The Invitation (from Rusty Lake)

Celebrate Rusty Lake 10 years anniversary

I hadn’t written anything decent in 174 days.

Outside my window, Amsterdam’s spring was still cold and grey. A thin fog turned the sunlight into a pale, sickly yellow.

On my laptop screen, the cursor blinked in the middle of a blank document, like a quiet countdown.

The walls of my tiny apartment were covered in sticky notes, once full of ideas. Now, they looked like meaningless symbols.

I’m Lin Qi, a narrative writer for indie games. Or at least, I used to be.

Over the past six months, it felt like something invisible had taken hold of me. I was stuck in a creative black hole I couldn’t escape.

One day, after another proposal got rejected by my editor, I stared at my reflection in the subway window on my way back home and muttered to myself, “If I could just write one truly good story… I’d be willing to trade anything.”

The coffee next to me had gone cold. It tasted like rust. My thumb hovered over the mobile screen, mindlessly swiping through emails and unopened notifications.

That’s when I noticed it: a small, familiar icon tucked among the clutter. A silhouette of a lone figure in a boat, drifting across a dark lake. Behind them, jagged mountain peaks glowed under a blood-red sky. Rusty Lake.

Back in university, I had been obsessed with that game series. It was known for its dark, surreal puzzles and strange stories. I thought, maybe if I replayed it, I’d get some inspiration?

Just as I tapped the icon, a pop-up appeared:

Rusty Lake: The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show – 10th Anniversary Edition is now available.

Without overthinking, I tapped “Download.”

As the game installed, the screen faded to black. The logo appeared, followed by that familiar, haunting music. I pressed “Start,” and once again, entered the world of Rusty Lake.

The game started just like the old Rusty Lake games I remembered: slow, strange, and slightly unsettling. I was controlling a character sitting in the twelfth row of a dark theatre. On stage stood a tall figure in a white rabbit mask, performing a series of bizarre magic tricks, and each trick was also a puzzle I had to solve.

I became completely absorbed. Time slipped away without me noticing. Outside, the sky turned darker, and rain began tapping at the windows, but I barely looked up. The real world faded into the background. I was inside the game, focused on every detail of this strange magician and his silent show.

The final challenge arrived.

Mr. Rabbit stood beside a mirror, a taxidermy bird, and a small black cube. The puzzle was more complicated than the ones before. I had to move objects in a certain order, find clues hidden in the stage, and figure out how the cube connected everything together.

After several tries, I finally solved it.

The moment I did, Mr. Rabbit turned slowly to face the audience.

To face me.

He gave a deep, deliberate bow. In silence, he raised his hands and removed the mask. Where a face should have been, there was only a mirror.

And in it, I saw myself.

But not exactly. The face reflected back was mine, yet slightly off. I looked older, more tired. I was wearing a worn-out suit, like one of the characters from the game. My expression was blank. For a second, I couldn’t tell if it was me looking at the screen or the reflection looking back.

The clock on my wall showed 2:37 a.m. I was exhausted and got into bed, but couldn’t sleep. That reflection wouldn’t leave my mind.

Was that really me? Why did the game end like that? Was it just a glitch… or something else?

Eventually, sleep pulled me under.

In the dream, I found myself standing at the edge of a vast lake, so wide it seemed to have no end. The water was dark red, thick and silent, like blood left too long in the open air. On the surface, dozens of white rabbit masks floated in perfect stillness.

They were simply… watching. Waiting.

I don’t know how long I stood there, but a strange feeling crept into my chest, as if I wasn’t dreaming at all, but remembering something that hadn’t happened yet.

The next morning, I was woken by the sound of the doorbell.

It rang again before I could even sit up. I looked at the clock: 10:02 a.m. Later than I usually woke, but not by much. The bell rang a third time, this time sharper, more impatient.

Still half-asleep, I pulled on a robe and walked to the door.

A deliveryman was standing outside, holding a brown envelope.

“Mr. Lin Qi?” he asked, his voice calm, almost too calm.

I nodded and took the envelope from him. He didn’t ask for a signature. He just gave me a small, strange smile and walked away.

I closed the door and examined the envelope. There was no return address. My name and apartment number were printed neatly on the front in an old-fashioned typeface, like something from a vintage telegram.

I opened it carefully. Inside was a thick, yellowed card. It looked like an invitation. The edges were decorated with elegant patterns, and at the centre was a short message:

To the Honourable Mr. Lin Qi,

On this cycle of eternal return, Rusty Lake Hotel warmly invites you to enter our quiet grounds.

