The corridors of the Scarlet Letter Mansion grew longer at night.
That was not a metaphor.
Porsette had discovered the pattern within her first three days there: during the day, she passed seven wall lamps on the way from the dining room to her room. At night, on that same stretch, she counted eleven.
She had told no one.
In Red Letter, observing was allowed. Speaking about it was not.
Anything spoken would reach Mother's ears, and anything she heard would become leverage.
But tonight was a little different.
Porsette stood at the end of the second-floor east-wing corridor, the night breeze lifting the edge of her cloak's hood slightly, her gilded eyes fixed on the wall before her.
The corridor should have turned here.
She had walked it seventeen times during the day, turning at the same spot every time-left, past the courtyard, then right again to her room.
She remembered it clearly. She had even marked the third loose floorboard.
But now, the wall was gone.
A descending staircase had appeared where the corner should have been. Its stone steps were dark gray, their edges worn to a shine. There were no handrails on either side, and the walls were bare, without even a single wall lamp.
There was no seam between the floor at the stairwell entrance and the corridor's floorboards, as though it had grown there in the first place.
Porsette's breathing slowed for a beat.
She did not turn and leave immediately.
She wanted to, but her feet seemed nailed to the floor by something-not an outside force, but some kind of instinct.
She had seen so many fragments of the future that she could no longer distinguish intuition from fear.
The stairs stretched downward, disappearing into darkness.
Porsette crouched and extended a gloved hand, her fingertips hovering about half an inch above the stairwell entrance.
Her Insight into the Human Heart could read nothing.
Stone was stone, and air was air.
But fine goose bumps rose on the skin inside her wrist.
She stood and glanced back at the corridor behind her.
The wall lamps still burned, their warm yellow light spreading over the wooden floor. The eyes in the picture frames dutifully looked straight ahead. Everything was normal.
Uncomfortably normal.
Porsette turned back, stared at the staircase for three seconds, then took her first step.
The stone felt completely different from the corridor's wooden floor beneath her feet: hard, icy, carrying a chill that seeped up from deep underground and penetrated even through her soles.
As she took her second step, a faint sound came from the corridor behind her.
Like a door closing.
Porsette did not look back.
In Red Letter, looking back meant admitting you were afraid, and those who admitted their fear would be devoured by it.
She continued down.
There were thirteen steps.
She counted them.
From the first to the thirteenth, every step was the same height. But when she reached the thirteenth, she glanced down at her feet and stopped.
Below the thirteen steps was not level ground.
It was another flight of stairs.
Identical stone steps, the same dark gray, continued down from the edge of the thirteenth step. And on this flight, there was something.
A pair of shoes.
White cloth shoes, very small, like something a seven- or eight-year-old child would wear.
They sat neatly in the very center of a step, toes pointing upward.
Porsette stared at the shoes for two seconds.
Her Insight into the Human Heart still read nothing.
The shoes were clean, without bloodstains, dust, or even signs of wear, as though someone had just taken them out of a box and put them there.
She did not bend down to touch them.
Porsette decided to go back.
She turned and stepped onto the thirteenth step she had just descended, then twelve, eleven, ten...
She stopped.
Below the eleventh step was not the step she had trodden on her way down.
She remembered it clearly.
On her way down, there had been a shallow crack along the edge of the eleventh step, running from the left side to the middle. She had deliberately avoided it.
But now, the eleventh step beneath her feet was smooth and even, like freshly laid stone.
Porsette's fingers slowly curled at her sides.
She tried walking upward, stepping onto the twelfth step, then the thirteenth.
Above the thirteenth step was not the second-floor corridor.
It was a corridor.
Gray cement walls, no wall lamps, no picture frames, no wooden floor.
The light overhead came from an unknown source, cold white and evenly spread across every inch of wall, giving the entire space the eerie feeling of having no shadows.
Porsette stood at the top of the stairs, staring at the corridor before her that should not have existed.
Behind her were the white cloth shoes. Before her was a corridor with nothing in it.
The steps beneath her feet were the only thing connecting the two places.
She closed her eyes.
Insight into the Human Heart was no use at a time like this. She could not read the emotions of inanimate objects or the intentions of anomalies. All she could read were the fragmented futures in her mind that did not belong to her.
She saw an image.
A brief one.
So brief it was like someone had slashed the insides of her eyelids.
In the image, she stood in the same corridor.
The walls on both sides were covered in doors, densely packed doors, each bearing a flower name.
Daffodil, Scarlet Mallow, Poinsettia.
And more names she did not recognize, engraved on rust-covered metal plates.
Every door was closed.
Only the one at the very end stood open a crack.
Porsette opened her eyes and found herself already standing in the corridor.
She did not remember when she had stepped down.
She did not remember whether her feet had ever left the stairs.
She did not remember when the corridor had grown longer-when she arrived, she had estimated it at roughly ten meters. Now she could see no end ahead, nor the stairs behind her.
The stairs were still there, about three paces behind her, but above them lay a gray-white void, as though something had erased it.
Porsette took a deep breath.
The air was dry and utterly odorless, without even the scent of dust.
She took a step forward.
The walls on either side of the corridor began to change.
Faint patterns emerged on the bare cement, like marks left behind after water had soaked it.
She leaned closer for a look, and the patterns gradually became clearer-
Doors.
The outlines of doors began to appear on the walls.
First on the left.
One, two, three.
Small silver plaques were set into the gray doors, engraved with names and dates.
"Mila, trial failed, day three."
Porsette recognized the name.
Flora had mentioned her, the girl named Mila on the third floor who hugged the wall whenever she encountered Broken Rainbow in the corridor.
But Flora had said "encountered," not "used to encounter."
Porsette continued forward.
Doors appeared on the right as well.
