When the dead whisper, it's not to be remembered.It's to remind you that you never really left.
They stepped into the corridor.
And the world forgot gravity.
There was no sound—not silence, just the absence of sound, like reality had stopped acknowledging that sound was a thing. No footsteps echoed. No breath misted. Just pressure—everywhere.Like memory itself was pushing down on their lungs.
The walls pulsed around them like the inside of something living.
Grey stone wasn't just stone. It breathed. Symbols—shifting, swirling, alive—pulsed in and out of the surface like parasites beneath a thin layer of skin. Some of the runes Quinn recognized. Some she didn't. All of them watched.
"Asher..." Quinn's voice was thin, too casual, a knife wrapped in sarcasm. "This is what you call a normal case, right?"
Asher didn't reply.
Because he had seen what lay at the end of the hall.
It wasn't light.
It was a face.
A girl's face.Pale. Familiar.Asha.
Her mouth was sewn shut again—black thread twisted into her skin. Her eyes weren't eyes. They were holes into somewhere else.
And she turned—backwards—her form glitching like a bad recording, every motion trailing echo-frames behind it. With each impossible step she took, the hallway stretched. Elongated. Widened, like the cathedral's innards were unraveling to swallow them.
"Asher—" Quinn started.
"I know."
They didn't move.
The hallway moved around them.
Suddenly, the corridor stuttered.
A flicker.
A breath.
Then they stood elsewhere. In front of a door made of bone and rusted chains. The number carved into it: VII.
Not Asha's room.
Lirieth's.
The cell stank of sulfur and rosewater. The walls were scraped with symbols—claw marks forming overlapping scripts. Enochian. Daedric. One older than both.A mirror hung dead-center. Just one. Cracked precisely into the shape of a spiral encircling a flame.
Asher stared at it.
"She was here," he said softly. "Before the others. Before even me."
His hand reached out.
And the mirror melted beneath his palm.
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LIRIETH'S MEMORY
The smell hit first.
Rot and roses.
Then the banquet unfolded around them—long tables piled high with decadent meats, fruits leaking blood-colored juices, chalices steaming with something too thick to be wine.
The guests: noblemen and women with hollow eyes, dressed in finery woven from spider-silk and shadow. They moved like puppets with fraying strings.
At the head of the feast sat Lirieth.
But not the one they knew.
No smirks. No charm.This version wore a crown of thorned black roses. Her eyes didn't shine. They absorbed light.
She didn't look at Asher or Quinn.
She looked through them.
Her skin glimmered like glass polished with nightmares.
Then a voice rasped from the end of the table.
A priest—tall, emaciated, wrapped in moth-eaten robes. His skin sagged off his bones like melted wax, and his mouth—stitched shut in a mocking grin—still spoke.
"You wanted to see what lies beneath?" he asked."Then feed the flame."
The chalices on the table ignited.The guests screamed—but no sound emerged. Their mouths stretched open wider and wider until they split apart.
Quinn flinched.
And the memory shattered—
------------------------------
BACK TO PRESENT – THE CORRIDOR SHIFTS
Quinn gasped as they were thrown back into the corridor.
Only now it was tilting sideways.
The floor beneath them twisted like a Möbius strip folding in on itself, and gravity turned from a law into a suggestion. They stumbled—not downward. Not upward. Inward.
And fell through.
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THE ROOM OF MIRRORS
They landed in silence.
A wide chamber. Infinite, but claustrophobic. The walls, the ceiling, the floor—all mirrors.
Each mirror played a scene.
One showed Asha—bloodied, laughing, tearing out her own stitches.
Another: Lirieth, lips pressed to a dying man's throat as he whispered, "thank you."
Another still: Asher, kneeling before a massive being made of hands and masks, its whispers crawling into his ears like centipedes.
Quinn backed up instinctively.
"Tell me this isn't real."
Asher didn't answer.
Because it was.
A voice replied instead—from above.
"It's all real," it said.
Lirieth stepped down the mirror-wall like it was a staircase.Barefoot. Elegant. Dangerous.
Her trench coat was gone.No coyness. No flirtation.
She wore only her runic tattoos—glowing softly, spiraling across her skin like scripture on living parchment. Her form shimmered with inhuman perfection. Not exaggerated. Not grotesque. Just… wrong in a way that made Quinn's pulse slow.
Two wings folded behind her like knives, glinting with threads of gold. Her tail traced a slow curve, curling like a question mark waiting to be answered.
"You summoned me, remember?" she asked, eyes locked on Asher.
"I never—"
"Not you," she said sweetly, turning her gaze to the mirror behind them.
She pointed.
Inside, Asha knelt.
Drawing a sigil.
Asher stood behind her—frozen. Watching. Never stopping her.
"You both made me," Lirieth whispered. "One with hope. One with silence. Now I'm part of this story, too."
The mirrors began to crack—one by one.
Each fissure ran like veins through the reflections.
In one:Asher burned, screaming silently as a thousand hands reached up to claim him.
In another:Quinn rotted, skin peeling, bones twisting into a cage.
And in the center, Lirieth smiled, licking her lips.
Behind all of it:
Asha.
Mouth re-stitched shut.
Eyes glowing with ancient fire.
In her hands, the mask—the same one worn by the priest. The same one glimpsed in the fire's heart. The same one carved into the cathedral's door.
And behind her, something stirred.
Something enormous.
Flames flickered in the space between worlds, and a shape stepped forward—made of smoke, fire, and forgotten names.
[End of Chapter 37 – The Veil Burns Twice]
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Next Chapter Preview: Chapter 38 – "Asha's Deal"Asha Blackwood made a pact long ago. Not to save herself—but to punish everyone who left her behind. Now, as her masked persona takes shape, the truth behind the cathedral, the fire, and Lirieth's binding is revealed. But not before Asher must make a choice: save his sister's soul… or protect what remains of his own.