The Heart shattered.But the train… didn't stop.
Instead, the world around them twisted.
The mirrors on the walls melted like wax, dripping into black puddles that crawled across the floor like insects. The hum of the train deepened, slow and uneven—like a dying animal struggling to breathe.
Then the lights flickered.
Once.Twice.Then off.
Pitch-black.
Sophie's breath hitched. "Guys… the lantern—"
The lantern's flame sputtered violently, shrinking down to a tiny trembling dot before stabilizing into a weak, sickly glow.
Leo swallowed hard. "It's not dead… the Heart wasn't the end."
Alex glared into the darkness. "So it was just one piece…"
Evelyn tightened her grip on the lantern. The flame trembled like it was afraid.
From deep in the corridor, something scraped.
Not footsteps.Not breathing.Something dragging itself, uneven, jerking, like bones scraping on metal.
Sophie whispered, "Is someone… crawling?"
The scraping stopped.
Silence.
Then a voice echoed down the hallway—distorted, glitching, like a corrupted recording over warped speakers:
"YoU… cAN't… kILL… whAT… nEvER… dIEd."
Alex flinched. "That's—"
But it wasn't a stranger's voice.
It was Alex's voice, twisted, overlapping, repeating.
Leo gasped. "No. No no no—look!"
The lantern dimmed even further.The darkness moved.
A shape crawled into view—something human-shaped, but wrong.Its limbs bent at impossible angles.Its spine twisted like a spiral staircase.Its face was a warped mask of Alex's features melted together…Eyes too large.Mouth stretched to the ears.Teeth layered like broken glass.
It grinned with Alex's voice:
"YoU AlrEaDy bElOnG tO uS."
Evelyn staggered back."It's… it's not him. It's a mimic. A shadow clone."
Sophie screamed as two more forms crawled out behind it—one with Leo's face, one with Sophie's, each more distorted than the last.
The Leo mimic had no eyes—only deep bleeding sockets, crying thick black liquid.The Sophie mimic had no mouth—only skin stretched tight over where it should be, her screams muffled beneath the flesh.
Evelyn's lantern flickered wildly, like the flame itself was panicking.
Leo whispered, voice cracking, "It's copying us using the Heart's fragments. There must be more pieces. This is just the first wave."
The SophIE mimic lunged, hands shaking violently like a glitching video.Alex tackled Sophie out of the way as the creature's fingers sliced through the floor like knives.
Evelyn shouted, "STAY TOGETHER!"
But the darkness ate her voice.
The three mimics shrieked at once—distorted, layered, glitching, unnatural.Their screams didn't sound like pain.They sounded like hungry children calling out for their parents.
Leo's heart pounded. "We can't fight these forever! We need to find the real source!"
Alex threw a broken shard of mirror at the mimic wearing his face.It struck the creature—and the glass disappeared into its body, swallowed like water.
The mimic whispered with Alex's voice, unnervingly calm:
"ThE mIRroRs bElOnG tO Us nOw."
And then—
The lantern went out.
Darkness swallowed everything.
Something grabbed Alex's leg.Something brushed Sophie's neck.Something whispered in Leo's ear.Something breathed behind Evelyn, inches from her ear.
And a chorus of distorted voices whispered from every corner:
"yOu ShOuLd HaVe LeFt WhEn YoU sTiLl HaD fEeT."