Your room, No. 309, is ready.

Date: May 5

A train ticket is enclosed.

We look forward to your arrival.

— Mr. Owl

[Stamped in ink: a wide-eyed owl with both eyes open]

A train ticket slid out of the envelope and landed on the floor.

I picked up the ticket, unsure whether to laugh or be afraid. Rusty Lake was a game. A fictional world. A setting made of puzzles and strange stories. There wasn’t a real hotel, and certainly no real train going there.

Was this a prank? A fan-made campaign? A piece of viral marketing?

Curiosity led me to open my laptop and search for “Rusty Lake.”

To my surprise, the name came up, not just as a game, but as an actual town. A small place about three hours from Amsterdam by train.

It was named after a lake with reddish water caused by high iron content. A few old forum posts described it as a private estate that had only recently opened to the public.

There was also a website about “Rusty Lake Hotel.” It looked like it hadn’t been updated in decades, plain, blocky design, low-resolution images, barely functioning links.

On the front page, there was a photo of a Victorian-style mansion by the lake. Red brick, dark roof, surrounded by trees.

I stared at the computer screen for a long time. The train ticket lay quietly beside the keyboard, its printed destination, Rusty Lake, blurring slightly in my vision. It sounded absurd, and yet every detail was too specific to ignore.

Perhaps someone had gone to great lengths to blur the line between fiction and reality. But deep inside, I felt none of that mattered. Whether it was real or staged, something in me had already responded.

I packed a small bag with some clothes and a notebook. I told no one about this trip and left the rest of my inbox unread. The idea of being unreachable felt like a kind of relief.

The next day, I boarded the train listed on the ticket. It left Amsterdam after midday, heading east through the low fields and scattered woodlands.

The train wasn’t crowded. Most of the other passengers were seated alone, reading or staring out the windows. No one spoke.

I took a window seat and tried to let my thoughts settle, but something felt off: I began to hear a sound that didn’t belong.

It was subtle at first, for a moment, I assumed it was just part of the machinery, some loose bolt clicking in time with the rails. But the pattern was too precise. A crisp, deliberate tapping, like the keys of an old typewriter being pressed with care.

I looked around the carriage. No one was typing, no one even noticed this strange sound. Everyone else seemed wrapped in their own silence.

The tapping didn’t stop. It continued with the same unhurried rhythm, as though someone, or something, was taking notes just behind my ear, recording each of my thoughts as they formed, one letter at a time.

I slowly fell asleep with the company of those tapping sounds until the overhead speaker crackled to life.

“Next stop: Rusty Lake.”

I woke up. Across the aisle, a few passengers lifted their heads at the exact same moment. Their expressions were calm, almost blank. They weren’t looking at me directly, but there was something in the way their eyes moved that made me feel seen.

I looked away and kept my eyes on the window, watching the trees grow thicker and the sky deepen into a dull, rusty hue. I felt less like travelling through physical space and more like slipping into another layer of reality.

The train began to slow, the sound of the wheels softening until it pulled into a narrow platform that looked like it hadn’t seen regular use in years.

The station sign was barely legible, its letters obscured by moss and weather stains. Above it, a lone streetlamp cast a weak, flickering glow, buzzing faintly like it was struggling to stay awake.

I rose from my seat, picked up my bag, and stepped off the train. No one else moved. The doors shut behind me with a faint hiss. The train waited a few seconds longer, as if uncertain, before sliding away, its hum dissolving into the trees.

The platform felt abandoned. A flicker of colour on the far wall caught my eye: a poster, half-faded, behind fogged glass. Through the surface, I could just make out the image: a red-brick Victorian hotel beside a dark, rust-coloured lake. Beneath it, in delicate, curling script, were the words:

Rusty Lake Hotel – Guardian of Your Memories.

A low rumble drifted through the mist. A black car had arrived near the platform’s edge, its engine settling into a quiet idle. The driver stepped out, a tall figure in a dark suit, holding a white placard with my name printed in neat block letters: Mr. Lin Qi.

He didn’t call out but simply waited, as if this moment had already happened many times before.

I walked toward him. The closer I got, the more carefully still he seemed. When I stopped in front of him, he gave a small nod.

“Mr. Lin Qi,” he said. His voice was dry, quiet, and almost flat. “Welcome to Rusty Lake. The hotel is expecting you.”

