Everyone in the building followed the rule.
No one talked about it. No one questioned it. They just knew.
The staircase was never used after sunset.
It wasn't locked. There were no warning signs. Nothing bad had ever happened there.
Still—every evening at exactly the same time, people stopped halfway up, hesitated, and turned back as if remembering something important. Something they could not explain.
I noticed it because I didn't feel the hesitation.
The first night, I thought I had imagined it. The second night, the shadow of someone climbing the stairs flickered strangely in the corner of my eye. When I blinked, it vanished. And when I went up to the top, the hallway stretched farther than it should have.
I counted the doors. Twice the number I remembered from yesterday. But the layout was the same. It shouldn't be possible.
And yet… the difference was undeniable.
The air felt thicker, heavier somehow. Shadows moved where no light fell. A soft hum echoed through the walls, as if the building itself were breathing.
I tried to tell myself it was my imagination. But every night, something shifted. A clock spun backward for a moment. A painting changed its angle. A doorknob that had been broken for years now turned smoothly.
These weren't coincidences. They weren't tricks of the mind.
They were anomalies.
They were Anamnex.
I began to notice patterns, or maybe hints of them. The building didn't just glitch randomly. Every shift had a rhythm, subtle but deliberate. The staircase always bent in the same way. The hallway lengthened only when no one else looked. The shadows flickered according to some invisible, unknowable code.
I spent hours observing. Standing still, trying to track the faint tremors in reality. Each anomaly was a puzzle piece, and the puzzle was bigger than I could imagine.
One night, I stepped into the hallway that should have ended at the library door. It didn't. The hallway stretched onward, twisting and folding in impossible angles. The walls shimmered slightly, as if they were trying to remember their proper place.
I reached out and touched one. It rippled like water. My hand felt nothing but cold paint, yet my eyes swore the wall was breathing, bending.
And then I heard it—a faint whisper, low and melodic, almost imperceptible.
"Notice me…" it seemed to say.
I jerked back. Nothing was there. Only the empty hallway, stretching farther than the building should have allowed. My pulse thumped in my ears.
I realized the anomalies weren't just visual. They were alive. Not conscious, but aware in their own way. Responding to observation. Adjusting, shifting, hiding.
That night, I stayed longer than I should have. Hours passed—or maybe minutes. I could no longer tell. Time was slipping, spinning backward in sudden jerks. A clock ticked once, twice, then skipped hours in the blink of an eye.
I needed to leave. But the exit… it wasn't where it should be. The lobby was gone. In its place, a small courtyard I had never seen. Trees grew at impossible angles, their shadows curling around each other like living ribbons.
I wanted to run, to escape, but my feet didn't move. A new fear emerged, not of danger, but of understanding. Something in the building wanted to be noticed. And it had chosen me.
The next day, I returned, pretending nothing had happened. But I couldn't forget. Every stair, every hallway, every shadow I passed seemed slightly… wrong. I was waiting for anomalies, scanning for shifts, listening for whispers.
By the third night, I found another. A painting in the dining hall, previously dull and unremarkable, now gleamed as though lit from within. The figures in it moved subtly—a hand raised, a gaze shifting, though no one else would see it.
A door creaked open where no door had existed before. I leaned in, careful, and glimpsed a room lined with books that shouldn't be there. Each title shimmered slightly, unreadable, words twisting on the page like smoke.
I had to be careful. The more I looked, the more anomalies I noticed, and the more I noticed, the stranger the world became.
By now, I understood one rule: observing changes everything.
Even the smallest glance could ripple through the Anamnex. A shadow would twist differently, a hallway would elongate, a clock would pause. Everything was alive in its own strange way.
I didn't know why this was happening, or who had caused it. Maybe no one had. Maybe reality itself was fractured. Or maybe… this was always how the world worked, and I had just been the first to see it clearly.
That realization was terrifying. And exhilarating.
The building pulsed around me, subtly, as I moved through it. Each step, each turn, each glance unveiled something new. Something impossible. Something that shouldn't exist.
And I wanted to see it all.
Because if I could understand it… maybe I could understand Anamnex.
But as I stepped into the hallway for the fourth night, the first true anomaly appeared that I couldn't explain—a shadow that didn't belong to anyone, not a person, not a tree, not a door. It moved independently, stretching along the wall, then folding into the corner, then disappearing entirely.
And I realized, with a thrill that ran straight to my bones: this wasn't just a building. It wasn't just anomalies. It was alive. And it was waiting.
Waiting for me to notice.