CHAPTER 3: THE HORROR INSIDE THE LOCKET
The illusion collapsed completely.
Elias awoke inside a nightmare beyond comprehension.
He wasn't standing in a skyscraper.
He wasn't even human anymore.
His consciousness floated inside a laboratory where a single brain pulsed inside a transparent cylinder.
His brain.
Scientists moved around him.
But they weren't human.
Their bodies bent at impossible angles.
Their voices resonated directly inside his mind.
They weren't studying him.
They were harvesting him.
Every memory.
Every fear.
Every regret.
Then the laboratory began to bleed black oil.
The walls melted.
The ceiling vanished.
And beyond it appeared thousands of giant lidless eyes staring down from an endless void.
The truth finally arrived.
The janitor.
The child.
The CEO.
The marriage certificate.
The entire simulation had been engineered for one purpose.
To feed on his suffering.
Desperate, Elias reached for the locket mentioned by the boy.
His fingers finally clicked it open.
Inside wasn't a photograph.
Inside was a mirror.
And staring back at him was not his own reflection.
But the face of the creature behind the eyes.
The architect of the nightmare.
The thing consuming every version of reality.
The thing feeding on every loop.
The thing feeding on him.
Because the monster was never outside the simulation.
The monster was Elias himself.
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And as the atrium slowly rebuilt around him once more, he heard the familiar sound of small footsteps running across the floor.
The loop had begun again.
