They said the house at the edge of the forest was where people went to die. Not in flesh—at least not always—but in spirit. They called it The Hollow. No doors. Only a stairwell that descends without end.

When Miriam first stepped inside, her shadow refused to follow. It clung to the threshold like a wounded thing, weeping onto the old stone. She was too numb to notice.

Grief had already carved her hollow. The loss. The shame. The silence. Her real death had begun long before she came to this place.

They told her—those who’d returned changed, or not at all—that the descent would strip her. That she’d face not demons, but decisions. That at the bottom, something waited. Something ancient. Something that did not speak in words, but in unraveling.

The stairs went down for what felt like days. No light. No time. Only her breath, and the thoughts she couldn’t remember thinking.

Why did you let it happen?

Who do you blame?

What are you without the grief?

She tried to scream once, but the sound turned to ash in her throat.

And then, she stopped falling. She stood on a surface that felt like bone. Before her was a mirror, impossibly tall, impossibly wide. But it did not reflect her. It reflected every version of her that had ever died.

The bitter one. The vengeful one. The girl who never forgave. The woman who never wept. Each of them stared back, hollow-eyed and hungry, begging her to return and become them again.

But Miriam dropped to her knees and wept instead. She wept so deeply that her tears soaked the bones beneath her. The mirror cracked, not from pressure, but from release.

In that moment, something vast moved through her. It had no face. No name. Only presence. It wrapped her in something colder than fear and warmer than fire. And it whispered, not in her ears, but in her marrow:

“You are not holding on. You are being held.”

When Miriam rose, the stairwell reversed. She ascended not with certainty, but with surrender. With every step, her bitterness died a little more.

When she emerged, the house was gone. Only her shadow remained, waiting at the edge of the forest. But it bowed before her now.

She had not escaped death. She had become it. And walked through it.

And now, she was more alive than the living would ever know.

The End