01:07 —— 'Til Death Can't Free Us

"Finding balance between desire and the truth often ends in dying wishes." - EIDOLON KIN, ???

The signal reaches him first.
Not as sound, but as pressure - like hands closing around the inside of his skull.Eidolon stops walking.The corridor they travel through is low and ruined, concrete sweating mineral rot, cables hanging like exposed veins.Elios is several steps ahead, muttering to himself as he tunes the receiver strapped to his wrist, chasing ghosts through static. He hasn't noticed yet. He won't, until it's too late.Eidolon feels it immediately.The Watcher's wake.His antlers hum, starlight buried in the bone flaring faintly. Shadows recoil from him as memory stirs - an ache without a shape, a grief without a name.He has felt this before. Not here. Somewhere greener. Somewhere burning.He exhales, and frost blooms along the floor."You feel it too," he says.
Elios turns. "Feel what?"
Before Eidolon can answer, the air folds.Reality creases inward like paper pressed too hard, and Luci steps out of the seam as if she has always been there.No flash.
No drama.Just presence heavy, undeniable. The corridor dims around her, lights flickering as though uncertain whether they're allowed to keep working.Her eyes are calm.
Too calm.Elios freezes. "You - ""I followed the signal," Luci says. Her voice is steady, measured. Human. "It wasn't yours?"Eidolon's gaze locks on her.The mask is perfect. Hair neatly braided back. Expression soft. A woman shaped like reassurance, comport and home.
But beneath it -The lock screams.His world burns again in the back of his mind. Twin moons folding inward. Green flame swallowed by an eye that blinked."The Watcher who blinked," Eidolon says quietly.Luci's breath catches.Elios looks between them. "What does that mean."Eidolon takes a step forward, shadows dragging behind him like a reluctant cloak."My world ended when a Watcher looked away. When they hesitated. When they chose mercy over vigilance."Luci meets his gaze. For a fraction of a second, something ancient and endless stirs behind her eyes."Then you know what comes next," she says, smiling.The corridor shudders.Lights burst. Somewhere deep below, the lower layers groan - old things waking, architecture rearranging itself in irritation.The Backrooms don't like reunions. They don't like memories being acknowledged.And then -
The channel opens.Elios' receiver shrieks to life, static flooding the corridor. He grabs it instinctively, heart already racing.
Soft singing bleeds through.High. Broken. Familiar.Elios goes still.The sound is distorted, stretched thin like a tape played too slowly, but the cadence - God, the cadence is unmistakable. His breath stutters."Reyna," he whispers.Luci's head snaps up.
"No."Her blood runs cold. Not metaphorically. Literally - frost spiderwebs across the wall behind her.She knows that voice.Not Reyna.Never Reyna.The singing crackles through again, layered now, overlapping frequencies like multiple mouths trying to wear the same memory.
Elios' hands shake.Tears well before he can stop them. "She's alive," he says, half-laughing, half-sobbing. "I knew it. I knew it. You hear that? She's alive."Eidolon watches him with something like dread.He can feel the truth pressing against his thoughts, sharp and invasive - not from the signal, but from Luci.Because Luci is screaming inside her own mind.Not her. Not her. Not her.
The signal is a broadcast. A ripple. An echo wearing a corpse's voice like stolen skin.And beneath that,
Another presence. Dormant. Observing. Learning how to speak.
Luci steps toward Elios. "Turn it off.""No," he snaps, clutching the receiver to his chest. "Don't you dare. This is her. This is - this is proof.""It's not," Luci says, too fast.
He looks at her, sharply "You said you lied before. About being close. About everything. And now you want me to believe this is another lie?"She doesn't answer.
The silence damns her.
The singing warps, pitch dropping, stretching into something wetter, worst."Come find me," the voice croons. "I'm where you left me."
The corridor reacts violently - walls peeling back, revealing layers of old doors, old stains, places where bodies once were.Luci clenches her fists.Eidolon sees it then.Not through sight, but through absence.He reaches - not physically, but inward, where thought touches thought. Where non-life brushes against the machinery of gods.
Luci's mind opens to him like a wound.He sees it.A room without doors.A body, still and empty.Hands not meant to be gentle, rearranging fate.A choice made in haste. In guilt. In fear.Given away.Not destroyed.Repurposed.A vessel.The signal spikes.Eidolon staggers back, breathless. "That body," he murmurs. "It was… redistributed."Luci's head whips toward him. "Don't."Elios looks between them, confusion sharpening into suspicion. "Don't what?"Eidolon's jaw tightens. He can feel the weight of it now - the knowledge pressing against his ribs like a second heart.He has seen this before. A Watcher making a choice. A world paying the price.History doesn't repeat.It rehearses."That voice," Eidolon says carefully, "is not who you think it is."
Elios laughs, brittle. "You don't know that."The transmission crackles again - closer now, clearer.A girl laughing.
Off-key.
Learning.
Luci closes her eyes.The guilt she buried - entombed beneath layers of calm, of control, of justification - claws its way back to the surface. This was the cost of blinking. This was the debt.
Elios steps away from her."You knew," he says quietly.She opens her eyes. Doesn't deny it.The lower layers scream.
Somewhere far below, something answers the voice. Something that has been waiting for permission to speak.Eidolon stands between them, torn.He can tell Elios.He can shatter what little trust remains, tear the wound open fully.
Or he can stay silent - let the Watcher's sin play out again, unchanged.He has seen how this ends.
Just not with these faces.
The signal laughs.And the Backrooms lean in, listening.Reflection has come.Retribution is close.

Written by: Addie Autumn Ambrose, TZN Staff WriterCharacters: Luci tLesca (@LuciTZN), Elios Wilder (@EliosWilderTZN),© 2025 Trivial Horizons. All rights reserved.
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01:07 —— 'Til Death Can't Free Us

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