enough to breathe.
When he opened them, he wasn't where he had been.
He sat in his apartment again. The couch. The journal. The TV. All perfectly ordinary.
For one beautiful second, Adrian believed.
Then the spiral shimmered on the wall.
And his reflection in the TV didn't sit at all.
It stood. Waiting.
---