The door at the far end of the ballroom creaked open on its own with a long, groaning protest—rotting wood grinding against rusted hinges, the sound dragging through the silence like fingernails on bone.
No one moved at first.
Then the voice returned—calm and cruel as before, disembodied but unshakable.
"Trial Two: Reflections of Death.Face what you fear most.You have one hour."
That was all.
No clues. No rules. No guidance.
Just the command... and a new hallway stretching out before them, long and narrow, cloaked in flickering shadows. On either side, tall blackened mirrors lined the walls, their surfaces smeared and warped like old glass left to rot.
Daniel stood slowly, still hollow inside. His throat burned from screaming Zoe's name in the last trial. The ache had settled deep in his chest like a bruise that wouldn't fade. He didn't speak. None of them did.
There was no point.
They followed the hallway because there was nowhere else to go.
They followed because the house wouldn't let them go back.
The hallway was wrong.
Wrong in a way that was hard to explain—like something watching from every mirror, like time moved slower between the walls, like the air itself didn't want them there.
The mirrors — tall, thin things with ornate black frames like gravestones — reached up toward the ceiling. They weren't just glass. They were windows into something fractured and cold.
Each reflection was subtly off.
Lena's reflection looked away, as if refusing to meet her gaze.
Maya's reflection bled dark liquid from its eyes, silent and still.
Daniel's reflection didn't move at all.
It just stood there, staring back with dead, hateful eyes—empty of emotion, drained of life. It was like looking at a corpse wearing his face.
Each step forward seemed to take something from them. Words became scarce. Jokes faded. Even breathing felt like it required effort. The house was stripping them, not just physically, but mentally—grinding down what made them human.
At last, they arrived at a circular chamber.
At the center stood a marble statue, cracked and weathered, depicting a robed figure with a shattered face. The floor beneath it was a mosaic of mirrors—circular tiles of silvered glass that reflected nothing quite right.
Etched into the base of the statue were six words:
"To pass, the untrue must die."
Ethan read the inscription aloud, his voice low, then took a nervous step back. "That... that could mean anything."
"No," Harper said slowly, her gaze fixed on the statue. "It means one of us isn't real."
Maya's head snapped toward her. "What?"
"Someone's reflection isn't theirs," Harper whispered. "It's something else. Something pretending to be one of us."
Daniel's stomach twisted. A sick, crawling dread moved under his skin.
They all began glancing around — eyes flicking from face to face, breathing quick and shallow, tension rising like heat. They were prey now, turned against each other.
One by one, they approached the mirrors lining the room, testing the truth of their own reflections.
Harper's reflection sobbed silently, but copied her movements perfectly.
Maya stood in front of hers, trembling. The reflection mimicked her posture exactly — except for the eyes. They were bone white, and leaking black tears that disappeared before hitting the floor.
Lena froze in front of her mirror.
Her reflection smiled.
Only her reflection smiled.
"Mine…" she whispered, voice thin with panic. "It's not—It's not me."
Everyone turned toward her.
Sure enough, the Lena in the mirror was grinning. Not with fear or nervousness — it was a slow, cruel smile, like someone savoring a secret. It wasn't just wrong. It was evil.
Ethan stepped protectively in front of her. "Get back. It's just a trick. The house is messing with her."
"No," said Jules, his voice trembling. "The message. It said the untrue must die. We have to figure out who doesn't belong."
"You're not seriously saying—" Maya began.
"We have to!" Jules snapped, panic flaring. "Or none of us are making it out of here!"
The statue behind them groaned as the floor began to quake. The mirror tiles cracked and lifted, jagged edges rising like glass fangs from the ground. Time was running out.
Daniel stepped forward. "We don't kill Lena," he said, voice calm but firm. "The reflection's wrong, not her."
"Then who is the fake?!" Jules shouted. "One of us has to die or the floor's going to eat us alive!"
That's when Maya screamed.
They turned.
Her reflection—now grinning wide—was pulling itself through the glass.
It moved unnaturally, joints bending wrong, limbs stretching too far, like liquid shadow dragging itself into the real world. Shards of glass clung to it like armor.
Before anyone could react, it drove a jagged piece of mirror into Maya's stomach.
Her scream pierced the chamber, raw and agonized.
Blood soaked her hoodie as she crumpled to the floor.
Monster-Maya grinned wider and charged the rest of them, dragging other reflections behind her—twisted versions of the group with blank eyes and cruel smiles.
The second trial had begun.
The chamber erupted into chaos.
Daniel pulled Lena behind the fallen statue, shielding her as Ethan tackled one of the mirror creatures. The thing laughed, high and gleeful, even as Ethan swung a rusted pipe and cracked its face. Shards flew, revealing writhing black smoke beneath.
Jules crawled to Maya, trying to drag her away from the growing pool of blood. She was still breathing—barely. But the color was draining from her skin fast.
A mirror-Zoe, mouth sewn shut with wire, leapt onto him, scratching and clawing at his face.
Daniel didn't hesitate. He grabbed a shard from the floor and drove it into the thing's neck. It shattered like ice under heat, spraying glass and shadow into the air.
The real Maya gasped, mouth full of blood.
"Hold on!" Jules cried, gripping her hand tightly.
But her fingers were already going limp.
Daniel knelt beside them just in time to see her eyes fade.
Gone.
Another soul claimed by the house.
Then — silence.
The lights flickered once.
All around them, the reflections shrieked — a high, unnatural sound — and burst into mist. Black smoke drifted up into the broken ceiling.
The floor stopped shifting.
The air calmed.
And the voice returned:
"Three players eliminated.Six remain."
No one moved.
Maya's body lay still, her blood seeping into the cracks in the mirror tiles. Jules sat beside her, hands red, lips trembling.
He looked up at Daniel, eyes vacant.
"I told her I'd protect her…"
Daniel crouched beside him, placing a hand gently on his shoulder. "You tried."
Jules shook his head, hollow. "Trying doesn't matter here. Only death matters."
Daniel had no answer.
What could he say in a house like this?
Eventually, when they returned to the hallway, the mirrors were all shattered. Their glass had turned black and opaque, like the light had finally abandoned them.
The trial was over.
But something was different now — something broken.
They'd left more behind than Maya.
They'd left trust.They'd left innocence.They'd left hope.
The house wasn't just killing them.
It was changing them.
Daniel saw it in every face — in the set of their jaws, the weight in their eyes, the way no one looked at each other too long anymore.
The fear wasn't dying.
It was surviving.
Surviving this place... surviving these trials... surviving themselves.
And what they would become if they did.