THE THIRTEENTH ROOM OPENS
It began with a whisper.
Not the haunting kind—not like the house.
This was softer.
Hopeful.
Like someone saying your name for the first time… and meaning it.
The Thirteenth Room had been open for a month.
Zina now had seven beds, all filled. The walls were covered in drawings, prayers, poetry scribbled in chalk.
Girls came in carrying silence, and left weeks later humming songs they had forgotten.
No mirrors in the building.
Only windows.
Only sunlight.
And a rule Zina had written above the entrance herself:
> "We are not survivors. We are beginnings."
But beginnings don't always stay quiet.
Not when the past still breathes beneath the floorboards of the world.
It happened on a Friday.
The sky was purple with dusk, and Laila had just finished baking yam and coconut cakes with two new residents. Zina was wiping down a shelf when the air shifted.
She felt it.
Not danger.
Not magic.
But memory.
Someone knocked.
Not loud.
Three soft taps.
Like a question.
Zina opened the door.
And nearly dropped the cloth in her hand.
A girl.
No older than seventeen.
Eyes rimmed red, wearing a robe far too large for her.
She said nothing.
But when she raised her left hand, Zina saw it.
A faint mark.
Three rings. Etched in silver.
Still glowing.
Zina didn't ask how she got there.
She stepped aside.
And said, "You're safe now."
The girl crumbled into her arms.
🕯️ That Night – After the Firewood Dies
They didn't sleep.
Zina sat beside the girl, now wrapped in clean clothes, sipping pepper soup in slow, careful gulps.
"She didn't want to go," the girl whispered. "But her family sold her."
Zina froze.
"Who?"
"My sister. She's… she's still in the house. It wasn't the same house, but it had mirrors. It had a man who didn't age. They called him 'The Groom.'"
Zina's heart sank.
Another one.
Another house.
Another story.
The girl pulled a crumpled piece of cloth from her pocket.
A veil.
Old. Torn.
And inside it—a fragment of mirror.
Zina touched it and flinched.
It remembered.
Flashes hit her like lightning:
– A girl screaming, trapped in a wedding dress that wouldn't come off.
– A name carved into a mirror: Nkiru.
– A door that only opened for blood.
Zina stood.
"This isn't over," she whispered.
Laila stepped into the room.
"It never was."
🕯️ The Next Morning – A Plan Unfolds
The girl's name was Ebere.
She had walked two days through forest and road to reach the Thirteenth Room.
She had no map.
Just a voice she heard in her sleep, saying:
> "Find the one with the black rose."
Zina placed the mirror shard in the center of the table.
She didn't cry.
Didn't panic.
She remembered.
And from that remembering, she planned.
"We'll go," she said. "We'll find the house."
Laila raised an eyebrow. "You mean break another one?"
Zina nodded. "All of them, if we must."
This time, they wouldn't go as prey.
They would go as fire.