[Stage Six: Mirror of the Soul - Minute 10 ]
There was no more air left in the white room. The atmosphere had been replaced by a heavy, metallic, and suffocating stench—the smell of warm blood wafting from the remains of "Father" and the corpse of "Lina," discarded on the floor like slaughterhouse waste. I looked at the digital timer through a blurry, red haze covering my eyes. [10:00] Ten minutes. Only six hundred seconds separated me from survival... or eternal madness.
The child, standing in blood-stained clothes over my father's remains, wiped the blood from his face with the back of his small hand—an innocent gesture that stood in jarring contrast to the scene. He turned slowly... very slowly and deliberately... toward the last corner. Toward Mother. She was huddled in the corner, trembling like an autumn leaf in a violent gale, covering her face with her hands, muttering terrified, frantic prayers, her voice quivering like a snapped string.
"The most important part remains..." the child whispered, walking toward her with slow steps, dragging the long knife behind him on the white floor. Screeeech... The sound of metal grinding against tile grated on the ears and carved into the nerves.
He reached her. He didn't strike her. Instead, he grabbed her by her gray hair, which had begun to whiten from horror, and forced her head up to face me. "Look at your son, Mother," the child said in a mocking tone, gesturing toward me with the knife. "Look at the monster you raised. Look at the idol who prefers to carry a bucket of paint over saving you."
My mother looked at me. Her eyes were drowned in tears, surrounded by black circles of exhaustion. Her gaze lacked my father's malice and Lina's disgust; in it was a plea. A plea that breaks backs and bows mountains. The gaze of a child seeking protection from their parent, but reversed. "Ray..." she called me in a trembling voice, a voice I knew better than my own. "My son... I am your mother... the one who nursed you... who stayed up with you when you were sick with fever." She reached her shaking hand toward me, fingers stained with my father's blood: "Don't let him slaughter me... don't be ungrateful... save me, my darling. Didn't you promise you would protect me?"
The child laughed and brought down the knife. He didn't cut off a limb like he did with Father. Instead, he began to flay the skin. Slice! He plunged the knife into her shoulder and pulled slowly—agonizingly slowly—to maximize the torment. "AAAAAAAH!" My mother's scream wasn't an ordinary cry of pain. It was a howl. The howl of an animal being slaughtered slowly, realizing its end. "Ray!! Help me! It burns! My son, please! The fire was more merciful than this!"
I closed my eyes for a moment, then forced them open. The tears pooling in my eyes weren't salty and clear this time. I felt a warm, heavy, viscous liquid descending from the corners of my eyes, rolling down my cheeks and dripping onto my lips. I tasted it. Blood. I was crying blood. The capillaries in my eyes had burst from the sheer psychological pressure. But the bucket... that cursed bucket didn't move a single millimeter. My hand was a piece of granite, completely detached from my soul burning in hell.
"Stubborn..." the child growled in annoyance. He stabbed Mother in the thigh. Then in the stomach. These were non-lethal, anatomically calculated stabs intended to prolong the pain to the absolute limit without a quick death. Mother writhed on the floor, trying to grab the child's feet to stop him, then she began to crawl. She crawled toward me, bleeding, leaving a wide, long trail of crimson blood on the white expanse. She reached my feet. She grabbed my tattered shoe with her blood-stained hand and rubbed her cheek against it. "My son..." she whispered in a voice choked with blood, kissing my shoe. "Wasn't I a good mother? Why do you hate me? What did I do to you?" She raised her bruised and wounded face to me, the light in her eyes fading: "Just drop the bucket... is this red liquid more precious than your mother's blood? Is it easy for you to watch me die piece by piece?"
I looked down. I saw her face. I saw her tears mixed with my blood. My heart was screaming, pounding against my ribcage, wanting to burst out: (Drop the bucket! To hell with the system! To hell with the power! Embrace her! Even if she is an illusion, don't let her suffer! She is your mother!)
But my cold mind... the mind of the "Survivor" forged in the White Corridor... screamed louder and harsher: (She is a puppet... she is a code... she is a test... if you move, you die, and your revenge dies, and her true memory dies with you. Steadfastness is the only mercy.)
I didn't move. I looked at her with bloody eyes and said inwardly in a broken voice: "Forgive me, Mother. Forgive me because I will kill you with my silence."
The child went insane with rage. "Why won't you move?!" he screamed with a terrifying, childish anger, his voice morphing into a double-layered demonic roar. "Move! Cry! Collapse!" He began to stab her frantically and randomly. In her back, her neck, her hands that clutched my shoe. Blood sprayed and covered the child's face entirely; he looked like a small red demon bathing in sin. Mother stopped talking. Her voice turned into a wet death rattle, her eyes fixed on me, blaming me in silence, begging for one last look of pity... until the light in them went out. Her head fell onto my feet. She died. And I was still holding a bucket of paint.
A deathly silence pervaded the room. I stood in the middle of a pool of my family's blood. Father, Lina, and Mother. The child was panting, the knife in his hand dripping blood, his face and shirt covered in deep crimson. He looked at me. He found no movement. The paint did not spill. The bucket did not fall.
The child's face flushed with fury. The veins in his neck bulged. He threw the knife onto the floor with force, letting out a loud ring. "Damn you!" he screamed in a voice that shook the room and made the walls tremble. "Damn your coldness! Damn your steadfastness! Are you a stone? Do you have no heart? How can you stand there?!" He kicked my mother's corpse in anger, then spat on it. "I hate you! I hate this steadfastness of yours!"
Suddenly... the transformation occurred. As the child screamed, the corpses on the floor began to change. Lina's beautiful, disfigured corpse... began to swell, turning a rotting green. Father's severed remains... began to melt and fuse together to form black fleshy masses. My mother's corpse beneath my feet... her soft skin turned into slimy, thick, scaly hide.
In mere seconds, my family vanished. In their place stood three hideous, disfigured green ghouls with yellow eyes and protruding fangs, emitting disgusting hissing sounds even in death. They were never human. They were merely monsters disguised as my loved ones.
My bloody eyes widened in cold shock, mixed with bitter relief. "I was right..." I whispered in a raspy voice, the bloody tears drying on my cheeks. "Monsters... just monsters."
The child looked at them with disgust, as if the play had ended and the actors had failed their roles. He raised his small hand and snapped his fingers with boredom. Poof! The ghouls' corpses turned to black dust and vanished into the air as if they never existed. The blood vanished. The remains vanished. The stench vanished. The floor returned to being white, clean, and sterile as it was before.
The child wiped the illusory blood from his face indifferently, returning to his terrifying calm in a single second. He looked at me with green eyes, cold as ice, devoid of any emotion. "Fine, Ray... you've uncovered the trick. You've surpassed the puppet show." He clapped slowly. "You are firm... firmer than I expected. You've killed your emotions to survive."
He walked slowly toward the hanging digital clock, which indicated: [05:00]
He turned to me, and his demonic smile returned, but this time it was wider, darker, and more serious. "Five minutes remain. I've exhausted the emotions... I've exhausted the memories... and I've exhausted the physical pain." From his pocket, he pulled something small, black, resembling a broken mirror. "Now... only the final card remains. The card that cannot be faked."
He looked me straight in the eyes and said in a voice dripping with venom and truth: "Let us see if you will stand firm... against yourself."