Without further explanation, the driver opened the rear door. I stepped in, and the car pulled away, gliding down a narrow road that threaded through the forest.

Trees stood close on either side, their trunks evenly spaced in a way that felt deliberate rather than natural. Above, branches formed a canopy that softened the late afternoon light into something dim and muted.

I glanced toward the rearview mirror, but the angle showed only the car’s ceiling. The driver didn’t speak. The silence made me wonder if the existence of this stretch of road was purely to move people from one reality into another.

The trees began to space out, and patches of open light broke through the canopy. Between the trunks, a lake slowly emerged: broad, perfectly still, stretched out like a memory that refused to fade.

Its surface held a dull, iron-red hue, the colour of oxidised silence. It didn’t catch the light so much as consume it, drawing brightness inward like it had been collecting shadows for years.

The hotel stood at the edge of the lake, exactly as I’d seen it before: first in the game, then in the poster. Three storeys tall, narrow windows, red brick softened by moss and ivy. Its roof sloped sharply, and its foundation looked heavy, as if time itself had pressed it into the ground.

The car came to a stop. I stepped out and climbed the stone steps, each one worn smooth at the centre. At the top stood a tall wooden door, its surface carved with curling patterns that looked like tangled vines, or veins. My fingers found the brass handle, cold and unmoving, as if untouched for years. I pressed forward.

Inside, the lobby opened into a floor of faded tiles, laid in a checkerboard of dull black and yellowed cream. The wallpaper was patterned with delicate, looping shapes, part geometry, part something older, harder to name. At first, it was decorative, almost elegant. But the longer I looked, the more the lines seemed to shift, curving subtly inward, as if the walls were quietly folding themselves around me.

A vintage clock stood in one corner. Its hands pointed to 12:12. I paused to listen and heard it ticking softly, even though the time never changed. Strange portraits lined the walls, painted in fine detail, wearing dated clothing, all unsmiling. Their eyes, no matter the angle, always seemed to meet mine.

At the reception desk stood a woman.

She looked to be in her early thirties, dressed in a crisp white blouse and a charcoal skirt. A dark green silk scarf was tied neatly at her neck, patterned with what looked like peacock feathers. Her black hair was pulled into a perfect bun. She looked as if she had been standing there for quite some time.

“Mr. Lin Qi,” she said. Her voice was calm, clear, and unhurried. “Welcome to Rusty Lake Hotel. We’ve been expecting you.”

She reached beneath the desk and handed me a key. It was brass, heavy in my palm, with a leather tag embossed in gold lettering: 309.

“Your room is prepared,” she continued. “Dinner will be served in the dining hall in two hours. Mr. Owl has requested your presence.”

The name made something shift inside me.

Mr. Owl. I had seen him before, or at least a version of him, in the games. A figure of authority. A gatekeeper. But now the name was being spoken as if he were real, someone I might actually meet in person.

I looked up. “Who is Mr. Owl?”

The receptionist offered a polite smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“All will be explained in time,” she said. “Perhaps you’d like to rest first.”

I nodded and took the key.

The elevator stood at the far end: an old-fashioned cage design, complete with a folding gate and brass buttons dulled by time. I stepped inside and pressed the button for the third floor. The elevator rattled softly as it rose, but otherwise moved smoothly.

When the doors slid open, I stepped into a corridor that felt oddly compressed, as though the entire floor existed only to hold this one space. There was just a single door at the end.

Room 309.

The door stood slightly taller than usual, its frame narrower than the ones I’d seen downstairs. The number was engraved into a brass plate: elegant, spotless. I reached for the key, slid it into the lock, and felt it turn with a soft, precise click.

Heavy curtains blocked most of the light from the lake-facing windows in my room. The wallpaper was patterned in a deep burgundy, and the carpet matched in tone. In the centre stood a four-poster bed draped in dark red linens, its wooden frame carved with swirling shapes, abstract, but almost organic in form.

On the far wall hung a painting. A man in a rabbit mask stood in front of a mirror, but his reflection was not a man at all; it was a real rabbit, upright and still, staring back through the glass.

There was a writing desk near the window. On it sat a thick guestbook bound in dark leather, and beside it, a fountain pen resting in a porcelain holder shaped like a swan with no eyes. Curiosity led me to flip through the guestbook.

