They walked.
Boots softly echoing across the damp floor, a quiet symphony of survival.
The air still held that heavy, metallic scent — the kind that reminded you you weren't in a place built for comfort.
Ava and Elliot walked ahead, side by side, their pace steady, eyes scanning each corridor as they led the group through the winding path of Phase 10.
Behind them, conversations started bubbling to life again — low, careful exchanges that somehow felt like a defiance of the gloom.
One of the girls, petite with jet black hair, soft round features and full lips, caught up beside Ava.
"Hey... where are you from?" she asked curiously, a small smile on her face.
Ava blinked. A bit caught off guard, but answered politely, her voice soft and British as ever.
"England."
The girl smiled wider. "Ooh, your accent is adorable. I'm from India. Been here for... I don't even know how long now."
Ava offered a faint smile back, her guard not entirely down, but comforted by the simple humanity of the exchange.
Meanwhile, at the front — a tall man from the group, possibly in his mid-twenties with a thick beard and broad shoulders — approached Elliot. The way he carried himself gave off a quiet authority, the kind earned through leadership rather than claimed.
"Hey."
"Any idea how much longer this phase stretches?"
It was a fair question — the kind that could easily make someone hesitate.
But Elliot didn't blink. He looked straight ahead, voice calm and confident.
"Phases like these don't tell you how long they are… they test how long you're willing to keep going."
"But trust me — we're closer to the end than we think."
The man gave a thoughtful nod, the answer vague yet strangely reassuring.
It wasn't about facts.
It was about belief.
And Elliot — he made people believe.
There was something magnetic about him. The way he carried himself. The warmth behind his words. His sharp jawline, the natural curl of his hair that framed his strong face, the glint of calm in his eyes.
A charming soul in a cursed place.
That's why the group followed him. Not because he asked them to.
But because he sounded like someone who already knew the way out.
But what they didn't see... what Ava had started to notice...
Was that he wasn't just carrying the group's hope.
He was carrying their lives.
And that invisible crown on his head — made of expectations, survival, and unspoken leadership.
That crown would weight HEAVY.
Yet Elliot still smiled. Still encouraged. Still looked back every now and then to make sure everyone was keeping up.
He wasn't just leading them.
He was protecting them.
And Ava...
She walked beside him like his shadow — proud, loving, but sensing the storm building inside her king.
They kept walking.
And walking.
But it didn't feel right anymore.
Elliot slowed down gradually, brows furrowed. He glanced up at the flickering lightbulb above.This time… it was shaped like a cone. Last time, it was round.
His eyes shifted to the tile below. One tile near the wall — last time, it had a long hairline crack across it. Now… it was smooth. Too smooth.
The same cell. Again. But… wrong.
Behind him, the bearded man who had spoken to him earlier — the one who seemed to be the group's former leader — also paused, his hand sliding along the damp wall.
"...You're seeing it too, right?" he muttered.
Elliot nodded. "Yeah."
"We're going in circles."
Elliot turned to face the group, holding out his arm to stop their movement.
"Wait." His voice rang through the hallway with clarity.
Everyone stopped. Ava looked at him, eyes narrowing with concern. The rest exchanged confused glances.
"We've passed this cell before," he said, pointing at it. "Three times. But it's not the same. The angles are off. The floor changes slightly. The light changes. The door is getting more crooked every loop."
Sierra stepped forward. "What are you saying? That this place is… warping?"
Elliot took a breath, hands on his hips as he explained, "This phase is shifting. Morphing. The map doesn't stay the same. It changes—maybe with time, maybe with how we behave. But if we don't notice it while it's happening, we'll never break the cycle."
"So you're saying we're stuck in a loop?" asked one of the girls, nervously gripping her friend's sleeve.
"Not a loop exactly," Elliot clarified, "but we're in something like a rotating maze. The exit's here somewhere. But until we're aware of the shift while it happens—until someone witnesses the change—we won't move forward. The phase won't let us."
"That's insane…" someone whispered.
"It's not about distance anymore," Elliot said, voice firm. "It's about perception. We need to stop focusing on just walking and start observing, tiles, lights, cracks, even air flow. If anything changes in real-time, we react."
The tall bearded man looked at him, genuinely impressed. "...You're sharper than you look."
Elliot smirked lightly, but it faded fast. "We don't have time to chit-chat"
A younger boy raised his hand awkwardly. "Wait, what if we do see the change? What do we do then?"
