The air was wrong.
Every step Avery took, every breath she gasped, drew her deeper into the maze of the mind that Spiral House had become. It wasn't just the building any more—it was everything. The air changed. In a language she couldn't quite understand, it filled her lungs with pressure, with need. Something strange occurred to her mind: it started to loop. The same questions. The same riddles. The same rhythms.
All of them too perfect, too symmetrical to be coincidence.
"You're okay," Reed whispered to her, but the tremble in his voice acknowledged his own hurt. He reached for her wrist, but she pulled her arm free.
"I don't know, Reed. I… I don't think we should be here."
He glanced down the black hallway, his fingers wrapped tight around the grip of his gun. "Could've told me that an hour ago. We're still in time to get out, Avery."
"I don't think there's any way out," she said quietly, her voice trailing off. She was staring at the wall, at the lines that moved like living veins beneath the plaster. "We're not just trapped in this house. We're inside something else."
Reed followed her gaze but saw nothing. "Inside what?"
"The riddle." Her hand moved slowly to the cryptic carving on the wall. "The one that keeps coming back. The question that never stops."
He frowned. "You're not making sense."
She wasn't even sure if she was anymore. She was losing her grip on time, on space, on the very concept of here and there. Her fingers twitched, desperate to touch the words that weren't there. The letters that didn't belong.
She blinked.
And the wall altered.
Reed grabbed her arm. "What the hell?"
The lines seeped like ink bleeding onto paper. They lengthened and shortened, curling over themselves like a warped imitation of reality itself. A door appeared.
"Not possible," she said, moving back from it.
"It's not a door," Reed said, gazing around frantically. "It's just… the house. The walls. They're playing tricks on us."
But Avery had already seen what was behind the door—a picture. A photograph. Her own face, distorted, half-obscured.
Her breath hitched.
And then the door opened creakingly.
***
It wasn't anything like she'd imagined. A cold, antiseptic room. A metal chair in the center, under a harsh, medical light. The walls were bare—except for one thing: another photograph.
This one was different from the others.
It was of her, yes. But she stood in this same room, stood right beside that same chair. Wide eyes. Shocked. Starved of expression staring at the camera as if the camera had caught her in the midst of a terrible realization.
"This… this isn't possible." Avery took a step back, and Reed followed after her.
"It's not you," Reed said to her, but the uncertainty in his voice faltered. "It can't be."
But Avery was already moving. She was drawn to the image like iron to a magnet.
The earth beneath her feet gave way again.
A voice.
Familiar. Cold. Alina's voice.
"You've come so far, Avery. But there's one thing you haven't learned yet."
Avery's heart thudded. She looked around. "Alina? Is that—"
"You never had a choice."
Walls close in. The light dips and waves, the room melting, the door vanishing as quickly as it appeared.
Avery stumbles. Reed grabs for her, but his fingers pass through.
"Reed!" she shouts, to be consumed by silence.
***
Avery froze, her hands trembling in mid-air where Reed had just vanished. His presence was gone—completely gone—as if the walls of this room had swallowed him up. The walls had closed in on her, and the door had vanished into thin air.
She gasped, terror gripping her chest. The photographs had blurred in her eyes, melting into shadows and distortion.
But something lingered.
The voice. It was not the same, now the tone more ominous, gruffer—a menace masquerading as familiarity.
"Do you have any idea who you are, Avery Locke? A riddle solver. A clue collector. But there is one question that you've never asked yourself."
Her breath was trapped in her throat. The voice surrounded her, choking her from all sides, but whenever she moved, wherever she looked, there was only empty white space and silence.
"What will you do when the answer doesn't come in the form you expect?"
Her heart began to beat fast in her chest, a beating that drowned her to the quiet around her.
Answer me!" she screamed into the void.
But the silence swallowed her screams, and the voice failed to respond. There was nothing but the beat of her own breathing—thin, strained—and the sensation of drawing further into the maze of her own brain.
She blinked, and then she was no longer alone.
A man stood in front of her, amidst the chill of the cold, sterile room lit by the harsh overhead lights. Avery's stomach rolled as she gazed at him.
It was Reed. But not the Reed she recognized.
This Reed was different. His eyes were sunken, his face wan, drawn tight in an expression she couldn't place. His lips parted, but nothing came out—just a feeble, twisted echo of the voice she'd been listening to.
"You shouldn't be here."
The words cut through her brain, not heard aloud but felt, as though they'd carved themselves into the air itself. She reached out to him, her hand trembling.
"Reed, please. What's this? What's going on?"
His face wavered, like a poorly drawn echo, and he disappeared—vanished in the time it takes to blink, leaving her alone there again.
The walls groaned, a slow, rumbling vibration buzzing the air. The air grew chilled. Her breathing misted in front of her, and black, viscous fog spread out along the edges of the room.
Something shifted.
A door appeared. This one was not the shiny, angular model she had previously witnessed. No, this one was old, made of weathered wood, and covered with creepy symbols carved deep into its surface. Symbols she could not recognize, but that seemed uncomfortably familiar.
Instinctively, she reached out. Cold metal cut into her skin, and when her hand closed around it, the whispering voice spoke again—this time, nearer, as if she'd been breathed directly into her ear.
"You think you've outsmarted me, Avery. But I always have more knowledge than you. Always."
Avery's hand shook as she cranked the handle. She wasn't sure if it was fear or something else—something sinister—propelling her, forcing her to see what was on the other side of that door. To see what he desired.
The door groaned open.
***
What was on the other side was not what she had expected.
It was a room. A tiny one. A suffocating one. But it wasn't the room that made her breath catch in the back of her throat—it was the painting above the far wall.
Her.
Another picture—but this time, it was different. It wasn't a distorted image of her face, it wasn't a symbol, or a puzzle. No, this picture was real—too real. The lighting was soft, warm, like the sun coming through the curtains in her apartment. And she was there, in the center of it all, smiling.
But it was more than a picture.
There was a note taped beneath.
It read:
"Who do you trust, Avery? Who in your life can actually save you? Ask yourself this: Would you kill to save them, even though the truth is accusing you?"
Her heart raced.
She could hear the gentle footsteps approaching her from the back.
She wasn't alone.