SFX: drip… drip… drip…
Faint water echoes through a dimly lit room.
Dante lies on a medical bed inside a reinforced chamber — sterile, quiet, glowing faintly blue from the containment lights above.
Electrodes trace his pulse. His chest rises slowly, each breath laced with exhaustion.
Visual: Close-up on his right hand. A faint scar glows beneath his skin — like something still breathing inside him.
SFX: beep… beep… beep…
Raen (off-screen, whispering): "He's stable… for now."
Scene 1 — The Silence Between Dreams
Dante's eyes flutter open.
The room blurs — sterile lights fade into dark reflections of glass panels around him.
He sits up slowly, touching his temple.
Dante (thinking): Where… am I?
A faint voice murmurs — low, echoing, familiar.
Shard Voice (whisper): "Still afraid?"
SFX: shhhhhhh…
He looks around — nothing but shadows shifting along the walls.
Dante (hoarse): "You're supposed to be gone."
Shard Voice: "Gone? No… you absorbed me. Remember?"
SFX: CRACK! — A mirror-like fracture spreads across the glass panel near his bed.
His reflection smirks back, its eyes faintly red.
Dante (cold): "You're not real."
Reflection (smiling wider): "And yet, you're talking to me."
He throws his blanket aside and stands, unsteady.
SFX: thud… thud… — Bare feet on the metal floor.
Scene 2 — Observation Room
Behind reinforced glass, Raen watches quietly, arms crossed, frowning.
Ada stands beside her, reading a tablet displaying Dante's vitals.
Raen: "He's hearing things, isn't he?"
Ada: "Not hearing. Hosting."
SFX: bzzzt! — Ada flips through a set of bio-readings.
The data spikes erratically — resonance readings unstable.
Ada (coolly): "The shard's energy didn't vanish. It embedded itself into his neural layer. It's talking to him now."
Raen (angrily): "So he's… what? Possessed?"
Ada: "More like… haunted."
SFX: PING! — The monitor's heartbeat rhythm quickens.
Raen looks through the glass — Dante now standing in front of his reflection, muttering to it.
The reflection moves half a second before he does.
Scene 3 — The Reflection's Bargain
Reflection (mocking): "You feel it, don't you? That power crawling under your skin."
Dante: "Power? It's poison."
Reflection: "Then why do you keep holding on?"
SFX: THOOM… — The lights flicker; the air hums with static.
Dante grips the edge of the sink, knuckles white.
Sweat drips down his cheek.
Dante (breathing heavy): "Because if I let you win… everyone dies."
Reflection (smirking): "No. If you don't let me win… you die."
SFX: BZZZZZT! — Energy crackles through the room; the reflection reaches forward through the mirror like liquid glass.
Raen (alarmed, shouting): "Ada! He's syncing again!"
Ada (coldly): "Let it run for ten more seconds."
Raen: "Are you insane?!"
Ada: "He has to learn to push it back himself. If we interfere, it'll root deeper."
SFX: VMMmmm… — A pulse ripples through the chamber.
Scene 4 — The Counterstrike
Dante's eyes flare blue. He slams his palm against the mirror — his reflection freezes.
SFX: CRACKK!!! — The glass shatters outward, shards floating midair like frozen light.
Dante (growling): "You think I'm your vessel? Then choke on your own curse!"
He exhales sharply — the floating shards implode into dust, vanishing into a faint blue mist.
The heartbeat monitor steadies.
SFX: beep… beep… beep…
Inside the observation room, silence.
Raen (relieved): "He did it."
Ada (flatly): "For now."
Raen (snapping): "You keep saying that. Why? What aren't you telling me, Ada?"
Ada (turning away): "Because shards don't die when the host wins. They… adapt."
She looks down at her tablet — Dante's neural scan shows a faint flicker of red among the blue waves.
Ada (quietly): "He's not fighting a ghost anymore. He's becoming one."
Scene 5 — Twilight Reflection
Later that night.
Dante sits by the glass window overlooking the city — the neon lights dancing across his face.
He breathes slowly, calm but uneasy.
SFX: hummmmm… — The faint vibration of the shard's pulse beneath his ribs.
Dante (thinking):
"I thought I buried my fears when I broke that mirror…
but maybe… it buried itself inside me instead."
A faint shimmer appears on the glass — his reflection, faintly grinning back.
Reflection (whisper): "Sleep tight, Dante."
SFX: tink… tink… — Hairline cracks crawl along the edge of the windowpane.
Dante (murmuring): "…Yeah. Sure."
SFX: fade to black — heartbeat echoing softly.
Narrator:
The shard may be silent…
but silence doesn't mean it's gone.
SFX: whummm…
A low hum resonates through the glass tower — faint, rhythmic, like a heartbeat beneath the walls.
The camera pans up the skyscraper — faint veins of crimson light pulse within the glass panels.
It's subtle, almost invisible — but alive.
Inside the tower's control hub, Ada Wong types furiously, her eyes darting between multiple holographic readouts.
Lines of corrupted data pulse red across the screen.
Ada (coldly): "This isn't electrical interference…"
SFX: bzzzt—! The glass floor beneath them pulses faintly red.
Narrator (voice-over):
"In a world of fear and reflection… the line between the host and the haunted grows thinner.
And the tower… has begun to whisper back."