MidnightScreams

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The storm outside was a living thing—a howling, writhing beast that clawed at the walls of the Grand Meridian Hotel. Rain lashed against the cracked windows, and the wind screamed like a banshee. Inside, Silas Vayne sat in room 303, his breath shallow, his hands trembling. The hurricane had trapped him here, in this decaying relic of a hotel, its once-grand halls now a maze of peeling wallpaper and broken chandeliers.

Silas wasn’t a good man. He’d spent his life taking what wasn’t his, leaving a trail of broken promises and stolen treasures. But this time, he’d taken something that clung to him like a curse. A small, ornate music box, its surface etched with delicate patterns, stolen from the bedside of a dying woman. It wasn’t the box itself that haunted him—it was the look in her eyes as he’d snatched it. A look of pure, unrelenting sorrow.

The Grand Meridian was no ordinary hotel. It was a place whispered about in hushed tones, a place where the walls seemed to shift when you weren’t looking, where time itself felt fractured. Silas had heard the rumors, of course, but he’d dismissed them as superstition. Now, trapped within its labyrinthine corridors, he wasn’t so sure.

The room was dimly lit by a single candle, its flame unnaturally steady despite the storm raging outside. The flickering light cast long shadows across the walls, dancing like specters. But it was the mirror that held Silas’s attention—a massive, ornate thing that seemed to pulse with a life of its own. Its surface shimmered, distorted, as though it were breathing.

“You seek closure,” a voice whispered, soft and cold, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. “But closure demands a price.”

Silas spun around, his heart pounding. “Who’s there?” he rasped, his voice barely audible over the storm.

“A choice,” the voice continued, ignoring him. “Face your reflection, or remain lost forever.”


A chill ran down Silas’s spine. He turned back to the mirror, and his breath caught in his throat. A figure was forming within the glass—a twisted, malevolent version of himself. It mimicked his movements, but there was something off about it, something cruel and mocking.

The horror had begun.

The Grand Meridian was cursed, a relic of a bloodline steeped in betrayal and sorrow. The Mirror’s Sorrow, the entity trapped within the glass, was the heart of that curse—a being of grief and rage, seeking to reconcile the past by destroying the present.

A soft sound drew Silas’s attention. He turned to see a young girl standing in the doorway, no older than ten. Her name was Elara, though he didn’t know how he knew that. Her eyes were ancient, filled with a wisdom far beyond her years. “The mirror remembers,” she whispered, her voice echoing as though it came from a great distance. “It sees what you cannot. It knows your regrets.”

Elara spoke of a ritual, a way to seal the Mirror’s Sorrow away. But her words were fragmented, cryptic, like pieces of a puzzle Silas couldn’t quite grasp. The hotel seemed to warp around him as she spoke—doors vanished, hallways twisted, and objects shifted when he wasn’t looking. The only constant was the candle, its flame unwavering, a small beacon of light in the growing darkness.

The doppelgänger in the mirror grew stronger, its movements more deliberate, its expression more sinister. It began to speak, its voice a distorted echo of Silas’s own. “You are a thief,” it hissed, its words cutting deeper than any blade. “A liar. A shadow. You deserve nothing.”

The Mirror’s Sorrow attacked not with claws or teeth, but by twisting reality itself. The corridors became endless loops, the rooms transformed into nightmarish reflections of Silas’s deepest fears. The doppelgänger stepped out of the mirror, its presence a tangible, suffocating force.


Elara appeared again, her small frame trembling. “The ritual,” she said urgently. “The music box… it must be played within the mirrored room, at the hurricane’s peak.”

Silas’s mind raced. The music box—the key to all of this. He fumbled in his coat pocket and pulled it out, its cold metal biting into his palm. The storm outside reached a deafening crescendo, the hotel shuddering under its fury.


The doppelgänger lunged, its movements swift and brutal. Silas stumbled backward, clutching the music box. He opened it, and a haunting melody filled the room, its notes resonating with the very fabric of the hotel. The doppelgänger hesitated, its form flickering.

Silas seized the moment. He grabbed the candle and thrust it toward the mirror. The glass shattered with a deafening crack, shards of light and darkness scattering across the room. The Mirror’s Sorrow screamed—a sound of pure, unrelenting grief that seemed to tear through the very air.

Elara appeared one last time, her eyes glowing with an otherworldly light. “Complete the ritual,” she whispered, her voice a command.

Silas looked down at the shards of the mirror, his own reflection fragmented and distorted. He understood now. The ritual wasn’t about sealing the Sorrow away—it was about returning what had been taken. The stolen sorrow.


With trembling hands, he pressed a shard of the mirror to his chest. Pain seared through him, sharp and unrelenting. He closed his eyes.

The room dissolved into a swirling vortex of light and shadow. When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer in the hotel. He stood in a vast, empty space, a dimension of fractured reflections and endless darkness. The music box was gone. The candle was gone. Elara was gone.

He was alone.

The twist: The ritual wasn’t an escape. It was a transfer. To complete it was to trade places with the Mirror’s Sorrow, to become the entity trapped within the fractured reality. The hotel, the hurricane, the doppelgänger—all of it had been a test, a final act of the Mirror’s Sorrow to find a replacement.

Silas Vayne, the thief, the regretful man, had completed the task. And now, he was trapped.

His final fate: Silas became the new Mirror’s Sorrow, forever lost in the labyrinth of reflections, a prisoner of his own regrets. His sorrow echoed through a dimension where time and reality held no meaning. He was trapped in the mirror, forever.