It wasn’t what I expected. No dates, no travel anecdotes or polite notes to the staff, but weird names, a series of handwritten fragments: some cryptic, some unhinged. A few were scratched out entirely, the paper beneath torn or burned.

One read, in spidery ink:

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
— Mr. Crow

Another, etched so faintly it was almost invisible:

The dreamer is inside the dream. But who is writing it?
— D.L.

Others rambled for pages, disjointed memories, confessions, or what might’ve been riddles. One entry was just a drawing: a rabbit with no face, standing beside a door marked “47.”

At the very end of the book, a final message stopped me cold.

The handwriting was unmistakable. Every loop, every uneven curl of a “g,” the exact pressure of the strokes: it was mine. Not similar. Not imitated. Mine. It read:

Day 12. I finally understand Mr. Owl’s plan. The memory cube is the key. The price is too high. I’m not sure if I’m willing to trade. If you’re reading this, please, don’t trust the Rabbit. Never tr

The sentence stopped mid-word. The pen must have been pulled away suddenly. The ink trailed off like a breath held too long.

I stared at the page for a while, unsure what disturbed me more: the warning, or the fact that I seemed to have written it myself.

A chill moved through me. I closed the guestbook, set the pen aside, and stood up.

There was still one hour before dinner. I wasn’t sure I wanted to rest in this room anymore.

I opened the door and stepped out. At the far end of the corridor, I noticed a staircase. I followed it down to the second floor, where the layout had subtly changed. The walls curved slightly inward, and the light from the sconces flickered more than before.

I passed a few closed doors and eventually came to a narrow hallway that ended in a tall set of wooden double doors. They were half open. Inside was a library.

The shelves lining the walls were uneven, some warped, others too narrow to hold anything real. A few of them contained books, but they were arranged in impossible ways: upside down, inside out, stacked with their spines turned inward.

Their titles have been scratched off or written in a language that resembled ink stains more than letters. One shelf held nothing but empty photo frames. Another contained rows of glass jars, each sealed and labelled with a date range of hundreds of years.

In the centre of the back wall stood a tall glass display case. It was the only thing lit by a spotlight. Inside the case, resting on a velvet cushion, was a small transparent cube.

It looked almost like crystal filled with slow-moving light. The liquid inside shifted gently, glowing faintly in shades of blue and white. A small plaque sat in front of it:

The First Memory Cube

Created by Albert Vanderboom, 1796

I leaned in without meaning to. The cube gave off no sound, but I felt something: a subtle pressure behind my eyes, like a dream trying to surface. My breath slowed. My pulse matched something inside the cube, or maybe the other way around.

Then, for just a second, I saw a faint image form: A small boy stood at the edge of a lake, staring into the water. His face was turned away, but his posture was familiar. The shape of his shoulders, the tilt of his head. It looked exactly like a character from the Rusty Lake game.

The boy slowly lifted his head and turned, but just before I could see his face, the image vanished. The light inside the cube dimmed, returning to a soft, steady glow.

I stepped back, heart pounding.

Had I really seen that? Or had the cube shown me what it thought I wanted to see?

Somewhere in the distance, a clock struck once, just a single, hollow tone. I checked my watch. Dinner would begin soon.

I left the library, trying not to look back at the cube. But even as I climbed the stairs toward my room, I could still feel it pulsing softly in the dark behind me, like something alive.

When I returned to my room, the bed was no longer empty. A black suit had been laid out with deliberate care across the blanket. The fabric was cleanly pressed, the seams sharp, the material so dark it seemed to swallow the lamplight.

Beside it sat a neatly folded red tie, and on top of the ensemble, a small cream-coloured card. It bore the same looping handwriting I’d seen on the invitation:

Please dress for dinner.

— Mr. Owl

I picked up the suit jacket and slipped it on. It fit too well. The shoulders aligned precisely, the sleeves ended exactly at the wrist, and the collar settled against my neck with surgical accuracy.

I took a breath and stepped into the hallway.

The portraits on the walls hadn’t changed, but they felt different. Their eyes, still and painted, seemed to follow me with quiet attention. As if they understood what the suit meant, and who I now was.

I passed the grandfather clock. Its brass hands were still locked at 12:12, but the internal mechanism hadn’t stopped. The tick-tick continued steadily, indifferent to the illusion of time.

At the end of the corridor, the great oak doors waited.

