He didn’t know when the screaming stopped.

Perhaps it never had. Perhaps it had only moved inside him, echoing in the hollow spaces his mind had tried to seal away.

He still stood before the mirror the Harrower had conjured, though he no longer saw himself—only that blurred shape, flickering between faces he could not bear to remember.

His knees buckled. He collapsed to the floor, palms slapping against something that felt neither solid nor liquid—a surface that yielded and resisted all at once.

The Harrower loomed over him, silent now. Watching.

Somewhere behind its faceless head, those dozens of arms swayed in a wind he could not feel, their rusted implements glinting in the dark like waiting instruments.

He tried to close his eyes. He couldn’t.

He tried to stand. He couldn’t.

It was as if reality itself had locked itself around him—forcing him to remain: present, aware, and utterly defenseless.

“I don’t remember,” he whispered, voice hoarse, cracking. “I don’t—I don’t know what I did.”

The Harrower tilted its head in a motion almost tender.

Another scene bloomed across the darkness.

A kitchen table. A bottle of cheap whiskey. A child’s drawing crumpled in an ashtray. A woman’s voice, pleading—Please, just come back to us.

And his own voice—slurred, contemptuous—I’m tired of pretending.

John clamped his hands over his ears, but the memory didn’t fade.

The Harrower spoke, calm and hollow as the grave:

They beg for justice… but when justice answers, they scream.

Its words crawled under his skin.

I am not cruel. I am fair.

A fresh vision took shape:

A hallway, smoke rolling under a door. Tiny fists pounding. A child coughing.

I only give what they have earned.

John tried to look away. The mirror followed him.

Measured in silence… in neglect… in lies whispered behind closed doors.

The kitchen fire swelled to fill everything—heatless but blinding. His tears boiled away before they could fall.

I strip them bare… not to hurt them…

One of the Harrower’s arms reached forward. A single, long finger tipped with a scalpel touched the mirror. The surface shimmered—and this time, it showed him not the past, but the present.

Him—on his knees, filthy, hollow-eyed, mouth open in a wordless plea.

…but to show them what they are beneath the masks.

He felt something give way in his chest, like a dam cracking.

“No… please… you don’t understand,” he gasped.

The Harrower did not respond. It didn’t need to.

Because in that moment, he understood:

The house was not holding him captive.

He was holding himself here.

Every locked door, every shifting hallway, every memory that refused to stay buried—it was all him.

He looked up into the Harrower’s faceless visage and finally asked the only question that mattered:

“What am I?”

A silence followed—long enough to feel like the end of time.

When it answered, its voice was softer than before, almost pitying.

You are what you chose.

And then—suddenly—he was alone.

No darkness.

No Harrower.

Just the hallway, restored as if nothing had ever happened. The cracked wallpaper. The warped floorboards.

But the air remained heavy, thick with the knowledge he could no longer escape.

He pressed a hand to the wall, steadying himself.

Somewhere in the house, a door creaked open.

An invitation.

Or a sentence.

He didn’t know anymore.

He only knew he had to keep moving.

Because this place—and whatever waited beyond the next threshold—was not done with him yet.