The pair of pupil-less white eyes staring sharply from behind the door gap continued to drive deep into his retinas, radiating an absolute horror that instantly froze the blood in Arya's veins. His heart stopped beating for several seconds that felt like an eternity, while his breath caught in his throat, refusing to move in or out of his burning lungs.

"No... please, don't look at me..." Arya whimpered in a voice so raspy, choked, and barely audible.

With the remnants of strength left in his violently shaking body, he lunged forward and slammed his entire weight against the wooden panel, slamming that one-centimeter gap shut with a loud thud. He immediately twisted the key back in its lock, deadbolting it tight from the inside, as though that frail strip of old wood could protect him from the creature outside.

Arya staggered backward, breathing raggedly and erratically. His spine collided with the chemical bottle rack, nearly sending several glass jars crashing to the floor. He slumped downward, collapsing limply onto the cold concrete floor, both hands clutching his head tightly. His mind completely shattered to pieces. His sanity had reached its ultimate limit, tormented by a boundless despair.

There's no way out. The door is locked from the outside. And that thing... that thing has already seen me, Arya's mind screamed hysterically, tears streaming profusely down his pale face. He felt like hunted game trapped in the corner of a cage, waiting for the executioner's arrival without a single thing he could do to save himself.

Amidst his harrowing sobs and the echoes of terror battering his chest, Arya's gaze inadvertently drifted toward the workbench illuminated by the safelight's red glow.

That antique biscuit tin still lay wide open on the table. Inside it remained a few untouched final film rolls.

A cold, hollow, and fatalistic realization suddenly crept into his mind. If he truly could not escape, if that door was sealed shut forever, then his morbid curiosity deserved to be paid in full. He wanted to know how this circle of terror ended. He wanted to see what destiny awaited Grandfather Haris—and what fate was now coming to claim him.

With mechanical movements devoid of full consciousness, driven by some horrifying trance-like compulsion, Arya slowly pushed himself up. His legs felt impossibly heavy, as though bound by invisible iron chains. He dragged his steps toward the workbench, ignoring the wound on his bleeding finger.

His trembling fingers reached deep inside the tin box, then pulled out the fifth film roll—the final roll labeled with the year 1999, the year of the studio's tragic closure before Grandfather Haris left it abandoned.

"1999... the final year," Arya whispered softly, his voice flat, vacant, and devoid of expression, like a lifeless automaton.

He performed the analog developing process mechanically, completely devoid of hesitation or explosive fear; what remained was a cold, absolute resignation. He mixed the chemicals, dropped the 1999 negative strip into the tank, agitated it with a slow, consistent rhythm, and finally clamped a pristine white photographic sheet to dip it into the developer tray.

The safelight's red glow reflected calmly across the chemical solution's surface in the tray. Silver halide reactions began to work, slowly forming contour lines across the white paper.

Arya stared straight down into the tray, waiting for the image to emerge with hollow, unblinking eyes.

Yet the moment those high-contrast tones formed completely and Arya lifted the photographic print to inspect it, the last drop of blood in his body abruptly drained away, leaving him as cold as ice.

The setting depicted in that fifth roll was no longer the upstairs studio living room, nor any other corner.

The setting in the photograph was the very underground room where Arya was standing right at this moment.

Corner by corner, the details of the laboratory space were rendered with chilling accuracy across the paper: the printing desk, the chemical bottle racks, the copper sink, and even the small door beneath the stairs—all of it captured to perfection, as though the photograph had been shot from the darkroom ceiling at that very second.

A terrifying realization struck Arya like a bolt of lightning out of the blue: the setting within the photo had merged seamlessly with present reality. The time loop had closed. Every prior victim—including Grandfather Haris—had endured the exact same cycle of terror, in the exact same place, and ended up inside the exact same frame.

Arya's heartbeat stopped entirely. His eyes dilated sharply, staring toward the darkest corner of that 1999 subterranean photograph.

In that corner of the photo stood the figure of a young man wearing a green jacket—the exact same green jacket Arya was wearing right now—slumped hopelessly on the concrete floor with his head bowed in despair. And right behind the back of the young man in the photo, a pair of exceptionally long, emaciated black arms reached out from the darkness, gripping the young man's head tightly with sharp claws dug deep into his flesh.

Before Arya could scream or hurl the photo from his hands, every single red safelight bulb in the room abruptly died out entirely.

Absolute darkness swallowed everything. And amidst the cold gloom of the night, an antique camera's flashbulb in the corner of the room fired automatically, blinding his eyes for one final time.