Chapter 43: The Heart of the Labyrinth

The mansion groaned beneath Caelum’s feet as if the very walls resented his presence. He moved through it as one does through an oppressive fog, each step sinking deeper into the void. He was becoming the mansion. Every hallway a reflection of his fractured mind, every mirror a piece of his crumbling identity. The silence was suffocating, but it wasn’t the silence of peace—it was the stillness before a storm. A storm he was caught in.

Caelum reached out to touch the wall beside him, his fingers grazing the cold marble surface, but it felt like something was lurking just beneath it, clawing at his skin. He pulled his hand back, but the sensation lingered like a phantom touch, his body trembling from an invisible force.

The mansion never let him forget.

The twisted grandeur of the building stretched endlessly before him, its halls impossibly long, its ceilings impossibly high. The light was dim, as though reality itself were turning a blind eye to him. Shadows stretched unnaturally along the walls, curling like living things, watching him with eyes he couldn’t see.

“It’s waiting for you.” The voice whispered through the air, so close Caelum could feel the words press against his eardrums.

His heart skipped. “Not again.” He whispered to himself, shaking his head. “It’s only in my head.”

But his reflection in the glass beside him—the one that stretched impossibly, dark and twisted—reminded him that he was no longer sure of where the boundaries of his mind began and the mansion ended.

He turned the corner, nearly stumbling over his own feet, but caught himself. The hallway stretched infinitely, the oppressive silence around him making his thoughts twist and turn like echoes in a hollow cavern. “This isn’t real.”

But as he stepped forward, the walls shifted. The air thickened. Was it just his mind, or was the mansion adjusting to his thoughts?

He froze.

The rooms—there were too many. Too many doors, too many reflections.

One door, slightly ajar, caught his attention.

He moved toward it. His heart beat louder now, the pounding resonating through his skull. Every thought was a disjointed rhythm, each beat a hammer against his fragile understanding of reality. He pushed the door open, stepping into the room beyond.

It was a dimly lit library.

Bookshelves lined the walls—endless rows of forgotten knowledge. The air smelled of old paper and dust, as though time had forgotten this place, just as it had forgotten him.

In the center of the room, there was a chair, facing a small table. And on the table—his medication. His heart froze.

It was the same pill bottle, the one he’d tried to bury in his mind. The one Dr. Lorne had given him, the one that had started all of this. The one that had turned his mind inside out.

A strange pull took him toward it. He reached for the bottle, the urge to open it unbearable. Maybe just one more. Maybe just to make it stop.

But as his fingers brushed the plastic, a memory resurfaced. Dr. Lorne.

Dr. Lorne’s cold eyes, those eyes that had prescribed him his fate, flashed before him. He could almost hear the doctor’s voice, soothing and sharp all at once, “You need it, Caelum. To feel better. To understand.”

The pills had been a lie. They were never meant to help him—they were meant to control him. The doctor had known. He’d always known.

“You think you’re free of me? You think this place, this twisted thing, is the end? This is just the beginning.”

His breath quickened. Caelum slammed the bottle down onto the table. The pills scattered like broken teeth.

“I won’t take it.” His voice was raw, cracking.

The room around him shifted again. The mansion, always alive, always shifting. The walls closed in as if the space was shrinking, the light dimming.

“No escape. No way out.”

Suddenly, the walls bent inward, elongating into impossible angles. The room was no longer a library—it was a prison. A mausoleum for his mind.

Was he still sane?

Caelum turned around, his pulse racing. But the door—his only exit—was gone. The walls had swallowed it.

The room tilted, and Caelum staggered. The mansion was alive.

But there, standing at the center of the room, was a figure.

Dante.

His pale face was barely visible in the shifting darkness, his eyes gleaming like twin moons in a midnight sky. His voice, when it came, was a whisper—“You’re closer now, Caelum. Closer to the truth. But truth, like this place, is never simple. It twists. It bends.”

“You—You knew.”

Dante’s smile was slow, deliberate. “I’ve always known.”

Caelum’s mind screamed. “I didn’t ask for this!”

“None of us ever do.”

“Then help me. Please.”

“I’ve already helped you, Caelum. Now, you must help yourself. The mansion will show you everything you need to see. But you must be ready to face it. To face him.”

The walls groaned again, the air heavy with dread. Caelum felt the weight of every word. Dr. Lorne. The man who had set him on this path.

“You’re right. The truth is ugly. And the truth is not your friend.”

The mansion trembled, as though breathing in sync with him, as though it was preparing to swallow him whole. But there was no escape. Not from this.

Not from the truth.

He turned his gaze to the shattered mirror beside him, seeing his reflection twist and writhe—an amalgamation of all his fractured selves, pieces of who he was and who he might never be.

And the doctor’s face was there, too.

The truth wasn’t just in the mansion—it was in him.

The light flickered once more, and Caelum felt the weight of his own mind crashing into him. He wasn’t sure whether he was the architect of this madness or the victim.

But he would find out.

He would find out who he was.