"Some doors open with keys. Others demand memory… and blood."
—------
The stairs beneath the museum groaned under their weight, but not from rot. The sound was deeper than decay. It was ritual. Memory shifting beneath each step.
Clara held her hand against her coat, still wrapped from the earlier wound. The Codex seal burned faintly under the bandage — not with pain, but with purpose.
They descended in silence, Gustav's lantern casting a dull circle of light around them. The rest of the space swallowed their presence like a tomb that had already forgotten the living.
At the bottom of the steps was a hallway that hadn't existed the day before.
No, hadn't been allowed to exist.
Walls of smooth black stone lined with faint carvings — not images, but grooves — spirals, time symbols, faces stretched in grief. As if the stone itself remembered too much.
At the end of the corridor: a sealed doorway.
No hinges. No handle.
Only a flat obsidian surface, with seven curved grooves — lines etched like veins across the stone, all bending inward toward a single center point.
Gustav stepped forward slowly. "This is it."
Clara's breath fogged in the air. "Why do I feel like something on the other side already knows we're here?"
"Because it does," Gustav murmured. "This door… isn't locked. It's waiting."
He raised his lantern. The lines across the door shimmered slightly under the glow. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silver knife — ceremonial, worn from age.
He looked at Clara. "I think it has to be you."
Clara hesitated. "You're sure?"
He nodded. "You're the only one whose blood remembers."
She unwrapped the cloth from her hand.
The spiral on her palm had faded into scar-tissue, but as she stepped closer to the door, it pulsed faintly—reacting to the carvings.
She took the knife, inhaled sharply, and dragged a line across the same cut.
Fresh blood welled instantly.
Then, slowly, she pressed her hand to the seventh spiral on the door — the lowest groove, the one almost hidden in shadow.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then — pain.
But not in her palm.
In her memory.
For a second, Clara thought she'd stepped outside of her body. The pain wasn't in her skin — it went deeper. As if someone had taken her past and wrung it through a keyhole made of bone.
The room vanished.
Not physically, but perceptually. One blink, and she was no longer in the chamber with Gustav. She was barefoot, standing on a floor made of glass. Beneath it: versions of herself — floating, writhing, frozen in moments she half-remembered.
One Clara was kneeling in snow, holding a lifeless child.
Another stood at a podium, wedding vows in hand, then dropped them and walked away.
One was older. Wiser. Laughing with a man who wasn't Gustav.
And one was monstrous — her face smeared in blood, a crown of thorns dug into her scalp, smiling like she had already lost everything… and liked it that way.
The mirror beneath her shifted. Tilted.
She fell.
Not through air — through truth.
And suddenly, she was inside a memory she'd never lived.
—------
A room with stone walls, candles flickering like they were scared to burn too brightly.
She was standing beside Gustav — not this Gustav, but an older one. He looked exhausted. Hollowed out by lifetimes. His eyes bore the weight of someone who had watched too many endings.
In his hands: a blade wrapped in red silk.
"You know what this means," he said.
Clara — or the version of her — nodded. "It means we finally stop pretending."
He didn't respond. Just handed her the blade. She took it.
Then walked toward a mirror.
This one didn't reflect. It absorbed. She raised the knife—
—------
The real Clara gasped and tore her hand from the stone door, yanking herself out of the vision.
She stumbled back into Gustav's arms.
"Clara?" he asked, panicked.
She didn't answer immediately.
Because she could still feel the silk of the blade. The silence of the mirror that had swallowed her.
"I've done this before," she finally whispered.
Gustav steadied her. "I know. You always do."
Clara blinked. "No… I mean this door. This ritual. I've opened it before. Or someone wearing my face did."
The cut in her palm flared again, as if affirming it.
Behind them, the carvings in the hallway pulsed — the entire structure reacting like a body remembering pain.
Gustav looked toward the altar ahead. "Then that means the ritual didn't start here. It started lifetimes ago."
Clara touched the door again, gently this time.
The spiral beneath her fingers glowed.
But this time, no scream followed. Only an echo.
We never meant to be eternal. Only remembered.
She didn't know where the thought came from — her own mind, or the walls. But it felt true.
She turned to Gustav. "If blood opens the way, what closes it?"
He didn't answer.
Because they both already knew.
Nothing would.
Not once it began.
The door before them finished splitting open. The lines became fractures. The fractures widened into a seam of light. And then—blackness.
Not absence.
Invitation.
A scream—not hers—ripped through her head. A wedding veil. A blade. Gustav's voice screaming her name before—
She collapsed.
Gustav caught her mid-fall, barely.
The door groaned.
Then cracked.
A single red line of light split down the center.
And then — open.
It didn't swing. It didn't creak. It simply became not-there.
They stepped inside.
---------
The chamber beyond was unlike anything they'd seen.
No furniture.
No artifacts.
No mirrors.
Only a wide circular space, floor etched with the same seven spirals, and in the center — a stone altar.
Above it, floating midair — a slow-turning sphere of mirror shards, suspended without wires or force.
Each shard reflected something different. Not the room. Not them.
A memory. A kiss. A death. A child. A betrayal. A painting. A scream.
Clara stared. "These are all…"
"Versions of you," Gustav finished.
Her knees nearly gave again, but she stayed upright.
She stepped toward the altar.
The mirror-shard closest to her showed Clara in a white gown, running down a church aisle.
Another shard — her bleeding in a bathtub.
Another — Naomi, standing at the window, disappearing breath by breath.
"They're not in order," she whispered.
"Because they're not separate," Gustav said. "They're all part of the same soul. Shattered. Thrown into time."
The altar glowed softly.
And across the far wall — a figure moved.
Not walked.
Glided.
Its presence was feminine, but faceless. A veil of ink and ash where a face should be.
Clara inhaled sharply. "Is that—?"
"No," Gustav whispered. "Not yet. That's not Irene."
The figure didn't approach. It stood at a respectful distance.
Then a voice — not from it, but from everywhere — spoke.
"One blood has opened the way."
"But to pass… the mirror must bleed too."
Clara turned to Gustav, confused.
He was pale. The color draining from his face.
He looked down — blood was seeping from a thin cut across his chest. One he hadn't made.
Clara rushed to him. "You're bleeding—how?"
He shook his head, gasping. "It's... the mirror. It's taking its price."
The faceless figure extended a hand — not demanding, not threatening.
Just offering.
Clara stepped forward. "What do you want?"
The voice answered again:
"Not want. Witness. We are not gatekeepers. We are reminders."
"Reminders that every door opened with blood… stays open forever."
The floating mirror shards spun faster.
One of them cracked — the image of Clara screaming in flames shivered and split.
A gust of cold wind whipped through the chamber.
The voice fell silent.
And from the shadows beyond the altar… a warm glow emerged.
A spiral of ink on the wall began to pulse.
3:13.
The time.
The moment.
Gustav looked at her. "If we go now—there's no turning back."
Clara looked at her hand.
Still bleeding.
Still burning.
She nodded. "Then we don't turn."
—------