THE SHATTERED REFLECTION

There are places in the hallway where memory isn't erased.

Where it's stored.

And if you stand too close, long enough, it will reform—not as it once was, but as something else.

A facsimile. A shadow.

Mira had forgotten that.

Or perhaps—if she were being honest—she had hoped it was just a dream.

Her sister, Jamie.

Gone for nineteen years. Vanished.

But not forgotten.

And now, Mira was back in the hallway where it all began. Not the parts of it she had wandered through, but the core—somewhere deep, where the hallway remembers everything it consumes.

It didn't speak as much anymore. The walls were silent.

No more whispers.

But still, it waited.

And so, Mira waited too. She didn't know what she was looking for. Or what she was hoping to find.

But she knew one thing:

She needed to know.

Not the version the hallway wanted to give her.

The real version.

So she walked.

Through corridors she didn't recognize, into rooms she couldn't name. Until finally, at the edge of a long hallway, she stopped.

There was a door.

Unlike any other she had seen.

Not a crack, not a hole, not a wound in the wall.

This one was whole.

It was made of wood, clean and polished, with a handle that gleamed like it had never been touched.

And on the door, written in gold script:

"JAMIE CALDER."

Her heart froze.

She didn't reach for the handle.

She couldn't.

But the door opened anyway.

Inside, there was no darkness.

It was a living room.

A small, cozy living room.

The one from her childhood.

The one she'd long forgotten, but still remembered in flashes—when she saw something familiar. The old couch where Jamie used to sit, the wooden bookshelf stacked with half-read books, the smell of her mother's cooking.

It was like stepping back in time.

Except…

Except for one thing.

Jamie was there.

Alive.

Sitting on the couch.

Looking up at her.

"Mira," she said softly, the word thick with something Mira couldn't place. "It's been so long."

Mira's breath caught in her throat.

This wasn't real.

This couldn't be real.

But Jamie smiled. A soft, sad smile. And patted the seat beside her.

Mira didn't move.

She stood frozen in the doorway, her skin crawling with a sickly, familiar feeling. This wasn't the hallway. This wasn't the building.

This was something else.

A reconstruction.

Jamie was a shadow. A memory. A dream of what could have been.

Not a person.

Not her sister.

Mira took a step back.

And the door slammed shut.

When the room vanished, the hallway returned.

Silent.

Empty.

The air thickened with a heavy kind of grief.

But there was more now.

Mira could feel it—something pressing in from all sides, something aching inside of her. She had stepped into the memory. And now, she couldn't step back out.

The hallway wasn't just haunted by the past.

It was woven from it.

The things that were lost here didn't stay lost.

They became part of the building.

And Jamie?

Mira couldn't let herself think about that.

Not yet.

The walls shifted again.

Another door.

This one smaller. Almost a closet.

But when she stepped through, her heart nearly stopped.

It was the same room. The same one she'd just seen.

Jamie was there again.

But this time, her eyes were wide.

The smile was gone.

Instead, there was something darker.

Her face was hollow, sunken, like a mask that had been cracked and put back on too many times.

The words Jamie spoke were different now.

"Why did you leave me?"

Mira recoiled.

"No," she whispered.

"You left me here. And you never came back."

Mira tried to say something. But the words caught in her throat. There was nothing to say. Not now. Not to this thing.

"You never came back," Jamie repeated, her voice stretching, cracking like glass.

The walls hummed with a low vibration.

The hallway was feeding.

On the grief.

On the guilt.

On the unsaid.

Suddenly, Jamie's face distorted.

Her eyes blackened.

Her mouth widened, too wide, far too wide, until it seemed as if her whole face was turning into a jagged, screaming hole.

Mira stumbled backward.

It wasn't Jamie anymore.

It was the hallway.

It was the building.

Swallowing her.

Taking her.

Taking Jamie.

Twisting their names into something else.

"Mira, I'm not here anymore."

Mira woke in the hallway again.

The walls had closed around her, but the door was gone.

No more room.

No more memories.

Just the weight of the rewrite.

The building was hungry.

And she had fed it.

But something more had happened too.

Jamie wasn't lost.

Not anymore.

Jamie was part of the hallway now.

She was inside.

And Mira was the last one left to remember her.

And to carry her memory, until it was rewritten as well.