The words the girl had spoken echoed in my mind as I stood there, staring at the torn page she handed me:
"The moment she reached the end, she became the next chapter."
I felt the weight of it, the terror of knowing Ruhani had become the story.
"I don't understand," I whispered, gripping the page. "How do we stop it? How do we stop the book?"
The girl, whose name I still hadn't learned, looked at me with eyes that were older than they should be.
"You can't stop it the way you think. The house won't let you. It wants to be completed."
I frowned. "You mean the story?"
She nodded. "The story. The house. They're the same now. It needs to be finished — and once it is, you'll either become part of it… or you'll be gone."
I felt a chill run through me. I looked back at the door.
The hallway felt longer, darker.
That night, the house began to change.
I couldn't explain how — it was subtle at first.
The walls creaked, the floorboards groaned under weight that wasn't there.
Then, the lights flickered.
And the doors?
They didn't stay open anymore.
I tried to leave my room — but the hallway stretched before me, too long, the door at the end never getting closer. It felt like I was walking in place, moving through a maze that wasn't real.
I stopped.
I couldn't go back.
The door I'd passed earlier — the one to the girl's room — was gone. Just a blank space where it had once been.
And then I heard it.
A whisper.
It came from behind me.
I turned, heart pounding.
And standing there, her face pale and twisted, was the girl.
But her eyes were empty.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Instead, a sound like a crackling static filled the air — the sound of a story being rewritten.
And then I heard it: the ticking.
A countdown.
"Three."
I tried to scream, but no sound came.
The house shook.
The lights buzzed.
"Two."
I bolted for the door. But it wouldn't open. No matter how hard I pulled, the handle wouldn't budge.
I looked back.
The girl was gone.
But the room was changing.
The walls seemed to breathe, the floor lifting and lowering as if the house itself was alive.
Then, the final whisper:
"One."
The door finally creaked open, but when I stepped through, I was no longer in the hallway.
I was in the red book.
I could feel it.
The pages around me, the words written in blood and ink, swirled around me like a vortex.
A sentence appeared in the air:
"She chose to write the end."