Elara opened her eyes. The darkness had lifted but she was no longer in the mirrored room.
Instead, she stood in the same mansion corridor she had seen before… but everything felt… different.
The walls looked newer, cleaner. The wallpaper was fresh, the wooden doors polished. Dust was gone. Sunlight poured faintly through windows that had been broken before.
Her heart skipped. "This… this can't be real," she whispered.
A soft voice echoed, familiar but strange. "You remember now."
Elara spun around. The hallway stretched longer than ever. Doors that hadn't existed before lined the walls. And at the far end… she saw a small child sitting on the floor, drawing symbols on the wall with chalk.
The child looked up. Elara's breath caught. It was her. A younger version of herself.
"You… that's me," she whispered, stepping closer.
The child nodded slowly. "I've been waiting. They always come back."
Elara's head spun. "Waiting for what? Who? What is happening?"
The corridor began to twist. The floor shivered. Elara felt her memories rearranging scenes from her past she didn't know she had. A birthday party she never remembered. A hidden attic where she had once played. Faces of people she had never met and yet, somehow, they felt familiar.
"It's the door," the child said softly. "It remembers… everything. It collects pieces of people… of you… and shows them. That's why you came back. Every time."
Elara stepped back, trying to grasp what the child was saying. "I… I've been here before?"
"Yes," the child replied. "Many times. You walked these halls, touched the hidden door… but forgot it. Every time you left, it kept part of you behind. That's why the house changed. That's why the corridor moves. That's why the whispers call your name."
Elara's chest tightened. "So… I'm trapped?"
The child shook her head slowly. "Not yet. But if you don't remember… fully… the door will take you completely."
Suddenly, the walls shifted again. She felt herself falling backward into darkness but this time, the darkness was warmer, heavier, filled with whispers. The trapped versions of herself and others pressed against her mind, tugging at memories she had forgotten.
She understood now. She wasn't just exploring the mansion. She had lived here before, though she didn't remember it. Every visit she thought was new had already happened and every time she left, she lost a piece of herself to the door.
Her heart pounded. If I don't remember… I'll never leave, she thought, panic rising.
A whisper her own voice echoed from everywhere at once: "Remember, or be mine forever."
The corridor stretched endlessly ahead, dark and pulsing. And at the very end… the carved wooden door waited. Alive. Patient. Hungry.