HER NAME WAS ARIA

They were outside.

The Hollow House stood silent behind them, rotting in the morning sun like a carcass finally sated.

Birds chirped. The breeze blew.

But it all felt wrong.

Ethan sat on the porch steps, staring at the dirt road ahead. Ryan was quiet beside him—too quiet.

"I need you to remember her," Ethan said.

Ryan looked up, confused. "Who?"

He couldn't say her name. Not because he didn't want to—but because he couldn't.

It was gone.

Every syllable stolen from his mind.

Ethan grabbed Ryan by the collar. "She gave her life for you. You loved her!"

Ryan pushed him away, eyes wide. "I don't know who you're talking about! Ethan… are you okay?"

He was not okay.

Because his own memories were slipping too.

He still felt her—lingering touches, the warmth of her laugh, the ghost of her voice. But when he tried to picture her face… it flickered like static.

That night, while Ryan slept in the backseat of the car, Ethan sat under the stars with a notebook. One of the three he kept hidden. He tore out the first page and wrote in shaking hands:

Her name was Aria.

She loved fiercely. She smiled like sunrise. She gave herself to the dark to bring us back.

She was real.

He folded it and placed it in his wallet.

If the house could erase memory, maybe it couldn't erase proof.

But when he looked up…

The Hollow was no longer behind him.

It was in front.

The house had moved.

He blinked.

No—it hadn't moved.

They never left.

The car. The road. The sky. All illusions. A perfect copy of the outside world.

They were still inside.

Ryan woke with a gasp. "Ethan…"

"What?"

"My name isn't Ryan."

Ethan turned to him.

"I mean… I don't know if it is. It sounds wrong now."

Ethan's throat closed. The house wasn't done. It had taken Aria's existence—now it was reaching into them.

Their names. Identities. Souls.

"It's unraveling us," Ethan whispered. "One thread at a time."

A familiar laugh echoed down the hall.

It wasn't hers.

It was her copy.

The Fake Aria.

She stepped from the trees that weren't trees, now dressed in Aria's favorite jacket, the one with the missing button. Her smile stretched across her face like a scar.

"I told you," she said softly, voice like velvet and rot. "One must stay. But you… brought two."

She tilted her head.

"So which of you gets to be forgotten next?"

To be continued...