Rey woke slowly, the world coming back in pieces — a faint throb at the back of his skull, the cool floor beneath his cheek, the weight of something unfinished hanging in the air.
He pushed himself up, groggy, and turned his head.
There it was. The last canvas.
He didn't remember finishing it. But it was finished.
The hallway stretched across the surface in uncanny detail — too sharp, too precise, like someone else had taken over his hand. It led off into deep shadow, flanked by walls that leaned inward as if the whole thing was collapsing. At the end, a door. Barely open.
A sliver of golden light leaked through the crack. Not warm. Not inviting. Cold. Mechanical. Knowing.
And across the floor of the hallway: a red thread. Thin. Delicate. Leading from the edge of the painting to the space beneath that half-open door.
Rey stared at it.
And the painting stared back.
No one else noticed.
Beans stretched nearby, yawned, flicked her tail. The genie floated by, halfway through a monologue about spaghetti being a metaphor for love. Neither of them looked twice.
But Rey couldn't look away.
He didn't blink. Didn't breathe.
He couldn't explain it — just the sense that something inside that canvas had seen him. And it wasn't done.
Not yet.
And maybe… neither was he.