The rhythmic tapping of long fingernails against the wooden ceiling overhead persisted, hammering against Arya’s eardrums like a judge's gavel dropping a death sentence. Thud... thud... thud... The sound remained relentless, oppressive, as though the entity up above were counting down the final seconds before it tore through the roof of his hiding spot.

Arya curled tighter beside the workbench, hugging his knees hard while biting his lip until it bled. Tears streamed freely, mixing with the cold sweat dampening his pale face. His body shook uncontrollably, pushing past the absolute limits of his nervous system.

"Go away... please, just go away from up there..." Arya whimpered in a raspy, fractured voice choked inside his dry throat. He felt as though his marrow were melting under a terror that seeped deep into his bones.

Yet amidst the crushing waves of despair, a cold and strange realization suddenly crept into his mind. Crying in a corner wouldn't save him. Listening to that knocking wouldn't release him from death's grip. Those dragging footsteps and taps were merely psychological terror designed to shatter his mental fortitude, nudging him to surrender to hopelessness.

If he was going to die in this place, he refused to go out as a cowering coward who knew nothing. He had to see this mystery through to its bitter roots. He had to witness just how far this vicious circle had consumed his own family.

With breath still heaving and hands shaking so violently his joints ached, Arya forced himself up from the floor. He ignored the pounding overhead, the chilling draft biting at his skin, and the throbbing pain in his wounded finger. His eyes locked with desperate, hopeless resolve onto the antique biscuit tin resting on the table.

His bleeding fingers plunged into the tin, bypassing the other rolls, and dragged out the fourth roll of film—a canister bearing a handwritten label marked with the year 1995.

"The year 1995... ten years after that first roll," Arya whispered softly, his voice trembling yet carrying a cold firmness. "Let's see what happened to Grandfather."

Without wasting a single second, he plunged straight into the analog developing process with rapid efficiency. His movements were swift, driven by pure adrenaline. He mixed the chemicals, dropped the 1995 negative strip into the processing tank, agitated it with a steady rhythm, and pulled a pristine white photographic sheet to dip into the developer tray.

The safelight’s red glow illuminated the surface of the tray, casting the reflection of Arya's haggard, terror-stricken face.

The chemical reaction began working across the photographic paper. Faint contours slowly materialized, outlining the studio room where he currently stood—captured as it looked a decade ago.

The moment those high-contrast black-and-white tones formed completely, Arya lifted the print using the wooden tongs and brought it close to his face.

Instantly, a choked shriek tore from his lips. He staggered backward until his spine slammed against the chemical rack, nearly sending the bottles crashing down in a clatter. His breathing stopped dead.

The scene captured within that 1995 photograph surpassed any limit of horror he could have ever imagined.

Inside the picture, the background was the very corner of the studio where the antique camera stood. Yet the central subject was no longer a stranger's family, but Grandfather Haris himself during his middle-aged years.

Grandfather Haris in the photo wore his signature work vest, but his facial expression was the absolute definition of raw terror. The old man stood frozen in front of the camera tripod, his eyes dilated wide and his mouth gaped open in a silent, paralyzed scream. His hand holding the cable release hung limp in mid-air.

And what made Arya's blood boil with an unbearable surge of terror was the figure standing directly behind his grandfather.

That towering, black shadow in a tattered suit with a featureless face had wrapped its elongated arms completely around Grandfather Haris, clutching the old man's shoulders in a tight, vice-like grip. The creature's blackened fingers dug deep into the grandfather's flesh, while its eyeless head dipped low, pressing right against the old man's ear as though whispering a fatal curse.

That shocking revelation struck Arya like a sledgehammer. All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place in a devastating tragedy: Grandfather Haris had ultimately been a prior victim of that entity all along. The old man's mysterious death in the studio bathroom weeks ago had been no ordinary heart attack, but rather the climax of a curse hunting him down for decades ever since he first captured that creature through his camera lens.

"Grandfather... so you were trapped too? You were the one who photographed it..." he ranted hysterically, tears flooding his cheeks as he stared blankly at the photo of his grandfather with a gaze full of grief and horror.

All those dark secrets stood exposed at last. This studio was no mere family inheritance, but an eternal prison claiming the life of anyone daring enough to touch those film rolls.

Yet before Arya could lament his grandfather's fate any further, an anomaly defying human logic suddenly unfolded before him.

The 1995 photographic print held in his wooden tongs suddenly shook violently. The emulsion on the paper warped, and slowly, Grandfather Haris's shadow inside the picture displayed genuine physical movement.

The mouth of the grandfather's image parted wide. And from within that analog paper sheet, a raspy, aged, and horrifyingly echoing voice surged outward, filling the underground laboratory with a deafening resonance:

"Run... before it photographs you."