There was no light in the new corridor.
Not darkness—but the absence of observation. A space unlit not by shadows, but by the fact that no mind had ever decided it should be seen.
Raiel stepped through anyway.
Each footfall rang like a thought dropped in an empty archive. The air was denser here, as if coded with resistance. She felt her thoughts slow—her name, even, began to fray at the edges of recognition.
The system wasn’t attacking her.
It was *disassembling context*.
This was Phase III. No mirror. No memory games. Just silence—and the question that always came after identity: **what now?**
The corridor turned sharply left. Then right. Then again. The floor remained steady, but Raiel could feel the angles slipping. Something in the architecture refused to be mapped. She counted
