4. RECLAIM

Everything Comes to Light - Choose Your Own Adventure

Jul 14, 2025

The button glows brighter the instant your fingertip grazes its surface—you didn’t press it, not really, but it’s reacting before you’ve fully decided. A deep hum resonates from within the console, vibrating through your hand.

Every mirror ripples like mercury. Even the walls lose their solidity, turning into what can only be described as clay. You brace yourself as reflections begin stepping out from the liquid silver and into your shrinking private space—they're no longer confined to their frames but free to walk into your reality.

The first one approaches cautiously, its slick wire-like hair crackling with static. Its eyes are so dark the pupils are indistinguishable. It raises a hand to yours—the palm clammy and cold—and you feel a pulse of connection as it melts into your skin. Pain blooms sharply in your temples; memories of anguish not yours—as far as you know—are now inseparable. Another version follows, hand dripping a black ink-like substance from wounded palms. Your body absorbs this reflection too, your chest seizing with grief for moments you might have never lived.

One after another, each reflection becomes you. You become them. You are drowning in identities: knowledge expanding, personalities contradicting, victories and failures—all colliding within your consciousness. Your knees buckle, hitting the cold, obsidian floor, and you gasp as the final reflection emerges. This one is sick, and you try to scramble to get on your feet, but it's a futile plan. It reaches out a weak and quivering hand and takes you—or you take it. Your body feels instantaneously weaker, and your mind bends under the weight of a dozen lifetimes, stitched together in seconds.

Then, silence.

You breathe deeply, tasting iron. When you rise, you feel it—you are heavier. Angrier. Denser. Half of mirrors tremble and fold, collapsing into one another and forming a singular, brilliant tunnel of pure white light. At its end waits an intricately carved door. Like a Celtic knot in wood. You walk through the tunnel, your pulse steadies, and you reach forward, pressing your palm to a hand carved amongst the indentations. The door recognizes you instantly, chiming in welcome.

But you hesitate.

You remember now—you are well aware of the previous lives. You realize you could go back through one of the remaining mirrors, back to the devil you know. Even as the door begins to open, doubt whispers at your back. Do you trust what lies beyond?

If you open the door and step through, skip to Segment #10.

If you turn away and break back through one of the mirrors, skip to Segment #8.