They say death is silence.

That’s a lie.

It is endless, constant, filled with overlapping screams. A thousand voices in your skull clawing to be remembered.

But I heard one louder than the rest.

Mine.

Still alive. Still thinking. Still clutching the thing that killed me.

It arrived in a crate with no origin.

No name. No postage. No fingerprints.

All it had was rotting linen wrapped around it and a note in black lettering which smelled of putrid rot.

           'For those who dig too deep.'

I didn’t open it out of curiosity.

I answered its call, my hands reaching for it even as my mind blanked.

Inside I found a mirror.

Not stone. Not metal.

Bone, maybe. Or a thing that had once been alive.

It had no face on it. No proper glyphs.

Only swirling lines as if made in a hurry by something that had too many fingers and too little time.

I put my hand on it.

Then, at once, everything stopped, and everything around me died.

The lights. The clocks. The sound.

Even the air forgot how to move.

And then the mirror started to breathe.

It exhaled dust - thick, black, and ancient. It filled my nose, my mouth, then my eyes.

It didn’t choke me.

It invited me in.

Then I fell.

Not backward.

Down.

Through the floor below. Through my body. Through everything I thought I was.

I felt rough sand grinding between my teeth as I woke.

The sky was wrong—too close, too tight, like a lid.

The air whispered in my ears in a language I couldn’t understand but still somehow feared.

And the mirror…

It was still in my hand.

Heavier now.

Like it had fed

The Duat. That’s what this place is called.

Not heaven. Not hell.

A necrotic dream built from forgotten gods, cursed names, and rituals that want blood more than belief.

Here, memories rot.

Identities bleed.

Souls become echoes unless anchored by force or madness.

I should have let go of the mirror.

But I gripped it harder.

They say no one escapes the Duat.

That the Gates of Oblivion are unreachable and forever closed.

That even the gods fear what lies beyond.

Let them whisper.

I’m not here to be judged.

I’m here to become worse than them.