The dim red glare blanketing Classroom 3B made everything feel like a suffocating nightmare. The stench of damp earth grew increasingly pungent, mingling with a bitter cold that felt like it was crystallizing right on their skin.

"Professor... please, Professor. Don't do this..." Vanya slid off her chair, collapsing onto the floor in tears. Her arrogance as the campus's trendy pop-girl had vanished without a trace.

Yet, Professor Danu ignored her. The middle-aged man turned his rigid body, facing the broad blackboard that stretched across the front of the classroom. With slow, jerky movements, he retrieved a piece of white chalk from the desk ledge.

"Open your books. The second chapter of our lesson begins now," Professor Danu's raspy double-toned voice resonated, bouncing off the silent corners of the ceiling.

"What lesson, you idiot?!" Gani screamed in frustration from the back, his fists clenched so tightly the veins in his neck bulged. "Can't you see the door is locked? The signal is dead? The clocks have stopped?! And you still want to lecture?! Have you completely lost your mind, Professor?!"

Professor Danu did not turn around. He didn't even raise his hand toward the blackboard. Yet, a horrifying miracle unfolded right before their eyes.

Srrrsk... Srrrsk... Srrrsk...

The piece of chalk in Professor Danu's hand remained completely still, but another fragment resting on the blackboard tray floated up into the air. The chalk moved on its own with an unnatural speed, scratching aggressively across the black surface to carve out large, sharp capital letters:

CHAPTER II: DEAD ETHICS AND MORALITY.

"P-Professor... the chalk..." Sela shrieked hysterically, pointing a violently trembling finger at the board. She buried her face in the back of Arin's shirt. "Arin, the chalk is writing by itself! Dear God, it's moving on its own!"

Arin froze, tears streaming down her face in silence. Her throat locked up in sheer, overwhelming shock.

Reno, who usually found a way to stay cool, now gripped the edges of his desk until his knuckles turned ghostly white. "This... this is a magic trick, right? Dinda, you're rich—do you know if there's projector or magnetic tech that can make chalk do that?"

Dinda didn't answer. She backed away step by step until her spine hit the classroom wall. Her eyes widened, staring directly at the floor beneath Professor Danu's feet.

Right then, Professor Danu stood directly underneath the flickering red fluorescent light. By all laws of physics, any object beneath a light source should cast a shadow onto the ground. Yet beneath the worn leather dress shoes Professor Danu wore, the concrete floor was completely clear. Empty.

"R-Reno..." Dinda's voice quivered, barely above a ghostly whisper. "The shadow... Look at the floor, Reno."

Reno shifted his gaze downward. His heart felt like it skipped a beat as he realized what Dinda was staring at. "No... where's his shadow?"

"Are you guys completely stupid?!" Gani stormed forward, his hurried footsteps cutting through the rows of desks. Though his face was deathly pale, rage still dominated his expression. "He doesn't have a shadow! The chalk is writing on its own! Are you still thinking this is a magic trick?!"

Gani came to a halt precisely three meters behind Professor Danu. "Hey, old man! What the hell are you?! A ghost?! Are you dead?!"

At the sound of Gani's outburst, the chalk writing on the board abruptly stopped with a sharp click. An instant hush fell over the room—so dead quiet that the pounding of their own frantic heartbeats sounded deafening.

Slowly, Professor Danu began to walk around the instructor's desk. He stepped toward the rows of student desks. And it was here that the ultimate physical anomaly revealed itself in full display.

Shhhk... Shhhk... It was not the sound of dress shoes stepping on concrete, but rather the friction of stiff fabric moving through the air. Professor Danu walked without making a single footstep. His movement was unnaturally smooth, as if his middle-aged body were not treading on the ground at all, but hovering a few centimeters above the floor's surface.

"When my life was disregarded, my voice was never heard by any of you," Professor Danu spoke as he drifted forward. His lips moved stiffly, yet his flat eyes stared straight ahead, never blinking once. "You treated me as if I didn't exist. You trampled my dignity as though I were dirt under your feet."

He came to a stop directly in front of Gani's desk. Only a thin wooden tabletop separated them now. A blast of ice-cold air radiated from Professor Danu's body, causing Gani to recoil violently until his back slammed against the chair behind him.

"And now, when I am truly 'no longer here'..." Professor Danu slowly tilted his head to the right with a soft yet distinct crack that echoed through the quiet room. "...why are you only now afraid, Gani?"

"P-Professor Danu... please, sir..." Vanya scrambled along the floor toward Dinda, clinging to her friend's legs while begging continuously. "We're sorry, Professor... We promise we'll come to every class... We promise we won't skip ever again..."

"Money..." Dinda whispered in a raspy voice, her tears ruining her expensive makeup. She opened her handbag frantically, pulling out the thick brown envelope she had brought to bribe him. "Professor... here's money... take all of it, sir. Please let us go... I'm begging you..."

Professor Danu glanced down at the envelope in Dinda's hand. In the very next second, the brown envelope spontaneously burst into cold, greenish-blue flames. Dinda shrieked in horror, dropping the envelope, which disintegrated into black ash in an instant before it even touched the floor.

"Your money cannot purchase a ticket out of my classroom, Dinda," Professor Danu said coldly, his voice echoing from every direction as if the very walls of the room were speaking in unison.

The chalk on the board resumed its violent frenzy—no longer writing course material, but carving out a single word repeatedly until it filled every inch of the black surface, producing an ear-splitting screech:

DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE.

"Reno! Gani! Open the door! Break it down now!" Arin screamed hysterically from the back, unable to endure the psychological terror shattering her nerves.

Reno snapped out of his trance. He sprinted toward the back door, joining Gani, who was already hurling his body weight against the heavy wooden door. "Gani! Together! Ram it!"

All six of them had come to the horrifying realization: the middle-aged figure in the batik shirt before them was not an instructor holding a makeup lecture. He was an entity from the beyond, returned to demand payment for every insult they had sown.

And nine o'clock tonight was slowly turning into their hour of judgment.