He remained standing there for a long time, his hand on the cold handle, without pushing it.
He thought of the twenty or thirty doors he had opened searching for another exit. Nothing. He thought of the hunger that had now become more than just an annoyance, a real pain pulling his stomach every few minutes. He thought of the time he had lost count of a long time ago.
"Okay," he said finally, in a voice different from all the voices he had used in this corridor until now. No sarcasm in it, no hesitation. "The time for joking is over."
He pushed the door.
The three chairs were in their place, and the shapes on them still as he left them. This time he entered without stopping at the threshold, his steps steady in a way he had not felt since he woke up in this world.
He stopped two steps away from the middle chair, where his father sits.
He stood looking at them, confused about how to deal with this closed room with their silent presence.
He looked at his father’s empty face, which never changed throughout all those visits, not once showing anything except that cold indifference he knew in real life.
"You said I am your son," he said, and his voice did not rise, it remained calm in a way that frightened even himself a little. "But you never treated me as such, not once, since the moment I lost my legs to save your daughter."
He looked at his mother, sitting with her hands in her lap, that same empty look.
"And you," he said. "I heard you behind the door. ’He was useful when he could walk.’ I remember every word."
Then he looked at his sister, the youngest of them, sitting motionless, at her exact age at the time of the accident.
He stopped at her for a second longer than the others. He had nothing to say to her, no accusation, no anger. Just a long, silent look.
"I will not ask for forgiveness," he said finally, to no one in particular. "And I will not ask you to understand. You are not real anyway."
He drew the knife from his belt, with a slow movement, without rushing, without a scream preceding it.
He remained standing there for an additional second, looking at the blade while the reflection of the blue light shines on it.
A part of him, small and distant, hesitated for one second then disappeared immediately. He did not give it a chance.
He approached his father first.
The shadow did not resist, did not move, did not show any expression even in the last moment. He stabbed the knife with a simplicity that surpasses any complexity he expected for this moment, and the shadow faded into gray fog without sound, without real blood, only a quiet disappearance.
Loki felt nothing. No terror, no satisfaction. Only neutral emptiness, similar to completing a task no more and no less.
He headed toward his mother.
He stopped for a longer moment this time, looking at her empty face, trying to find in it any trace of the woman who was, even for one second, even in this illusion. He found nothing.
"You did not even care enough to hate me," he said calmly.
He stabbed the knife.
She too faded.
Only his sister remained now.
He stood in front of her, the knife still in his hand, stained with gray fog instead of blood. She did not move, did not look at him, continued in the same still posture he had seen her in since the beginning.
A long moment passed in which he did not move.
"You did nothing," he said finally, in a voice lower than any voice he used in this room. "I saved you, and you moved away from me later, but you were a child. You had no choice."
He stopped. He looked at his hands, at the knife, then at the empty side chair where his father was, and at the other where his mother was.
Then he looked at her again, wondering if this path is the only way to complete what he started here.
He did not hesitate more than that.
He stabbed the knife.
She too faded, without sound, without resistance, without even a final flash in her empty eyes.
Loki remained standing alone in the now empty room, the knife still in his trembling hand, and three empty chairs in front of him.
He did not cry. He did not scream. He stood there, waiting for something, anything, a feeling appropriate for what he had just done.
It did not come.
He sat slowly on the floor, the knife still in his grip, and looked at the chairs for a long time.
"Is this all?" he asked the room, in a voice carrying neither anger nor victory. "I killed shadows that do not feel, and I wait for a door to open?"
A door did not open immediately.
He sat there, not knowing for how long, until he felt something changing in the air itself, a heaviness gradually lightening, the white walls around him began to fade quietly, the three chairs dissolving into the blue fog he knew from the stairs.
He stood up slowly, the knife still in his hand.
He looked at his other palm, empty this time, no blood on it, no trace of what he did except the memory itself. He wondered, without a clear answer, if this means something, that the blood was not real, or that this does not matter at all.
"They were not real," he said to himself, trying to make the sentence seem more confident than he really felt. "Just images. Ghosts this place made from my memory."
His own voice was not completely convinced, and he did not try to convince it more.
The blue fog swallowed the entire room, then the corridor, then the long row of doors that no longer had meaning now. When everything faded, Loki found himself standing at the beginning of a new staircase, wider than the previous one, without fog this time, and a steady blue light illuminating the way upward clearly.
At its base, a new stone plaque.
"Third Floor."
He read it, and did not smile this time as he did at the second floor. He stood there, looking at the new stairs, the knife still in his hand, as if he forgot to return it to his belt.
He wiped the blade with a piece of his clothing, even though there was no real blood on it, with a more automatic movement than necessary.
"Third floor," he repeated, in a low voice. "Let us see what you have for me this time."
He placed his foot on the first step, and climbed, without a final look at the corridor that disappeared behind him.