The corridor seemed to stretch on forever, every door along its length a portal to a memory Mira had tried to forget. The wallpaper peeled and shifted, patterns rearranging into the spiral—always the spiral—taunting her with its broken symmetry.
Mira's footsteps echoed, muffled by the thick, oppressive silence. The air was heavy with the scent of rain and old sorrow. Shadows flickered at the edge of her vision, and every so often, she caught a glimpse of Elara's silhouette darting just out of reach.
She paused by a door she recognized—a faded sticker still clinging to the wood. Her old bedroom. The knot pulsed in her mind, urging her forward, but her heart clenched with dread.
Face it, she told herself. You can't run from the past forever.
She pushed the door open.
Inside, the room was exactly as she remembered: a small bed, a shelf of worn books, a cracked clock ticking out of sync. And there, sitting on the bed, was Elara—her face pale, eyes shining with accusation and longing.
"Why did you leave me?" Elara's voice was soft, but it cut deeper than any blade.
Mira's throat tightened. "I didn't want to. I was scared. I thought… I thought I could fix things if I just kept moving forward."
The shadow that was Elara shook her head, her form wavering. "You can't fix what you refuse to remember."
The clock on the shelf began to spin wildly, the hands moving backward. The walls of the room warped, the spiral pattern bleeding through every surface.
Mira stepped closer, tears burning in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Elara. I should have stayed. I should have tried harder."
For a moment, the shadow softened, Elara's features almost human again. The knot's threads glimmered between them, gold and shadow entwined.
But then the darkness surged, swallowing Elara's form. The spiral deepened, and Mira felt herself being pulled further into the memory—deeper, darker, toward the heart of her regret.
She reached out, desperate. "Elara, wait!"
But the room shattered into fragments of light and shadow, and Mira tumbled into the abyss, the echo of Elara's voice haunting her:
"Remember me."