The ninth floor was a confession booth.
Not metaphorical. Literal wooden confessionals lined a cathedral-like space, each one glowing with that same crimson light. The ceiling soared impossibly high, lost in shadow. Stained glass windows depicted scenes Elara didn't remember but somehow recognized.
Her. In each window. Different versions, different choices, different lives spiraling out from single moments.
"Every choice creates a branch," the Echo said, manifesting beside her. This one looked almost human—male, middle-aged, with kind eyes that made him more disturbing than the shadow-forms. "The ninth floor shows you the branches you pruned by living the life you chose."
"I don't want to see this," Elara said.
"Everyone says that. Everyone looks anyway. Because humans can't resist. You're hardwired to wonder 'what if.' Your brilliant psychiatric brain knows this. It's called counterfactual thinking. It's what keeps your species stuck in regret."
Elara approached the nearest confessional. Inside, instead of a priest's shadow, she saw a projection of herself at twenty-three, holding a positive pregnancy test. Young, terrified, staring at a future that had suddenly become real.
In the projection, she made a different choice than she remembered.
"No," that Elara said to the test. "Not now. Not like this."
The scene fast-forwarded: No pregnancy. No Sarah. A career that flourished without interruption. Department chair by thirty-five. Published papers, international recognition, a name in psychiatric journals. Happy. Successful. Alone.
"I wouldn't trade Sarah," Elara whispered. "Not for anything."
"Keep watching."
The successful Elara, forty-two and childless, received a diagnosis. Ovarian cancer. Stage four. She died in a private room, attended by colleagues but loved by no one deeply enough to grieve.
"Wouldn't trade her, you say," the Echo mused. "But that Elara never knew loss. Never knew the pain you're carrying. She died peacefully. You're in hell. Which life was better?"
Elara moved to the next confessional, already dreading what she'd see.
Herself at thirty, signing divorce papers. But in this version, she fought harder. Compromised more. The marriage survived. She and Thomas raised Sarah together. Ordinary suburban life. Family dinners. School plays. Sarah's graduation.
Sarah, alive and eighteen, hugging her parents.
"Stop," Elara choked out.
"This branch was available to you," the Echo said. "You chose pride over compromise. Chose to be right over being together. One conversation. That's all it would have taken. One moment of swallowing your ego."
"You don't know that. You're just showing me fantasies—"
"Am I? Or am I showing you the mathematical probability of outcomes based on different choices? Your life is quantum, Dr. Kane. Every decision collapses possibilities. The ninth floor shows you the corpses of your other selves."
The third confessional showed the day Sarah died. Except in this version, Elara stayed. Lifted the sheet. Looked.
It wasn't Sarah.
A different child. Wrong age, wrong features. The morgue had made a mistake.
In this version, Elara spent six months searching. Sarah was alive, found eventually in a refugee camp, traumatized but breathing. They reunited. They rebuilt. They survived together.
"No," Elara sank to her knees. "No no no—"
"If you'd looked. If you'd been strong enough to look. She was alive. Three confessionals, Dr. Kane. Three major branches. A life without her. A life with her safe. A life where you could have saved her. And you chose none of them. You chose to run, to break, to build a tower of delusion rather than face reality."
Elara couldn't breathe. The cathedral spun. Her entire existence reduced to three roads not taken, three better versions left to die while she stumbled forward in the worst possible timeline.
"Why are you showing me this?" she screamed at the Echo.
"Because the tenth floor requires it. You can't ascend until you accept that your current life is a consequence of your choices. Not fate. Not bad luck. Not the apocalypse. You. Every failure, every loss, every pain—you chose this path."
"That's not fair—"
"Fair?" The Echo laughed. "The sanctuary isn't about fairness. It's about truth. And the truth is, Dr. Kane, you've been climbing this tower not to escape your trauma but to escape responsibility for creating it."
More confessionals appeared, hundreds of them, thousands, each showing a moment where a different choice would have led to a different life. Each one a ghost of who she could have been.
"I can't," Elara whispered. "I can't carry this. It's too much."
"Then don't. The exit is behind you. Go back down. Forget the ninth floor ever existed. Live with your comfortable delusions. Most people do. They reach this floor and flee."
Elara looked back. The stairs down glowed with warm, inviting light.
"Or," the Echo continued, "accept that you chose this. Accept that your pain is yours. Accept that the only way forward is to own every decision, good and bad, that led you here. The tenth floor awaits only those who can look at their own life and say: 'I did this. And I choose to keep going anyway.'"
Elara stood on shaking legs. Looked at the confessionals full of better lives. Looked at the stairs offering escape. Looked at the ceiling and the shadows beyond.
"I don't want to be responsible," she admitted. "It's easier to be a victim."
"I know," the Echo said, almost gently. "That's why the ninth floor breaks most people. But you're not most people. You're someone who killed patients to end their suffering. Who left their daughter's body unchecked. Who built an apocalypse to hide from divorce. You're already the villain of your own story, Dr. Kane."
The Echo moved closer, and Elara saw its face clearly for the first time.
Her own face. Aged, scarred, but hers.
"I'm you," it said. "The part that knows. The part that remembers. The part that's been trying to get you to the top floor since before you knew there was a tower. Because at the top, there's something waiting. Something you need. Something worth all this pain."
"What?"
The Echo smiled. "The truth about which apocalypse was real."
The ninth floor began to fade.
Elara took the first step upward.
Behind her, the confessionals whispered the names of everyone she could have been.
But ahead of her, on the tenth floor, something was screaming.