you found a room that shouldn't be a room. the floor is lacquered wood — dark, almost black. the grain catches light that has no source. scratched into the surface in a spiral that moves counterclockwise: thirty-six spaces. six destinations visible from any point. the road does not end. it circles.

six masks are mounted on the walls. porcelain. cracked at the edges. each one watches the center of the room from a different angle.

there is a bone die on the table. ivory. six faces. the authority owns the roll — not you, not the masks, not whatever is watching from the center. someone carved a rule into the table edge in letters too small to read without leaning close:

one traveler may escape. no traveler survives alone.
the house wins when the table forgets that.

the static is already here. you can feel it in the walls. hairline veins of interference spreading from the center outward. it wasn't here when you entered. it started when you read the rule.

six roads. six masks. six ways to lose everything you carried here.

the room remembers that you found it. the hallway will feel different now.