Elias woke to the smell of burnt wood and rain.
His eyes snapped open to a dim, gray light filtering through the curtains. The air was heavy, metallic, filled with the aftertaste of smoke. His head throbbed with the weight of dreams — fragments of the night before, the mirror, the voice that said we'll remember for you.
He pushed himself up, heart pounding.
The house was silent.
Too silent.
He looked around. His lamp lay shattered on the floor beside the bed, the oil having dried into a thin black stain. The walls looked different — cleaner, newer, as if freshly painted. The cracks he'd noticed days ago were gone.
A strange calm sat over the house, but it wasn't comforting. It was the calm before something else noticed he was awake.
He stood carefully, his legs weak beneath him. He couldn't remember lying down, or even making it to the bed after what he saw last night.
Was it even real?
His reflection's face, the voice that spoke through him, the mirror that cracked — it all blurred now, dissolving like fog under morning sun.
He tried to convince himself it had been a nightmare. But as he stepped into the hallway, he heard it — the soft clinking of cutlery from downstairs.
Someone was in his kitchen.
Elias froze halfway down the stairs. The sound was calm, rhythmic — a spoon stirring tea, a plate set gently onto wood.
He wasn't alone.
His voice trembled when he called out, "Who's there?"
No answer.
But the sounds didn't stop. Whoever it was, they acted as if they belonged there.
He descended the stairs slowly, each step protesting with a faint creak. As he neared the bottom, the smell of tea and something floral — lavender, maybe — filled the air.
He turned the corner into the kitchen.
Someone sat at his table.
A man. Mid-thirties, wearing a dark suit that didn't belong to this era — crisp, but faintly frayed at the cuffs. His skin was pale, almost gray under the morning light. A faint smile curved his lips as he looked up from the steaming teacup before him.
"Good morning, Elias."
Elias froze. "You—how do you know my name?"
The man didn't answer. He gestured politely toward the empty chair across from him. "Please, sit. You look as though you haven't slept in days."
Elias hesitated. His instinct screamed to run, but something about the man's tone — calm, precise, knowing — made it hard to move at all.
He sat, if only to stop his shaking knees from giving out.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The man's eyes lifted to meet his. They were… wrong. Not unnatural, but too steady, as if unblinking. In their reflection, Elias thought he saw faint movement — like another room behind them, shifting faintly, filled with faces he couldn't quite make out.
"You invited me here," the man said simply.
"I—what? No, I didn't."
"You did," he said, smiling faintly. "Not today. Not yesterday. But long ago. Before you started forgetting."
Elias's chest tightened. "Forgetting what?"
The man tilted his head. "You still think this town appeared out of nowhere, don't you? That you stumbled into it by accident. That you're the only one who doesn't belong."
He took a slow sip of tea.
"But this place was built around you, Elias. You drew its first streets, wrote its name, even chose the hour the clock would stop."
Elias's mouth went dry. "That's not possible."
"You were a writer once, weren't you? A journalist. A storyteller."
He leaned forward slightly. "What happens to a story when its author forgets how it ends?"
Elias's hands began to tremble. "You're lying."
The man smiled wider, and for a moment his face flickered — like an image burned on a faulty reel. For half a second, Elias saw something beneath his skin — a pattern of black veins and faint, moving words.
The man's voice deepened, layered with echoes. "When the mind can't handle the guilt, it invents a world to hide it. A world that resets. A world that forgets."
Elias slammed his hands on the table. "Stop talking like you know me!"
The teacup rattled but didn't spill. The man didn't flinch. He only looked… almost sorry.
"Do you remember her?"
Elias's breath caught. "Who?"
The man's expression softened, though his smile remained fixed. "The one you came here to forget."
Elias's head throbbed — flashes of a woman's laughter, a necklace glinting in sunlight, then screaming, blood, and the sound of a car skidding on wet asphalt.
He pressed his hands against his temples, shaking. "No, no, no—"
The man stood slowly, his shadow stretching long across the floor.
"You built this town, Elias, to bury what you did. But guilt doesn't stay buried forever. It watches. It waits. And it sends guests like me to remind you."
Elias looked up — and saw that the man's shadow wasn't attached to his feet.
It reached toward Elias instead, the edges of it flickering like black flame.
Elias stumbled backward, knocking over the chair. "Stay away from me!"
The man didn't move, but his shadow did — sliding across the floor, curling around Elias's shoes.
"You'll forget me again," the man said softly. "You always do. But we'll keep meeting, until you remember what really happened on the day you killed her."
Elias froze.
His heart stopped for half a beat.
"I didn't—"
But when he looked up again, the man was gone.
Only the teacup remained, steam still rising from it — though the tea inside was black as ink.
Elias stumbled back, breathing hard. He grabbed the edge of the table for balance. His fingers brushed something cold.
A small silver necklace.
He recognized it instantly.
He didn't know how, but the memory hit him all at once — a flash of a car door, rain, a woman's voice saying his name.
He dropped the necklace, gasping.
The walls around him pulsed once — as though the entire house took a breath.
And from the empty hall came the faint echo of the man's voice, soft and patient:
"We'll remember for you."
To be continued…
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