The hallway devoured him — not with fangs, but with forgetting.
A corridor not built, but remembered, like something the world had once tried to erase and failed.
It stretched out in both directions — dark, endless, breathless.
The air was cold, though not in a way that touched the skin.
This cold was deeper — internal, like the echo of a door long closed inside the soul.
Kylo's boots echoed against the tile.
Sharp, solitary.
But then... a second echo.
Footsteps.
Not beside him.
Not behind him.
Somewhere in between what existed and what should not.
He didn't turn. He didn't slow.
The silence was thick, as if it had weight.
Fog without fog. Air without trust.
And then—
A phone.
Ringing.
Somewhere ahead, distant and magnetic.
Its tone didn't just fill the hallway — it reached into him, vibrating something unspoken in his chest.
It sounded like it knew his name.
He glanced around.
The corridor was lined with doors, identical in design — tall, velvet-red panels like slabs of dried blood sealed in varnish.
Each stood still, patient, waiting.
Except one.
It didn't move.
But it felt as though it wanted to.
It pulled at him — not physically, but viscerally.
Like a memory he never formed, whispering through the ribs.
He reached out.
The door drifted — just barely — gliding backward, away from his fingers.
As if the hallway itself had breath, and it was exhaling in resistance.
He stepped forward again, more firmly.
The door continued to pull back, slow and surreal, stretching the rules of space like string unraveling in a dream.
He blinked.
The door was still.
Mocking his sanity.
"Crazy," he muttered under his breath — the first sound in hours that felt like his own.
The overhead lights flickered, spasming like stars dying in reverse.
Still, the phone rang.
So he walked.
And the hallway shifted.
Not his steps — the hallway itself.
As though it had grown tired of linearity.
The doors twisted.
Up. Down. Sideways.
Some began to melt into the ceiling. Others folded like origami nightmares and disappeared into the walls.
Spatial logic died screaming.
But Kylo kept walking, whispering—
"I need answers.
I need to pick up that call."
Time lost its rhythm.
Had he been walking for seconds? For days?
There was only the sound of his breath, the echo of his steps—
—and the phone.
Then:
Light.
A blood-red glow, soft and thick like wine pouring in slow motion, bled from the far end of the corridor.
And there it was.
A desk.
Wooden. Ordinary.
Impossible.
Atop it, a single black rotary phone — ringing, unwavering.
He approached like a man stepping into his own dream.
Each step heavy, like trudging through memory.
When he reached the desk, he hesitated.
Then, with a breath drawn from instinct rather than trust, he lifted the receiver.
Click.
And then—
A voice.
"Kylo…"
A woman.
Her voice sounded like sorrow made flesh.
Like someone trying to speak through the weight of oceans.
"My beloved…
I miss you. I miss you in places I no longer remember how to name."
His grip tightened.
Her voice was a knife coated in warmth.
It slid through him, effortlessly.
"Come find me.
Find the truth that bleeds through the cracks of this… LIMINA."
A pause.
A whisper, quieter than pain.
"I always love… you."
Silence.
Not the absence of sound, but the kind that leaves static behind —
The spiritual hum of something unfinished.
He lowered the phone.
Her words echoed within him, not as memory… but as commandments.
LIMINA.
Beloved.
Truth.
Kylo…?
Then—
A sound.
Wet. Viscous. Close.
He turned.
And the floor — was giving birth.
Three black shapes pulled themselves from the tiles.
Not crawling, but emerging, like ink learning to stand upright.
They were faceless.
Boneless.
Wrong.
Kylo stepped back.
The desk had vanished.
No trace.
Reality rewrote itself.
Panic didn't rise — it erupted.
He reached for the only constant in his chaos.
The revolver.
Its weight was the only truth he could still believe in.
He pulled it free, hands trembling like a prayer barely spoken.
Click.
The hammer drew back.
"Stop! I'll shoot!"
They didn't stop.
They moved like hunger incarnate.
No emotion. No hesitation.
Only need.
Kylo inhaled once — sharp, deliberate.
Then pulled the trigger.
BANG.
The revolver roared like a god denied sacrifice.
Smoke spiraled from the muzzle, a serpent rising to heaven.
His ears rang.
His breath hitched.
When he opened his eyes—
They were gone.
But the world was beginning to collapse.
The ground quaked.
At first a rumble, then a seizure.
Cracks raced along the walls like spiders given language.
Doors flew upward — sucked into the ceiling like memories torn from the mind.
"What the hell—Earthquake?!"
Another jolt. Stronger.
The hallway howled.
Kylo dropped to his knees, clutching the revolver like it might keep him anchored to existence.
And then—
The floor split.
A jagged mouth tore through tile and concrete and concept.
And beyond it—
Eyes.
Massive. Red.
Floating in an endless void.
Dozens. Hundreds.
Watching.
Eternal.
Unblinking.
Not judging. Not loving. Just… witnessing.
As if they'd been waiting for him.
As if they had always been there — before time had the courage to begin.
"Are they watching me…?"
Kylo asked no one. Not even himself.
The third quake hit.
The ceiling buckled.
Bricks cracked.
Chunks fell.
He tried to move.
But then—
He saw it.
The fractures weren't just crawling outward — they were racing up, climbing the walls like lightning given form.
His eyes followed them, dread pulling his gaze toward the heavens.
He looked up—
And the cracks spiderwebbed across the ceiling like it, too, was about to forget how to hold itself together.
Too late.
The last thing he saw was the revolver in his hand — still gripped, still real — just before he raised both arms to shield his face, instinct overriding reason as the world came crashing down.
Then:
Collapse.
Darkness fell like a curtain ending the act.
And behind it —
Silence.
The kind that doesn't end.
The kind that listens.