I Loved Her. Then I Killed Her Dreams

The brothel wasn't just a building anymore.

It breathed.

Not like lungs in a chest.

No—this was older.

Deeper.

A breath that didn't belong to the living.

It exhaled not with air, but with memory.

Rot-laced, soot-slicked memory.

Like someone had inhaled centuries of grief and was only just now letting it go—slowly, painfully, one groan at a time.

Every brick felt alive.

Heaving under the weight of silence that had never been spoken aloud.

The kind of silence that wasn't passive, but resentful.

Each floorboard didn't creak.

They sighed.

Groaned like tired bones remembering too much.

Some whimpered underfoot like they were pleading not to be walked on again—

Not to bear witness to another ghost dragging themselves through the halls.

The house had lungs.

But it also had ribs.

Wooden beams that curled inward like a cage, holding something inside.

A secret. A scream. A soul.

It had a spine too.

Bent. Crooked. Twisted by time and guilt.

As if centuries of pain had curled it inward like a dying body trying to protect its own heart.

And the ceilings?

They bowed downward—like the sky itself was trying to press the house into the dirt, force it to confess.

But it wouldn't.

It couldn't.

Even rot has its pride.

It wheezed with mourning.

It sweated shame.

The smell of it was thick—like iron and mildew and the kind of perfume worn by people who want to be touched but not seen.

The wallpaper clung to the walls like skin on a corpse, too afraid to peel all the way back and show what was underneath.

There were no footsteps here.

Only echoes.

And every single one Soren took—

Wasn't just a sound.

It was a memory.

A scream, muffled and buried under floorboards soaked in regret.

Not loud screams.

Never loud.

This house didn't do loud anymore.

These were the other kind.

The kind that happen when the door is shut.

When the windows are thick and the music is too loud and the girls have learned how to cry without moving their lips.

The kind of scream that gets lodged in your throat and stays there for years.

That turns into silence—not peace, but suffocation.

The walls had heard them all.

And they remembered.

And the mirrors?

The mirrors watched.

Not like glass.

Not like reflection.

No—these things weren't mirrors anymore.

They were eyes.

Old. Tired. Unforgiving.

Their silver wasn't silver.

It was memory.

Polished guilt.

Condensed pain.

You didn't see yourself in them.

You saw what you tried to forget.

What the house wouldn't let you leave behind.

Some were cracked.

Jagged veins running through the glass like lightning scars frozen in time.

Some were fogged up with breath that didn't belong to anyone living.

Others were smeared—

Not with dust.

Not with age.

But fingerprints.

Small ones.

Thin ones.

Pressed like desperate pleas trying to claw their way through.

Some didn't reflect at all.

They blinked.

And when they blinked—

The walls pulsed.

The house listened.

Because these weren't decorations.

These were witnesses.

And they had seen everything.

The forced smiles.

The bruises under powder.

The men who left and the girls who didn't.

They didn't want apologies.

They knew no one here was brave enough for that.

They didn't want revenge either.

No, revenge is for the living.

This was deeper.

This was remembrance.

This was punishment by exposure.

By being seen.

And ahead—

The hallway stretched.

Not just long—wrong.

Longer than it should've been.

Longer than any blueprint could justify.

Like space was bending around the memory it carried.

Like reality itself was backing away from whatever happened here.

The air thickened.

Heavy.

Warm with rot.

Wet like breath on the back of your neck.

Soren's shoulders tensed.

It felt like he was being watched from behind his bones.

Like someone was reaching through him.

Not just looking at him, but looking with him.

Time didn't move here.

It ached.

It didn't tick.

It throbbed.

The walls pulsed.

The ceiling twitched.

There was no wind—but the wallpaper fluttered like it was exhaling again.

The hallway pulsed like a wound that hadn't healed.

One that didn't want to.

It didn't obey physics.

It obeyed memory.

And memory?

It doesn't play fair.

It twists.

It loops.

It hurts.

The walls were too close and too far all at once.

The color was hard to describe—somewhere between dried blood and forgotten dreams.

Peeling paint curled like rotting petals.

If you scratched it, you could feel layers.

Names.

Scraped beneath the surface.

Hidden under coats of new wallpaper like lies stacked on trauma.

A patchwork of cover-ups.

You could dig through years of pretending.

And underneath, every time, there'd be another girl's name—

Etched in fear.

Etched in survival.

Etched in failure.

The silence wasn't empty.

It had weight.

The kind of silence that grows fangs.

That climbs into your lungs and stays there.

You breathe it in, and suddenly your ribs feel like they're not yours.

Like your chest is a cage and your heart's already been sentenced.

And then—

A whisper.

Not from behind.

Not from ahead.

Not from anywhere a body could be.

It came from the house itself.

A feminine murmur, barely formed.

Like lips brushing against a secret.

And with it—

Aurela.

She didn't walk.

Not really.

She didn't float either.

She existed.

She occurred.

She arrived.

Somewhere between breath and ghost.

Between memory and flame.

