The silence didn't last.
It never does in places like this.
At first, it was only a tremor—subtle, barely there, like the house holding its breath. Then came the pressure shift, the dense stillness before something breaks. The air thickened, saturated with static. Then, without warning, wind slammed through the Theater Room.
Not from outside.
There was no outside anymore.
The wind came from within the walls. From the floorboards. From the lungs of the manor itself.
A low groan echoed through the theater, rising in pitch until it sounded almost human—a scream choked behind drywall.
Anna staggered back. "Something's coming."
Riley didn't look away from the stage. "No. It's already here."
The spotlight above them exploded in a burst of glass and heat.
Wind whipped across the stage, carrying flecks of torn curtain, shreds of Eden's final monologue, and the coppery tang of something electric. Velvet ripped from rafters. Floorboards cracked open. The walls began to swell and breathe, then stretch. Fissures split in spirals, running in directions no geometry could explain, like the house was peeling its skin away.
Then the stage buckled beneath their feet.
The group scattered, instinctively bracing to stay upright—but the storm didn't want equilibrium.
It wanted separation.
The storm came alive with laughter—Eden's, but not as they remembered it. Warped. Looping. Threaded with exhaustion and something inhuman.
The floorboards twisted. Hallways tore through the walls like scars reopening. And then—
The house flung them.
Anna
She hit the ground hard. Her shoulder shrieked in pain, but adrenaline kept her moving. The air here was sterile and cold, the floor tiled like a hospital waiting room.
Everything laughed.
Not people. Not voices. Things. Chairs giggled. Lights chuckled. Magazines wheezed with pre-recorded sitcom laughter. Anna clamped her hands over her ears, but it wormed through the bone.
She turned a corner and froze.
Mirrors. Dozens.
Each one showed her in the front row of Eden's final set.
In one, she was laughing.
In another, scrolling her phone.
In the worst—she was looking away as Eden cried mid-joke, mascara running, voice trembling.
"Why didn't you leave with her?" a voice asked.
Eden's voice.
Anna spun. No one there.
"Why didn't you stand up?"
The laughter spiked.
The mirrors cracked.
Riley
The room was a green room—maybe. The walls rippled like fabric. A vanity mirror buzzed above a stained counter, casting cold white light. Old makeup pans littered the surface. Cigarette smoke clung to the wallpaper like a memory that refused to leave.
Riley looked into the mirror—and saw himself.
Not quite.
Younger. Smug. Holding a drink in one hand and a half-baked joke in the other.
"Come on, Eden, lighten up," the reflection said, parroting a night Riley had spent years trying to forget.
He backed away.
The mirror leaned forward.
"She came to you," the voice snarled. "Told you she wasn't okay. And you said…"
"I said she was just bombing," Riley whispered. "Just a rough patch."
The mirror shattered.
Something behind the wall screamed.
Siobhan
She landed in a room and immediately knew where she was.
Eden's bedroom.
The one she'd helped her move into years ago. The cracked window. The tangle of posters. The stack of notebooks on the nightstand, pages half-torn and overused.
She heard crying.
Muffled. Behind the closet door.
Siobhan's legs wobbled as she approached. She opened the door.
Eden sat curled in the corner. Not ghostly. Not spectral. Just human. Rocking. Crying.
Behind her stood another Siobhan—arms crossed, leaning in the doorway like a judgment made flesh.
"I told her to toughen up," the double said flatly. "Said the crowd was supposed to be cruel. That it meant she was earning it."
Siobhan's throat tightened.
"She needed a friend," her double said. "She got a coach."
The crying stopped.
Eden stood.
Her eyes were empty.
"You were always better at being seen than at seeing me."
The closet door slammed shut.
Malik
He landed in what looked like a stage—but upside-down, backward. A negative of reality. The only light came from a single overhead spotlight.
In its glow: a chair.
On it—himself.
Younger. Calmer. Confident.
He was sitting across from Eden in a parking lot. She was holding a script—no jokes, just truth. Raw, angry, honest.
"Can you read it?" she'd asked that night.
On the stage, he watched himself nod, scan the pages—and shake his head.
"Stick to what works," his double said.
The scene looped.
Over and over.
"Stick to what works. Stick to what works."
The line became rhythmic. A mantra. A cage.
"You made her a brand," whispered a voice. "You helped polish the mask."
The spotlight blinked out.
Jonah
A hallway.
It stretched into the distance, endless and straight, lined with portraits of Eden at every stage of her life.
Smiling.
Crying.
Cracking.
He walked. Slowly.
As he passed each frame, they began to bleed—not blood, but ink. Thick black streams dripped down the canvas, pooling on the floor. In the liquid, her jokes formed:
"I never wanted to be funny…"
"You don't listen unless I'm smiling…"
"Why does pain only matter when it rhymes?"
At the end of the hallway stood a single door.
He opened it.
Inside—an empty dressing room. Cold. Dim.
On the table: a single ticket.
To her last show.
Unused.
He stared at it.
He hadn't gone. Had told her he was busy. "Next time," he'd said.
There wasn't one.
The ticket ignited in blue fire.
And outside, the house screamed.
Rooms folded. Hallways spun. The manor turned in on itself like a dying star.
But beneath the storm, beneath the carnage and the crumbling walls, a laugh rose up through the floorboards.
Not cruel.
Not mocking.
Just tired.
A final laugh.
One that had been waiting to be heard.