Chapter 10: The Truth Beneath the Ward

A blinding white light engulfs Elias, consuming the endless hallways and their maddening whispers. The suffocating darkness peels away, replaced by something eerily familiar—a vast, sterile space. White walls. A tiled floor. The scent of antiseptic thick in the air.

A hospital.

Elias stumbles forward, his breath uneven. The oppressive whispers are gone, replaced by an eerie silence. The room is vast, the remnants of an abandoned psychiatric ward scattered before him. Broken gurneys line the walls, and discarded medical charts litter the floor. The buzzing flicker of a lone overhead light casts shifting shadows across the peeling paint.

His pulse slows, but dread coils in his stomach. He has been here before.

The woman stands beside him, watching. There’s no fear in her expression, only something he cannot quite place—sorrow.

“Where are we?” he asks, though the answer already gnaws at the edges of his mind.

She exhales softly. “The real Forgotten Ward.”

Memories surge forward, splintering his mind with cruel clarity. The bloodstained door. The whispers. The shifting hallways.

It wasn’t just the asylum haunting him. It was his past.

His breath hitches as flashes of white hospital gowns and cold restraints flood his vision. Shadows loom over him, their voices muffled, distorted. A cacophony of memories—of screams, of isolation, of something worse—drowns his thoughts.

This isn’t just some nightmarish prison.

This was home.

His chest tightens. “I… I don’t understand.”

The woman steps toward a nearby desk, where an old, worn patient file rests, the pages yellowed with time.

“Look,” she says, her voice gentle but firm.

Elias hesitates, his fingers trembling as he reaches for the file. The moment he flips it open, the truth unfolds before him:

• Patient Name: Elias Vance.

• Diagnosis: Dissociative Identity Disorder.

• Incident Report: Patient found unresponsive near Room 407. Symptoms of psychotic break. Unstable reality perception.

• Status: Dangerous. Unfit for release.

Elias staggers back, his head spinning. His pulse thunders in his ears.

“No,” he whispers. “This—this can’t be real.”

But the evidence is undeniable. He was never a visitor here. He was never investigating a mystery. He was the mystery.

The whispers return, this time from within his own head.

"You were never meant to leave."

A chill slithers down his spine. He glances at the woman, searching for denial, for contradiction—for anything. But she only nods, confirming the unthinkable.

“You were a patient here, Elias. This place was your mind’s way of keeping you trapped.”

“No…” He grips the desk, his breath shallow. “That means—”

“That means none of this is real.”

The world around them shifts. The walls tremble, cracks spiderwebbing through their pristine surface. The light overhead flickers erratically. Reality itself is collapsing.

A guttural growl rumbles from the darkness behind him.

The creature—the thing from the reflections, the shadow that has stalked him through every hallway—it is here.

Elias turns slowly. The towering figure stands at the edge of the crumbling reality, its twisted, skeletal frame heaving with every breath. Its hollow eyes glow with something ancient, something patient.

It has waited for him.

The woman’s voice is urgent now. “You have to decide, Elias. Stay here and let it take you… or break free.”

His mind races. “How?”

She reaches for his hand. “Accept the truth.”

His heart pounds. The creature steps closer, its presence bending the world around it. The air thickens with dread, the temperature plummeting. It is the embodiment of his fear, his pain—everything he has refused to face.

Elias looks at the patient file once more, then at the woman beside him.

And then…

He understands.

With a deep, shuddering breath, Elias closes his eyes. He lets the truth settle within him—not as a weight, but as a release.

He was never supposed to escape. He was supposed to wake up.

When his eyes snap open, the creature is upon him, its claws inches from his throat—

But this time, he does not run.

The world shatters.

Elias wakes up to the sound of beeping monitors. His body is weak, restrained to a hospital bed, the smell of antiseptic thick in his nostrils.

A nurse stands beside him, her eyes widening as she rushes out to call the doctor.

He blinks at the ceiling, his mind still swimming between the dream and reality. But as the remnants of the Forgotten Ward fade, he knows one thing:

He is finally awake.

And the nightmare is over.