They towered before me, carved with symbols I recognised without recalling from where: concentric circles, pairs of keys, feathers in spiral arrangements, rows of open eyes that seemed to watch from every angle. They reminded me of a forgotten alphabet, one I used to dream in before I knew how to read.

My hand found the handle. It was warm.

Inside, the dining hall glowed with low amber light. Velvet curtains shrouded the windows. Shadows pooled in the corners. Down the centre of a long lacquered table, twelve candles flickered in perfect unison, as if they shared a single breath.

Twelve chairs were already filled.

The guests sat in silence. Their clothes were elegant: dinner jackets, evening gowns, but each of their faces was obscured by an animal mask: the glassy-eyed stag, the feathered crow, the sleek fox, the proud peacock, the smiling cat, the hunched porcupine, the blunt-faced bear… All familiar.

They didn’t turn to look, but I knew they had registered my arrival.

At the far end of the table, seated in a high-backed chair, was a tall figure in a black tailcoat and an intricately carved owl mask. A wineglass rested in his gloved hand, though he hadn’t raised it.

He turned his head slightly toward me.

“Our final guest has arrived,” he said. His voice was low, carried a trace of something foreign in its accent. “Please, Mr. Lin Qi. Take your seat.”

A single chair stood empty at the near end of the table. Waiting.

In front of it, a rabbit mask rested on a folded napkin. White porcelain, its surface smooth and faintly luminous. Velvet lined the inside like it had been made for comfort.

I picked it up. The moment I lowered it onto my face, it fit too well. The edges pressed against my skin with a precision that felt less like design and more like memory.

“Let us begin,” said Mr. Owl.

With a faint clink of silver, the masked guests lifted their glasses in perfect sync. Their movements were fluid, practised, almost mechanical. I followed suit, fingers brushing the cool stem of my own glass.

The liquid inside was dark red. Not the translucent ruby of wine, but something denser. It shimmered faintly in the candlelight.

Mr. Owl raised his glass without standing.

“For memory,” he said quietly. “For the lake. For the return.”

The others echoed him:

“For memory. For the lake. For the return.”

The voices around the table murmured in unison, like a spell that had been recited too many times. The words didn’t ring with meaning. They echoed like muscle memory.

I raised the glass and took a cautious sip. The liquid tasted almost like red wine, but there was something else beneath it: a sharp metallic note, bitter and lingering, like a rusted key melting on the tongue.

What followed was less a meal than a surreal performance: Every dish seemed carefully engineered. Some were arranged in spirals that resembled sliced organs; others were geometric and perfectly symmetrical. All those courses didn’t seem made for consumption, but for interpretation.

The guests spoke, eventually. Their conversations were fragmented, disjointed, threads from lives that might have belonged to different centuries and different realities.

A woman in a cat mask murmured casually, “During my third dive experiment, I accidentally inhaled the memory of a bird… Since then, I dream in feathers.”

An older gentleman with a crow mask added, “My left hand was exchanged on the night before my wedding. The bride said it was Mr. Crow’s promise. To this day, I’m unsure whether she married me, or the memory.”

A woman in a red shawl leaned forward, her voice barely above a whisper: “I was born in Rusty Lake. I died in Rusty Lake. I was married here three times. They say my husband was just the version of me who came before.”

I sat in silence, unsure if I was a guest or a participant in some vast, unfurling role-play game, because their conversations were not like people recalling the past; rather, narrators reading lines.

Mr. Owl rose from his chair and raised a hand. The room stilled instantly.

“Now,” he said, “let the game begin.”

Mr. Owl stepped toward me, drawing something from the inner pocket of his coat.

A small wooden box.

He placed it on the table in front of me. Its surface was carved with swirling runes and strange symmetrical patterns.

“Each guest must give something in return,” he said, his voice suddenly colder. “A memory lost to time. A wound still bleeding. Or a sin never spoken.”

I took the box in both hands. Though it looked small, it felt heavier than expected.

“Open it,” Mr. Owl instructed. “Use the key you carry in your mind.”

I didn’t understand what I was holding. The carvings on the surface looked decorative at first — worn symbols, looping lines. But as I stared, a puzzle emerged, etched directly into the grain.

Shapes clicked into being: my old bedroom, dim and silent. Crumpled drawing paper across the floor. Every page bore the same image: a rabbit, faceless, staring from the page with nothing to say.

My hands moved without instruction. Each slide was instinct. As if my muscles remembered a pattern my mind had forgotten.

