Chapter Four: Reflections in the Silence

The recording played on a loop.

Nael sat motionless in the Whisper Room, eyes glued to the monitor as the flickering footage replayed again and again. The grainy quality gave it a ghostly quality, each frame trembling slightly as though the recording itself was frightened. It was him on the screen—earlier that same day, seated in the same chair. His posture had been rigid, his shoulders hunched slightly forward, like he had already sensed something was wrong.

And behind him… the shadow.

Each repetition brought the same dread, like a knife turning slowly in his chest. The silhouette didn't move. It didn't breathe. Yet it radiated a presence—a density that made it more real than anything else in the room.

He pressed pause.

For a few seconds, the image stilled, the moment frozen like a piece of fossilized fear. Nael leaned closer, inspecting every pixel of the reflected figure. It had a vaguely humanoid shape, but the proportions were wrong. Too tall. Too narrow. Its arms hung unnaturally low, just slightly too long. The head—if it had one—was cocked at a subtle but impossible angle.

No facial features. No light reflected from it. It was as if the figure had absorbed all light, all energy.

His breath fogged up the screen. He hadn't realized how close he'd gotten.

He took a slow step back, rubbing his temples. The voice had spoken again, just before the shadow had appeared: You were never alone.

And now, he was beginning to believe it—not in the paranoid sense, not in the metaphorical way—but in a visceral, primal way that made every nerve in his body clench.

The room's silence pressed in on him.

He took another step backward, and the floor creaked beneath his heel. That sound—so simple, so mundane—felt almost violent in the quiet. He flinched, turning toward the doorway as if expecting something to lunge through it.

Nothing.

The shadows in the corners of the Whisper Room seemed to deepen. He couldn't shake the feeling that they weren't just shadows, but… something else. Watching. Waiting.

He moved toward the chair again, hesitating. The folder that Dr. Halen had given him earlier still sat on the table. He had pushed it aside when the screen first activated, but now he reached for it, his fingers trembling slightly.

Inside were photographs—he remembered those. Rows of strangers. Some smiling. Some expressionless. Some visibly terrified. But as he flipped through the pages again, a new image caught his eye.

One that hadn't been there before.

It was a still frame pulled from the very recording playing on the screen. But in this photograph, the figure behind him was clearer—more defined.

And it was closer to him.

Much closer.

He stared at it, his stomach knotting. The figure had moved forward slightly, just enough that one of its elongated fingers now hovered near his shoulder. It looked almost… curious. Or hungry.

Nael dropped the photo.

His heart thundered in his chest as he backed away from the table.

Something was wrong with this place.

He turned to leave—and froze.

The glass wall in front of him no longer reflected the room behind him.

Instead, it showed something else. A different room entirely. Dimly lit, with greenish walls stained by water damage. And there was someone in that room—sitting in a chair, face hidden beneath a hood. Breathing slowly. Shallowly. Nael watched as the figure lifted its head just slightly—

And looked directly at him.

The reflection shattered.

Not physically—no cracks or shards. But the illusion disappeared in a flicker, and once again the glass showed only his own reflection. Pale. Afraid. Eyes wide with disbelief.

He stumbled backward, hitting the table with a dull thud.

He needed answers.

Not more riddles. Not more wh

ispers.

Answers

Nael steadied himself against the edge of the table, drawing in a deep breath. His fingers were cold. Numb. As if the room had drained not just warmth from the air, but from his body itself.

He crossed to the screen and pressed a button beneath it. The video flickered again—this time switching to a different feed. The timestamp was from twelve years ago.

And what he saw made his stomach lurch.

A boy sat in the same chair. Small. Frail. Maybe ten years old. His hair was unkempt, his clothes plain and ill-fitting. He shifted constantly, fingers twitching at the hem of his sleeves, eyes darting to every corner of the room as if something might crawl out of the walls.

Nael felt a strange familiarity settle over him. The way the boy moved. The nervous glances. The quiet dread in his posture.

He recognized himself.

It was him.

His younger self.

But that couldn't be right. He had no memory of this place, of ever being here. No childhood visits. No lost weekends spent under observation. Nothing.

Yet there he was.

Nael pressed pause. The screen froze, capturing the boy mid-movement, mid-fear. His mouth slightly open, whispering something.

He leaned in, trying to read the boy's lips.

"Don't… trust… them."

The same words he thought he'd heard before. Not in the whisper, but in his dreams. In fleeting moments of fear he'd chalked up to nightmares. But now, here was proof. Evidence that something had happened to him—something he had been made to forget.

A sudden noise broke the stillness.

Click.

The door behind him creaked open slowly.

Not the quiet hiss of automatic doors, but the raw, rusty groan of old hinges. As though whatever was about to enter had pulled it open with deliberate slowness, savoring the sound.

Nael turned sharply.

A tall figure stepped inside. Male, judging by the silhouette. Dressed in a long, charcoal-gray coat that nearly brushed the floor. The overhead lights seemed to bend away from his face, cloaking it in unnatural shadow.

Nael instinctively stepped back, heart pounding. "Who are you?"

The figure didn't answer immediately. His head tilted slightly, as if examining Nael the way one might study a wounded animal—curious, but disinterested in its suffering.

"I'm the reason you forgot," the man finally said, his voice gravelly and low. "And I'm the one who decides if you ever remember."

Nael's fists clenched. "What did you do to me?"

The man took another step forward. The temperature in the room dropped, the air thickening like a storm rolling in through the walls.

"I kept you safe," he said. "From them. From it."

"From what?"

The figure didn't reply. Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled out a single photograph. He held it between two gloved fingers and extended it toward Nael.

Cautiously, Nael took it.

It was a picture of the Whisper Room.

