The staircase led nowhere.
It spiraled higher and higher, a winding ribbon of velvet and shadow, until it delivered them to a circular room suspended in limbo. There was no ceiling—just a yawning, starless void above, pressing down with the weight of a forgotten god. The walls shimmered with stage curtains, blood-red and endless. The velvet floor beneath their feet absorbed every step like a muted gasp, swallowing sound before it could fully form.
There were no mirrors here. No windows. No illusions.
Only them.
And in the center: a stage.
Not grand. Not gilded. Just a modest wooden platform with a single microphone standing under a pale, unwavering spotlight. No flicker. No hum. No fanfare.
Lena was the first to speak.
"It's... quiet."
"Too quiet," Marc muttered, his voice too loud in the hush. "Where's the next trick? The next twist?"
Vivian stepped toward the stage and ascended with measured steps. She looked out at the empty room like an actor searching for an audience that would never arrive. Then she turned to the others.
"What if this is the twist?" she said. "No laughter. No lights. Just silence. The one thing Eden never got to sit in."
Darren lowered himself onto the edge of the platform, elbows resting on his knees. "I keep waiting for her to show up. But I think... she won't. Not here."
Theo raised his piece of Eden's punchline again, holding it up like a map he hoped might guide them. But the page didn't glow. The ink didn't shift. The joke, like Eden herself, remained unfinished.
Then Kay pointed, silent but sharp-eyed.
The curtains along the walls began to part—not revealing doors, not hallways, but memories.
Projected like grainy film against the crimson fabric, the images flickered to life.
They weren't Eden's memories.
They were theirs.
Lena saw herself at nineteen, watching Eden bomb on stage during an open mic, arms crossed, offering no support. Marc, beaming during a radio interview, laughed and took credit for a joke they'd written together. Vivian, drunk and seething, tossed one of Eden's notebooks into a backstage trash bin after a failed group show. Darren, pacing outside a locked dressing room door, paused as Eden sobbed inside—but never knocked. Theo, alone in his apartment, rewatching the footage of Eden's televised breakdown, muttering to himself, "This'll trend."
Each memory struck like a slap.
But they weren't just memories.
They were blueprints.
As the projections continued to loop and grow, the room itself began to warp. The images bled into the walls, reshaping the space. Windows formed where Marc's laugh echoed. Doors appeared where Darren turned away. Staircases twisted up from Lena's silence. The manor flickered in and out of their recollections like a ghost made of guilt.
Marc took a step back, face pale. "No. No, no, no—this place... it's not hers."
Lena stared at the carousel of regret unspooling across the curtains. Her voice was hollow. "It's ours."
Theo nodded, slowly, painfully. "We built it."
The wooden stage beneath them groaned as if it, too, had something to confess. Dust curled from the floor, twisting in the stale air like smoke. A low hum vibrated through the room—static, or maybe applause warped into something less human.
"The manor isn't a haunting," Kay said, voice even.
"It's a confession," Vivian finished, barely above a whisper.
"So you're saying..." Marc turned, as if hoping someone would offer an easier truth, "Eden didn't trap us here?"
"No," Lena said. "We trapped her."
The microphone on the stage buzzed, then crackled to life.
And Eden's voice drifted in—not sharp, not broken, but soft and far away, like wind over shards of glass.
"You gave me an encore I never wanted."
The spotlight blinked.
Then it died.
Darkness returned, thick and weighty.
Marc stumbled off the platform, reeling like the words had struck him physically. "I didn't mean for this. We didn't know—"
"Didn't know what?" Darren snapped. "That ignoring someone until they shatter isn't the same as letting them heal?"
"We were kids," Vivian said defensively, arms crossed, voice rising.
"No," Theo countered. "We were professionals. Cowards, maybe. But old enough to see the signs."
Kay lowered herself to the velvet floor, hands resting loosely in her lap. Her voice was calm, but the words sliced deep. "This place... every room, every echo... it's made of the things we chose to forget. The moments we buried. And they rotted."
Vivian joined her on the floor, knees pulled to her chest. "Eden got caught in it. Or at least... a version of her. The one we turned into a spectacle."
"She's been performing for us," Lena murmured, "not to scare us. To show us who we were. Over and over."
Theo approached one of the curtain-walls and touched the image playing on its surface. The projection rippled under his fingers, then dissolved into mist.
"Maybe the real Eden's gone," he said. "Maybe what's left is just an echo. A loop. But it's real enough to hurt."
Silence fell.
Then a sound—subtle but sharp—broke the air.
A crack.
Behind the stage, a hidden door split open. None of them had seen it before. Beyond the threshold stretched a long, dim hallway lined with dressing rooms. The nameplates on the doors bore no illusions.
Each door was marked with one of their names.
Not Eden's.
Marc stepped toward the hallway, his eyes fixed on the door with his name engraved in tarnished brass. He hovered, hand on the knob, then turned to the others.
"She's still in here. Somewhere. Even if it's not really her. Even if it's just... the memory of her. I have to try."
Vivian scoffed lightly, exhausted. "Try what? Say sorry to a ghost?"
Marc shook his head. "To myself. To her. I don't know. But we can't keep walking circles around our guilt."
Lena stood. "We end it. No more hiding. No more pretending we weren't part of what broke her."
"And if we can't?" Darren asked, his voice low.
Kay looked up, her eyes steady. "Then we let her go. Even if it means losing her again."
Theo reached for the doorknob bearing his name and turned it.
Inside was a typewriter. Still warm. A single blank page waited.
He looked back at them all. "We face it. All of it. Then maybe... she gets to rest."
One by one, they opened their doors.
Not for forgiveness.
Not for redemption.
But because the house they had unknowingly built—room by room, mistake by mistake—had become a prison.
Not just for Eden.
But for all of them.
And only the truth could take it down.