The mirror in Amaka's bedroom hadn't stopped smiling.
She covered it with a bedsheet. Taped it down. Turned it to face the wall.
But no matter what she did, by the next morning—
> It was uncovered.
> And the smile was wider.
---
She stopped writing.
No journal entries. No texts. No social media.
She spoke only when necessary.
Avoided mirrors, screens, reflective water, even polished spoons.
Because anything that showed her face was beginning to show another version of her—one who always smiled just a beat too late.
Amaka didn't know what it meant.
But she felt it.
Something was writing again.
---
And this time—
> It was her.
But not the her that lived in this body.
Somewhere, in a mirror-world or a buried floor of the Apartment, another Amaka had taken the pen.
And she was writing forward.
Without mercy.
---
Three Days Later.
Amaka woke to find a letter slid under her door.
It was folded like an old library note. Smelled like burnt paper and dried roses.
On the front, in spidery handwriting:
> To the Original
Inside:
> "You stalled the story. That is not allowed."
> "The Apartment feeds on momentum."
> "So we've assigned a new Author. One more compliant. One who remembers how endings are made."
> "We thank you for your service. Your version will be archived."
> "Sincerely,
The Editorial Body Beneath All Floors"
The letter crumbled to ash in her hands.
---
She turned on her phone—first time in days.
No service.
No signal.
Only a blinking notification:
> "New Chapter Uploaded."
> Chapter 13: The Author Returns
She opened the app.
And stared.
There it was.
A story, written under her name.
With new entries, detailing things she had not done, but was about to.
The first paragraph read:
> "Amaka opens her door at 3:33 a.m., barefoot, eyes unfocused. She smiles. She doesn't know why. She only knows she must go downstairs."
She looked at the clock.
3:32 a.m.
---
Panic slammed into her chest.
She backed away from the phone—but her feet moved toward the door.
Her hand reached for the knob.
Exactly on time.
She tried to stop.
But her muscles moved on their own.
As if scripted.
"NO," she gasped, forcing herself to fall to the ground. She bit her lip hard—pain broke the rhythm.
She screamed at herself.
> "You are not a character!"
> "You are NOT a character!"
The movement stopped.
The door remained closed.
And the phone buzzed again.
---
New notification.
> "Deviation Detected. Correction in Progress."
She didn't open it.
Didn't need to.
She could already feel the air change.
Reality shift.
The walls breathed, just once.
Then the hallway outside her door echoed with footsteps.
Not real ones.
But the sound of words being typed—
Each step like a keystroke against the wooden floor.
A draft being written in footsteps.
Someone—or something—was editing her.
---
She raced to the mirror she'd covered.
Ripped the cloth away.
And screamed.
Her reflection was already downstairs.
Standing in the lobby of her building.
Smiling.
Waiting.
It raised a hand and waved.
---
Amaka dropped the cloth.
Backed away.
She had to find the original Book of the Source.
Not the one the Apartment rebuilt.
But the first one. The one that James said had been buried beneath the original Cemetery Apartment.
She didn't know if it still existed.
But if there was a way to destroy the story itself—
> She'd have to go back to the burial ground.
---
Just before she left, her phone buzzed again.
One final update:
> "New Author Note: The Archive is Watching."
And then—
Amaka stood outside the old lot where Cemetery Apartment once loomed.
But tonight, it had returned.
Not as concrete.
Not as steel.
But as architecture made of story.
The fence that once guarded the ruins had dissolved. The pavement cracked like book spines, and beneath her feet lay pages—thousands of them, overlapping like broken tiles. Each one whispered.
Not in sound.
In memory.
As she stepped forward, the pages clung to her shoes, shuffling her timeline.
She blinked.
The moon was red now.
Her phone was gone.
And her name was missing from her ID card.
---
She knew this was a trap.
The Apartment was trying to edit her out.
But she pressed forward.
At the center of the lot stood a new structure—a spire of spiraling books and broken walls. It pulsed with red light, like a wound sewn with paragraphs.
Over the archway was a title, written in fire:
> "THE LIBRARY OF ABANDONED DRAFTS"
She stepped inside.
And felt her breath leave her body.
---
It wasn't a building inside.
It was an archive of realities.
Rows and rows of books floated in air, suspended by strings of words. The books moved, shifted, whispered. Some screamed.
Each one bore a title.
> "Amaka Dies in Chapter 6"
> "Amaka Becomes the Apartment"
> "James Was Never Real"
> "The Book Writes the Reader"
Some were blank.
Some had redacted lines as if something had censored them violently.
Others bled from the spine.
---
"Why bring me here?" she whispered.
"Because the plot remembers what you try to forget."
The voice came from deeper within.
She followed it.
Down spiraling staircases that became sentences. Past doors shaped like quotation marks. Through halls lit by hanging punctuation lanterns.
Until she entered a reading chamber.
There, seated at a desk, was…
Her.
Another Amaka.
This one was pale. Eyes all black. Fingers ink-stained and twitching.
She looked up.
Smiled.
"Welcome, Original," she said.
"I've been writing you out."
---
Amaka froze.
"You're not real."
"Neither are you," the other replied calmly. "Not anymore. You lost control of the narrative."
She tapped the desk, where a typewriter clicked without pause—writing lines before Amaka even thought them.
