Whispers of the Echo
1579 Words
The door slammed shut behind them with a thud that echoed like a warning. Emily flinched. The obsidian key warmed again in her grip, its strange pulse now in rhythm with her heartbeat. She did not know if it was responding to her fear or feeding from it.
Cass leaned against the desk, struggling to catch her breath. “We barely made it out of there. That room was not real. Not in the way it looked.”
Logan kept his eyes on the door. “It was built to keep something in. Or maybe to test who could survive it.”
Emily crouched and examined the shards of mirror scattered across the floor like shattered truths. Each fragment caught flickers of light and memory, images that did not belong to the present. Her own reflection stared back from a dozen broken angles.
She stood and tightened her grip on the key. “Carrow said this opens what lies beneath Ridgewood. But what exactly is down there?”
Cass’s voice lowered. “There are stories. That this school was built over something older. Some say a tomb. Others say a gate. All of them agree on one thing. It chooses who enters.”
Logan nodded grimly. “We thought we were unraveling hauntings. But this feels orchestrated. Like a game we were tricked into playing.”
Emily’s wrist tingled again where the mark pulsed softly. “This is not just about the school anymore. It is about me.”
From the hallway, the long chime of the old grandfather clock rang out. Midnight.
Cass turned toward the sound, her face tense. “Time is running out. We either open that door or we walk away. For good.”
Emily met Logan’s gaze. “We were never meant to walk away.”
He nodded slowly. “Then we go together.”
They moved to the desk’s base, where the hidden panel had appeared earlier. Emily knelt and fitted the obsidian key into the jagged slot. It clicked into place with a deep and satisfying lock. Then the floor beneath them trembled.
The wood gave way.
They plunged into darkness.
Their screams were swallowed by the void as they fell. But the descent slowed before panic could set in completely, and they landed, firmly, yet without pain, on cold stone.
The chamber they had entered was vast. The air was thick with moisture, and a faint metallic scent hung in it. Old torches flared to life along the curved walls, revealing stone blocks marked with ancient runes glowing faint blue.
“This place is alive,” Cass whispered.
Ahead of them, an arched stone door stood half open. Symbols danced across its surface. A deep voice echoed from within.
“You have crossed the threshold.”
Emily stepped forward. “We are not here to turn back.”
The chamber stretched far beyond what any architecture above should have allowed. The ceiling was lost in shadows, and every footstep echoed louder than expected. At the center stood an altar of obsidian stone. A basin glimmered atop it, filled with something silvery and shifting.
“This is not for ceremony,” Logan muttered. “It is for containment.”
Cass studied the markings. “This is where it began. All the missing students. All the strange events. This room has held it all.”
Emily touched her wrist again. The mark burned. “And it is calling me now.”
A sudden wind swept through the chamber, lifting dust and extinguishing several torches. The basin began to ripple. From it rose dark smoke, coiling into a shape that resembled a person, though no face could be seen. Only glowing amber eyes.
The voice was deeper now. “You have come farther than any before you, Emily.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I am the Echo. The soul of Ridgewood. The guardian of its memory.”
Cass stepped back. “It is conscious?”
The Echo nodded. “Ridgewood remembers every fear. Every lie. Every betrayal. It binds itself to those it marks.”
Emily stood her ground. “Then tell me how to end it.”
“There is only one way,” the Echo replied. “But it demands sacrifice.”
The altar shifted. A hidden compartment revealed a small leather bound book.
Emily opened it. Inside were sketches, blueprints, journal entries, all tracing back to the school’s founder. A man obsessed with capturing time, freezing memory, and transcending death. His work failed. The school turned on him. The project became a curse.
Cass’s eyes widened. “He turned this place into a vessel.”
Logan clenched his fists. “We have to destroy it.”
The Echo’s voice grew soft. “Beyond this chamber lies the final choice.”
They approached the back of the room. A narrow passage opened behind the altar.
The air turned colder with each step. Their breaths fogged in front of them. At the end of the path was another chamber, circular and silent. In its center stood a pedestal, cradling a blackened stone door etched with runes.
Emily approached. The obsidian key pulsed in her hand.
She turned to Cass and Logan one last time. “Whatever is behind this door, this is where it ends.”
Logan placed a hand on her shoulder. “We are with you. All the way.”
She fit the key into the final lock. It turned slowly.
The door opened.
Behind it waited only darkness. Not empty. Not silent. But watchful.
Emily stepped inside.
The dark swallowed her whole.
And Ridgewood watched.
The darkness was not absence. It was presence.
It breathed.
The air shifted around Emily as if the space itself had lungs. Cold pressure pressed against her skin, yet there was no wind. The ground beneath her boots felt more like thought than stone, pulsing and humming faintly with a rhythm not her own.
Cass and Logan stepped in behind her. The door sealed shut.
No going back.
They stood in a long corridor, lit faintly by veins of blue light crawling along the walls like electric roots. The silence was full, not dead, but listening.
Emily’s voice was barely a whisper. “It is alive.”
“No,” Logan said. “It is aware.”
They moved forward. Every step echoed with unnatural clarity, as though the walls were memorizing their presence. Symbols blinked into view as they passed, strange glyphs glowing softly, shifting between languages none of them recognized.
At the corridor’s end, a large mirror stood, unbroken, freestanding, framed in obsidian metal that pulsed like a heartbeat. But the reflection was wrong.
Emily saw herself, but older. Worn down. Hollow eyed. Behind her stood no one.
Cass leaned closer, then gasped. “This mirror shows what the school wants. Or fears.”
Logan touched the glass and jerked his hand back. “It feels like it knows me.”
The mirror shifted again. This time, the image showed Ridgewood burning. Its walls twisted. Students screamed silently, vanishing into their lockers, their classrooms. A spiral clock spun above the building, melting with each turn.
Emily clenched her fists. “This is not prophecy. It is warning.”
The mirror cracked.
And from its center, a figure emerged, another Echo, this one in the shape of a child with hollow eyes and no mouth. It raised a hand, pointing back the way they came.
Cass whispered, “It wants us to leave.”
Emily stood her ground. “We cannot. Not yet.”
The figure’s eyes glowed, and the corridor shook. The ground split slightly beneath their feet, revealing beneath it a mass of gears turning endlessly, clocks without hands. Time unraveling.
“This place,” Logan said, “is built on memory, on choices. The ones they made. The ones we did not.”
Emily looked past the figure. A door shimmered into view at the far end of the corridor, half real, flickering like an old film frame.
“That is it,” she said. “The final door.”
Cass glanced between the child Echo and the door. “We go through, we might not come back.”
Emily stepped forward, heart pounding. “If we do not, Ridgewood keeps feeding. It keeps choosing.”
The figure did not move.
She passed through it.
Her body tingled with ice, but she stayed upright.
Cass and Logan followed.
The moment they stepped through the flickering door, sound returned. Not just noise, voices. Hundreds of whispers at once. Names. Cries. Laughter. Shouts. All overlapping.
They stood now in a circular chamber. The floor was covered in pages, school files, photos, handwritten notes. The walls were curved mirrors, each showing different students, different timelines, some familiar, some impossibly distorted.
Emily picked up a page. It was her handwriting.
But she had never written these words.
“To become more than memory, I must first let go of what I fear to forget.”
The pedestal at the center glowed. A book rested on top, its cover blank, except for one small carved symbol. Her wrist mark.
Cass spoke softly. “This is the origin. The core.”
Logan added, “The book finishes writing when you decide how the story ends.”
Emily approached. Her reflection fractured and multiplied in every mirror, every angle watching her.
She reached out.
And the room waited to see what she would write.
- Writer
