The door towered over Mira like a relic from some forgotten epoch—alive, pulsing with memory. It hadn't been opened for years, maybe decades. Or perhaps it had never been closed. Time in the building was treacherous, elastic, and every inch of this door radiated oldness—not in the way of decay, but as if it had always been here, waiting.
The carvings across its surface writhed now, no longer static symbols. They bent and reshaped into forms she recognized. Her forms. Memories, moments, choices—each carved in motion like living hieroglyphs on flesh.
She stared, transfixed, watching herself move across the wood in fragmented scenes. A scream muffled by her own hand. A silhouette, holding her down. A flash of light. Then darkness.
And over and over again—her walking into this very room, only to be changed.
It was not a door.
It was a mirror.
She reached out, fingers trembling, and laid her hand flat against it. The wood wasn't hard. It wasn't soft either. It felt like skin—cool, too smooth, too pliable. The kind of thing that remembers every touch it's ever felt.
And when she pushed—
—it opened, not with a creak, but with a shudder.
The room beyond was circular, impossibly wide. The ceiling arched overhead like the inside of a skull, domed and veined with pulsating crimson light. The air was thick, metallic, humming softly, almost like a whisper that couldn't decide what language to speak.
At the center stood the Rewrite Machine.
It didn't look like a machine at all. Not in the way of gears or wires. It was a structure made of bone and brass and flickering glass. It looked grown rather than built—like it had risen from the floor like a tumor, fed on memories, identities, and fear.
The glass hummed with static, alive with shifting images that flickered too fast to catch. Every screen showed someone—crying, screaming, laughing, forgetting. A hundred faces. A thousand lives.
And then—
Her own.
Mira staggered back, her own image looping endlessly on one of the monitors. She was strapped down. Eyes wide, mouth open in a scream that echoed without sound. Her limbs jerked. Tubes ran into her head like roots, pulsing with light.
That wasn't memory.
That was now.
The room hadn't remembered.
It was remembering.
The door behind her sealed shut with a wet click. The light in the chamber dimmed until only the glow from the machine remained.
Something stepped out of the darkness.
Tall. Cloaked in a surgeon's apron stitched from leather and bandages. Its face was covered in black gauze, mouth sewn shut, but it still spoke.
"Welcome back, Mira."
Her throat closed. Her legs itched to run, but the floor moved with her—subtly, shifting beneath her feet like a conveyor belt hidden in the flesh of the room. It kept her still, kept her facing forward.
"You didn't finish your process," it said.
"I never wanted the process," she spat, fists clenched. "I fought you."
The figure cocked its head, curious. "And yet, here you are again. The Rewrite never fails. Only delays."
It moved toward her, slow, deliberate. The brass bones of the machine groaned in response. Tendrils of filament and sinew uncoiled, like the room itself was waking up, stretching.
Mira forced herself to speak. "Why me? Why keep bringing me back?"
"You are the anomaly," it answered. "The story that refuses to end. The page that will not erase. You are resistant."
Something in her chest twisted at that. Was it pride… or terror?
"What do you want from me?" she asked, the walls closing in like lungs.
The figure raised a hand, gloved in something too smooth to be leather.
"To finish what we began."
The tendrils snapped toward her, fast as thought. She ducked the first, rolled beneath another—but the third caught her ankle, yanking her off her feet. She hit the floor hard, the breath knocked from her lungs.
More tendrils slithered forward, wrapping around her wrists, her waist, hoisting her off the ground. She kicked and thrashed, but they only pulled tighter.
Her body was dragged to the base of the machine, toward the wide, tooth-edged cradle she had seen in the screen—her own body strapped in there, flailing.
The machine began to hum louder. A low, vibrating note that shook through her bones.
And then—
A voice.
Ansel.
"Fight it, Mira!" it echoed, faint and panicked. "You're still you!"
Her eyes widened.
Somewhere in the walls—he was watching.
The machine paused.
The tendrils loosened—just a hair. Not enough to free her, but enough to think.
Ansel was still out there. Not all gone. Still Ansel. Still fighting.
And if he could reach through the building… then maybe…
Maybe she could reach back.
She turned her head to the nearest screen and stared at her own terrified face.
"Not again," she whispered. "I won't lose myself again."
The image flickered.
For a moment, it showed something else.
A room. Dark. Ansel. Hands pressed to a wall, whispering her name.
The tendrils jerked—reacting violently. The surgeon figure flinched, taking a step back.
The building didn't like this.
It didn't like being seen.
Mira smiled.
"I remember now," she said, louder. "I remember what you did. And I remember who I was."
The screen cracked.
The cradle beneath her buckled. Sparks burst from the bone-brass core of the machine. It was glitching. She was glitching it.
She pulled with all her might, twisting her wrists, biting into the tendrils as they strained to hold her.
"You can't rewrite me," she screamed. "Not this time!"
The lights exploded overhead. The machine shrieked in a voice made of static and feedback. The surgeon reeled as if in pain.
And then—
Everything went dark.
Silence.
Then Mira hit the ground, hard. The tendrils were gone. The machine was still. The door behind her hung open, the hallway beyond bathed in a soft, grey light.
She rose, shaking, and turned to the machine one last time.
"I'll rewrite you," she said coldly. "And I'll make you suffer."
Then she stepped out.
Into the next corridor.