Her feet didn't touch the floor—

But the house reacted to her anyway.

The air around her shivered.

The walls bowed.

The mirrors winced.

Her glow was faint—

Not holy.

Not bright.

It was tired.

Like the flicker of a candle on its last hour.

Like she had burned for too long and was now made entirely of smoke and spine.

But she stood like she still remembered who she was.

Like the house remembered who she was.

This wasn't a haunting.

This was a homecoming.

She moved with a quiet authority—like a girl who'd been told to shut up too many times and now owned every silence.

Her fingers brushed the wall.

And where she touched—

The surface quivered.

Like it recognized her.

Like it remembered what it did.

Like it wanted to say sorry but didn't know how anymore.

Not even rot can form apologies.

Old stains bloomed beneath her fingertips.

Not fresh blood.

Not new violence.

But something deeper.

Wounds in the wood grain.

Rust-colored.

Memory-colored.

Faint fingerprints reappeared.

Girls who had once clawed at the walls with silent screams.

Names buried under layers of denial and cheap paint.

The blood had dried, but pain doesn't evaporate.

And behind her—

Soren.

Still following.

Always following.

His breath was wrong.

Thin. Shallow. Borrowed.

Like the house had stolen the air and was letting him use it on loan.

Every step felt like permission he didn't deserve.

Like his body knew he wasn't supposed to be here—

But his heart had never left.

Then—

The hallway ended.

Not with a door.

But an opening.

A mouth.

Unhinged. Gaping. Hungry.

They stepped through—

And there she was.

Yena.

Tied to a wooden chair.

Spotlit by a jagged shard of sunlight like judgment breaking through a stained-glass God.

The chair was old.

Splintered.

Stained with blood, ink, and consequences.

Yena looked half-dead.

Half-remembered.

Half-gone.

Head bowed.

Face bruised.

Hair clinging to her cheeks like shame that wouldn't let go.

Her clothes—once elegant—were now nothing but scraps.

She didn't speak.

Couldn't.

Maybe shame had locked her throat from the inside.

And then—

"Choose."

No voice.

No mouth.

Just the house demanding.

"Choose her."

"Choose the one who watched you die."

"Choose the one who carried your name beyond the grave."

"Choose your love."

"Choose your executioner."

The chandelier rattled like bone applause.

The spirits poured in.

All girls.

All victims.

All waiting.

Aurela didn't move.

But her eyes—

"She didn't just sell us," she said.

"She watched.

She smiled when the door closed behind me.

She fed this house with souls."

Yena's voice cracked.

"I… I tried to stop it. I didn't mean for it to happen like that. I—"

"No," Soren said.

"You didn't."

The mirror cracked.

"Choose."

"Choose."

The house didn't whisper anymore.

It commanded.

Not a voice.

Not a suggestion.

It weighed down on Soren's shoulders like a noose made of memory.

The room shrank.

Tighter.

Hotter.

It was like the air itself was suffocating on rage.

Yena twitched in the chair.

The ropes around her wrists were soaked—not with blood, but with sweat.

Fear.

Desperation.

Her fingers clawed at the wood beneath them, nails bent, skin split, but she didn't fight anymore.

She knew she couldn't.

She wasn't the one holding power anymore.

The house had stripped it from her—peeled her like a lie, layer by layer.

The spirits circled tighter.

Their faces blurred like candlelight reflected in broken glass.

They didn't speak.

They waited.

Aurela's glow pulsed.

Not warm.

Not bright.

Just steady—like truth echoing in an empty cathedral.

And Soren—

He didn't look at Yena.

Not fully.

He looked through her.

Like he was seeing every girl she'd betrayed superimposed behind her face.

His voice, when it came, wasn't loud.

It didn't need to be.

"You knew what they did here."

Yena flinched.

Her mouth opened, then shut.

Like denial was trying to escape before the truth swallowed it whole.

"You watched," Soren said, stepping forward.

"You watched them take Aurela. You watched them feed the house. You let them touch girls too small to scream loud enough. You—"

"I HAD NO CHOICE!" she snapped.

Too fast.

Too loud.

Too late.

"You had every choice," Aurela said softly.

"You chose survival over salvation."

Yena's eyes darted.

To the door that wasn't there.

To the walls that wouldn't let her leave.

"I— I tried to stop it. I didn't know how bad it would get—"

"You knew what it was," Soren cut in, voice low.

"You were part of it."

A mirror on the wall shattered.

The ghosts didn't flinch.

But Yena did.

Hard.

Like something inside her cracked at the sound—like the lie she'd wrapped herself in had just fallen to the floor in glass shards.

She looked up at Soren.

Her face a mess of blood and salt and something that used to be beauty.

"Please…"

Two syllables.

Wet.

Shaking.

Almost childlike.

But the house didn't care.

The house had seen her.

It knew.

"Choose," it whispered again.

"The one who haunts you… or the one who buried you."

Soren's chest rose—

Not with breath.

But with finality.

He turned to Aurela.

Her eyes met his.

No pleading.

