Ethan ran.
Down the hallway.
Again.
But every turn brought him back to the beginning.
Same potted plant.
Same crooked frame.
Same flickering light above Room 3C.
He left marks behind—anything to prove he'd moved forward.
A scratch on the wall.
A red X drawn with a pen he didn't remember grabbing.
A chair tipped over.
But minutes later, they were gone.
Or worse: they'd changed.
The scratch became a carved spiral, dug deep into the wall like it had always been there.
The red X was now on the ceiling, as if gravity had rewritten itself.
And the chair?
It sat upright.
Someone already in it.
Himself.
Eyes closed.
Muttering something inaudible, like a prayer or a system process.
Ethan backed away, spine prickling with cold recognition.
He turned—again.
This time, the hallway split.
Left: a stairwell, dark and narrow.
Right: a corridor where the lights pulsed in time with his heartbeat—an echo of something inside him.
He chose the stairwell.
But it didn't go up.
Didn't go down.
Just… sideways.
And when he stepped out—
A street.
Bright sky.
Cars.
People walking with coffee cups and earbuds, traffic humming along as if none of this had ever happened.
Too normal.
Wrong kind of normal.
He stepped forward in a daze, drawn to a small, dusty newsstand tucked between buildings.
Every paper on display had the same headline:
"ETHAN HALE DIES IN CAR CRASH — NO SURVIVORS"
He stared.
Grabbed a copy. Flipped through pages, searching for a lie.
But it was all there.
Photos of the wreckage.
Quotes from friends he didn't remember having.
And in the center of it all—his own face, beneath the words: "Remembered by few. Survived by none."
He dropped the paper.
A hand touched his shoulder.
He turned.
And saw her.
"Mira?"
She looked like the name:
Quiet.
Focused.
Eyes that had seen too much and were still seeing.
"You're new," she said, her voice soft but unafraid.
"I think I'm stuck," Ethan replied. "This place… it keeps looping."
She nodded slowly. "You saw your obituary. That's how it starts."
He searched her face for answers. "Is this hell?"
"No," she said. "It's memory."
She took a step back, giving him space to process.
"We're not in your dream, Ethan."
His chest tightened. "Then whose?"
Mira looked up.
The sky flickered—just for a moment—like an old TV losing signal.
A glitch.
"We're all in the same one," she said. "The only difference is—some of us remember why."
A heavy silence settled between them, fragile and real.
Then she handed him something.
A crumpled napkin, stained and torn.
Scrawled in shaky handwriting:
"FIND THE ROOM WITH NO DOORS. THAT'S WHERE IT BROKE."
Ethan frowned. "What broke?"
She met his gaze.
"You."
And just like that—
Mira vanished.
Not faded.
Not walked away.
She glitched.
Gone mid-blink, like reality had stopped rendering her.
Ethan stood there alone.
The newspaper at his feet flickered, then changed.
New headline:
"REALITY FAILS TO LOAD. RETRY?"