Part 1: Whispers on Glass
Lila begins digging for answers. What she finds is not just memory—but obsession, buried guilt, and evidence of someone who came before her. Someone who never left completely.
---
Last Moment:
["Good. Then watch me burn."]
The note wouldn't stop burning.
Lila had tucked it in the inner lining of her coat, the place where people hide things they don't want to admit they're carrying. But all morning, she kept feeling its weight. Like it pulsed. Like it whispered every time she stopped moving.
> She wore the thread too. She's gone.
Someone else had worn the crimson thread. Someone who played this same game. Someone who vanished.
And Damien had said nothing.
Of course he hadn't.
Power doesn't explain itself.
She tapped a blank screen for hours, pretending to work, pretending the tablet didn't remember that sketch. The one that wasn't hers. The one that watched her.
No one came. Not Damien. Not Rhys. Not anyone.
But the silence—that curated silence—was louder than any words.
It was nearly noon when she rose from her chair and walked toward Logistics.
———————————————————
Rhys's office wasn't on the map.
It lived behind a low, narrow hallway flanked with unmarked doors, just beneath the mechanical subfloor. Lila had only found it once before, guided there under the excuse of signing onboarding forms that never existed.
When she knocked, he didn't say come in.
He never did.
The door creaked open.
Rhys looked up from his desk. Pale light slanted across half his face, the other hidden in shadow. His sleeves were rolled, necktie crooked, as if sleep had been an afterthought.
He didn't smile.
"Curiosity again?" he asked.
"Curiosity's the only thing keeping me sane."
He gestured to the seat across from him, already half-covered with blueprints and cut schematics.
Lila brushed them aside.
"You've worked here a long time," she said.
"Too long."
"You ever hear of someone named Evelyne?"
For a moment, his body went still.
Too still.
His pen stopped mid-scroll.
The only movement was his eyes—just slightly narrowing.
"Why?"
Lie, Hart. Carefully.
"I found an old file," she said. "A sketch. Signed 'EK.' Her work looks… familiar."
Rhys leaned back. That haunted look returned. The one she was learning meant memories he didn't want to keep but couldn't quite throw out.
"She was a designer," he said slowly. "Before you."
"How long before?"
He tapped his temple. "Two years ago. Maybe more. She was… brilliant."
"But?"
"But this place doesn't reward brilliance," he said. "It eats it."
He stood and crossed to the opposite wall—lined with cabinets, pinboards, and torn maps of Blackwell Tower's lower levels. Lila followed with her eyes.
Something on the far wall caught her.
A yellowed sheet of sketch paper—barely visible beneath a layer of curling blueprints. Pinned with a rusted clip.
A woman in red.
Not a photo. A rendering.
Hair wild. Eyes distant. Arms folded, like she was defending something inside herself.
The style…
It could've been mine.
Same lines. Same weight. Same emotional angles.
Lila stood before she knew why.
"Who drew this?" she asked.
Rhys didn't turn.
"Leave it alone, Lila."
But it was too late.
Her fingers brushed the paper. The graphite smeared slightly under her touch.
She recognized the technique.
Recognized the woman.
Not from memory.
From the mirror.
Last night.
The woman falling in the sketch from the encrypted folder.
This was her.
Lila reached into her coat pocket as if scratching her neck, and palmed her phone.
Click.
A photo.
Quick. Dirty. Enough.
She turned to Rhys. "You knew her."
"I did."
"Did Damien?"
Rhys stared at her for a long, quiet moment.
"You ask questions like you're ready for answers."
"Maybe I am."
"Then know this—the last girl who thought she could unravel him never made it to the end of the story."
He walked to the door and opened it without another word.
Dismissed.
But as Lila turned to leave, she noticed a keycard still clipped to his jacket pocket.
Just loose enough.
Just exposed enough.
Like it wanted to be taken.
She reached to brush past him.
Her fingers slipped it free without a sound.
---
She waited until the floor went still that night.
Until the sound of motion became something distant.
The archives were buried three levels below the lobby—through a maintenance stairwell marked "ELEVATOR MECHANICAL." The keycard gave her access through a side door no one had touched in years.
The hallway buzzed faintly as she moved through it. Pale red lights flicked on ahead of her footsteps.
Everything down here smelled of old copper and forgotten dust.
Until she reached the server vault.
The air inside was cold enough to bite.
Dozens of machines lined the walls, blinking in perfect intervals. They weren't labeled. They didn't need to be. This wasn't a place meant for finding.
It was a place meant for hiding.
She used the card again—this time on a private terminal at the back.
It flickered.
Loaded.
Required biometric confirmation.
She hesitated. Then pressed her thumb to the glass.
It clicked.
One directory appeared.
> ARCHIVE.LOG - RED FILES
One folder glowed in red text.
/EK
She opened it.
Sketches.
Dozens.
Every one of her. Evelyne. Poses, studies, motion frames. Some unfinished, some obsessive. Close-ups of her mouth, her hands, her eyes—drawn and redrawn and redrawn.
Damien's style.
Then: audio files.
Old. Grainy.
Lila pressed play on the first.
> "Entry one. I'm recording this because... because I think I'm starting to see it. The mirror. It's not a window. It's a... trapdoor. Something lives behind it."
Another file.
> "He told me I was his 'cathedral.' What the hell does that mean? That he was building himself a god?"
Lila's skin went cold.
Then the last recording.
She pressed play.
> "If you're hearing this... he knows. He's already watching you. Don't try to fight him head-on. That's what I did. And now—"
The file cut out.
Silence.
Lila stared at the screen. At the last name.
Evelyne Kai.
She whispered it aloud.
It felt sacred.
Like a curse.
---
Back in her apartment, Lila didn't sleep.
She sat by the window, the city breathing beyond the glass.
She traced the line of her own throat with one finger. Wondering if she'd ever know the truth before it was too late.
Wondering if anyone ever escaped Damien Blackwell.