He didn’t remember taking the first step.
Or the second.

Only that the hallway was gone, and he stood somewhere else now—a room stolen from the fragments of a dream.

The door behind him had closed without sound.
No lock had turned, yet he knew leaving was impossible.

The place seemed almost ordinary.
A study, perhaps.
A desk. Bookshelves. A tall window showing nothing but blackness, as though the world beyond had been erased.

John’s breath rasped in his throat. His heart dragged too slowly,as if reluctant to keep going. Every sound he made echoed back at him—hollow, brittle, unreal.

He moved toward the desk, desperate for something—anything—that might explain this. The drawers were bare except for one.

Inside lay a single object:
A hand mirror.

His own reflection stared up at him—eyes bloodshot, face drawn tight. But when he leaned closer, he saw the truth pressed behind the glass.

Dozens of pale faces. Silent. Mouths moving in perfect, awful unison.

He slammed the drawer shut.
But the faces did not vanish.
They burned themselves into his skull.

I can’t…I can’t do this…

A voice answered.
Calm. Slow. Patient in a way that was worse than rage—like the tide, inevitable.

They all say that.

John turned, trembling.

And he saw it.

A towering, inhuman silhouette loomed in the haze, its body carved from a mass of writhing sinew and tangled cords of flesh that seemed both muscular and organic, yet alien in design. Its form was humanoid, but only in the broadest sense—like a sculpture of anatomy half-finished, the muscles exaggerated and coiled like ropes, twitching with unnatural tension.

Where its head should have been, there was no face. No skull.
Only a perfect cube—smooth, geometrically flawless—radiating a dull, cold light that oppressed more than it illuminated. The cube tilted slightly, as if aware, though its lack of expression was more horrifying than any face could be. Around it, halos of warped energy swirled, like gravity itself bending in reverence.

Its torso bulged unnaturally, breastplate-like pectorals carved from sinew instead of stone. From the chest downward, its flesh unraveled into ridges and spirals, broken by a single, glaring cavity shaped like an eye—watching him, condemning him without words.

Its arms hung long and sinewy, bound in spiraling tendons that stretched into elongated forearms. Its fingers ended not in hands but in angular claws, sharp and geometric, as if broken shapes had torn their way through living flesh. Vein-like cords uncoiled from its shoulders and elbows, writhing like serpents, tethering it to forces John could not see.

Its lower body was less real. It began humanoid but dissolved into spirals and roots, fading into haze and shadow. Parts of it flickered in and out of existence, slipping between planes, leaving afterimages that trailed wrong against the light.

Around it drifted a faint storm of ash-like motes. Some orbited the cube-head, others spiraled down its body, as if even the smallest particles of reality bent to its presence.

It did not look the same as before. Or perhaps it had always looked this way, and only now did his mind allow him to see it.

The Harrower radiated an aura of godlike patience. Not the peace of kindness, but the inevitability of judgment. An executioner unmoving, because it knew everything would, in time, fall before it.

John stumbled back against the desk, his mind fraying.

The Harrower’s voice pressed into him, deep as oceans:

They beg for justice. But when justice answers… they scream.

Its arms unfurled, claws glinting with surgical sharpness, moving without moving.

I am not cruel. I am fair.

The study collapsed. The walls peeled away, the floor disintegrated, and John hung suspended in an endless dark. Out of it bloomed visions like open wounds:

A child’s room burning, flames crawling across the ceiling.
A woman sobbing, cradling something small and still.
And John himself, frozen in the doorway, his cowardice a chain binding him to the floor.

He tried to scream. His mouth opened, but the sound was swallowed whole.

I only give what has been earned, said The Harrower, voice steady, inexorable. Measured in silence. In neglect. In lies whispered behind locked doors.

No—please—

One claw extended, gleaming in the dark. It did not cut. It only touched.

And the memories burst open.

Every night he had turned away.
Every promise left to rot.
Every door locked while the world outside it burned.

It isn’t real, he whispered inside himself. But the thought collapsed into dust.

The cube tilted. The faceless shape rippled, and for a moment John saw his own visage reflected on its flawless surface, smiling back at him. Thin. Pitiless.

Do not blame the flame for burning, it whispered. Blame the rot that made it necessary.

The dark grew heavy, pouring into him like wet cement, clogging his lungs, seeping into his veins. He felt himself hollowing, stripped down to nothing but guilt.

I’m not this, he thought. But a deeper voice whispered back.
You are. You always were.

And then the screaming began.

Not his voice—never his.
Theirs.

Every face from the mirror.
Every life broken under the weight of his silence.

They shrieked until his mind cracked, until the roar of guilt devoured the last fragile piece of what had once been human.

And The Harrower stood unmoving.
Patient as eternity.
Watching, as it always had, until the inevitable was complete.