One after another, neatly arranged, with exactly equal spacing.
"Lina. Trial failed. Day seven."
"Yisha. Trial failed. Day twelve."
The date on every door was different, but all were short periods. None exceeded thirty days.
Porsette counted nine on the left and nine on the right.
Eighteen doors.
Eighteen instances of "trial failed."
She wanted to stop, but her feet would not obey.
The corridor continued to stretch before her, new doors still emerging, swelling out of the cement walls like bubbles, their surfaces gleaming gray.
"Kati. Trial failed. Day twenty-one."
"Nuola. Trial failed. Day forty-four."
As Porsette's gaze swept over the names, her Insight into the Human Heart suddenly activated beyond her control.
What she read was a mass of gray.
There was nothing.
No fear, no pain, no regret.
Behind every door was emptiness-not the emptiness of an empty room, but an emptiness where even air did not exist.
As though those people had never lived.
Porsette's footsteps halted.
Not because she wanted to stop, but because the corridor ahead broke off.
It broke off abruptly.
One moment, there was level cement flooring. The next, there was a straight fissure, about one pace wide and bottomless, with a very faint sound rising from below.
Porsette crouched and pressed her palm to the floor. The floor was cool, but the edge of the fissure was warm, like a mouth that had just closed.
She withdrew her hand.
"You shouldn't have come down."
The voice came from behind her.
Porsette spun around.
Her right hand reflexively pressed against the pocket at her waist. There was nothing there. She had no weapon, no ability she could attack with. Inside the Scarlet Letter Mansion, her Anywhere Door was locked down by Mother's rules.
At the end of the corridor, the stairs remained where they had been.
But now there was someone on them.
Someone very small.
Shorter even than Porsette. Wearing a gray dress, head lowered, most of her face concealed by hanging black hair.
On her feet was a pair of white cloth shoes.
Exactly like the pair that had been sitting on the stairs.
Porsette stared at the shoes for two seconds, then raised her head.
"You're Mila," she said. Her voice was steadier than she had expected.
The girl did not answer.
She simply stood on the stairs, her hands hanging at her sides, her face still obscured beneath her black hair.
"Or Lina," Porsette said again. "Or someone else."
The body beneath the gray dress moved. A faint, almost imperceptible sway, as though a breeze had brushed her, but there was no wind here.
"Do you know them?"
Even Porsette found it strange as she asked the question.
The girl raised her head.
Her black hair parted to either side of her face, revealing a blank face.
No features, no expression.
Porsette's heart skipped a beat, but her feet did not move. She had seen more frightening things in Red Letter. In those fragments of futures that did not belong to her, she had seen every angle of herself being torn apart by vines.
"You shouldn't have come down," the girl repeated.
The voice came from that blank face, flat and without inflection.
Porsette stared at the featureless face for three seconds, then did something even she had not expected.
She smiled.
The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, her gilded eyes curving in a faint, almost imperceptible arc. But it was a smile.
"I know," she said.
She took a step forward.
The girl shrank back a little.
On that blank face-though there was nothing there-Porsette could sense something.
She had spent so long training her eye in the Scarlet Letter Mansion. Watching people, watching emotions, watching habits.
That blank face could not fool her.
That girl was afraid of her.
Even more afraid of her than Porsette was.
"You belong to this house." Porsette's voice was very soft. "But you aren't one Mother raised."
She took another step forward.
The girl shrank back another step.
"Mother doesn't know you're here."
The gray dress trembled slightly.
Porsette stopped.
She glanced back at the crack behind her. The breathing inside it was still there, its rhythm unchanged.
Then she turned back and looked at the girl on the steps.
"I won't tell Mother," she said.
The girl's blank face lifted toward her and stayed there for two seconds.
Then her gray body began to fade.
It started at her feet. The white cloth shoes vanished first, then the dress, then her hair.
The last thing to disappear was that blank face.
Porsette stood in the corridor, with nothing but the steps left before her.
Stone, dark gray, thirteen in all, leading to the second floor.
The walls on either side of the corridor turned back into bare concrete. All those doors were gone, as though they had never appeared.
Porsette turned and stepped onto the first stair.
The second, the third.
Her steps were steady.
The fourth, the fifth, the sixth.
When she reached the thirteenth, the surface beneath her feet became wooden flooring.
The corridor's wall lamps were lit, their warm yellow light spreading over the picture frames. The people in the paintings gazed quietly ahead.
A faint breeze came from the direction of the atrium, carrying the mingled scent of iron sand and old wood.
Porsette stood at the end of the corridor and glanced down at her hands.
A little dust clung to the fingertips of her red half-finger gloves, very fine and the same color as concrete.
She wiped both hands on her cloak.
Then she headed toward her room.
The next morning, the training ground's lights were on, and the iron-sand floor was pitted with footprints.
Porsette stood barefoot in a corner of the grounds, facing a row of wooden posts.
Broken Rainbow leaned against the wall, her white hair loose and her green eyes half closed.
"You sneaked out again last night," Broken Rainbow said.
Porsette did not turn around.
"Where did you go?"
"Nowhere."
Broken Rainbow yawned, her voice languid. "There's dust on the soles of your shoes."
Porsette glanced down.
Her shoes sat by the door, perfectly clean.
Broken Rainbow did not press her.
She closed her eyes, as though she was about to fall asleep again.
About half a minute later, she spoke again, her voice a good deal softer than before. "Stay out of the east wing corridors at night as much as you can."
Porsette's movements faltered for a beat.
"Especially anywhere with stairs," Broken Rainbow said.
Her eyes stayed closed.
Porsette turned to look at her.
Broken Rainbow slumped against the wall, her breathing steady, as though she really had fallen asleep.
But her right index finger tapped lightly against her knee twice.