Chapter 44 – The Breath Beneath the Floorboards

The walls had mouths now.

Not literal ones, no—but lips implied in the molding, teeth hidden in cracked patterns. Caelum walked slowly, each step a prayer, not to a god, but to the silence beneath all things.

The hallway narrowed behind him, a subtle gesture. The mansion didn’t need to roar anymore. It whispered now.

“Where are you going, Caelum?”

The Voice wasn’t mocking today. It was almost… wistful.

“I don’t know,” Caelum said aloud. “But something’s waking.”

He stepped into a room he hadn’t noticed before. The door hadn’t been there yesterday. Or maybe it had, wearing a different face.

The room was still, as if time itself had exhaled and left. Wallpaper peeled in deliberate symbols—an alphabet only his mind could misread. On the floor: a trapdoor. Brass handle. Wood warped from something wet beneath.

He stared.

The Voice said nothing.

Symbolism coiled through the space. A mirror cracked from the center like an eye struck blind. A child’s toy—an old, scorched marionette—hung in the corner by a single thread, spinning.

Caelum knelt. The handle was colder than thought. Something inside him pulsed—not his heart, but the memory of a decision never made.

He opened it.

A stairwell spiraled downward into dark.

And from the dark came breath.

The mansion changed its tone in the underground. It was no longer dreaming—it was remembering. The staircase was tight, the walls pulsating faintly like capillaries. The smell of old blood. Of regret fossilized.

With every step, Caelum’s shadow grew longer.

And behind him, another set of footsteps.

Not echo.

Not imagined.

Just… late.

“Who’s there?” he asked. No one replied, but a picture flashed in his head—a man in a white coat. A clipboard. A kind smile stretched taut.

Dr. Lorne.

But Caelum shook the image away. Not yet. Not real. Not here.

The Room Beneath All Rooms

At the base of the stairs, he entered a room that shouldn’t exist. Vast. Circular. Walls like wombs—pulsing with memories not his own. And in the center: a chair. Wooden. Strapped.

He recognized it.

Flash.

Electricity.

Foam between teeth.

A voice saying, “It’s not real, Caelum. You’re just sick.”

He turned around. The mansion was gone.

Now he was in the ward again.

White walls. Screams down the hall.

A hand on his shoulder—

But it was his own.

The Dialogue of Madness

Voice: “So. You remember.”

Caelum: “No. I feel.”

Voice: “And what is feeling if not memory with teeth?”

He clutched his head. The mansion pulsed around him. The walls collapsed, revealing hundreds of Caelums, each staring back—different ages, moods, injuries.

One of them was whispering:

“You were prescribed this world.”

Caelum collapsed to his knees. The floor became water. Beneath it, images:

Dr. Lorne handing him a bottle of pills, eyes too calm. His mother shaking him, weeping, “Why can’t you just stay with me?” The first hallucination—black tendrils in the mirror, laughing.

And then—

The real-world hallway. A flickering bulb. Caelum with a knife. Looking for Lorne.

But it wasn’t now.

This was still memory.

He touched the floor. And whispered:

“I will find you. I will make you see.”

Suddenly, he was split.

Half of him remained in the mansion. The other—the part that remembered how to bleed—was standing on real ground, somewhere outside, barefoot and laughing.

And for a moment, both realities overlapped.

A door opened.

And behind it stood a new figure—faceless, tall, wrapped in medical gauze. Its presence carried authority and guilt.

Caelum stood.

The Voice quieted.

“It’s time,” he said.

And the mansion whispered:

“Then break.”