The moment Anaya accepted, the space reacted.
Wind roared through the endless room. The floating names spun like a storm of broken memories.
The floor dissolved beneath her feet.
She fell—
Not downward.
Inward.
The corridor unfolded inside her mind.
She saw hallways growing like veins. Doors forming like ribs. Lights blinking like eyes.
Pain rushed through her body, not sharp, but deep—like something old moving into her bones.
Anaya screamed.
Then stopped.
Because the screaming wasn't hers anymore.
It belonged to the corridor.
She felt its hunger coil inside her chest. Its fear. Its loneliness. Its need to be noticed.
"Sleep," Anaya whispered, barely able to speak.
The whisper traveled outward.
The spinning names slowed.
The darkness softened.
The corridor shrank.
Into her heartbeat.
Into her breath.
Into her memory.
Ishika watched, tears in her hollow eyes.
"You're kinder than I was," she said.
Anaya's knees touched the invisible floor.
The space around her rebuilt itself—walls forming, ceiling lowering, reality returning to shape.
317B became a normal room again.
Small.
Silent.
Closed.
Anaya sat on the bed that hadn't existed before, breathing slowly, carefully, like someone holding a sleeping animal inside their ribs.
Outside, the hostel exhaled for the first time in ten years.
The lights steadied.
The walls forgot how to listen.
And the Whispering Corridor finally learned how to be quiet.