Location: Beyond the Gates
Time: Doesn't move forward… but loops, like thoughts that can't let go.
When they regained consciousness, they didn't find themselves in familiar ground… but in a void too empty to be called a place.
No walls, no ceiling, no sky.Only a dark gray ground, pulsing slowly, as if it were breathing or dying beneath their feet.
From every direction, a corridor stretched into infinity.But it wasn't a path forward—it was a reflection folding in on itself.Your first step brings you back to the beginning… without you realizing you've returned.
Raine stood up first. His steps were cautious, like someone walking across a memory wired to explode.His eyes gleamed with a light they hadn't held before. Not fear.But an ancient question that had finally found soil to grow in.
Raine:"Are we… in another dimension?"
Lima (brushing the air with her fingers as if feeling out a dream):"No… This isn't a dimension. It's a thought. A place built from choices we haven't made yet."
Niko (examining the thickening mist):"Whose thoughts?"
No one answered.
But something began to happen.
From the void, walls began to form… like smoke freezing in mid-air.Then the smoke turned to glass, and the glass into mirrors—mirrors not of reflection, but of possibility.
Mirror of Possibilities
The corridor's walls became screens.Each one showed a version of them…Versions that spoke, moved, acted out paths never taken… and paid prices never owed.
Raine saw himself shouting at his brother, shoving him, walking away… and never returning.A moment that never happened, but felt real enough to choke him.
Raine (voice breaking):"That's… not me."
A voice echoing from within the walls:"But it is you… if you'd chosen anger over loss."
On another wall, Lima was kneeling before a tiny grave,holding a torn toy, whispering a single phrase without shedding a single tear.
Her alternate self:"I should've left before I was born."
Lima (softly):"I thought that once… when everything around me rejected my existence."
Then appeared Niko—or another version of him—holding a weapon, laughing coldly.
Other Niko:"I killed to get here."
Niko (more like a confession):"And I betrayed… to survive."
But the walls weren't content with the past.
They began to shift, every second.Images changing, choices branching, words unsaid emerging, endings exploding before they began.
Then… a different scene.The three of them together, opening a door… then disappearing.
The Convergence
At the heart of the corridor, time stopped.
Their eyes met.Three bodies, three minds, three possibilities searching for a single exit.
In that moment, they weren't just Raine, Lima, and Niko.They became who they might have been… had they made worse, or better, mistakes.
A voice pulsing from the walls:Heartbeat's buzz, mind's whisper, choice's pulse.
Raine:"If these versions are possible… can we fail twice?"
Lima:"Or forgive twice. Even if we no longer know who we're forgiving."
Niko (glancing back):"The corridor doesn't refuse to be crossed… we're just afraid to continue."
And at the end of the path, a single door appeared.
It wasn't made of wood or iron…but of fractured light, as if time itself had shattered into shards, then rearranged itself into an exit.
The voice returned… not from the walls, but from within them:"Crossing isn't for those who are ready… but for those who face truth as it is, without mirrors… without excuse."
Beyond the Door
The three stood before it.
Each carried within them a different version of who they were.Each realized what they left behind wasn't a past… but a test of self.
Raine:"We don't know what's beyond…"
Lima (touching the light— it flares briefly, then dims):"But we know what we no longer want to run from."
Niko (looking at them, as if seeing himself in both):"Let's write the corridor… instead of walking it."
They opened the door.
But they didn't step through…
Instead, the version that chose to exist passed through.
It was the possibility that decided to live through them Author's Note to Readers:
As our heroes enter deeper realms of awareness and decision, the upcoming chapters will increase in length, depth, and detail.Each step forward will not just be an event… but a reflection of a greater conflict within each character.
Get ready for denser chapters… where truth isn't what we see, but what we choose to believe.
End of Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen: "The Last Chapter of Knowing"Who are you, if you can't forget who you might've become?