The elevator door shut behind them with a hiss that sounded too alive. Amelia didn't speak. Neither did Alexis. The silence between them was no longer comfortable—it was coiled, like the spiral painted on the mirror in Room 303.
They had walked through fog to get here. Not real fog, but something thicker—memory? A presence? The city felt quieter tonight. As if waiting.
"Do you feel it?" Alexis asked at last, her voice almost swallowed by the corridor's damp walls.
Amelia nodded. "Like we're being watched by something that used to be human. Or wanted to be."
The hotel they stood in had no record in public archives. No nameplate. Its windows reflected nothing. Yet Room 303 had been here, waiting for them.
They opened the door again.
This time, it was a forest.
Branches grew through the carpet. A sapling pulsed from the sink. Roots broke through the ceiling tiles and twisted like veins. The spiral was gone—but its echo remained in the air, the scent of damp leaves and blood.
And then the whispers began.
Not in words. In seasons. In decay. In bloom.
Amelia took a step forward—and the room changed. She stood in her childhood bedroom. But Alexis still saw the forest. They were occupying the same space, but different realities.
"Alexis," Amelia said, but her voice came out as birdsong.
Alexis turned sharply. "That's not funny."
"I didn't—" But the birds were chirping louder now. Forming words. A memory. A warning.
> Some seeds remember. Some seeds become.
Alexis raised her phone to take a picture. The screen cracked instantly.
Amelia touched a tree branch. It pulsed like a heartbeat.
They looked at each other, both realizing something too late:
They weren't investigating the spiral anymore.
They were inside it.