The door behind them sealed with a soft, merciless click.
Miles barely had time to turn before a spotlight stabbed down from the ceiling, pinning him, Kayla, and Levi like insects on display.
The room was wide and circular, the walls a patchwork of mirrors.
Only the floor was different — etched with spiraling words so deep they looked like they bled.
At the center stood a black pedestal.
On it: a silver scale.
And behind the scale — towering, hooded, faceless — was something waiting.
Its arms were too long. Its fingers ended in dripping ink.
It did not breathe. It simply waited.
A voice, colder than any they'd heard so far, whispered:
"RULE #22: EVERY DEBT MUST BE PAID."
The mirrors shuddered. Then images flickered across them.
Not monsters.
Not fake memories.
Their pasts.
Miles' gut twisted as he saw himself, years ago — standing over a bleeding suspect in a back alley. His badge thrown carelessly in the mud. His knuckles split.
Kayla shrieked softly beside him. In her mirror, a hospital bed. A woman — old, weak, gasping for breath — as Kayla stole something from her bedside table and ran.
Levi's mirror was worse.
It showed him in military fatigues, rifle shaking, stepping over the bodies of civilians.
Each scene burned itself into the glass before vanishing.
The voice continued:
"You have been measured. You have been weighed. You have been found... wanting."
Three black brands erupted across their forearms, searing into the skin like molten wire.
Miles grunted, clenching his teeth. Kayla screamed. Levi fell to his knees, clawing at the mark.
"PAY YOUR DEBT," the voice hissed.
"OR BE CLAIMED."
The hooded figure behind the scale lifted a single hand, crooking a finger toward the far wall.
Another door cracked open.
Out stumbled a fourth person.
A boy — no older than twenty. Wide-eyed, filthy, breathing like a cornered rabbit.
He looked from Miles to the others, terror blazing across his bruised face.
"I-I'm not supposed to be here!" he cried. "I was just— I just woke up here—!"
The hooded figure extended its other hand.
A heavy iron coin materialized in the boy's palm, burning bright red.
He screamed, trying to drop it, but it seared into his skin.
A second later, he staggered forward — shoved, it seemed, by invisible hands — toward the scale.
The voice whispered again, almost lovingly:
"His debt is greater than yours. Watch and learn."
The boy collapsed at the base of the scale, sobbing.
The hooded figure reached down —
— and peeled something out of him.
It wasn't blood.
It wasn't soul.
It was weight.
Like invisible meat, carved off in chunks, laid onto the scale's left side.
The scale dipped.
The boy's sobs weakened.
When the scale finally balanced, he was little more than a gasping, hollowed-out thing.
Then the hooded figure tipped the scale deliberately.
The balance shattered.
A scream split the air.
The boy's body tore into ribbons — sucked screaming into the mirrors, leaving no trace behind.
Kayla vomited against the wall.
Levi backed away, muttering a prayer.
Miles wiped his mouth and stepped toward the pedestal, fists tight.
The brand on his arm pulsed.
The scale glowed.
"Each of you must pay."
"Confess your debt."
"Or be weighed and judged."
The hooded figure extended three coins — one to each of them.
Miles closed his hand over his without flinching.
It was already too late for innocence.
He turned toward Kayla and Levi.
"We pay," he said hoarsely.
"Or we die."
The mirrors behind them shifted again — new memories crawling to the surface, worse than the first.
The past wasn't done with them.
Not yet.