BLEEDING VELVET

The door made of ribs opened with a sound like cracking knuckles from the mouth of Hell.

Almond didn't look back.

Not at Aren's ashes. Not at the golden god still breathing in chains. Not at Velda who had fallen silent, or Kairo, who now walked like he'd aged a thousand years in a second.

She stepped into the next space like she'd done it in another life. Like the blood on her fingers was a passport. Like fire had always been her shadow.

Inside: darkness that moved.

It slithered against her skin. It tasted her name. It whispered things her mother never dared to tell her.

Velda followed next, her breath coming in short, trembling clouds. Behind her, Kairo muttered a prayer to a god that had been mute since birth.

"What is this place?" Velda asked.

Almond didn't answer. Because the moment she opened her mouth, the darkness tried to crawl in.

She kept walking.

The corridor twisted like intestines. It pulsed, faintly alive. Every step felt like walking inside someone's unspoken memory.

Etched into the walls were moving images—scenes of Almond's life that never happened.

In one, she was married. In white. To Aren. Smiling like nothing had ever broken her.

In another, she was dead. But peacefully so. Buried beneath a weeping willow with fresh flowers laid by Kairo.

And then the last one—

She was a god.

Crowned in barbed gold.

Surrounded by worshipers on their knees.

Bleeding from her eyes.

Smiling.

Velda looked away.

"None of these are real," she said.

"They're all real," Almond whispered. "Just not mine."

The corridor ended in a door made of tongues.

It spoke before she touched it.

"Do you accept what you are?"

Almond's hand trembled above the flesh.

"I don't know what I am," she said.

The door hissed.

"Wrong answer."

It didn't open.

It swallowed her.

Inside the mouth of the door, Almond was alone.

Stripped of power. Stripped of name.

And before her: a mirror. One last mirror. But not made of glass. Made of memories.

She saw herself as a child. Laughing.

She saw herself being hurt. Over and over.

She saw herself choosing pain instead of freedom, rage instead of forgiveness, fire instead of sleep.

She touched the mirror.

And it cut her.

"Why do you keep bleeding?" a voice asked.

She answered without pause:

"Because I haven't finished becoming."

And just like that—the mirror shattered.

And behind it?

Nothing.

Not even fire.

Then a figure rose from the floor.

Not Almond.

Not her twin.

Not her god.

But someone… new.

They wore Almond's face. But older. Wiser. Deadlier.

Their smile was cruel.

Their voice was colder.

"I'm what you become when you stop pretending to be good," the new self said.

"Then show me," Almond whispered.

Outside the mouth, Velda waited.

Kairo held her hand.

And when the door of tongues vomited Almond back out, she wasn't the same.

Her eyes were silver.

Her hands crackled with invisible chains.

Her voice? It echoed with too many selves.

Kairo gasped. "What… what are you now?"

Almond didn't smile.

"I'm the part they buried in the beginning," she said. "I'm the last fire they couldn't drown."

Behind her, the entire corridor caught flame—

But none of them looked back.

The flame didn't devour them—it followed. Like a loyal hound. A creature that no longer burned, but obeyed.

Velda looked at Almond's back. "You've changed."

"I remembered," Almond murmured.

"What?"

"What I came here to do."

They passed through a stone archway with teeth carved into its frame.

Another door waited.

This one was breathing.

And it was crying.

The tears were gold.

Kairo touched one. It burned his finger and healed an old scar at the same time.

"This place…" he whispered. "It's not just about pain."

"No," Almond said. "It's about cost."

The fire behind them howled like a mourning beast.

And somewhere beneath their feet… chains snapped.

Almond paused in front of the golden door, pressing her palm to it.

"Are we sure we want to keep going?" Velda asked, almost too softly to hear.

"We never had a choice," Almond replied.

Kairo nodded. "Only illusions of one."

The door hissed like it knew their names.

Then it opened to reveal an empty throne.

And on the walls around it—hundreds of names carved in bone.

Almond's name wasn't there.

Not yet.