Rowan rolled her shoulders, managing to suppress a yawn as she turned off the lights of the empty practice room. Violin in hand, she turned toward the familiar, door-lined hallway that ran the length of the music department, briefly closing her tired eyes as she walked. An uncanny shift in the atmosphere pulled the air from her lungs, her eyes flying open to find the corridor replaced by an expanse of grey concrete which seemingly extended infinitely in either direction. Stark, discolored dark blue doors lined the walkway, rust visible where the paint had chipped away. Though each had a small, rectangular window, she couldn’t see anything but darkness beyond the glass. The buzz of hanging bar fluorescent lights filled the space with an almost physical presence, to say nothing

Heart pounding, the young woman wondered if she had stumbled into something like the Gameboard. There was no sign of any of the structures that typically accompanied that unpleasant…whatever that place is…so until she saw otherwise, she needed to work on figuring out the rules here. Reaching for the handle of the nearest door, she wasn’t entirely surprised to find it unyielding. But that didn’t stop her from trying another. Then another. Then another.

OK, opening doors clearly violated whatever rules governed this place. If she was going to get out, she needed to figure out more about where she actually was. Rowan wasn’t quite delusional enough to believe that she would be able to puzzle out the true nature of this place, or even get a read on where it may or may not be located in the outside world. But with luck she’d be able to scrape together enough knowledge to get herself out.

As she scrutinized her surroundings, she realized that some patches of the floor and walls bore the telltale sheen of freshly poured concrete, an impossibility considering how solid the rest of the hallway looked. Swiping her finger across one of the darker sections he felt nothing out of the ordinary, in terms of both the magical and the mundane. For a few brief moments, she could almost have sworn that the trail she left behind shifted as though traced by some phantom digit. An edge of frustration driving her, she continued her trek down the hallway, doing her best to ignore the footprints appearing and vanishing in the wet patches. Doing her best to ignore how many there were. Bare and shod, large and small. Doing her best to ignore the handprints that pressed outward toward her from the walls in countless sizes. At countless heights. Something was closing in. Something wanted her to be afraid. She wasn’t going to feed it. Or them, however many there might be. Reaching further into the space. She chided herself for allowing this fear to creep inward. She had seen worse. Definitely heard of worse. She could fight them off if she needed to.

The hallway seemed to narrow nearly imperceptibly with each passing second, the lights overhead growing louder before they began to shed darkness in a series of glassy pops and Rowan quickened her pace, fingers clutching the handle of her violin case so tightly it hurt.

Then just as quickly as it had overtaken her, the hallway came to an end, depositing the young woman safely outside of her practice room as the lights continued to buzz.