But not as it looked now. This version was older, covered in rot and ruin. The floor cracked and uneven. The glass shattered. And in the center of the room, surrounded by black tendrils that crawled up the walls like veins—

—was the chair.

And someone was sitting in it.

Someone whose face had been scratched out, violently and repeatedly, until nothing remained but gouged paper and shadows.

Nael looked up.

The man was gone.

The door had closed.

The Whisper Room was silent again.

But the photo remained in Nael's hand, trembling with his breath.

Then the screen behind him flickered.

A new message appeared. Plain white text against a black background:

"THE MIRROR WILL SHOW YOU."

Nael stared at it.

He turned, scanning the room. There was no mirror in the Whisper Room. None that he could see.

But the message had been clear.

Somewhere in this facility was a mirror—one that could show him the truth. His past. What they did to him. What he had seen as a child.

And maybe, just maybe, how to stop the thing that was now following him.

He tucked the photograph into his jacket and walked toward the door.

He wasn't sure if he would ever come back to this room.

But he knew this:

He wouldn't leave until he remembered everything.

Nael stepped out into the corridor, the echo of his own footsteps chasing him down the sterile hallway. The lights above flickered slightly—once, twice—before settling into a steady glow. The silence here was deeper than before. Thicker. As if the building itself was holding its breath.

He passed a series of numbered doors. Each one sealed, each one identical in design. Frosted glass windows, steel handles, biometric locks. The walls were lined with nothing but pale gray paint and small ventilation grates. No signs. No directions. The kind of place designed to confuse.

He paused at Room Twelve.

Something about it made his skin crawl.

As he reached for the handle, the door unlocked with a soft click—as if expecting him.

Nael pushed it open slowly.

The room inside was dark, lit only by a single overhead bulb swinging gently from the ceiling. Dust danced in the air like falling ash. A large mirror dominated the far wall. Cracked. Old. It was framed in ornate black wood, so out of place among the sterile surroundings that it looked like a piece of antique furniture stolen from another century.

He approached cautiously.

As he neared the mirror, his reflection wavered—just slightly. It didn't mimic him perfectly. A second behind. Then two. As if it were hesitating.

He reached up to touch it.

The glass was cold.

But something else stirred behind it.

Not in the room. Not in his reflection. Behind the glass.

A shadow moved.

It wasn't him.

Nael froze. His pulse surged in his ears, loud and urgent.

He took a step back, but the reflection didn't.

Instead, it leaned forward.

And smiled.

Not a pleasant smile. Not human.

Nael stumbled away from the mirror just as a voice slithered through the air—thick, slick, and close.

"He's starting to see..."

Then the bulb above him popped, plunging the room into darkness.

Nael backed up against the door. His hand fumbled for the knob. The mirror across from him still glowed faintly—lit by something unseen—and in its surface, his reflection continued moving, twisting its head unnaturally, as if unhinged from the laws of bone and muscle.

He slammed the door open and stumbled out, breathing hard, heart hammering like a drum.

The hallway was empty again.

But he knew what he'd seen.

The whispers were no longer voices from the void.

They were messages.

Warnings.

And that mirror—whatever it was—was more than just a window into the past. It was a barrier. Thin. Fragile.

And something was pushing against it.

Nael didn't stop running until the hallway bent into a wide, circular chamber. It was dome-shaped, the walls lined with flickering holographic panels that buzzed with static. A large pedestal stood in the center, and atop it—a book. Bound in black leather, old and frayed around the edges. No title. No markings.

He approached cautiously, breathing ragged.

His fingers hovered over the cover, hesitant.

Then, from behind him—a soft click.

The entrance had sealed.

He was trapped again.

Nael opened the book.

The pages were handwritten. Dozens of entries. Observations. Journal notes. Names.

Each written by different people.

But the last ten pages…

They were his handwriting.

His heart seized in his chest. He flipped to the final page, where a line was written in hurried, slanted script.

"Do not trust the man with no face. If you see the mirror crack, run."

His hands trembled. He didn't remember writing this. He didn't remember any of it.

Something deep inside him stirred. A memory buried in darkness, surfacing like a drowned secret gasping for air.

He had been here before.

He had written those words.

The man with no face.

Nael turned, the room spinning. The book slipped from his hands and landed with a thud.

And there—standing at the edge of the chamber—was him.

Not a mirror. Not a shadow. A full figure.

Tall. Dressed in black. Face obscured in a blur, like static on an old television. It shifted constantly, preventing Nael's eyes from focusing.

"Do you remember now?" the voice asked.

Nael took a shaky breath. "I don't… I don't understand what this place is."

The man stepped forward. "It's not a place. It's a wound."

Nael recoiled. "A wound?"

"In your mind. In your memory. And now… it's open again."

The lights flickered violently. The whispers rose—hundreds of voices speaking at once. Pleading. Crying. Warning.

Nael dropped to his knees, clutching his head.

"You locked it away," the faceless man continued. "You buried the truth beneath fabricated memories, under layers of false identities. But truth doesn't die in darkness. It festers."

The voices rose into a crescendo. Nael screamed.

And then—

Silence.

He opened his eyes.

He was in a forest.

Sunlight filtered through tall, dense trees. Birds chirped in the distance. The air was warm, gentle.

And beside him, a little boy stood barefoot on the grass, staring up at him with wide, familiar eyes.

Nael's breath caught.

It was himself.

Six years old. Alone. Frightened.

"Nael," the boy whispered, "you promised you'd come back."

The words struck him like a blade.

He knelt slowly. "I… I don't remember. I'm sorry."

The child reached out and took his hand. "You will. Soon."

And as the forest faded, Nael woke up again—this time not in a hospital room, but in a stone cell lit by a single torch.

On the wall, scratched into the stone, were the words:

"Find the mirror."

"Face yourself."

"And remember why you forgot."