Chapter 3 The Mysterious Voice
Daylight at Blackwood Academy offered no warmth at all. Sunlight filtering through the vast stained-glass windows could only cast a dim, sickly bluish-purple glow, illuminating the dust motes drifting lazily through the air. In the silence of the dormitory hallway, abandoned by its other residents out of fear, Iris walked alone.
Driven by a destructive curiosity—a dark impulse surging through her veins—she left Room 204 and let her feet carry her farther and farther, past the warning sign and into the west wing, tightly shrouded in the fog of time.
“Clara said this place is a nest of monsters,” Iris murmured to herself, her voice echoing softly off the towering stone walls. “But what kind of monster could make me feel so alive in this rotten place?”
The farther she walked, the thinner and more stifling the air in the west wing became. The smell of ancient moss mingled with the heavy scent of sandalwood, creeping into her senses and creating a strange yet intoxicating dizziness. The walls on either side were no longer ordinary plaster, but massive medieval stones fitted tightly together without modern cement mortar.
Iris stopped before the darkest-looking stone wall in the corner of the hallway. She swallowed, feeling her heart race—not from fear, but from burning anticipation.
With fingers trembling slightly, Iris raised her right hand and slowly pressed her palm against the cold surface of the stone.
A physical shock instantly stung her skin. In that same moment, the stone no longer felt dead.
“Oh my God...” Iris breathed, her breath immediately coming fast.
The stone beneath her palm throbbed faintly. Soft, steady, yet powerful—like the heartbeat of a giant living creature trapped inside concrete and hundreds of years of history. Warmth spread upward from her palm, tracing her wrist before sending a sharp, erotic shiver through her entire spine. The wall seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting to the rhythm of an unseen person’s breaths.
“Do you like it, Miss Francesca?” The hoarse, heavy voice suddenly flowed directly into Iris’s ear, without any discernible source, as though invisible lips were pressed against her earlobe. “Touch me again, and I’ll crush your fingers between these stones... or perhaps I’ll pull you inside the flesh of this wall forever.”
Iris gasped sharply, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Instead of pulling her hand away in horror, she pressed her palm even harder against the stone, as though she wanted to absorb its intoxicating warmth.
“If you want to pull me in, do it now!” Iris challenged in a trembling yet provocative voice, refusing to show weakness to the entity surrounding her. “Don’t just whisper from behind the stone. Show yourself!”
Silence fell for a moment. The only sound breaking the stillness of the hallway was Iris’s own breathing. With what little sanity she had left beginning to slip away, Iris finally yanked her hand from the wall.
Her eyes widened when she saw what remained. The layer of ancient dust that had covered the stone’s surface had been wiped clean, leaving behind the wet, glistening impression of a human palm, as though the stone had just sweated in welcome at her touch.
Before Iris could process the strange sight, a horrifying scraping sound suddenly erupted from behind the stone wall.
Scrape... krrrk... scrape!
Long, razor-sharp nails clawed at the inside of the stone, grating against the sound of rock being worn away. Something behind it was moving, writhing wildly, as though the creature could not wait to break through the boundary between worlds and lunge out at her.
Iris stumbled backward in panic, her heart nearly tearing free from her chest. “What is that... what’s behind there?!” she screamed hysterically, staring in terror at the wall, which was now shaking violently.
Before she could turn around and run, tiny cracks suddenly appeared across the surface of the stone directly before her. From within those cracks, a thick, dark-red liquid seeped out, dripping slowly onto the marble floor.
The liquid moved on its own, twisting and curling into strange hand-drawn strokes until it finally took the shape of a mysterious symbol—a winged eye exactly like the design on the ring that always appeared in her dreams.
Iris stood frozen, trapped in the spell of an overwhelming horror, while the smell of blood and sandalwood filled her lungs.