Chapter 5

“If you listen to the silence long enough, it begins to speak to you.”

I swam through water that no longer felt liquid. It was like glass: viscous, motionless, as if the labyrinth were slowing my body down. Forcing me to think. To listen.

The corridor widened. I surfaced, gasping for air — and found myself in a room where it immediately became bone-chillingly cold.

The ceiling was low, pressing down on me. The walls were scuffed and riddled with cracks. Fluorescent lights hung overhead, but not a single one flickered. It was too stable. Too… sterile. Water covered the floor up to my ankles. Through it, the tiles showed — old, yellowish, with rusty seams.

Four metal doors stood in the room. Each had a plaque.

Ailis. Thomas. Joe. Miranda.

Mine was the last one. It hadn’t been there when I entered. But now it was. And it was slightly ajar.

I stepped toward it — and stopped.

On the wall, like in a police interrogation room, hung a mirror. But it wasn’t an ordinary one.

I looked at myself — and didn’t recognize what I saw.

My reflection stared straight back at me. It didn’t blink.

It breathed while I stood frozen.

It smiled while I tensed in fear.

Beneath the mirror was a table. On it sat a microphone built directly into the metal. Its red light was already glowing.

And then, a voice.

Female. Cold.

“Name the one who is redundant. One of you must not go further. Name them.”

I didn’t answer. The room grew colder. The light began to flicker.

For a second, the lamps went out. And in the pitch-black darkness, I heard footsteps.

Not mine.

And not from the water.

Footsteps — dry, confident, as if someone had already left the game and returned for me.

The light returned.

“They have already made their choice,” the voice said. “Thomas chose Joe. Ailis chose you. Joe remained silent. Joe drowned.”

I closed my eyes.

“We are a team. I will not name anyone.”

“Then stay. Forever.”

The doors behind my back vanished. All except one—the one with my name.

But now, it was locked.

My reflection in the mirror smirked.

“Coward,” it whispered. “You always were.”

I didn’t know if that was me, or what I could become.

“Name them. Or you will become her,” the voice said.

I felt the floor sink. The water was rising. Now it reached my knees. The walls began to “cry” — thin streams trickled down them, as if the room were going to drown me in my own fear.

And then I approached the microphone.

“If anyone here is weaker than me,” I said, “it’s the one standing on the other side of the glass.”

And I slammed my fist into the mirror.

It cracked. Then a second crack split it.

And then — it imploded.

The water surged upward, like an aquarium with its plug pulled out. The room vanished.

I was back in the water.

But now I wasn’t swimming — I was falling. Down. Deep. As if into a well.

Before me was a new section. It looked like nothing that came before it.

There were no walls. Only emptiness.

And within it — figures. All six of them. Like statues, frozen. Only their eyes followed me.

And in the center — a black funnel, a whirlpool.

A voice resonated inside me:

“You have passed. But whom did you leave outside?”