NOVEL WEB Chapter 4: THE ROOM OF FORGOTTEN NAMES
"If you forget who you are, the floor will name you instead."
The handle was warm.
Too warm.
It wasn't metal — not really — it only looked like it. When Jié's fingers curled around it, he felt a pulse. A slow beat beneath his skin, echoing in his knuckles like a second heartbeat.
Everything here pretends to be something else.
He pulled.
The door didn't creak.It exhaled.
A low, wet sound.
The hinges weren't metal. They were cartilage.
The door wasn't wood. It was bone.
Jié stepped through and entered the Room of Forgotten Names.
Silence swallowed him.
The corridor behind sealed itself shut with a snap — a sound like a mouth biting off its tongue.
He stood alone in a circular chamber.
The walls were flesh.But here… they were scarred.
Not pulsing.Not warm.Just covered in carvings — names, hundreds of them, dug into the wall with bone, teeth, fingers.
Some in Chinese. Some in English. Some in languages Jié couldn't recognize.
Some weren't words at all.
Just symbols.
Twisted, alien things that made his stomach knot when he looked at them too long.
At the center of the room:A mirror.
But not the one from before.
This one was made of skin stretched tight over glass, pulsing softly.
His reflection looked back at him.
Same face.
Same scars.
Same eyes.
Then it smiled.
Jié did not.
But the thing in the mirror curled its lips in a grin that was too slow. Too wide.
Its eyes didn't blink.
His did.
The thing inside the mirror did not.
He backed up a step.
The walls pulsed once — just enough to remind him this place was alive.
[SYSTEM TRIGGER: MIRROR ROOM – PERSONAL REFLECTION EVENT INITIATED]
Floor Rule: Speak only truthPenalty for violation: Trait CorrosionDuration: 3 minutesReward (optional): Trait Evolution Opportunity
The mirror rippled.A voice echoed — but not from the glass.
"Say your name."
Jié didn't speak.
"Say your name."
He clenched his fists.
The mirror darkened.
His reflection warped.Got… fatter.Younger.Eyes wider. Terrified.Back hunched. Arms crossed over bruises.
His childhood self.
The version of him that begged and bled and waited for kindness that never came.
"Say your name," the voice repeated.
Jié stepped forward.
The skin-glass shimmered.
"Jié Dè," he said quietly.
"Calamity's Own."
The glass froze.
"That's what they named you," the voice whispered."Not who you are."
The image changed again.
Now he saw the version of himself that never got out.Never escaped the apartment.Never climbed into the crack in the ceiling.
A bloated corpse.Rotting on a moldy mattress.Tongue black.Eyes dry.A dead thing in a room that forgot him.
"You aren't real," Jié whispered.
The mirror pulsed.
"Neither is this place."
"But something real bled to make it."
He stepped forward again.
Closer.
This is the floor testing me.Testing if I know who I am.Because if I don't… it will decide for me.
The mirror shifted.
Now it showed Xiǎorú.
Sleeping.
Then waking.
Sitting up.
Looking around.
Then screaming.
Screaming his name.
And no one answered.
Jié slammed his fist into the glass.
It didn't shatter.
It bled.
Warm, viscous red dripped down the surface.
He pulled back his hand.Looked down.
The glass had sliced his knuckles open.
Rule: Touch nothing that bleeds.
Too late.
The walls groaned.
The names began to twitch.
Letters shifted. Rearranged.
His name — Jié Dè — started to blur on the far wall.
He clenched his jaw.
"No."
He pressed his bloody hand against the name.
"This is mine."
"I don't forget."
"You don't take it."
The wall trembled.
Then...
Settled.
His name stopped shifting.
The other names stilled.
The mirror cracked — just once — a long black line running from top to bottom.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: Personal Anchor Reinforced]Trait Resistance +1Blood Signature Registered: Jié DèFloor Corruption Threshold Raised
He turned.
A new door had opened.
But it didn't lead forward.
It led down.
Into darkness.
Jié didn't hesitate.
He walked through.
Because the floor wasn't just trying to scare him.
It was trying to rewrite him.
And he wasn't going to let it.
TO BE CONTINUED…Next: Chapter 4 – The Blood Staircase
"Every step is a decision. Take the wrong one, and the floor takes something back."