The manor did not roar, or rattle, or rage.
It exhaled.
A long, exhausted sigh, as if a centuries-old audience had just risen from their seats. The kind of breath that comes not at the end of a story, but after its truth has been wrung out and laid bare.
Marc and Theo stood alone beneath the flickering chandelier. The red ribbons no longer burned. Theo's was black now—a final punctuation mark. Marc's trailed loosely from his wrist, limp but not severed.
Outside the sealed door, morning must have come. But inside, time had lost its shape.
Neither spoke.
Not for a long while.
Until Marc broke the silence.
"So what now? Standing ovation? Eternal damnation? Matching tattoos?"
Theo didn't answer at first. His eyes were on the cracked walls. They no longer bled ink, but glistened faintly—as if the house had cried itself dry.
"I think," Theo said, "we're still here because we haven't finished listening."
Marc scoffed. "To what? The voice of God? Eden's ghost? The endless laugh track from hell?"
"No," Theo said. "To her. The real her. Not the version we performed."
A soft click echoed through the manor.
The wall to their left split open.
This time, not violently. Gently. Like a page turning.
Behind it, a hallway stretched—a corridor lined with mirrors. Dozens of them. All slightly warped. Some cloudy with age. Others cracked. And in each one: a different image of Eden.
Not illusions.
Memories.
Eden onstage, pacing in sneakers too big for her feet. Eden scribbling punchlines on napkins. Eden curled in a dressing room chair, mascara streaking her face as she whispered her set to herself like a prayer.
Eden alone.
Always alone.
Marc stepped forward but stopped just before the hallway.
"She'd hate this," he muttered.
"She'd hate being remembered wrong," Theo replied.
And so, they walked. Slowly. One mirror at a time.
Each reflection came with sound, faint and scratchy, like tapes played on dying reels.
"What if God is laughing? Not with us—at us?"
"I tried therapy once, but the therapist said I was too self-aware to be helped. That's like telling a drowning woman she's too wet to be saved."
"Everyone says I'm brave. But I'm not. I'm just tired."
Some mirrors showed her killing on stage—bright lights, roaring crowds. Others showed her bombing in silence, eyes wide with fear. In one, she stood before an empty audience, practicing anyway. In another, she clutched a voicemail she'd never send, mouthing the words she couldn't say.
And then, one mirror near the end revealed Eden not as a comic or a ghost, but as a friend.
Laughing on a rooftop with Lena. Sharing a milkshake with Darren. Swapping jokes with Marc. Sitting across from Theo, passing a notebook between them like contraband.
She wasn't a headline.
She wasn't a legacy.
She was a person.
Theo stopped.
"This is what I never wrote about," he said quietly.
Marc rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. Well. People don't read stories about what they ignored."
"No," Theo said. "But maybe we can make them listen now."
At the end of the hall stood a final mirror. Larger than the rest. It reflected nothing but the viewer—until Theo stepped in front of it.
The surface rippled.
Then resolved.
Not Eden.
But them.
Theo and Marc, sitting in a theater audience. A single spotlight on a stage below.
The curtains lifted.
And Eden appeared one last time.
But not as a ghost.
Not as a victim.
As a performer.
She stood center stage, mic in hand. Her leather jacket hung off one shoulder. Her boots were scuffed. Her smile uncertain, eyes wide and vulnerable.
The set she performed was stitched from everything the others had buried.
From Vivian's jealousy.
Darren's silence.
Lena's fear.
Marc's theft.
Theo's edits.
But Eden didn't perform it as vengeance. She told each truth like a confession of her own. A final set, raw and unfinished.
"Everyone says comedy is tragedy plus time. But nobody tells you what to do when time runs out."
"I wasn't just the joke. I was the setup. The punchline. The silence that followed."
"I died long before I stopped breathing. And I kept performing, even then. Because maybe laughter was the only pulse I had left."
She didn't wait for applause.
Just looked out—into them.
And whispered:
"Don't remember me for how I ended. Remember me for what I kept trying to say."
The spotlight flickered.
The stage darkened.
And the mirror cracked down the middle.
They stood there a long time after the image faded.
Then the walls behind them opened once more—not into void, or shadow, or punishment.
But into the stage.
The same stage from her last show.
Empty now.
Except for one mic.
Marc looked at Theo. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
Theo nodded. "Yeah. Someone has to finish the set."
They stepped onto the stage together.
The house—the manor, the memory, the graveyard of guilt—held its breath.
Marc took the mic first.
He cleared his throat, voice dry.
"So… no pressure, right?"
A beat of silence.
Then Theo stepped beside him, holding Eden's crumpled page in one hand, the words she left behind now committed to heart.
Marc looked out into the dark, into the unseen faces of those they'd failed.
And then—quietly, reverently—he began to speak.
Not to entertain.
But to confess.
To remember.
To resurrect.
Because in this house, the truth wasn't just an exit.
It was the only kind of afterlife Eden ever wanted:
To be heard.
To be understood.
To be unfinished—on her own terms.