It was a cold, moonless night. The kind of night where the air felt sharp, like it was biting into the skin with every breath. The world outside seemed swallowed by the darkness, and every small noise—every crackling leaf, every whisper of wind—echoed through the night like a forgotten secret. The sound of my footsteps was the only thing that kept me grounded as I hurried down the long, narrow hallway. Each step was slow and deliberate, the floorboards creaking beneath my weight, but still, I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. The pressure in the air was thick, suffocating, as though the darkness itself had weight.

My heart pounded in my chest, quickening with every step I took. The hallway stretched on endlessly, every corner and shadow magnified in the silence. A part of me—perhaps the part that was still clinging to logic—told me it was nothing, just a trick of my mind. But another part of me, the part that had been gnawing at my nerves since the moment I stepped inside, knew that something was wrong. Something had been wrong from the start.

At last, I reached the end of the hallway, my breath shallow and ragged. My eyes fixed on the door at the far end—old and weathered, its wood cracked and worn as if it had been untouched for years. I didn't know why, but I couldn't stop myself. Something drew me toward it, an invisible force that whispered my name even though I couldn't hear it. Without thinking, I grabbed the handle and pushed the door open.

The hinges groaned with age, and the door creaked as it swung inward, revealing nothing but pitch-black darkness. My pulse quickened, and I stepped into the room, the air thick with dust and decay. There was a musty, metallic scent that clung to the corners of the room, as though it hadn't been disturbed in years. My breath caught in my throat as my eyes strained to make out anything in the murky blackness, but there was nothing—no shapes, no outlines, no hint of light. Just empty, oppressive darkness.

And then I saw it.

Two legs. Suspended in midair, unmoving, as though they were attached to something unseen. They dangled there, motionless, like a grotesque parody of a human form. They were unnaturally still, eerily quiet, but the sensation of them hanging there was enough to send a chill so deep into my bones that it felt like they were freezing from the inside out.

For a moment, I stood there, frozen, completely still, as if my mind refused to accept what my eyes were seeing. The nightmare that had been haunting my sleep for days—the one that left me waking in a cold sweat every night—had somehow bled into the waking world. But even then, as I stared at those floating legs, I couldn't tear my eyes away. The room felt alive, like it was watching me, and I, like some helpless insect, was caught in its gaze.

But then, something else shifted in the room. A deep, guttural sound—the unmistakable crunch of something moving in the dark—reached my ears. My heart leaped in my chest, and without thinking, I turned to look behind me. My muscles screamed at me to run, to flee from whatever was creeping ever closer, but my feet remained rooted to the spot, heavy and unresponsive.

A massive shadow loomed in the doorway behind me, blocking the faint light from the hallway. Its outline was wrong, distorted in a way I couldn't fully comprehend, its edges shifting and flickering like a mirage. The shadow grew, stretching taller, wider, until it seemed to fill the doorway completely. My breath hitched in my throat, and my blood ran cold.

Then, those eyes. Two small, glowing orbs of yellow light pierced the darkness, fixing on me with terrifying intensity. They gleamed with something ancient and predatory, as though they had been waiting—watching—just for me.

I didn't even have time to scream before the world around me started to blur. The edges of the room, the walls, the floor—all of it seemed to bend and twist, warping as though I were being pulled through a veil into something far worse. My vision dimmed, and the shadow behind me moved, too quickly for my mind to process. The footsteps that had been echoing behind me now grew deafening, thundering across the silence.

In an instant, darkness swallowed me whole.

I felt myself falling, but there was no ground, no sense of direction—just the weight of the blackness pressing down on me from all sides. My chest tightened with panic, my breath coming in ragged gasps as the last fleeting remnants of consciousness slipped away, and all I could hear, all I could feel, was the hollow emptiness closing in.