The hallway beyond the time-distorted room was silent.
Too silent.
No hum.
No whispers.
No shifting shadows.
Just stillness.
I slowed my steps instinctively. The key in my pocket wasn't pulsing anymore—it was holding its breath.
"This is wrong," I whispered.
My companion stopped beside me. "Yes. This isn't an anomaly that announces itself." She scanned the corridor. "This one waits."
The lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then the hallway fractured.
Sound rushed in first—whispers overlapping, echoes colliding, footsteps that weren't ours moving just out of sync. At the same time, shadows peeled themselves off the walls, stretching across the floor in jagged patterns. The air shifted violently, like the room had inhaled.
And then gravity tilted.
I staggered as the floor slanted sideways. Light bent unnaturally, warping distance. The walls felt farther away and closer at the same time. Every sense screamed at once.
"This one—" I gasped, steadying myself. "It's combining everything."
Sound.
Light.
Shadow.
Time.
Gravity.
All converging.
The key flared to life, pulsing rapidly, as if struggling to keep up.
A voice echoed—not calm like before, not whispering.
"Observe correctly… or be lost."
The hallway split into layers. I could see three versions of it overlapping—one darker, one brighter, one slightly delayed in time. Shadows moved differently in each layer. Footsteps echoed from places that didn't exist.
"Focus!" my companion shouted. "Pick one reality—don't let it overwhelm you!"
I forced myself to breathe.
The key pulsed strongest toward the middle layer—the one where shadows moved slower and sound aligned more naturally with movement.
"Middle," I said. "That's the anchor."
We moved together.
Immediately, the other layers reacted. Whispers grew louder, trying to distract us. Light flared painfully bright, then plunged into darkness. Gravity lurched, trying to throw us sideways.
Shadows lunged—not to attack, but to confuse—splitting into fragments that mimicked our movements a second too late.
I ignored them.
Observe.
Pattern.
Respond.
That was the rule.
Each step forward stabilized the chosen layer slightly. The others grew more chaotic, as if frustrated we weren't engaging with them.
Then the mirrors appeared.
Dozens of them.
They showed us making wrong choices—stepping into the wrong layer, losing balance, disappearing into shadow. Some reflections showed us frozen, trapped in endless loops.
I clenched my jaw. "They're lies."
"Or warnings," she replied. "Either way—we don't look."
We kept our eyes forward.
The sound shifted again—this time rhythmic. Familiar. Almost like a heartbeat.
The key synced to it.
I followed the rhythm, adjusting my steps. My companion matched me perfectly. The gravity stabilized. The shadows retreated slightly. The layered hallway began to collapse inward, merging into a single, coherent space.
A door appeared ahead—solid, unmoving.
The anomalies resisted one final time.
Light flared.
Sound screamed.
The floor tilted sharply.
I nearly fell—but strong hands caught me.
"We're almost through," she said firmly. "Don't stop now."
We reached the door together.
The moment my hand touched the handle, everything snapped back into place.
Silence.
Stillness.
The hallway returned to normal.
The key pulsed once—slow, deep, satisfied.
Behind us, the anomalies withdrew.
The building had tested not one sense—but all of them at once.
And we had passed.
But as the door opened, I felt it—
This wasn't just another lesson.
This was a threshold.
Whatever waited beyond wasn't just teaching anymore.
It was watching.