The final cut
The Final Cut
Chapter 5: The Redroom
The hallway was too quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that comforted, but the kind that pressed against eardrums and filled lungs like smoke. Seraphina walked first, her fingers grazing the wall. It felt warm. Breathing. As if the building itself were alive, listening.
Behind her, Ty muttered a prayer under his breath, one he hadn't said since he was eleven. Noa followed with arms wrapped around her chest like she was holding in something that would spill if she let go.
The corridor narrowed with every step, red lights casting long shadows that twisted with their movement. The sign ahead pulsed with a dull, sick rhythm.
REDROOM
No other words. No instructions.
Just a name that sounded like a warning disguised as a whisper.
Seraphina reached out.
The scanner didn't beep. It sighed. A slow, wet sound like lungs struggling through molasses. The door split down the middle—not opening, but parting—and revealed a corridor coated in metallic crimson, walls reflecting just enough to confuse the eye.
"This place is getting worse," Ty muttered.
Noa didn't speak. Her eyes were locked on something distant that the others couldn't see. Or maybe she saw everything too clearly now.
They stepped in.
The moment their feet crossed the threshold, the corridor behind them sealed shut. The lights above dimmed, leaving the space bathed in bleeding hues. The Redroom wasn't a room at all.
It was a maze.
Not just of walls—but of memories.
Mirrored glass lined each turn. But the reflections weren't real. Not exactly. Each surface played a different moment from a different past, looping them like cursed films.
Seraphina saw herself at fourteen, standing at the hospital window, watching her father bleed out behind the glass. Ty stumbled to a halt before a panel showing him as a child, gripping a medal and crying because his brother—still alive then—had told him he didn't deserve it.
Noa collapsed.
Her panel didn't reflect her at all.
It showed her mother. Thin. Pale. In a hospital gown. Her hands shaking. Her mouth forming the words—"You did this to me"—before vanishing.
Seraphina rushed to her side, but Noa shoved her away.
"Don't touch me," she choked. "I don't want you to see me like this."
"This place isn't testing us anymore," Seraphina said, heart sinking. "It's... feeding on us."
The voice returned, distant now, almost disinterested. Like it had grown tired of the same game and wanted a different flavor of pain.
> "In the Redroom, emotion is currency.
Despair is power. Regret is truth.
Love... is a knife."
The floor pulsed, and beneath their feet, thin lines glowed in a soft, pulsing crimson. Then, one by one, panels in the wall slid open.
Twelve.
Twelve coffin-like chambers. Vertical. Narrow. Cold.
Above each chamber was a name.
Not written—carved.
Like epitaphs.
Seraphina's heart stopped when she saw her own name. Not just her name, but her real one. The one she hadn't used in years. The one only her mother called her when she was angry. Or mourning.
Ty looked for his. Found it. Swallowed hard.
Noa screamed when she saw hers. Not because it was there—but because it had her mother's name below it.
"She's gone," Noa whispered. "She's dead. She died two years ago. Why is her name here?"
The voice didn't answer.
Because it didn't have to.
The floor tilted. Just slightly. Just enough to force movement.
The three of them stumbled forward, each to their own coffin door.
The moment Seraphina touched hers, it opened inward, drawing her in like a tomb eager for a resident.
The door shut behind her.
Silence.
But not emptiness.
The room smelled of old paper and burnt plastic. In the center was a chair, facing another.
In that second chair...
Her mother.
Not exactly.
But real enough that Seraphina couldn't breathe.
Not a projection. Not a memory. A living, breathing presence that wore her mother's sorrow like a gown.
"Sit," the voice said again. Not mechanical this time. Personal. Soft. Familiar.
Seraphina sat.
Her mother smiled—an expression she hadn't seen since she was a child. It broke something inside her.
"I forgive you," the not-mother said gently.
Seraphina's throat tightened.
"For what?"
"For not being the daughter I needed."
Tears welled instantly. "I tried," she whispered. "You know I did. I did everything to protect us. I never meant for him to—"
"But you didn't stop it," the not-mother said. "And the silence became a truth you built your life around."
Seraphina felt the chair vibrate beneath her.
She remembered everything.
The trial. The lie. The choice. The knife she hid. The journal she burned. The evidence she suppressed.
Because telling the truth wouldn't have saved her mother.
It would've destroyed what was left of her.
"I didn't mean to," she whispered.
The lights flashed white. Burning. Blinding.
"But you did," said the not-mother. "And that's why you're here."
A door opened behind her.
The exit.
Seraphina stood. Shaking. But taller.
She didn't say goodbye.
The not-mother didn't vanish.
She just watched, like a mirror no longer needed.
When Seraphina rejoined the group, everything had changed.
Noa sat curled into herself, eyes vacant. Ty leaned against the wall, blood dripping from a split in his knuckles. He didn't say what happened in his room. No one did.
Of the twenty-eight who entered the Redroom, only twenty-three returned.
The others?
Gone. Swallowed. Forgotten.
Or remembered only by the chambers that had carved their names.
A screen buzzed to life.
Words dripped down like static-coated blood:
> YOU HAVE FACED TRUTH. NOW FACE CHOICE.
ONLY ONE DOOR WILL OPEN. ONLY ONE LEADS FORWARD.
YOU DECIDE TOGETHER. VOTE.
Three words appeared beneath:
TRUST. BETRAY. ESCAPE.
Three buttons.
One vote per person.
No instructions.
No second chance.
The group looked around, hollow-eyed. No one moved.
Then Seraphina stepped forward.
"I'm tired of surviving," she said. "I want to know if anyone's still capable of choosing something... real."
One by one, the others approached.
Some trembling. Some angry.
Each pressed a button.
Trust. Betray. Escape.
When the last vote was cast, the screen went dark.
A voice, deeper now. Not cold.
Curious.
> "Only six chose Trust.
Ten chose Betray.
Seven chose Escape.
The door will open.
But not for all of you."
A section of the wall opened. A stairwell, steep and dark, descended into shadows.
The screen blinked with one final message:
THE FINAL CUT BEGINS NOW.
---
Author's Note
Chapter 5 was always meant to hurt. And not in the usual way.
The Redroom isn't where bodies break. It's where souls fracture.
Unlike the Mirror Room, this test wasn't about fear. It was about history. About the pieces we keep buried because we think forgetting will heal. But in this place, forgetting is forbidden. Here, the past isn't just remembered. It's weaponized.
Each character saw something they never wanted to revisit. And not all of them survived it. Not physically. Not emotionally. Not spiritually.
And then came the vote.
A choice between belief, betrayal, and running away.
What would you have chosen?
Trust, knowing someone might stab you in the back?
Betray, hoping you strike first?
Or Escape, believing you can still get out clean?
This chapter marks the shift in The Final Cut. From now on, the test isn't just survival.
It's transformation.
And not everyone will make it to the next cut as the person they were.
Until Chapter 6,
— Aarya Patil
The girl who learned that sometimes, the scariest monster in the room... is memory.
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