> "Amaka backs away."
She did.
> "She denies what she sees."
She did.
> "She begs."
She refused.
And the typewriter jammed.
The other Amaka frowned.
"You broke format."
"I am the format," Amaka hissed, stepping forward. "You're a copy. A puppet."
"Perhaps," the double said. "But I write faster than you think."
---
Amaka grabbed the typewriter and smashed it against the floor.
The room rippled—walls flickering like static.
Shelves collapsed.
Pages fluttered and burned midair.
The Library screamed.
Other books flew open, revealing possible deaths, alternate endings, nightmare futures.
She didn't care.
She stormed toward the spiral staircase at the center of the library—where, chained in glass, hovered the original Book of the Source.
It was covered in locks made of ribs.
Bound in leather that whispered.
Inside it, she knew, was the power to close the Apartment—not just for her, but for everyone.
Forever.
---
Her double rose.
"You don't have the name," she said. "You need the full name of the story."
Amaka turned.
"What?"
"All stories have a true name," the double said, stepping forward. "And this one has been hiding its name behind every chapter. Every smile. Every 3:33 a.m."
Amaka's eyes widened.
"Then tell me," she whispered. "What is the name?"
The other Amaka smiled.
But didn't answer.
Instead, she faded—into mist, into letters, into silence.
And Amaka stood alone, before the chained book.
---
On the floor beneath her feet, a line appeared in fire:
The Book of the Source hovered inside a glass cage suspended from iron chains.
It pulsed.
Not like a heartbeat—more like breathing paper.
Alive.
Hungry.
Waiting.
Amaka circled it slowly. The chains were made of bone. Each link engraved with names—dozens, maybe hundreds.
> Every one was a lost tenant.
Each soul bound into a looped sentence.
Her own name shimmered near the bottom of the final chain.
Still unfinished.
Still writable.
For now.
---
She reached out to the glass.
It fogged beneath her fingertips.
Then cleared—and showed her reflection.
But not her as she was now.
> A younger Amaka.
From her first day in the Apartment.
Naive. Wounded. Trusting.
She was humming.
The same lullaby her mother used to sing.
Then her image cracked.
And the girl looked at her with eyes full of smoke.
"You left us behind," the reflection whispered.
Then shattered.
---
The lock unlatched.
Not with a click—but with a sigh.
The case lowered gently and opened.
Inside lay the Book.
Bound in leather that looked disturbingly like skin. Etched with runes that twisted when stared at too long. The pages within breathed like lungs, rising and falling.
She touched the first page—
And her hand jerked back.
Because the page screamed.
A scream of a thousand stories being devoured.
Her palm now bore ink-scars where she'd touched it.
It had branded her.
A word written in a tongue she couldn't understand—but her bones recognized.
---
The Library trembled.
Pages flew like birds in a burning sky.
Shelves collapsed.
Ink poured from the ceilings like rain.
> The Archive was collapsing.
And the Book pulsed harder, as if aware this moment had been written before, and would be written again.
Amaka grabbed it.
Held it to her chest.
And suddenly—
She was everywhere.
---
Flashes of timelines:
James watching her from a mirror in a version of the Apartment made entirely of screams.
Her mother sewing red threads across doorways in a village where shadows had teeth.
The Smiling Man as a child, whispering to a hole in the floor that answered back in rhyme.
Her own hands writing in blood on the back of an unborn twin.
Each flicker peeled her mind open.
Each image felt like a memory she hadn't lived.
Until one voice echoed through them all:
> "Only the one who knows the true name may write the end."
---
She opened the Book.
And read.
But it wasn't in English.
It wasn't in any language known to her mind—but her soul recognized it.
Each line she read rewrote something in her body.
Her scars vanished.
Her childhood returned in glimpses.
The faces of the dead flickered through her mind—thanking her. Cursing her. Warning her.
She read on.
And then—
A single name appeared on the last page:
> "Iyare."
> James's true name.
> The first Witness.
She now held the Word he had buried in the story.
And in saying it aloud…
> She could overwrite the Apartment.
---
But the Library didn't want to let her go.
The floor opened beneath her.
Ink and fire spiraled upward.
From the staircase behind her came the Archive Keeper.
It was a being made of every erased chapter—stitched together by plot holes, wearing a robe of shredded outlines.
It hissed, voice echoing from a thousand throats:
> "Give us the book."
She stood tall, eyes glowing now with the language of the Source.
"No."
"You are unfinished," it growled.
"Then I will finish me," she answered.
And spoke the name:
> "Iyare."
---
The Library shattered.
Light exploded from the Book.
The Keeper disintegrated into footnotes.
The Archive folded inward like a burned manuscript.
And Amaka found herself falling—
Falling—
Until she landed.
---
On her bed.
In her room.
3:33 a.m.
Heart pounding.
Everything was quiet.
She checked her hands—no ink scars.
No symbols.
No burns.
Just sweat.
Had it all been…?
But no.
Because beside her pillow—
Lay the Book of the Source.
Sealed.
Silent.
And inside, only one phrase remained:
> "The next chapter must not be written."
> "Do not write."
> "Do not remember."
---
She stared at it for a long time.
Then stood.
Walked to her desk.
Picked up a pen.
And whispered:
> "Then I'll write something else."