Piece by piece, the past assembled itself. And when the last tile fell into place, the box exhaled. A soft, shivering breath.

It opened.

Inside, something pulsed.

A cube lay cradled in darkness, its surface smooth as glass but faintly yielding to the light. Within it, a pale luminescence swirled. The glow shifted slowly, folding into itself in endless, seamless spirals.

As I leaned closer, the glow within shifted. The patterns broke apart, dissolved, and began to take shape again; this time not as motion, but as memory.

A child’s face appeared first, tear-streaked, lips trembling; I stood at an airport alone, seventeen, clutching a passport and a bag that felt too heavy for how little it held… Soon, years compressed into seconds, forms signed, apartments rented, nights passed under unfamiliar ceilings. And always, a desk. A lamp. The sound of my own thoughts, circling with no place to land.

Suddenly, the flow inside the cube cut to a single, frozen frame.

A man sat motionless in a studio. Not working. Not resting. Just… paused. His skin looked washed out under fluorescent lights. His eyes held no focus. He hadn’t moved in some time, and something in his posture suggested he might never again.

He looked up.

He was me.

The light in his eyes had dimmed to something unreadable. His lips parted. From inside the cube came a voice, jagged and broken like sound filtered through cracked glass.

My breath caught. I took a step back before I knew I had moved. The pressure in my chest tightened as if the cube were pulling the air from the room. I didn’t know whether I had just witnessed a memory… or whether a memory had turned and seen me.

At the head of the table, Mr. Owl gave a single, slow nod.

“Your first memory cube,” he said. “Keep it close. You will need it.”

Around me, the masked guests began to clap, slow and mechanical, as if the room had accepted my offering and now the machinery of the night could continue.

Mr. Owl gave a small nod, his expression unreadable behind the mask.

“Tomorrow, the lake will open,” He said, leaning in slightly, voice lowering just enough to feel personal. “Be at the platform by noon. Bring the cube. The others will be waiting.”

Without further explanation, he turned away. The candles along the table flickered in unison.

I put the cube in my pocket and returned upstairs to my room. That night, I dreamed again:

I was sitting in an empty theatre. The curtains were red, floor was tiled in a jagged black-and-white pattern. I couldn’t move; my body felt pinned to the seat, eyes fixed on the stage.

From behind the curtain stepped a man in an old grey suit. His hair was silver, his sunglasses thick and dark. He didn’t look at me. He faced the void and spoke in a low voice that felt too slow for time.

“You think you’re awake. But you’re only watching.”

And then the dream collapsed.

I woke to late morning light, pale and slightly distorted. The curtains swayed gently, stirred by a breeze I hadn’t noticed until now.

The memory cube still sat on the nightstand. The glow had vanished, replaced by the dull gleam of ordinary glass. And yet, something in the air told me the cube was only sleeping. Waiting to be used again.

I dressed in the clothes that had been left for me: a white linen shirt, freshly pressed; black trousers, tailored to fit my shape precisely.

I slipped the cube into my pocket. The hallway outside was quiet. The ticking of the clock had not resumed; its hands still pointed stubbornly to 12:12. The woman at the front desk was gone. No one else was in sight.

I opened the front doors.

The air that met me was cold and damp, edged with the scent of wet leaves and metal. A layer of mist clung to the lawn, blurring the edge of the lake, which had taken on a deeper colour than before, closer to dried blood than rust.

Ahead, near the shore, twelve figures stood arranged in a circle. Each wore the same black and white attire as I did. Each carried a cube.

As I approached, the group parted slightly, making space for me at the centre. Their movements were smooth, unhurried, almost choreographed. At the centre of the circle stood Mr. Owl.

“You’ve arrived,” he said. His voice carried easily across the fog. “And you’ve brought your cube?”

I nodded and reached into my pocket. The cube felt heavier now, as if it understood where it was going.

Mr. Owl extended a gloved hand. I placed the cube into his palm. Without a word, he turned and stepped toward the stone platform.

Twelve recesses had been carved into its surface, shallow, square spaces arranged in a perfect circle. Eleven were already filled by masked guests. Each cube glowed faintly, casting thin shadows that stretched across the ground like spokes of a clock frozen in mid-turn.

Only one space remained.

Mr. Owl knelt with unexpected care and fitted my cube into the final slot. It slid into place without resistance. As it settled, a soft click echoed through the clearing, metal meeting stone, memory locking into memory.

The circle was complete.

