Chapter XXIII: The Silent Interval
The bathroom light flickered.
Nathaniel Cross stood frozen, both palms braced against the sink. His reflection should have been staring back at him, but it wasn't. Instead, the pale figure in the mirror pressed its hand to the glass as though it were the barrier, not him. Its lips moved soundlessly, eyes silver and hollow, whispering words he felt more than heard.
Knock. Knock.
The scar beneath his shirt burned like it had heard them too.
Nathaniel staggered back, slamming into the tiled wall. His toothbrush clattered to the floor, echoing far too loud in the tiny flat. He shut his eyes, counted, forced air into his lungs.
When he opened them again, his reflection was normal.
Just him. Messy hair, bloodshot eyes, water dripping from his chin.
Normal.
Except his reflection was still smiling.
And he wasn't.
He fled the flat.
The gray London dawn clung to the streets, fog curling low over wet cobblestones. Buses hissed past, cyclists hunched in rain-slick jackets, the city alive in its indifferent rhythm. Nathaniel pulled his coat tighter and kept his head down, every sound amplified in his ears.
The hum of a streetlamp.
The hiss of tires.
The scrape of footsteps behind him that always stopped when he turned.
He told himself he was just tired. Delirious. Hallucinating after too many nights without sleep.
But then he saw the cracks.
Hairline fractures ran across the pavement, glowing faintly like veins of silver beneath the stone. No one else noticed. Pedestrians stepped over them, cars rolled across them, cyclists cut through them without pause.
But Nathaniel felt them hum. In rhythm with his scar.
By noon he had retreated into the university's library. Its vaulted ceilings and dust-stained windows usually offered comfort, the kind of silence he could bury himself in. But today the silence felt sharper.
Every cough, every page turn, every footstep echoed like a hammer.
He slumped into a corner table, textbooks spread open in front of him. Engineering formulas and diagrams stared up like strangers. Numbers used to soothe him. Now they mocked him with their order, their precision.
The notebook sat in his satchel. Unmoved. Silent.
He didn't dare open it.
But it pulsed. He swore he felt it pulse, like a second heart waiting to beat louder than his own.
Nathaniel clenched his fists, whispered to himself:
"You're still human. You're still you."
Across the table, a student lifted his head. A stranger. Thin, pale, with hair falling across his eyes. He stared too long, unblinking, then leaned forward and whispered:
"You rehearsed well."
Nathaniel's breath caught. His chair scraped back violently as he stood, slamming his knee against the table. The noise shot through the library. Everyone turned.
But the pale student was gone.
Vanished like he'd never been there.
Darkness crept faster that day. By six, clouds swallowed the last trace of sun. Nathaniel couldn't bring himself to return to the flat. He walked instead, coat soaked, shoes heavy with rain, following streets he didn't recognize.
The city felt wrong.
Streetlamps bent at angles they shouldn't. Windows reflected buildings that weren't behind him. The air tasted like metal.
And always—knocks.
From doors he passed. From walls he brushed against. From the very ground under his soles.
Knock. Knock.
Once, he froze at a crossing. The traffic light blinked red, but no cars came. The street was empty. Silent.
Then, from the manhole at his feet:
Knock. Knock.
Nathaniel fled into a narrow alley, chest heaving. His coat clung like a second skin.
"Running again," said a voice.
The man from the void stood at the alley's end. Gray coat. Sharp features. Eyes like bottomless pits.
Nathaniel stumbled back. "Stay away."
The man tilted his head, the faintest smile curling his lips. "Do you still believe you are running? No. You are being shown."
The scar seared beneath Nathaniel's shirt. His knees buckled, but he forced himself upright, gripping the wrench he carried everywhere now.
"I don't want this," he rasped. "I don't want any of it."
The man's expression darkened, as though pitying him. "Doors never ask to open. They simply do."
He stepped closer. Rain didn't touch him. Shadows bent toward him.
Nathaniel raised the wrench. His hands shook, but his voice was steady. "What happens if I refuse?"
The man stopped inches away, eyes burning. "Then they open without you. And you—" His voice broke into a thousand whispers, surrounding Nathaniel from every angle. "—shatter."
The ground split.
Cracks tore across the alley, glowing with white fire. The bricks peeled away into static. The rain froze midair, drops suspended like glass beads.
And through the cracks came hands.
Hundreds. Thousands. Twisting, reaching, dragging themselves upward. They didn't belong to bodies. Just hands, endless hands, each knocking against the world as if begging to be let through.
Knock. Knock.
Nathaniel's scream caught in his throat. He swung the wrench wildly, but every strike passed through static, sparking uselessly.
The man's voice boomed over the chaos: "Choose, Nathaniel Cross. Open—or be torn."
The scar ignited, blinding white. Nathaniel collapsed to his knees, clutching his chest, vision shattering into fragments. His lungs filled with fire.
And in the fire, voices whispered—his own voice, multiplied, layered:
"Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock."
He fell.
Not onto ground. Not into air. Into sound.
The knocks became drums, thunder, a heartbeat that wasn't his. His body dissolved, piece by piece, until only his mind remained, plummeting through an endless void.
The hands followed him. Reaching. Clawing. Pulling him deeper.
Then—silence.
Complete. Crushing.
Nathaniel landed on stone.
He stood in a vast cathedral. Its spires stretched higher than sight, its walls woven from mirrors and shadow. Every surface reflected him—but not him.
One Nathaniel was faceless.
Another dripped blood from his eyes.
Another grinned with silver teeth.
Another pounded against the mirror, mouthing let me out.
At the cathedral's center stood a single door.
Tall. Black. Without handle or hinge.
The scar on his chest pulsed in perfect rhythm with it.
Knock. Knock.
Nathaniel staggered forward, whispering, "No... no, not me, not me—"
The reflections whispered in unison:
"Yes, you. Yes, you. Yes, you."
He fell to his knees before the door, tears mixing with sweat, his voice breaking:
"Why me? Why me?"
The cathedral answered with a whisper that rattled every mirror.
"Because you are already open."
Nathaniel jolted awake on his couch.
Morning light slanted through the blinds. The radiator ticked. The fridge hummed. The flat looked ordinary again.
Except for the cracks.
They spiderwebbed across his ceiling now, faint but glowing.
And the notebook lay open on the floor.
Fresh words scrawled across its pages in jagged black ink:
"The silence watches."
Nathaniel pressed his palms to his face and sobbed.
Because for the first time, he wasn't sure if he had woken up at all.