Ren was still standing in the middle of the room after the Red-faced Man disappeared. The feeling of fear and mystery began to mix with something else... something deeper than mere terror. There was a sense of drifting, as if he was drowning in a whirlpool of confused memories.
Ren began to walk cautiously towards the closed door, his hand trembling as it reached for the cold handle. When he grasped it, his fingers felt a slight electric current as if the cottage itself was pulsing with life. He tried to open the door, but it didn't move. A feeling of frustration began to creep in, as if he was stuck in an inescapable trap.
"How will I get out of here?"
He slowly pulled his hand back, stepping backwards, recalling what had just happened. The words uttered by the Red-faced Man were still ringing in his ears. "Not every secret should be uncovered. Some secrets can be deadly."
He began to realize that his presence in this place was not just a coincidence. There was a buried secret, a secret connected to his family and his past. But questions were piling up quickly in his mind, and he had no answers.
In the corner of the room, the painting was still hanging, but this time it was different. The image of the Red-faced Man had disappeared. Instead, there was a new picture... a picture of Ren himself.
"What? How...?"
He quickly approached the painting, staring at its details. There was no mistake, that was his picture. He was standing in the same place he was standing now, but what worried him more was the facial expression in the picture. His features carried the same sense of awe he was feeling now, as if the painting was reflecting his trapped soul.
The room began to sink into darkness bit by bit. The candle that had been lighting the place began to dim, and shadows started to gather around him. Ren felt that time was passing quickly, as if moments were turning into hours.
"There must be a way out of this place..."
As he was trying to think of his next move, he began to hear strange sounds creeping into the room. The sound was like whispers coming from a distant place, echoing in his ears as if they were echoes of thoughts buried long ago.
He slowly backed away, looking around anxiously. The place seemed to be pulsing with life in a strange way. The old dilapidated walls began to move, as if they were breathing with him. Suddenly, he noticed that the floor under his feet had started to crack slowly.
"This isn't real... this is all just an illusion."
But no matter how much he tried to convince himself of that, the realities around him were tightening their grip on him. The cracks in the floor were widening rapidly, and beneath them, an endless dark abyss began to appear. He felt panic as he tried to escape from the place, but the ground was collapsing around him.
Suddenly, he found himself falling... falling into darkness
The fall continued for what seemed like an eternity. His sense of weight disappeared, as if his body had become part of nothingness. Everything around him was black, with no end and no beginning. There was no sound except for the beats of his racing heart.
"Is this death?"
At that moment, the fall suddenly stopped. He found himself standing in a strange place. The air was cold and damp, and the ground beneath his feet was strangely soft, more like soil or ash. He tried to see around him, but the darkness was dense.
He began to hear the sound of slow footsteps approaching him, and the echo of those footsteps was reverberating in the surrounding atmosphere. Then, from among the shadows, the Red-faced Man appeared again, but this time he was different. His features were less distinct, as if he was melting into the darkness around him.
"You are now in my world, Ren... the world from which no one can escape."
The words were heavy and full of mystery, but Ren no longer felt afraid as he had before. Something had changed inside him, as if the truth he had been searching for had begun to reveal itself before him.
"What do you really want from me?"
The Red-faced Man took another step forward, then stood directly in front of him.
"I want you to see what I saw... to feel what I felt. The world your parents left you in, the world they tried to bury with me."
Then, in the blink of an eye, successive scenes began to appear before Ren. He saw his family in previous years, hiding from something invisible, talking about secrets he didn't know about. They were avoiding mentioning the name of the Red-faced Man, as if his existence was forbidden.