It took three days to decode the fragments of Noreen's notes.
She had written everything in layers—half of it in ink, the rest in faded pencil, or carved faintly into the margins of old bills and torn wallpaper.
But one word kept repeating in every section:
"Ritual."
There was no full description, no detailed diagram. Just bits and pieces. But they all revolved around one thing:
"The Whisper Door must open twice. Once for memory. Once for release."
The first time I opened it, I remembered.
Now… I had to open it again.
But there was a price.
Every entry warned the same:
"The second opening always demands a Witness."
Not just someone who had lived in the apartment…
Someone who had seen the inside of the door.
That narrowed it down to one horrifying possibility:
Me.
I spent the next night trying to reconstruct what the ritual required.
What I had was this:
A symbol: the Sun in Thirds.
An offering: something given in fear.
A circle of salt and ash.
A name written backwards.
And finally, the door itself—opened willingly.
I had the symbol: the brass medallion I found on the chain.
I didn't know what "something given in fear" meant.
But when I reached into the back of the kitchen drawer and found the broken piece of mirror from my first night, I felt it—that old fear rushing back.
I wrapped the shard in cloth and placed it beside the chain.
I drew the circle on the floor using salt and ash from burned pages of the first ledger.
My apartment stank of scorched paper and dread.
Then, with shaking hands, I wrote my name in reverse on the wall just above the circle.
"N E V A H"
My real name had become slippery. Foreign.But seeing it backward made my skin crawl.
I waited until midnight.
The hour of the whisper.
When the air in the apartment goes still.
When the walls forget how to hold sound.
And then I said the words I found etched into the back of the Sun in Thirds medallion:
"Open, not by key.Not by hand.But by the weight of what was witnessed."
The light in the room blinked out.
A low hum vibrated through the floor.
The Whisper Door appeared again—this time on the ceiling.
A square of shadow opening above me like the underside of a well.
From it came a breeze that smelled like old flowers and rot.
And a voice that was no longer distant.
It spoke clearly, and directly:
"You attempt the Ritual of Second Sight.Do you offer your own fear?"
I placed the mirror shard into the center of the circle.
"Yes."
"Do you offer the truth of your inheritance?"
I laid down the medallion.
"Yes."
"Then step forward, Witness.And speak what cannot be spoken."
I stepped into the circle.
The floor vanished beneath me.
I fell into the dark.
Not down—inward.
Through layers of the apartment I had never seen.
Rooms stacked like memory cells.
Each filled with another Witness.
Each frozen in a loop.
One man screamed endlessly in a chair.
A woman traced sigils in blood over and over.
A child stared into a TV that showed static faces.
And above them all:
A mirror with no glass.
Just light. Blinding. Infinite.
And in the center of it…
Me.
I saw myself—tied to the lease, branded with my own name written backward, holding the same ledger I had hidden weeks ago.
I tried to call out, but my voice was gone.
The Mirror-Me opened their mouth and said:
"You did not bring another.The ritual demands two.You must give yourself twice."
Pain split through my body.
A scream ripped out of me—not in sound, but in memory.
Flashes:
Mara, whispering about the rent.
Eli, warning me too late.
Fray, in his coat of many contracts.
I fell to my knees.
I didn't have another Witness.
But maybe I could become both.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the black pen I'd found in the welcome box.
I stabbed it into my palm.
Ink and blood mixed together.
I smeared it across the wall of the memory-space, and shouted—not with words, but with intent:
"I witness myself."
The air cracked.
The Mirror shattered.
The loops stopped.
All the other tenants turned to look at me at once.
Eyes hollow.
But thankful.
And one by one, they vanished.
Released.
I woke up on the floor of my apartment.
Covered in salt and ash.
The Whisper Door gone.
But the ceiling still bore a faint burn in the shape of a rectangle.
And in front of me…
A new envelope.
Smaller than before.
Inside:
"Ritual acknowledged.Lease: Severed.Memory: Retained."— The Building
There was no key.
No medallion.
Just a final note, handwritten on old paper:
"You've done what others could not.You've broken it.But you will always remember.And memory… is its own haunting."
That night, I slept.
For the first time, dreamless.
But even now, as I write this—
Sometimes I hear a faint whisper through the vents.
Sometimes the mirror flickers.
And I wonder…
Did I break the contract?
Or just move into a new one?