The hallway stretched endlessly, each mirror catching her from a slightly different angle.

  In one, her eyes were missing.

  In another, her mouth moved but made no sound.

  In a third, she was smiling—wide, unnatural, as if someone else was wearing her face.

  Ira backed away, dizzy.

  Her breath fogged the glass closest to her.

  But only hers.

  The others remained clear.

  She turned sharply, hoping to find any opening—

  —and found herself back in the forest.

  No door. No hallway. No house.

  Just trees.

  She blinked, confused. How—?

  There was no transition, no movement. Just a change, like the world had decided she was in the wrong place and corrected itself.

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  The ground beneath her feet felt soft. Too soft.

  She knelt and touched it.

  Not soil.

  Fabric.

  Worn cotton.

  She pulled at it. Beneath the top layer were more—layers of cloth, stitched together by thin black thread, stretching out into the forest floor like burial shrouds.

  Suddenly, the fabric moved.

  A ripple.

  Then a rise.

  A shape pressed upward from beneath—a hand, pushing from the underside, fingers clawing through the thread.

  Ira scrambled back.

  More shapes began to form. Bodies struggling beneath the stitched earth, faceless and gasping without mouths.

  And from behind her came a soft click—the sound of a camera shutter.

  She turned.

  A child stood in the trees.

  Maybe seven years old. Dressed in rags.

  Holding an old-fashioned camera.

  She raised it again.

  Click.

  And the forest reset.

  The bodies vanished.

  The ground was normal.

  The child was gone.

  But in Ira’s pocket, something heavy had appeared.

  She reached in and pulled it out.

  A photograph.

  She was in it.

  Smiling.

  Standing with Ama Dey.

  And the date at the bottom said: October 13, 1928.