Kahn crouched behind the edge of a desk, sweat beading on his forehead. The office was silent, yet alive with a pressure he couldn't explain. The whispers—low, incomprehensible murmurs—threaded through his thoughts, curling into the edges of his mind. They pressed at him, testing him, teasing him.
He had survived the first steps. He had avoided misaligned papers, crooked chairs, even his own shadow. But now he realized something new: the space itself was changing, shaping itself according to a pattern he didn't understand… yet.
A flash of movement made his heart leap. Across the office, a vaguely humanoid figure was forming. Limbs bent at impossible angles, skin folding and swapping, twisting in mirrored perfection. Its head fractured into symmetrical halves. Features multiplied and mirrored, creating an optical illusion that made his stomach churn.
Kahn froze. Observing, breathing carefully, he searched for the rules that governed this nightmare. There had to be a pattern. Everything had rules.
And then he noticed it.
A pen rolled slightly, and another on the opposite desk shifted simultaneously. Papers fluttered and mirrored each other's curves. A chair that had tipped slightly leaned back into exact alignment with its twin across the room. Shadows stretched in perfect balance. Even the flickering light seemed to pulse symmetrically.
It clicked in his mind. Symmetry.
The monster's obsession wasn't just a random distortion—it was symmetry itself. Every movement, every object, every shadow had to "align" perfectly in its perception. Misalignment would trigger awareness, and a mortal had no chance.
Kahn swallowed hard, his eyes darting across the office. The patterns were everywhere: pens, paperclips, monitors, even the shadows themselves. Objects floated, twisted, and corrected themselves as though the monster's will projected into the room. He realized he could navigate safely—if he respected the obsession.
Every step became a calculation. Every breath, every motion, had to conform to the invisible rules of mirrored alignment. The whispers pulsed like a heartbeat as he moved along a row of paperclips perfectly arced between two desks. He almost tipped a chair, but the shadows adjusted, nudging it back into perfect alignment. For now, the monster hadn't noticed.
Then he made a critical mistake.
A subtle misalignment of his own reflection in a monitor—a flicker he hadn't accounted for—caught the monster's attention. Its fractured gaze snapped toward him. Kahn's stomach dropped. He was seen.
Panic clawed at him, but his mind raced. Escape was almost impossible. And yet, he noticed something unusual—a pulse within the symmetry monster itself. Not physical, not visual, but psychic. A rhythm, a subtle fluctuation he could sense in the way the office responded. A pattern embedded in its obsession.
Desperate, he decided to gamble.
Slowly, deliberately, he began to mirror the pulse, moving and breathing in perfect alignment with the psychic rhythm he had detected. The office responded instantly. Shadows and floating objects synchronized. He felt it—the partial sync, a connection to the monster's obsession.
Pain shot through his head and chest. Colors bled, shapes multiplied. His own reflection fractured and mirrored itself impossibly. The whispers intensified, layered with echoes of his distorted thoughts.
Every use of this psychic connection risked warping his mind, fracturing his perception, and pushing him closer to the obsessions he sought to manipulate. The symmetry monster's mirrored gaze lingered, patient, unblinking. Kahn could feel its awareness of him, probing, testing, stretching—but gradually, its attention began to shift back, absorbed once more in the act of digesting its memories and reshaping its grotesque form.
He had to get out.
Kahn moved carefully, staying in alignment, toward the office exit. Every step, every breath, was a measured calculation. The whispers had dulled, but a faint resonance lingered in his skull, a subtle hum that made his vision quiver. He could feel it—something of the monster still clinging to him, a fragment of its obsession quietly merging with his own mind.
Finally, he crossed the threshold of the office. The door closed behind him with a soft click, but the hallways beyond seemed… wrong. The walls stretched, bending in impossible symmetry, echoes of the monster's obsession spilling outward. Light fixtures hovered in mirrored pairs, shadows stretching unnaturally along the ceiling. Every corridor he passed twisted slightly, a reflection of the creature's inhuman perception.
Kahn's eyes darted over the warped corridors. Patterns repeated, subtly altering with each step. He noticed the carpeting rippling like water, as if the building's very structure flowed to maintain perfect symmetry. Handrails on the stairs aligned with invisible counterparts. Even the faint scuff marks from his own shoes appeared mirrored, mocking him. His pulse quickened—not from fear alone, but from the creeping realization that the monster's obsession wasn't confined to a single room. It had spread.
Doors appeared to replicate themselves, corridors doubled, angles shifted. For a heartbeat, Kahn thought he had taken a wrong turn—but the hall corrected itself in perfect symmetry. Even as he moved, the space seemed alive, reshaping around the monster's digestion, molding reality to its grotesque sense of order.
He forced himself to move, each step cautious, measured. The whispers had dulled, but a faint resonance lingered in his skull, a subtle hum that made his vision quiver. He could feel it—something of the monster still clinging to him, a fragment of its obsession quietly merging with his own mind.
Step by step, he forced his mind to pull back from the rhythm, slowly unraveling the psychic connection he had created. Pain shot through his temples as the threads resisted, tugging at him like live wires. Hallucinations flickered—shadows stretched unnaturally, surfaces rippled—but with steady, deliberate focus, he untangled himself.
A final, shuddering pull. The pulse snapped free. Kahn collapsed against the wall, gasping for air, chest burning, vision swimming. The whispers dimmed to a dull murmur. He was free.
Or so he thought.
Something lingered. Not the monster's full attention, not the pulse—but a faint echo, a subtle integration of the symmetry obsession into his own perception. It was imperceptible at first: a twitch of awareness when he tilted his head, a micro-shimmer in reflections, a pattern forming without his conscious thought.
Kahn shivered. He had survived. He had escaped. But he did not yet realize that a piece of the monster had come with him—integrated, hidden, a seed of obsession within his own mind.
The building behind him was silent once more. The whispers faded. But the echo within him… had only just begun.