The night carried a weight that didn't belong to it. No wind, no insects—only the slow creak of trees swaying like watchers around the clearing. The building ahead waited in silence, its windows cracked like open wounds, its roof caved in as though something had pressed down from above. A moss-eaten sign hung sideways above the doorway, trembling whenever the air shifted.
Chloe stepped closer, her flashlight trembling in her hand. "This is the place?"
Elijah gave a short nod. "Yeah. That's the address from the message."
Lucian lingered near the threshold, his face caught between curiosity and dread. His voice came out low, distant. "Something's wrong here."
He wasn't exaggerating. The building reeked of damp soil and something metallic—like blood drying on iron, old and persistent.
Then Chloe's light caught on the sign. It wasn't a name or an advertisement. It was a symbol.
A triangle carved into the board, inside it a spiral of looping lines twisting toward a center that looked almost alive. Three eyes were painted shut along its edges, and from each eye a dark streak ran downward—ink, or maybe something worse. A crude handprint framed it, five fingers but six impressions. The pattern bent reality itself, the spacing unnatural, the lines too symmetrical to be human.
Richie took a step back, his voice tight. "That… that thing's moving."
It wasn't—but the shadows around it pulsed, a faint red hue leaking from the center spiral like blood seeping through cloth.
Chloe's jaw locked. "Lucian, if this is another one of your setups—"
"I told you," Lucian muttered, eyes unfocused, somewhere far away. "I don't know what this is."
The sincerity in his tone sent a chill through her. He sounded scared—genuinely scared. And Lucian never sounded scared.
Elijah turned, his patience thinning. "Enough. We'll get nowhere arguing. We came here to find answers, so let's move."
He pushed through the doorway first. The rest followed, hesitant but bound by the pull of the unknown.
The moment they stepped inside, the door slammed shut with a metallic boom that echoed through their bones.
Darkness swallowed them whole.
"Wait—" Chloe's voice cut off as the lights flickered to life with a low, electric hum.
A massive painting loomed on the far wall, its frame gold but peeling, as if dug up from a grave after decades of burial. A family portrait.
An old man sat in the center, posture rigid, his expression carved with disapproval that seemed to leak from the canvas itself. Beside him stood two women. One wore a wedding dress, smiling faintly, eyes gentle but guarded, as though she knew something terrible was coming. The other—her face was scratched out, gouged with something sharp, the canvas torn in places where rage had carved deepest.
Below the frame, words were written in flaking red paint that might have been blood once:
Two daughters born of one shadow—
One blessed, one denied.
When the will was signed in blood,
Only the orphan remembered the ink.
Around the frame were painted symbols—a feather quill, a shattered ring, droplets of red, and a blot of ink spreading outward like a wound that wouldn't close.
Vivian stepped closer, voice barely a whisper. "It's like a story… or a clue."
Then a sound rippled through the hall—laughter. Not quite human. A child's voice, shrill and echoing through invisible speakers, distorted just enough to twist the stomach.
"Welcome, guests," it chimed, saccharine and cruel. "Before you is truth dressed as art. Solve the story before the time runs out, or someone will pay for your ignorance."
Panels in the walls slid open with mechanical hisses. Guns emerged, sleek and humming with barely contained power. Red dots appeared on their chests—one for each of them, laser sights painting targets on their bodies.
Chloe's breath hitched. "You've got to be kidding me."
Elijah's voice stayed calm but strained, each word measured. "No one moves. Think."
A timer flickered to life above the portrait, glowing red like a beating heart. 30:00.
They gathered quickly, whispering frantic guesses, voices overlapping in desperate competition.
Chloe pointed at the inscription, her finger shaking. "It's about inheritance. Two daughters, one excluded. The orphan must've held evidence—the ink, the will."
Lucian frowned, pacing in tight circles. "Or it's symbolic. The 'orphan' might mean something else—maybe a creation, a mistake left behind by the family."
Richie trembled near the back, his brother Ron beside him, both pale as ghosts. "Can't we just—break it? Shoot the timer or something?"
Elijah's jaw clenched. "And trigger a failsafe? No. We think this through."
Minutes bled away like water through cupped hands. The clock ticked down, glowing red on their faces, counting heartbeats until death.
