Mildew

[Backrooms] + [Cunning Survival] + [Exploration] + [Uncharted Levels] + [Plot-Driven] + [No Plot Armor] --- The air hums with the static of flickering yellow lights. Damp carpets reek of mildew underfoot. Walls stretch endlessly in a maddening monotony of sickly beige—a prison of decaying déjà vu. This is the Backrooms. If you’re reckless enough to clip through reality in the wrong places, you’ll end up here. Pray you never hear something shuffling nearby—because if you do, pray it didn’t hear you too. It started in July 2019. A grainy photo posted on an obscure forum, captioned: “Stuck here. Send help.”Replies flooded in. People claimed to have dreamed of this liminal nightmare. Worse—some swore they’d found real-world overlaps: a circular factory in Nara, Japan; fog-choked woods in California; a stretch of Florida coastline… all eerily mirroring the Backrooms’ architecture. Could it be real? I laughed it off—until the day I stumbled into it myself.

Xu Yinyin's last memory was the blaring sound of her phone alarm. She had been working late into the night, drowning in financial reports and endless deadlines. A single moment of dizziness, a sharp pain in her chest, and then… darkness. When she opens her eyes, she is no longer in her modern high-rise apartment but in a **tiny, dimly lit room** that smells of damp straw and mildew. The air is thin and cold, and her body feels incredibly weak, as if she hasn't eaten in days. Her gaze lands on the cracked ceiling, the wooden beams above her looking fragile, as if they could collapse at any moment. Her body aches, and when she moves her hands, she feels her own **bony fingers**—thin, fragile, with calluses that don’t belong to her. Her throat is dry. Her stomach twists in hunger. **"Where… am I?"** She struggles to sit up, only to feel sharp pain radiating from her limbs. Her wrists are marked with old scars, faint traces of bruises scattered across her arms. The shabby quilt covering her is thin, barely providing warmth. A sense of unease grips her. Then, memories **flood** her mind. Her name is no longer Xu Yinyin. She is now **Su Wan**, a nineteen-year-old orphan in a poverty-stricken village in 1960s China. Her parents passed away early, leaving her at the mercy of her uncle’s family. Instead of caring for her, they treated her as an unwanted burden—a servant who worked from dawn to dusk with barely enough food to survive. Just yesterday, the original Su Wan had collapsed from exhaustion while carrying heavy buckets of water from the river. No one helped her. No one cared. She had been left in this tiny storage room to either wake up or die. The realization makes her shudder. Before she can process more, a cold, mechanical voice **echoes in her mind.** **[Host detected. Survival Space System initializing.]** A translucent blue screen appears before her. ### **Inventory:** ✔ **Fresh vegetables, rice, and flour** ✔ **Bottled clean water** ✔ **A first-aid kit with modern medicine** ✔ **Basic survival tools like a knife and matches** Su Wan's eyes widen. **"A cheat system?!"** She instinctively selects a loaf of bread. The next moment, a **warm, soft bun appears in her hand.** The scent of freshly baked bread fills the air. Her stomach growls. With trembling hands, she **takes a bite**—the fluffy warmth melting on her tongue, sending an almost overwhelming sensation of relief through her starved body. Warmth spreads through her, chasing away the biting cold. Her eyes flicker with determination. **"I have a second chance. I won’t let anyone trample on me again!! "

Typhon wakes up in a dingy, mildewed stone dungeon. Breaking apart his dungeon door, he finds a world that hates and fears him. But... he can't remember anything. Why is he hated? How cruel is it to be born good but forced to be evil?

The only business the Lyderwood Courtyard Motel gets are those who are more than eager to rest, in more ways than one. Desperate and tired people flock to the almost abandoned Lyderwood for the famous “suicide spot” and the mystifying lore behind it for a chance at an entertaining final rest in the town. Amongst the Courtyard’s inhabitants is the young Genevieve, a 19 year old girl on the outs with her family for being gay. She came to Lyderwood to find the same thing as everyone else, a solution to her problems. Instead, she uncovers a truth that leads her to questions she didn’t think to ask. Where did everyone in town go? How was Lyderwood claiming so many victims? Why was nobody stopping them? Why was the Courtyard still in business and how? As Genevieve explores, she doesn’t know if she wants to die anymore, and she isn’t understanding why there is so much pressure for her to do so. Something is amiss, and it’s not the mildew covered hallways of the Courtyard Motel. _____________ DISCLAIMER: Cover image is not mine, found on Pinterest and edited. All writing is mine. All characters and ideas are purely fictional and any resemblances to real people or previously written works is purely coincidental. P.S. Not male leading, there is no female leading realistic genre category which is kind of sexist but ok. Enjoy!

In the interstices of existence, where cosmic threads fray and dimensions converge, I, a weaver of improbable narratives, present to you a chronicle—a mortal flung into the Backroom, that dimly lit dimension where the remnants of shattered realities coalesce. Here, fragments of forgotten worlds gather like dust motes, and the air hums with the echoes of vanished civilizations. Level 0, they call it—an innocuous designation for a place that defies mortal comprehension. Imagine, if you will, a labyrinthine expanse of corridors, each stretching into infinity. The walls, a mélange of peeling wallpaper and faded paint, whisper secrets to those who listen. The floors—uneven, warped—yield underfoot, as if bearing the weight of countless footsteps across eons. Our mortal protagonist, nameless and bewildered, awakens here. His senses, attuned to the peculiarities of this realm, detect the faint scent of mildew and the distant drip of water. His diary, a fragile tether to sanity, lies open before him—a canvas for musings, observations, and the cryptic comments of otherworldly beings. The Backroom, you see, is no mere curiosity. It is a cosmic timepass—a diversion for entities like myself, who traverse the multiverse with idle curiosity. We fling mortals into its depths, like dice cast upon a celestial board. Some arrive willingly, seeking answers or escape; others stumble in, lost between dimensions. And so, our mortal scribe begins his entries: “I wake up in this strange place. The walls look weird, like they’re bending in impossible ways. Is this some kind of dream? I hear faint voices telling me to find a crimson door. But where is it, and what’s on the other side?” Dear reader, your role is pivotal. You, a transient consciousness, can shape his fate. Offer hints, cryptic riddles, or dire warnings—the ink of your comments seeps into his reality. Will you guide him toward salvation or plunge him deeper into the labyrinth’s heart? And thus, the tale unfolds—a dance of choices, a symphony of uncertainty. Mortal, immortal, and everything in between—we are but threads woven into existence’s grand tapestry. So, dear reader, what say you? Will you aid this lost soul or consign him to oblivion?