“This is the wheel of return,” Mr. Owl said. “Twelve months. Twelve memories. Twelve witnesses.”

He turned to face the others, the wind tugging gently at his coat.

“You were all chosen,” he said, steady and clear. “Each of you brings what the lake requires.”

His voice dropped. The next words were spoken in a language I didn’t understand — ancient, rhythmic, carried on the air like a tide returning. The others joined in. One by one, the masked figures lifted their heads toward the lake, their voices folding into his, creating a hum that seemed to rise from the earth itself.

Fog curled in from the water’s edge, thickening with each breath of the chant. Light dimmed. Trees receded. Sky vanished. Only the memory cubes remained visible. Each pulsed with its own dull glow: some blue, some grey, some flickering like stars on the verge of collapse.

The lake answered. Its surface darkened. A slow ripple passed through it, then another. At the centre, a whirlpool began to form, spinning with impossible symmetry.

One by one, the cubes began to hum.

The first vision surfaced.

A birdcage, barely swinging. Inside, a parrot, Harvey. His feathers were faded, his movements lethargic. He turned his head with effort and spoke, the words unmistakably human: “Scissors, egg, fish tank… I remember… I remember…”

The sound dissolved into static before the last word could settle.

Next, a barefoot woman appeared, standing by a porcelain bathtub. Water had crept up to her ankles, silent and still. In one hand, she held a knife, its blade resting against her leg. Her reflection in the mirror didn’t match her stillness. It raised a knife of its own, but smiled.

From it emerged another scene I recognised instantly, though I had never seen it with my eyes. The basement of Rusty Lake Hotel. Five figures stood in a row, each wearing a mask: elk, peacock, cat, crow, rabbit. One by one, they stepped into a chamber lit by red light.

The fourth vision was a woman in red sat before a fire. Slowly, ritualistically, she pulled strands of hair from her scalp and braided them into a thin black cord. The cord became a spine. The spine, a doll.

The fifth vision lingered longer than the rest. Mr. Crow was bent over a cluttered laboratory bench. Around him stood dozens of glass bottles, each marked with faded labels, dates, names, and torn scraps of sketches. In his gloved hand, he held a memory cube.

He uncapped a vial and let a single drop of black ink fall into it. The moment the ink touched the liquid, it began to stir. Shapes emerged from within: my old drawings, rising slowly from the depths. Page after page. Rabbits. Always without faces.

Many other images appeared and faded. The fog around us tightened. I stood there, unable to speak. These were pieces of something vast, fragments of stories that overlapped, looped, blended into one another like watercolours left too long in the rain.

They were memories.

And Mr. Owl turned toward me.

“You’ve seen them now,” he said softly. “Do you understand?”

I hesitated. My throat felt dry.

“These people…” I said, voice unsteady. “They were like me?”

Mr. Owl nodded.

“Not just like you,” he replied. “They are you. They are all of us, fragments, reflections, possibilities. Each one is a thread that leads here.”

He raised his hand toward the swirling lake.

“Rusty Lake is not a place,” he said. “It is a state. A dimension of memory and recursion. It exists on the edge of collective awareness, drawn out by those whose minds hover at the borders, like creators, seekers, the nearly broken.”

“You came here not because we summoned you,” he said. “But because you opened the door. When inspiration dried. When the world grew silent. When you whispered that you would give anything for a true story.”

“And Rusty Lake listened.”

A ripple passed through the group as Mr. Owl stepped closer. The fog around the lake seemed to draw inward with him, as though even the air waited for what came next.

“You’ve seen what memory can become here,” he said. “You’ve felt how deeply it takes root, how quietly it rewrites.”

He reached into the folds of his coat and drew something from within: a mask, white and long-eared. A rabbit mask.

“This is the moment, Mr. Lin Qi.”

He placed the mask in front of me.

“You have two paths,” he said.

His tone was neutral, like a ritual that had played out many times, in many forms, across many lives.

“Take the mask, and you remain. You will become part of the cycle. Not as a guest, but as its guardian. Its architect. You will design new layers. Gather new memories. Guide others who arrive as lost as you once were.”

He paused.

“You will not age, not as others do. You will be preserved within the lake’s rhythm, outside of time, yet forever within its current.”

His voice changed, softened.

“Or you may take your memory cube and return. To your world, your time. You will forget parts of this place. Not all, but enough to wonder if it was real. You will write. You will create. And you may carry traces of what you’ve seen.”

