Absolute darkness swallowed Arya's vision in a heartbeat. The chilled air reeking of damp soil billowing from behind the small door seemed to crawl upward, wrapping around his ankles like the grip of an unseen hand.

"No... no, please, not now!" Arya shouted in panic. His voice cracked, echoing against the walls of the studio room, which had suddenly transformed into a suffocating, pitch-black cavern.

His heart hammered so wildly that his chest ached. His hands groped frantically along the rough concrete wall, searching for anything to hold onto. His trembling fingers kept sliding across the surface of the wall, while his ears caught the strange, echoing sound of dripping water—drip... drip... drip—even though there was no leaking faucet nearby.

"Damn it, where's the switch? Where?!" Arya ranted hysterically, his breath coming in ragged, gasping hitches amid the dense gloom. Fear seeped straight into his marrow, making his knees feel so weak he nearly collapsed to the floor.

Suddenly, his right palm slammed against a small, rough-textured protrusion on the wall to the left of the narrow hallway beneath the stairs. Without a second thought, Arya slammed his hand down on the emergency toggle switch with all his might.

CLICK!

A sharp red glow flared to life, shattering the darkness dramatically. Yet this was no ordinary yellow light; it was a distinct, dim crimson glow—a safelight commonly used in photography darkrooms to protect film rolls from white light damage.

That blood-red illumination slowly lit the space behind the small door, revealing a sight that made Arya's blood run dead stop.

He found no pile of junk or thick dust, but rather a spacious subterranean room meticulously arranged like a 1980s photography laboratory. A long printing desk stood there, alongside stainless steel wash tanks and rows of glass bottles filled with chemical solutions neatly aligned on wooden shelves.

What truly made Arya's hair stand on end was the condition of the room: absolutely zero dust. The workbench surfaces were polished clean, as though someone diligently maintained and cleaned them every single day, standing in stark contrast to the filthy, neglected state of the studio upstairs.

"W-what is this place..." Arya whispered, his voice trembling violently. He took a slow step backward, but the door behind him had already clicked shut by itself, completely silently. He was trapped inside.

Arya had no choice but to step deeper into the darkroom. His footsteps produced an agonizingly loud creak on the wooden floor amid the suffocating silence. His own shadow stretched long and writhed against the wall under the dim red glow, creating horrific silhouettes that seemed to move on their own at the edge of his vision.

BUZZZZT...

Suddenly, an old machine's hum sputtered to life on its own from the corner of the room. The analog enlarger machine resting on the workbench hummed lowly, casting a bright circle of white light downward onto the desk.

Arya jolted, leaping backward until his spine slammed against the rack of chemical bottles. The glass jars clinked loudly from the impact of his body.

"Who's there?! Don't mess with me! Come out!" Arya snapped, trying to mask his overwhelming fear by hurling his voice into the empty air. Yet his voice sounded hollow, swallowed by a room silence that felt alive and breathing.

No answer came. Only the hum of the enlarger machine grew progressively higher pitched, coinciding with a sudden, drastic drop in the darkroom's temperature that caused Arya's breath to plume into thin white vapor.

He wanted to run, to smash open the exit door that had clicked shut and locked tight. But his eyes were glued to the main workbench directly beneath the enlarger's light.

Spread across the clean wooden table lay a single, blank 8x10 inch white photographic sheet. The paper looked fragile, resting idly beneath the glare of the white light.

Suddenly, a subtle, freezing draft swept across the surface of the desk. The blank photo paper moved on its own, lifting a few centimeters off the wood without a single hand touching it, as though stirred by the breath of an unseen entity.

Arya held his breath, his eyes widening in horror as he stared at the slowly hovering paper.

As the sheet drifted back down to tap the desk, a damp, reddish stain suddenly appeared at the corner of the pristine white paper, slowly bleeding out to form a fresh, bloody fingerprint that still gleamed wetly beneath the darkroom's red light.