The rain had stopped, but the air still tasted like rust and mourning. Arav stood alone in the room where everything began — the walls, once whispering with echoes of laughter, were now silent tombstones of memory. A single bulb flickered above, its dying light slicing the dark like a heartbeat that refused to quit.
He didn't cry anymore.
He couldn't.
Every tear had dried into something colder — a quiet fury humming beneath his ribs.
He'd buried grief under duty, terror under logic, but something still moved within him — something old, something not human.
Arav felt the pulse again.
That hollow pulse — the same one he'd felt on the night of Mira's disappearance, when the mirror cracked, and the shadows learned his name. It wasn't pain anymore; it was an invitation.
"Do you feel it too?" came a voice — distorted, but familiar.
He turned. In the corner stood Mira's figure, not alive, not gone. Her face blurred in waves of static, her body shuddering between light and void.
"Stop running," she whispered.
"I'm not," Arav muttered. "I'm just... not sure which side I'm supposed to run to."
Mira tilted her head — not like a person, but like a reflection that hadn't learned how to mimic correctly.
"You already crossed it, Arav. You're on the wrong side now."
The walls pulsed.
He felt the house breathing — a slow, wet rhythm that matched his heartbeat. Each inhale carried whispers; each exhale brought flashes of faces he couldn't bear to see again — his father, Rhea, the scientists, the victims.
And all of them… were smiling.
Arav stumbled backward, clutching his temples. "You're not real," he hissed. "You're my guilt — that's all you are!"
The mirror behind him shimmered. The reflection didn't mimic him — it grinned.
From its mouth poured black smoke, thick and slow, crawling like oil across the floor.
The air froze. His reflection spoke in his voice — but darker, older, detached.
"Guilt? You still think this is guilt? You tore the veil open, Arav. You invited me in."
He staggered, trembling. "No. I wanted to fix things. I wanted to—"
"Control them?"
"Save them!"
"Then why did you enjoy watching them break?"
The words hit harder than fists. The reflection stepped out of the mirror — same face, same eyes, but void of mercy.
It smiled, leaning closer. "You've become what you feared, Arav. You just haven't accepted it yet."
Lightning cracked outside.
The reflection's hand brushed against Arav's chest — and the moment it did, he saw everything.
Bodies floating in crimson light. Screams in static. The moment Mira died. The moment he didn't stop it.
He'd told himself it was all for knowledge, for truth — but deep inside, he knew he'd wanted to see how far he could go before something broke.
And now, something had.
The floor split open — not physically, but through perception. Reality peeled like old paint.
Half the room was memory, half nightmare. Mira's voice screamed from somewhere between dimensions:
"Arav, wake up! It's feeding off your mind!"
He couldn't. He was already inside it.
The reflection's grin widened. "There's no waking up. You are the dream now."
The bulb shattered, plunging everything into chaos. And in the dark, he heard one final whisper — not from Mira, not from the reflection, but from the Hollow Pulse itself:
> "Your grief created me.
Your love sustained me.
Your truth… will end you."
Then silence.