The room didn't return to normal.
It changed again. And again.
One second, Amelia stood in her childhood home, the next—on a train platform where no trains came. Alexis, still in the forest-turned-room, now saw her reflection in a shattered television screen. Except... the reflection moved first.
Time, place, logic—none of them worked now.
"This isn't a memory," Amelia whispered. Her voice echoed like it traveled down a well.
"No," Alexis replied. "It's a seed."
They turned at the same time.
Behind them, a door had appeared. Not the hotel door. A wooden door, carved with a familiar spiral, wet with something dark. Beneath it, root-like tendrils slithered across the floor like veins searching for a pulse.
The door opened inward.
No sound.
Just a cold wind. And a voice—not heard, but felt.
> "You were grown for this."
Amelia staggered. Alexis caught her.
Something was waking.
And it remembered their names.