No begging.

Just a kind of peace that looked like grief carved into marble.

And Soren, broken-lipped and flame-eyed, whispered:

"You."

The chandelier above shattered into dust.

The floorboards screamed.

The house howled.

The air ripped.

Reality twisted.

The room itself recoiled as the choice was made.

The spirits surged forward—

Not to Aurela.

To Yena.

She screamed—

Not just in fear, but in betrayal.

"NO—NO, YOU LOVED ME—SOREN, YOU LOVED ME, YOU PROMISED—"

But Soren didn't look back.

"I buried a lie," he said.

"Now I resurrect the truth."

Yena writhed—

The ropes vanished.

Not because the house set her free—

Because it no longer needed her contained.

The spirits dragged her backward.

Not physically.

Not really.

They were pulling her soul.

Her body remained in the chair—screaming, begging, unraveling—

But her essence?

It was being dragged into the mirror.

The cracked one.

The one that blinked.

The mirror opened.

Not like glass breaking.

Like a mouth.

Sharp.

Wet.

Final.

And it swallowed her.

Silence.

Yena's body went still.

Then—

Ash.

Gone.

Not a single scream left behind.

Just the chair.

Empty.

Waiting for the next lie to sit down.

The air shifted.

The ghosts?

They stopped circling.

They stood in a line.

Facing Aurela.

Then—

One by one—

They bowed.

Low.

Hollow.

Like soldiers kneeling before a war that had finally ended.

And Aurela—

She wept.

Quiet.

Shaking.

Not for Yena.

Not for herself.

But for all the girls who would never get their voice back.

Soren walked to her.

He didn't speak.

Just reached out—

Fingers brushing hers.

Warm.

Alive.

And the house?

It sighed.

Like something ancient had finally been laid to rest.

The house had stopped screaming.

But silence didn't mean peace.

It meant aftermath.

The ghosts lingered like fog that didn't want to lift.

They hovered near the walls, curling into corners, watching.

Some smiled.

Some cried.

Some simply vanished.

One by one—

They began to pass.

Through the cracked windows.

Into the floorboards.

Into nothing.

Their purpose had ended.

Their names were finally safe.

But not all of them left.

Some stayed.

Some always do.

The ones who loved too hard to move on.

The ones who hurt too deeply to let go.

The ones who remembered too much and forgave too little.

Soren stood in the middle of the room.

No chair.

No mirror.

Just memory—and her.

Aurela.

She was brighter now.

But not in a holy way.

No white wings. No choir. No salvation.

She glowed like revenge done right.

Like the sun after a storm had wiped a village clean.

"It's over," he said.

Aurela turned to him.

The light in her eyes was softer now—no longer fire, but ashes still warm.

"Not yet."

And that's when he saw it—

The house was still breathing.

Barely.

A shallow rasp.

A lung collapsing under the weight of its own sins.

But it was alive.

"There's one last door," she said.

He didn't ask where.

He knew.

They walked.

Down another hallway that shouldn't exist.

Past wallpaper that peeled like burned skin.

Over floorboards that whispered beneath their steps—

But not in pain this time.

In relief.

At the end:

A door.

Black.

Rotting.

And chained shut.

Except the chains weren't metal.

They were hair.

Braided. Tangled. Pulled tight.

Girl-hair.

The kind you find knotted in a comb and weep over.

"This is where they buried them," Aurela said.

"The ones they didn't even bother to name."

Soren's fists clenched.

"Let me."

He tore the hair-chains apart.

One by one.

Like freeing each girl by hand.

And when the door swung open—

The garden waited.

But it wasn't flowers.

It was bones.

Skulls lined in rows like teeth in a god's mouth.

Fingers still curled in prayer.

Spines half-arched in remembered pain.

So many.

So many.

They hadn't just died here.

They were planted.

To feed the house.

To keep it full.

To let it grow.

And in the center?

A grave.

Fresh.

No marker.

Just a name scratched in the dirt with fingernails:

SOREN.

His breath caught.

"This is where they meant to leave you," Aurela whispered.

"But you weren't meant to stay dead."

He turned to her.

And she—

She stepped into the grave.

Not as a corpse.

As a promise.

"Let the house keep me," she said.

"It owes me too much."

"No."

He stepped in too.

Wrapped his arms around her.

Held her like he'd never let go again.

"You come with me."

"I'm not alive, Soren."

"Then I'll die with you."

But the house—

The house listened.

And for the first time—

It chose mercy.

The bones sank.

The air warmed.

The walls stopped bleeding.

And the grave?

It closed.

Not like a trap.

Like a door… locking behind them.

Outside—

The brothel stood empty.

Silent.

No footsteps.

No whispers.

No eyes behind glass.

Just a ruined building in the shape of a sin.

But if you listened closely—

Very closely—

You'd hear two heartbeats.

Entwined.

Pulsing from beneath the floorboards.

Not buried.

Just resting.

Together.

"I chose you," he whispered again.

"And I'll keep choosing you. Even in the dark."