He wandered.
Not with purpose, not with fear—just the mechanical motion of limbs that didn't want to stay still.
The hallway twisted into another. Then another. The floor changed underfoot. Carpet. Wood. Tile. Sometimes soft, sometimes echoing. The walls bore paintings he couldn't look at long enough to describe. Each time he glanced at one, it became something else. Or maybe it had always been something else. His mind couldn't hold them.
There were no clocks.
No windows.
Only doors.
Most of them didn't open. Some didn't even have handles. One turned out to be just a painting of a door on a wall. He stood in front of that one for longer than he meant to.
Time moved like syrup.
There were no people. No noise. Just the endless, silent hum of the place existing.
It didn't feel abandoned.
It felt like it was waiting for him to stop walking.
He passed through a room filled with overturned chairs and still water on the floor.
A hallway made of red wallpaper that bled ink from its seams.
A stairwell that looped back to itself no matter how many times he climbed.
At some point, he began whispering to himself. Not words. Just noise. A presence to fill the space. Just to hear something. Anything.
His thoughts frayed at the edges.
He began to forget what he was looking for.
Or if he was looking for anything at all.
And then—
The pain hit.
Sharp. Violent. White-hot at the center of his skull, like a needle piercing through thought itself. He gasped and fell to one knee, hands trembling against the wall as the world shimmered around him.
He saw something. Just for a blink. A memory. A shape. A flash of a room not this one.
A voice. Laughter.
A breath not his.
It passed almost instantly.
But the pain didn't.
He closed his eyes.
Gripped his head.
And through gritted teeth, through the fog of forgetting, a whisper tore its way out of him.
"I remember."