The elevator was always silent, even when it wasn’t moving. Most people didn’t notice it at first—the old building had many quirks, but the lift was one of the least disturbing. It was a small, rusted box with a flickering light bulb and a cracked mirror that reflected the ceiling instead of the floor. The button for the 13th floor never worked, and no one could explain why. Some said the building had been constructed on an old cemetery, others whispered about a man who vanished inside years ago. Lena started working in the building three months ago. She was a junior architect, assigned to a project that required her to spend long hours in the office on the 9th floor. At first, she ignored the elevator’s oddities. But as days passed, she began to notice things: the faint hum of a voice from the empty shaft, the sudden drop in temperature when the doors closed, and the way the numbers on the panel sometimes changed without her pressing them. One evening, after a late meeting, Lena found herself alone in the building. The other employees had left, and the lights in the hallways were dim. She stepped into the elevator, pressed the 9th floor, and watched the numbers slowly ascend. As the elevator climbed, the mirror reflected not her face, but a figure standing behind her—tall, draped in tattered clothes, with hollow eyes that seemed to follow her every move. She turned around, but the cabin was empty. She hurried out when the doors opened, heart pounding. That night, she told her roommate about the encounter. Her friend laughed it off, saying it was just fatigue. But Lena couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching her. The next day, she tried the elevator again. This time, the numbers skipped from 4 to 6 without stopping at 5. When the doors opened on the 9th floor, the hallway was completely dark. She walked through, but the office door was locked. She checked the clock—she hadn’t even been gone ten minutes. The building was empty, yet the elevator had taken her somewhere else. Over the following weeks, Lena became obsessed with the elevator. She began leaving notes inside the cabin, hoping someone would find them. She wrote about the strange reflections, the missing floors, the cold spots. One morning, she found a note tucked between the buttons. It was written in shaky handwriting: “Don’t go to 13.” She looked up at the number, which still read “13” despite being non-functional. She had never seen the number change before. Curiosity overpowered her fear. She waited until the building was quiet and returned to the elevator. This time, she pressed 13. The button glowed briefly, then the elevator shuddered as if something heavy was shifting inside. The lights flickered, and the mirror showed not the ceiling, but a long, dark corridor with a single door at the end. The figure from before stood in the distance, now closer, its face half-hidden by shadows. The elevator stopped. The doors creaked open, revealing a narrow stairwell that wasn’t there before. A soft whisper echoed in her ears, not in any language she knew, but it felt like a warning. She backed away, but the doors closed behind her. The numbers on the panel began to spin wildly, and the air grew colder. For a moment, she thought she saw a hand reach through the glass, brushing against her cheek. She ran, stumbled into the hallway, and slammed the door shut. The elevator was gone, replaced by a blank wall. No one else had noticed anything. The building remained unchanged, the elevator still waiting for the next person to step inside. Lena quit her job the next day. She never told anyone what happened, but she kept a small notebook filled with sketches and observations. She believed the elevator wasn’t just a machine—it was a threshold, a place where time and space folded in on themselves. And somewhere, deep within the building, the 13th floor still existed, hidden from the world, waiting for the next curious soul to find it.