Elliot nodded, already anticipating the question. "We acknowledge it. Out loud. Point it out. That's how the phase knows we're catching on. I think this place is reactive... if we ignore the change, it resets. But if we confront it, we might push it forward."
A hushed silence fell over the group.
Ava, who had been watching him this whole time, couldn't help the way her chest warmed.
The way he spoke. The calm in his voice. The intelligence behind his eyes.
She stepped a little closer, gently brushing her hand across his as a subtle sign of support — a silent I believe in you.
In her mind, one thought lingered:
"He's not just leading us... he's saving us."
And in that dark, warped prison... a new hope flickered to life.
Because with Elliot, they felt like they actually had a chance.
They had just passed the crooked cell again… but this time…
Everything shook.
Like the world had exhaled.
The world had just shifted.
A low groan echoed through the walls. The floor twitched, the ceiling lights blinked erratically—one short burst, then stillness.
"...Did you all feel that?" Elliot asked sharply, eyes widening.
"Yeah—what the hell was that?" someone whispered.
"It's like…" the girl from India muttered, shivering, "like the place… breathed."
Elliot's heart pounded in his chest. His fingers clenched into fists. And then—
"DID YOU ALL SEE IT?!" he shouted, pointing to the corner tile that had just turned black like ink spilled across porcelain.
The group flinched. Heads turned. Eyes darted. Yes.
They all saw it.
"The shape of the wall—it's different!"
"The hallway was narrower before!"
"That cell's door is crooked now!"
Ava's eyes widened, her voice soft but certain:
"That confirms it… The prison is reactive."
Her words were a whisper… but in that moment, they felt like prophecy.
"It changes when we figure things out," she continued.
"It's alive. Watching. And when we start understanding, it… responds."
And Elliot—confident, charismatic, glowing with purpose—stepped forward like a leader reborn.
"We've been walking in the wrong direction," he said.
"This whole time… forward wasn't the way."
"What do you mean?" someone asked, half skeptical, half afraid.
Elliot's voice was strong, sure. His tone, like scripture.
"Think. We kept walking forward, assuming we were progressing. But all we were doing was feeding the loop. Feeding its illusion."
He pointed back behind them—toward the darker hallway now shrouded in deeper shadows.
"But now, the prison changed. The loop was broken the moment we saw through the trick."
He turned to them, voice steady as steel:
"The exit is behind us."
"We didn't lose our way… We just never understood it."
"Now we do."
The group stared. Some in awe. Some still afraid.
But no one challenged him.
Even Ava looked at him with pride swelling in her chest, gently slipping her hand into his like she had found her answer, her leader, her reason to believe.
They turned back.
Their steps echoing with purpose.
But they didn't know.
They didn't hear the soft, quiet thump echo through the far corner of the prison.
They didn't see the thin ripple in the air.
The brief flicker of white light behind the wall.
They didn't feel the presence that had just slipped in from the Tower above.
Because the truth was—
The prison didn't breathe because they figured it out.
It just shifted because someone else had entered.
SAMUEL.
OWEN.
JACE.
VICTOR
And whatever changes they had seen.
The hallway being narrower, The shape of the wall being different, The cell door looking crooked.
Those were just hallucinations.
They had paid too much attention, to a small single detail wishing it was a change and so they had created their own hallucination of the prison changing.
And now it was just a trap.
And they were walking straight into it.
The group moved with new energy.
Their footsteps no longer dragged—there was rhythm now. Purpose. Even the injured ones stood taller.
Hope was a strange drug, and Elliot had just handed them their first taste of it in hours.
Elliot walked confidently at the front, Ava at his side, their shoulders brushing occasionally as they made their way through the dimly lit corridor. The air was cold, but she felt warm.
She glanced at him, a soft smile curling on her lips.
"You know… you're kinda brilliant," Ava said, her voice light and teasing.
"That whole speech, so confident. Like you knew everything all along."
Elliot chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck as a hint of red spread across his cheeks.
"I mean... I was guessing half of it," he admitted.
"But hey, you fell for it, so I must've done something right."
Ava giggled.
"You looked smart. That's what matters."
"Well, I only get smart when you're watching," he replied, grinning.
"You're like my battery pack. My big-brained high IQ cutie goddess of logic."
She laughed, lightly elbowing him.
"Stop it, you're gonna make me blush—"
"Too late. You're already red."
He leaned closer with a smirk.
