Arya's eyes remained locked in horror on the photographic processing tray before him. That horrifying face with pupil-less eyes and a skin-tearing grin seemed to scorch his retinas, freezing his entire body stiff like a statue of ice. His breath hitched in his throat, while cold sweat poured heavily down his forehead and neck.

"No... no, this is impossible. It's just a normal chemical reaction! An optical artifact from solutions that are way too old!" Arya screamed hysterically inside his head, fighting desperately to stave off the terror gripping his soul. He shook his head violently, trying to convince himself that what he had just witnessed was nothing more than an illusion born of his exhausted mind.

With hands trembling so severely that the wooden tongs in his fingers rattled loudly, Arya lifted the photographic paper out of the developer bath. The wet emulsion dripped leftover brownish chemical solution onto the floor. Without wasting a second, he immediately submerged the paper into the second tray containing the stop bath to halt the reaction, then dipped it into the third tray filled with fixer solution to make the image permanent.

Once the chemical process was complete, Arya used the small tongs to hang the black-and-white print upon a special clothesline stretched across the corner of the darkroom, right beneath the blood-red glare of the safelight.

He stood dazed before the hanging photograph, regulating his still-ragged breathing. The air in the room felt heavy and humid, thick with the pungent, nose-stinging reek of acid. Arya wrapped his arms around his trembling body, trying to find a shred of warmth amidst the chilling draft creeping up from the concrete floor.

"All right, Arya... calm down. Let's look at this with a clear head. It's just an old photo," he whispered to himself, his voice sounding terribly raspy, broken, and echoing hollowly against the silent walls of the underground laboratory.

He leaned in closer, inspecting the analog print with meticulous care.

From a close distance, the classic aesthetic of 1980s photography was striking. Halide silver grains decorated the surface of the matte-textured paper, giving it a deeply distinctive artistic feel. At first glance, there was no longer any horrifying, hollow-eyed face haunting him inside the chemical tray.

What lay before him now was a picture of a remarkably harmonious and perfect family—a nostalgic scene that typically graced old-fashioned family albums.

In the center of the studio space stood a middle-aged man in a neatly tailored suit with a warm smile, wrapping a protective arm around an elegant, shoulder-length-haired woman wearing a classic 1980s dress. Standing right in front of them was a little boy of about seven years old, wearing denim overalls while clutching a small wooden toy in his hand. The three of them stood straight, smiling stiffly toward the camera lens, radiating a peaceful family warmth.

And in the left corner of the photo frame stood a young Grandfather Haris—with thick black curls and his signature work vest—holding a large analog camera mounted on a tripod, smiling proudly toward the camera as if capturing the very moment of happiness itself.

Arya exhaled a long, heavy breath. His previously rigid shoulders slowly relaxed. A stiff, thin smile tugged at the corners of his lips, even though his heart still hammered wildly.

"Phew... just as I thought. That was just a hallucination. The red light and sheer exhaustion made my eyes play tricks on me," Arya muttered, forcing a small chuckle to break the oppressive atmosphere in the room. "It's just an ordinary family portrait. Grandfather was simply documenting his clients back in 1985. There's nothing to be afraid of."

Slowly, a false wave of relief crept into his chest. He felt as though a ton-weight had suddenly lifted off his shoulders. This place was certainly creepy, but perhaps his terror all along was merely the fruit of over-anxiety after losing his grandfather and being left entirely alone in a strange place.

Arya reached out toward the clothesline, intending to tidy up the rest of the printing equipment and figure out a way to break through the exit door. Yet as his arm moved, his elbow accidentally clipped a small graduated cylinder filled with leftover clean water resting on the edge of the workbench.

Clatter!

The glass cylinder tumbled to the concrete floor and shattered into pieces. Worst of all, a few splashes of clear water from the broken glass vaulted upward, landing squarely against the surface of the family photo hanging on the line.

Arya flinched slightly. "Ah, damn it!" he hissed.

He quickly grabbed a dry tissue from the table and reached out to blot away the droplets clinging to the lower surface of the hanging photo.

Yet the moment the edge of the tissue touched the photographic surface... an extraordinarily horrifying anomaly unfolded right before his eyes.

The background of the photo—the living room wall behind the harmoniously smiling family—suddenly shifted in color, turning pitch-black, dense, and inky, as though the white paint of the wall had dissolved under a wash of black ink.

Arya froze, his hand suspended in mid-air. The tissue slipped from his fingers, fluttering down to the floor.

Beneath the safelight's red glow, the previously normal and empty background of the photo slowly revealed a brand-new, terrifying shape—a tall, oddly proportioned pitch-black shadow with elongated, slender arms. Where nothing had stood when the print was first developed, this entity now crouched right behind the little boy's back, wrapping its arms around the child's head with a grip of long, sharp, blackened claws.