When the timer hit thirty seconds, panic seized them. They shouted their final answer in unison, voices cracking with desperation.
The lights went dark.
A single gun fired.
Ron collapsed instantly, the sound of the shot echoing like thunder in the stillness that followed. Blood spread beneath him in a slow, dark pool, creeping across the floorboards. Richie screamed, dropping to his knees, clutching his brother's limp shoulders.
"Ron! Ron, please!" His voice broke, raw and panicked, inhuman in its grief. "He was right next to me—he was right here—"
No one could speak. The smell of blood mixed with the cold air, metallic and suffocating, filling their lungs with every breath.
Then the voice returned—this time soft, mocking, almost tender.
"Wrong answer."
Another timer blinked on. 30:00.
Chloe turned, fury cutting through her fear like a blade. "You sick coward! Come out and face us!"
Lucian stared at the walls, eyes darting across every surface. "It's pre-recorded. None of this is real-time. He planned every reaction, every outcome."
Vivian's voice shook, breaking on the last word. "That means… no matter what we say, it's already set."
Elijah exhaled hard, shoulders rigid with tension. "Then we find a way to break the pattern before he runs out the script."
They threw ideas wildly—metaphors, names, code numbers, hidden meanings in the symbols. Every second scraped at their nerves like fingernails on stone.
Richie stopped crying. His eyes were hollow now, fixed on the timer with a terrible emptiness that frightened the others more than his grief had.
When the clock reached the final minute again, Lucian shouted, voice hoarse, "The orphan was the true heir!"
The timer froze.
Everyone held their breath, hope flickering like a dying candle.
Then came another gunshot.
Vivian fell backward, eyes wide in disbelief, her hand reaching out as though to catch something invisible. Then her body went limp, collapsing like a puppet with cut strings.
Chloe screamed until her voice tore, until there was nothing left but raw sound and horror.
Lucian slammed his fist into the wall, knuckles splitting. "He's killing us for fun!"
Elijah's composure cracked, his voice rising for the first time. "Then we stop playing his game."
The next timer flickered to life—30:00—red and unrelenting, indifferent to their terror.
Morning. Crestwood Estate.
The world outside the nightmare was painfully ordinary. The lake shimmered beneath a pale dawn, mist rising like ghosts from the water. Inside the mansion, Viola paced the marble hallway, her phone pressed to her ear, voice trembling with barely controlled panic.
"Pick up, Chloe. Please. Just pick up…"
No answer. Only the hollow buzz of the line, empty and mocking.
When William entered, he looked older, his tie loosened, eyes red from sleepless hours spent staring at walls and waiting for news that wouldn't come.
"Any news?" Viola asked, stepping toward him, desperate for any scrap of hope. "Tell me you found her."
He shook his head once, the gesture heavy with defeat. "Not yet. The police are looking. But it's complicated."
"Complicated?" Her voice rose, sharp with maternal fear. "Our daughter's missing!"
William's restraint shattered. "You think I don't know that? My father's company is under investigation, half our investors are gone, the board wants my head, and you're yelling at me like I can fix everything with a snap of my fingers!"
Viola flinched but didn't back down. "So that's it? You care more about the company than your family?"
He turned sharply, eyes burning with something dangerous. "Don't talk to me about family." His voice cracked into fury. "Blackwell told me before he died—that you were sleeping with my father. Was he lying?"
The air left her lungs. Time seemed to stop. "William—"
He grabbed her by the throat before she could finish, slamming her back against the glass window. The impact echoed through the hall. She clawed at his wrist, choking, her legs kicking for balance as black spots danced in her vision.
Kenny, the butler, ran in, wrenching William off her with surprising strength. Viola dropped to the floor, coughing violently, tears streaming down her face, throat burning.
William glared, shaking, breathing hard, looking at his own hands as though they belonged to someone else.
Then his phone rang again. He snatched it up, listened in silence—and whatever he heard drained the color from his face completely. He hung up, turned toward the door, and walked out without a word, shoulders slumped.
Viola's voice broke behind him, raw and desperate. "Is your pride really worth her life?!"
He didn't answer.
When the door closed, she sank to her knees, sobbing into her palms, her whole body shaking. "Chloe… please be alive…"
Kenny stood nearby, helpless, as the morning sun bled across the marble floor like a slow, spreading wound that would never heal.