Jacob had stopped counting how many times he’d died. It no longer mattered. Every “death” led him somewhere new — deeper, stranger, more unrecognizable. The hospital had stopped resembling anything human. It breathed now. It pulsed. Its walls were moist and soft underfoot, veined with tubes that pumped bck liquid like blood. The ceilings wept. The doors were mouths. And the air? It tasted like ash and copper. He knew the rules had changed. He hadn’t seen another person in what felt like days—weeks maybe. Not even Amanda. Not even her voice. But the thing that followed him? That had never left. It never showed itself directly. It didn’t need to. It spoke through the broken speakers in the ceilings. Through the flickering TVs. Through the mouths of corpses and the echo of his own footsteps. Jacob… Jacob, come home. It knew him. It was him. He had come to fear the quiet moments more than anything else, because that was when he could feel it breathing behind the walls—close enough to touch. The hospital had become its skin, and Jacob, just another cell trying to escape. But today—this time—the game was different. He fell again. From where, he couldn’t say. The floor simply gave way beneath his feet and he plummeted into bckness, as he always did, expecting to wake in another twisted wing of the hospital. But not this time. This time, he nded hard and didn’t wake. Because he wasn’t asleep. He groaned as he rose to his feet, joints aching. His shoes sank slightly into the soft, spongy ground. The hallway ahead stretched endlessly, wrapped in twitching, organic walls. A warm, wet breeze blew from the corridor’s end, carrying a low, melodic hum. It wasn’t music, exactly—it was more like… a lulby. Familiar. His mother’s lulby. Jacob’s stomach twisted. “No,” he whispered. “You don’t get to have that.” The walls around him shuddered in response. The humming grew louder. And then he saw it. The thing. It stood at the end of the hallway. At least, part of it did. What Jacob could see was only a sliver—its full height swallowed by the corridor’s curved ceiling. Its skin was gray, striated with veins that glowed faintly beneath the surface like dying embers. Limbs hung loosely from its sides—some human, some animal, some too mangled to name. But it was the faces that made Jacob back away. Hundreds of them. Stitched into the creature’s chest, its arms, even its spine. Some had eyes that blinked in slow, unnatural rhythms. Others whispered constantly, lips moving without sound. He saw Amanda’s face among them. His father. His childhood dog. And himself. Over and over again. One of the Jacobs blinked—and then smiled. Jacob screamed. “What are you!?” he shouted. The creature took one step forward. The hallway flexed under its weight. The lights above flickered and died, one by one, plunging the corridor into crimson darkness. Then it spoke—not aloud, but into his mind. “You know what I am, Jacob. You made me.” “No,” he growled. “I didn’t—this pce, this thing, this nightmare—I didn’t create it!” “Not with your hands,” it whispered. “With your grief.” The creature’s voice began to change as it spoke, flickering between people Jacob knew. His mother. His old therapist. Amanda. The drunk driver who hit his cousin. All voices from his past—all wrapped in guilt. Jacob stumbled back, smming into a wall of pulsing flesh. He gasped, tried to run, but the hallway closed behind him. He was being herded. “Every death… was your attempt to escape yourself,” the voice continued. “But Bck Hollow isn’t a pce.” “It’s a mirror.” Jacob dropped to his knees. “I just wanted to get out. I just wanted to leave…” The thing knelt in front of him—its massive, contorted form pressing into the space like it was made of shadow and rot. One of its many arms reached out and touched Jacob’s forehead. And in an instant— He saw everything. He saw hundreds of versions of himself—some old, some young, some completely broken—all trapped in loops. Different lives. Different choices. But the same guilt. Always the same hospital. It changed for each version of him—sometimes a burning house, sometimes a dark forest, sometimes a car crash he couldn’t stop—but it always ended here. With the creature. With himself. Because the thing wasn’t separate. It was Jacob. All of him. All the parts he refused to face. Every bad decision. Every death he caused. Every version of him that gave up and surrendered to the void. They had fused. Grown roots. And become something immortal. The thing leaned down. Its stitched-together lips moved again. “You are the disease, Jacob. We are the cure.” Jacob stared, breathless. “Then kill me.” The creature paused. And smiled. “You’ve already died too many times. There is no ‘killing’ what you’ve become.” “Then… what now?” The thing stood. And gestured behind Jacob. A door had appeared. Tall. Bck. Wooden. Simple. And humming with life. “One st death,” the voice said. “But this one… you do by choice.” “Step through, and see what waits.” “Or stay. And become me forever.” Jacob stood slowly. And stared at the door. He reached for the handle.