"But seriously… you're the reason I even want to be right. If it's just me? I'd give up."
Her eyes softened. "Then let's keep being right. Together."
They shared a glance.
A moment.
His hand slid into hers as naturally as breath. She squeezed it.
Behind them, a few of the group members smiled silently, whispering among themselves about the "couple goals" up front. Even in the dark, even in the unknown, there was something comforting about the sight of two people in love.
It reminded them of home.
Of warmth.
But then...
Ava's steps slowed.
So did Elliot's.
The group behind them began to murmur.
Because just up ahead, shrouded in a soft haze of flickering light, was something they'd already seen.
That same cell.
The bent door.
The crooked lightbulb.
The single cracked tile near the corner.
"Wait..." Ava said softly.
"No. No, no—" Elliot's voice trembled, his previous confidence fading.
One of the guys at the back called out, "Isn't this the same place? Again?"
Elliot's hand slowly slipped from Ava's.His mouth opened, but no words came out.
Because the cell wasn't just familiar.
It was identical.
Every. Detail. Was the same.
And yet… something was different.
The light was dimmer.
The tile's crack had deepened.
The air—colder.
Like something had passed through.
Like the world had changed again.
But this time... it wasn't reacting to them.
They just didn't know it yet
They stared at the cell.
Nobody said anything. Not for a long while.
The laughter from earlier was gone. Hope flickered… and then was extinguished.
A cold, suffocating silence settled in their bones.
The cell door... was open.
It had never been open before.
It creaked softly on its hinges, swaying just slightly—like it had been touched... recently.
A chill spread through the corridor. A few of the group instinctively stepped back. One of the girls clutched her jacket tighter, trembling.
Elliot's smile had long vanished. His hand hovered near Ava's, fingertips brushing hers like he needed to feel her warmth just to stay grounded.
"This isn't right," he muttered.
"We were wrong," Ava whispered.
Her voice barely audible, but the words hit them like thunder.
"The prison didn't react to us… it reacted to something else."
And with that, the dots connected in Elliot's mind—the shift, the distortion, the unnatural stillness when the world 'breathed'.
His eyes widened.
"Someone entered the phase."
The realization cut through them like a knife.
And now, the fear sank deep into them.. This is what the Phase had wanted.
THUMP.
The sound echoed like a sledgehammer against their chests.
Someone whimpered.
THUMP.
Closer now. Heavier. Like the floor itself was cracking beneath the weight.
The group froze—hearts pounding, eyes wide. The corridor, already narrow, suddenly felt like it was closing in on them.
THUMP. THUMP.
The rhythm picked up. Their breath caught in their throats.
And then they saw it.
A silhouette.
Tall.
Inhumanly tall.
Its shoulders scraped the ceiling. It moved like a mechanical beast—joints cracking, chains dragging behind it like dead weight.
A butcher's axe glinted in the low, flickering light, still dripping fresh, wet blood.
Not old. Not dry. Recent.
THUMP.
It stepped into view.
And the world stopped breathing.
It wore a dark, rotting prison warden's uniform, stitched with barbed wire and sealed with dried flesh. Its skin—if it could be called that—was grey, tight, sewn. Long metal chains were stapled into its flesh, wrapping around its neck like a noose that never killed.
But it was the mask that shattered them.
A torn leather bag.
Pulled over its head.
Tied with wires.
Blood seeped through the bottom.
There were no eyes, but they all felt it looking—into their soul.
And hanging from its belt, like keychains—
Heads.
Human heads.
Rotting. Still dripping. One of them—a woman's—had her mouth wide open in a silent scream.
Ava stepped back instinctively. Elliot pulled her behind him. The others trembled—some were sobbing now, quietly, praying under their breath.
No one screamed.
They couldn't.
Fear had taken the oxygen from their lungs.
The thing… didn't run.
It marched.
Deliberate.
Heavy.
Certain.
Like it had all the time in the world.
Like it knew they had nowhere to run.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
It stopped.
Only a few meters away now.
The chain attached to its axe dragged loudly across the floor, drawing a metal scar behind it. A low, growling breath hissed from beneath the mask.
And then—
CLINK.
One of the heads fell from its belt.
Rolled across the floor.
And stopped.
Right between Elliot's feet.
It was still warm.
The eyes stared up at him.
Blinking.
Someone behind them broke. Screamed. Loud. Raw. Shattered the silence like glass.
And that's when it moved.