The butterfly garden was only the threshold. Elara realized this with an icy shudder as Silas's misshapen figure faded into the reddish gloom, leaving her alone again before the grotesque central structure. This place… was far more vast and complex than she had initially imagined. And it felt more and more… alive. As if Silas Thorne's mind, in its sickening darkness, was aware of her presence, watching her, studying her, even playing with her.
She took a deep breath, trying to calm the growing unease. She couldn't allow herself to be intimidated. She had to keep exploring, delving deeper into this mental labyrinth. Lisa Kramer was waiting for her.
He left the structure of bone and flesh behind and entered an even darker, more labyrinthine area of mental space. Organic walls rose around him, forming narrow, winding corridors that twisted in unpredictable directions. The air grew thicker and damper, laden with a nauseating smell of rotting flesh and stagnant moisture. The inaudible whispers intensified, becoming a constant, oppressive murmur that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
She felt watched, followed by invisible eyes lurking in the shadows. Each footstep echoed strangely in the unreal silence, amplified and distorted, as if not only she was walking, but also a ghostly echo imitating and mocking her.
The corridors branched, crisscrossed, twisted, creating a spatial confusion that was disorienting and distressing. It was like being trapped in a labyrinth constructed of living tissue, a labyrinth that breathed and pulsed with a sickly life. Elara groped her way, trying to maintain her bearings, but the feeling of being hopelessly lost grew ever stronger.
Suddenly, he found himself in a larger space, a sort of circular chamber whose walls were covered with distorted and distorting mirrors. In each mirror, his own image was reflected, but twisted, fragmented, multiplied ad infinitum in a kaleidoscope of anguished and distorted faces.
In some reflections, his face appeared aged and withered, in others, grotesquely swollen and swollen, in others, fragmented into a thousand pieces that recombined into monstrous configurations.
A sudden dizziness struck her. The kaleidoscopic vision of her own distorted image, multiplied to the point of nausea, destabilized her, making her stagger. She braced herself with one hand against one of the mirrored walls to keep from falling, and her reflection in the glass twisted and rippled as if it were murky water stirred by an invisible force.
And then, in one of the mirrors, she saw something other than her own reflection. Amid the myriad of distorted faces, a different image appeared, clear and sharp in contrast to the surrounding deformity. The face of a little girl. Lisa Kramer.
Elara's heart leapt. There she was. In a reflection, trapped in the mirror maze, pale and frightened, her eyes wide and brimming with tears. She seemed to be looking directly at Elara, through the mirror, through the mental space, silently pleading for help.
"Lisa?" Elara whispered, reaching out to the mirror, as if she could touch it, as if she could pull it out of that trapped reflection. "¿Lisa, do you hear me? I'm here to help you."
But Lisa's image in the mirror didn't react.
She remained motionless, like a photograph frozen in time, trapped in her own anguished reflection. And then, slowly, the image began to fade, to blur, to dissolve in the maze of distorting mirrors, until only her own twisted and multiplied reflections remained, mocking her hope.
Elara turned away from the mirror, her breath ragged and a pang of despair rife. She had seen her. She had been so close. But she had vanished like a mirage. Was she just another illusion in this mental maze? Or had it been a real glimpse of Lisa, a sign that she was trapped somewhere in this nightmarish place?
She had to keep searching. She had to decipher the secrets of this labyrinth of flesh and mirrors. Lisa could be in there, in some hidden corner of Silas Thorne's mind, waiting to be found. And Elara wasn't going to give up until she found her, even if she had to lose herself forever in this mental hell.
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