He glanced toward the lake. The whirlpool had slowed. The water now shimmered in deep, impossible colours.

“But you will never come back.”

The finality in his voice landed with a weight that no echo dared follow.

I stared down at the rabbit mask.

Its surface seemed to reflect more than light. My own outline bent inside it. I imagined what it would feel like to lift it, to wear it, to let it seal away the uncertain parts of me. The doubt. The noise. The longing.

But another image rose to meet it.

A message. Written in my own hand. The unfinished note I had seen in Room 309, now suddenly whole in my memory.

“Don’t trust the rabbit.”

And just like that, the image snapped into focus. A reminder from a version of me that had stood here before. That had chosen differently.

Maybe many times.

I stepped back from the mask.

“I choose the cube,” I said.

The words tasted metallic. They rang out too loudly in the air, like I had disturbed something asleep.

But Mr. Owl didn’t protest.

He simply nodded, as though this too had been expected.

“Very well,” he said. “You will return. You will carry the story.”

He reached out and handed me the memory cube.

“When you wake,” Mr. Owl said, “you will be back where you began. The cube will remain. But the door… will close.”

I held it tight.

The lake opened. Where the whirlpool had been, there was now a circle of pure, midnight-blue water.

“This is your path home,” Mr. Owl said. “You only need to step forward.”

I turned, took one last look at the masked figures, at the pedestal and the mask I had not chosen. And I stepped into the lake.

I woke to the pale wash of morning light filtering through the curtains. For a few long seconds, I simply stared at the ceiling, trying to match the rhythm of my breath with the stillness of the room. My body felt heavy, as though I had travelled through more than sleep.

The radiator hummed quietly. My coffee mug sat where I remembered leaving it. Everything looked as it should. The books. The scattered notes on my walls. The blinking cursor on my computer screen.

But something had changed.

I sat up slowly. The sheets were tangled around my legs. My throat was dry. When I turned to the nightstand, the confirmation was waiting.

The memory cube.

I turned to my phone. The Rusty Lake icon still sat on the home screen. But when I tapped it, the screen blinked once, then displayed a message: File corrupted. Unable to open.

No matter how many times I tried, the result was the same. Just as Mr. Owl had promised, the door was closed.

Life resumed, or appeared to. I returned to writing. Ideas came quickly, as if something had been cleared out and replaced with clarity. I finished projects with a speed and certainty I hadn’t felt in years.

My new work, a dark, surreal, and psychological horror game, was met with critical acclaim. People called it a breakthrough. Some said it “peeled away the boundary between the conscious and the submerged.”

I smiled in interviews. I spoke of process and influence. But I never mentioned the hotel, or the lake, or the man behind the mask.

One day, I was invited to attend a national live broadcast.

The host read the usual questions. I responded smoothly, half on autopilot, as though playing a part I already knew by heart. Then came the final card.

He didn’t read it aloud. Just placed it on the table in front of me.

“This one’s from a viewer,” he said.

I picked it up.

The handwriting was mine.

Not similar. Mine.

And the words, exactly as they’d appeared in Room 309, unfinished and trembling:

Day seven. I finally understand Mr. Owl’s plan. The memory cube is the key…

Except now, the final line was complete:

Never trust memory.

I felt my fingers tremble. The edges of the card blurred slightly, as if resisting focus. A vivid image surfaced: I was back at the desk in Room 309, writing with a black fountain pen. Outside, the lake churned like reversed blood flow. That version of me looked up, eyes meeting mine through the impossible distance. His lips moved, but no sound came.

You never left.

The studio lights flickered once, just once, and everything went dark. A voice followed, low and close, as if spoken directly into my ear:

“You still think you’re telling the story?”

Then silence.

A moment later, the lights returned. The host was smiling again. The audience clapped. The final card had vanished. No one brought it up. No one seemed to remember it was there. But I knew something had crossed over.

Back home, the clock on my wall read 12:12.

The memory cube rested on the nightstand, quiet and still. I picked it up, turned it once in my hand, then dropped it into the drawer and locked it.

That should have been enough.

I lay down in the dark and closed my eyes.

At first, nothing. Then a murmur, almost imagined: the echo of water turning. A familiar chant, low and distant.

I tried to tell myself it was just a memory. Just the residue of something I couldn’t explain.

But as the sound deepened, slow and tidal, I realised either something had followed me back, or I had never really left.