The handle was cold. Not metallic, but dead cold—the kind that reached through Jacob’s skin and into his bones. He hesitated, his hand resting there longer than it should have, not from fear but because something inside him had frozen. Not physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Whatever the entity—the mirror—had done to him, it left fractures in his mind. Splinters of himself arguing in silence. Don’t go in. You’ve made it this far. You’re already dead. What’s one more death? This door ends it. This door begins it. He clenched his jaw, drew a breath that tasted like spoiled air, and turned the knob. The door opened inward. No creak. No groan. Just the silent, slow swing of fate. Beyond it was darkness. No lights. No sound. No scent. Just a cold void that made the air behind him seem like summer in comparison. The hospital’s wet breathing faded. Even the thing—himself—had vanished. Jacob stepped through. And the door smmed shut behind him. At first, there was nothing. Just weightlessness. He felt as though he were floating—not falling, not flying, but suspended in a bck sea with no current. There was no floor beneath his feet, no ceiling above. Yet he wasn’t panicking. Not yet. Because something in this dark was different. The silence wasn’t hollow. It was watching. Like the void had ears. And a will. Then he began to fall. Not downward. Not toward anything. He simply began to move—his body stretching, his thoughts unraveling like thread pulled from the spool of his soul. He saw fshes again. Memories. Lives. Jacob in a hospital bed, tubes running from his arm, looking pale and thin. Jacob in a bathtub, holding a razor bde and crying. Jacob behind the wheel of a car, drunk and screaming into a phone before the crash. Every version of himself he’d tried to forget. They didn’t accuse him. They didn’t scream. They just watched. And as he passed each one, something was stripped away—guilt, pain, identity. He was being unmade. Not violently, but gently, like a mother putting a child to sleep. Until he nded. Jacob blinked. He was standing in a white hallway. Clean. Bright. Modern. The walls were pstered with pastel-colored signs pointing toward “Radiology,” “Pediatrics,” and “Behavioral Health.” This was a normal hospital. People passed him in scrubs and white coats. Some carried clipboards. Some were pushing wheelchairs. Patients sat on pstic chairs, scrolling their phones or staring out the windows. The floor was polished tile. The ceiling was acoustic. The lights didn’t flicker. Jacob stood there, stunned. It was like waking up from a nightmare, only to question if you were still dreaming. No one seemed to see him. He waved at a nurse walking by. She didn’t look. He stepped in front of a doctor—nothing. Then he turned. And saw himself. Jacob was sitting on a gurney, dressed in a hospital gown, hands folded on his p. Pale. Silent. His eyes stared straight ahead. An orderly stood next to him, talking to someone out of sight. “Admitted three days ago. Catatonic. Responds to stimuli but hasn’t spoken. No ID on him when he was found wandering outside Route 9. Just… bnk.” Jacob stepped closer. The other figure stepped into view. A woman. His mother. No—a memory of her. She looked younger than he remembered, stronger. She was crying. “You’re sure this is him?” “Facial recognition says yes. Jacob Reyer. Twenty-seven. Born in Bck Hollow. We were… surprised to find that town even existed. It doesn’t anymore. Been off the maps for nearly two decades.” The word hit Jacob like a hammer. “Born in Bck Hollow.” He stumbled back. I wasn’t visiting. I was coming home. Suddenly, reality cracked. Like gss under strain. The white hallway twisted. The pristine paint peeled. The lights buzzed, flickered, died. The people vanished like smoke. And Jacob stood once again in the rotting, pulsing corridors of that hospital. The real one. The illusion was over. But something was different. He remembered. He remembered the first time he’d entered this pce. As a child. A fever had nearly killed him when he was seven. He had fallen into a coma. The doctors said his brain activity was erratic, near ftline. They thought he would never wake. But he had. After three days. When he returned, he told his mother about the endless hospital. About the pce of shadows. About the thing in the dark that had followed him even after he woke. She told him it was a dream. But it hadn’t been. Because this hospital—the one that looped forever—had always been there. Waiting. A soft noise echoed behind him. Footsteps. Slow. Dragging. Familiar. He turned. And saw it again. The thing. Only now, it was different. Smaller. It wasn’t a beast made of flesh and memory. It was a child. Him. Seven years old. Wearing a paper hospital bracelet and pajamas covered in stars. The child looked up at Jacob, hollow-eyed, mouth stitched shut. But he reached out a hand. And Jacob, without thinking, took it. The moment their fingers touched, pain smmed into Jacob’s chest. A flood of memories, raw and unfiltered, poured into him—moments from a hundred lives, a thousand deaths. All the versions of himself he had buried, denied, locked behind trauma and fear. He saw the day his father left. The night Amanda begged him to get help. The time he almost jumped. He remembered everything. And when he looked again, the child was gone. In his pce stood a mirror. Smooth. Tall. Featureless. Jacob stared at his reflection. It changed with every blink. A boy. A man. A monster. And then— Nothing. Just Jacob. No illusions. No shadows. Just him. A voice whispered from the dark. “You’ve finally seen yourself.” The hallway lit up in firefly flickers. No more pulsating walls. No more shadowy limbs reaching out. Just long, cracked tiles and peeling wallpaper. The hospital was dying. Or maybe, it was letting go. “So what now?” Jacob asked the dark. No answer came. Only silence. And then… A new door. Not bck. Not monstrous. Wooden. Warm. Familiar. The kind you'd see on a childhood home. He walked toward it. He didn’t rush. Didn’t hesitate. He just moved. When he opened the door— Sunlight. Real, golden sunlight spilled in. He smelled pine trees. Grass. Summer. He stepped out. Jacob stood in the middle of a forest clearing, birds chirping overhead, wind rustling the trees. His clothes were clean. His shoes dry. He felt... human. He dropped to his knees and cried. Not out of fear. Not out of grief. But release. He didn’t know how long he sat there. But eventually, someone else stepped into the clearing. Amanda. Her eyes wide. Her body thin and bruised. They stared at each other. She didn’t speak. She just ran into his arms. They held each other in the sun. They were out. They were free. Or so they believed. But somewhere, deep inside the real Bck Hollow, far below where light could reach, the stitched-faced entity stirred once more. Watching. Waiting. Because no one truly left. They only forgot. And one day— They always came back.