That droplet of thick, inky liquid seeped slowly from the surface of the photographic paper, dripping down onto the wooden table with a drip... drip... drip... that sounded deafening amidst the absolute silence of the darkroom.

Arya froze. The air around him seemed utterly sucked away. His eyes remained fixed without blinking on the viscous fluid reeking of metallic iron. This was no mere optical illusion or failed chemical reaction. This was an absolute violation of the laws of nature. A two-dimensional object—a portrait of the past trapped within paper emulsion—had just displayed terrifying signs of life.

"This... this is impossible. You're just paper! You're just dead memories!" Arya screamed, his voice cracking hoarsely, shattering the despair tightening around his throat.

He staggered backward away from the workbench, his hands grasping frantically at empty air for support. His sanity hung by a razor-thin thread, thrashing violently to break free from this absurd reality. In his chaotic mind, a single thought dominated: This red light is what brings it to life. This light is its medium. I have to kill that light source. Even the densest, pitch-black darkness was far preferable to having to watch those portraits move and hunt him beneath the blood-red glare.

With breaths heaving heavily like a wounded bull, Arya spun around and lunged toward the wall near the entrance. His violently shaking fingers groped blindly across the cold, rough concrete surface.

Where is the switch?! Where is the damn switch?! he cursed internally. His fingernails chipped and bled as they scraped against the concrete wall, but he didn't care about the pain in the slightest.

Finally, his palm slammed against the plastic protrusion of the main switch box. Without a second's hesitation, Arya slammed the toggle downward with all the force of his fist.

CLICK!

He hoped the room would instantly plunge into a soothing darkness. Instead, it triggered a brand-new, far more horrifying hell.

The red safelight bulb in the center of the ceiling did not go out.

Instead of dying, the bulb let out a piercing, ear-splitting hiss, then began to flicker wildly and erratically. Bright light... pitch black... bright light... pitch black.

A strobe effect instantly materialized within the underground laboratory. Every single flicker lasted for a fraction of a second, shattering reality into disjointed, fragmented frames of imagery.

Simultaneously, from behind the concrete walls enclosing the room, a high-voltage electrical hum ground to life with deafening volume. BUZZZZT... CRAAAACK... BUZZZZT! The sound echoed violently, as though thousands of volts of wild current were ripping apart the old copper wiring inside the walls, commanded by the wrath of an unseen force refusing to be silenced.

"No! Turn it off! Turn it ooofff!" Arya screamed, pressing his palms hard against both ears as he collapsed to the concrete floor.

Sensory overload struck his brain without mercy. The flashing red illumination snapping on and off with extreme violence blurred his vision and sent his head spinning violently. Beneath that flickering glow, everything in the room seemed to move in a jerky, stuttering fashion, like a silent horror film with a mangled celluloid strip.

The focal scene now centered on Arya's own shadow cast against the room's wall. Due to the strobing light pulsing at a frantic rhythm, his shadow on the concrete wall seemed to detach itself from its host. As Arya crawled frantically across the floor, his shadow on the wall leaped wildly, distorting—stretching long and shrinking short in deeply unnatural ways, as though the shadow were mocking his agony.

"Argh! Mercy... stop this!" Arya sobbed.

Panic dominated his motor nerves. Amidst the darkness punctuated by blinding red flashes, he lost all orientation. He no longer knew where the walls, the door, or the workbench were. The cramped underground room suddenly felt as vast as a football field hemmed in by terror.

Arya groped the floor in sheer desperation, his knees scraping against the concrete until his trousers tore. He had to find the space beneath the workbench to hide. His hands clawed blindly at the air every time darkness swallowed the room, only to jerk backward in horror when the red flash revealed rows of chemical bottles that looked like rows of severed heads to his hallucinating eyes.

BUZZZZT...FLASH! Arya spotted the edge of the table.DARKNESS. He crawled forward with all his might, dragging his numb legs.BUZZZZT...FLASH! His hands successfully clamped onto the wooden rim of the printing table. His breath came in ragged gasps, expelling plumes of white vapor as the room's temperature abruptly plummeted past freezing.

Yet as he leaned against the table leg, gasping for air, Arya's eyes reflexively snapped straight toward the blank concrete wall across the room.

And at that exact second, amidst the lethal strobe flicker, true terror laid bare its form.

FLASH! (First Flash) Across the room, illuminated by the blinding red glare, Arya saw the wall was empty. Only stacks of wooden shelving shadows remained.DARKNESS. Gripping silence for half a second, followed by the sound of coarse vintage fabric rubbing together. Swish.

FLASH! (Second Flash) Arya's blood froze solid. In the farthest corner of that wall now stood a tall, impossibly thin silhouette with grotesquely unnatural proportions. That creature in the tattered suit stood dead still. Its featureless head dipped downward toward the floor, yet Arya knew with chilling certainty that the entity was watching him.DARKNESS. Arya wanted to scream, but his vocal cords were utterly paralyzed. His muscles locked up. He was trapped in a paralysis brought on by absolute terror. The sound of barefoot dragging across the concrete floor rang out clearly. Tap... swish.

FLASH! (Third Flash) That tall silhouette was no longer in the corner of the room. It had shifted position, advancing three meters closer to the table where Arya hid. In that fraction of a second bathed in red light, Arya could see its long, emaciated arms dangling nearly to the floor, with blackened fingers curling like dead tree branches.DARKNESS. "Go away... please go away," Arya whispered, tears streaming from his eyelids. He tried to press his back hard against the wooden table leg, praying his body could phase right through the solid wood and vanish.

FLASH! (Fourth Flash) The creature was now right in the center of the room. Barely two meters away from Arya's huddled, wretched form. Its towering body hunched in jerky, broken angles to accommodate the low darkroom ceiling. Its neck snapped sideways with a sickening crack as its head abruptly yanked upward, exposing the utter absence of a face directly to Arya's eyes.DARKNESS. A wave of freezing air swept the entire room. The electrical hum from behind the walls reached its highest pitch, screaming like a thousand iron bees. Within this absolute darkness, Arya felt the suffocating aura of death invading every pore of his skin.

FLASH! (Fifth Flash) The red bulb flickered one last time, casting a dying, washed-out glow. In that final fraction of a second of light, the creature was no longer in front of Arya. Empty space. Yet before Arya could even exhale a sigh of relief, he felt the tip of a freezing-cold nose smelling of rotting flesh gently press against the back of his ear. The icy draft of the creature's breath crept downward along his spine.

Amidst the final flicker of the red light dying out completely, leaving behind eternal darkness, the silhouette of that tall, tattered-suited figure leaned in close, standing directly behind the young man's back, fusing seamlessly with his shadow.