Three in the morning is the hour when human logic begins to rot. Outside the window of a twelfth-floor apartment located in the heart of a city that never sleeps, a haze of pollution blankets the streetlights, creating a sickly yellow glow. But for Aris, the darkness inside his room feels far more real than the world outside.
Aris is a curator of darkness. As the main moderator on soaxblogz, an underground forum dedicated to dissecting gore videos, unverified urban legends, and forbidden recordings, he has seen everything. He has watched footage of cult rituals in the remote regions of Eastern Europe, amateur videos of supposed apparitions in the Aokigahara forest that turned out to be mannequins, and thousands of short stories attempting—and utterly failing—to imitate Lovecraft's style.
To him, horror is statistics. Horror is a commodity.
His sleep-deprived red eyes stare intensely at the dual monitors that serve as the only source of light. The blue glow reflects off his thick glasses, hiding the dark circles beneath his eyes. His thin fingers dance across the keyboard, deleting spam posts and banning accounts that violate the forum rules.
"Boring," he mutters. His voice is hoarse, rarely used for days except to order coffee through an app.
Suddenly, a notification appears in the bottom-right corner. A new email. No subject. The sender is nothing but a string of random numbers: 000.000.000.
Aris frowns. Normally, his email filter would immediately send something like this to the spam folder. But this one sits calmly in his main inbox, as if it has a privilege to be there.
He clicks it. There is no text in the body. Only a PDF attachment, sized 6.66 MB.
"So cliché," Aris scoffs. "Cheap devil-number symbolism. Whoever sent this needs a lesson in originality."
Even though his professional instincts tell him this could be a virus, his overwhelming boredom pushes his finger to click download. The file opens automatically.
His monitor flickers for a moment. The pixels seem to melt, flowing like wet ink before hardening again into letters. A title appears in the center of a page that is too clean, too stark against the darkness of his room.
Aris jolts. His ergonomic chair creaks as he leans back. "What the hell is this?"
He has never written a book. He has never even written a short story. The name soaxBLOGZ is his digital identity, a mask he built over years. How could there be a manuscript using his name as the author?
An unnatural chill begins creeping from his feet up his spine. He tries to close the PDF, but his mouse cursor won't move. He presses Alt+F4, Ctrl+Alt+Del, but the computer seems frozen, forcing his eyes onto the first page.
He starts reading.
Aris feels his throat go dry as he realizes this manuscript is not just a story. He will reach for the bottle of mineral water to his right, only to find it empty. He will feel an intense thirst, as if his tongue has been scraped with sandpaper.
Aris stops. His heart pounds. Reflexively, he grabs the bottle of local-brand mineral water that always sits on his desk. Empty. He clearly remembers buying it that afternoon and barely drinking half.
He shakes it. Completely dry. Not even condensation inside.
"Coincidence," he whispers to himself. Cold sweat forms on his forehead. "Just psychological coincidence. Is someone watching me through my webcam?"
He quickly covers the small webcam above his monitor with black tape. His breathing quickens. He looks back at the screen. The text changes. The sentence he just read disappears, replaced by a new paragraph that appears as if typed in real-time by an invisible hand.
Aris covers his webcam. He thinks it will protect him. Foolish. What watches him is not behind the camera, but behind the mirror at his back.
His blood feels frozen. Behind his desk, attached to the wardrobe, is a tall mirror he bought at a flea market last month. He doesn't dare turn around. He can feel something there. Something massive. Formless, yet heavy.
A sulfuric smell seeps into his senses. Not just foul—it is ancient, like boiling volcanic craters and burning flesh.
He tries to stand, but his legs feel like jelly. His vision trembles. The corners of the room warp. The once-flat white walls now seem to breathe, expanding and contracting in a slow, painful rhythm.
Aris squeezes his eyes shut. "This is a hallucination. I'm sleep-deprived. I've read too many horror stories. My brain is rebounding."
But in the darkness behind his closed eyes, sounds begin to emerge. Not whispers—but radio static, mixed with screams he knows too well.
"Help me, Aris! Why are you just watching?"
It's his mother's voice. The last voice he heard ten years ago before that tragic accident. The voice he buried deep in his subconscious.
"You prefer watching us suffer through a screen, don't you? You're a great moderator, Aris. You worship other people's pain."
"Shut up! That's not true!" Aris screams into the empty room.
He opens his eyes—and sees something worse. The manuscript text on his monitor has turned into a video. Not someone else's video—his own. Sitting in that chair. Staring at the screen. Terrified.
The footage is taken from above—a perspective no camera in his room could possibly capture. In it, he watches himself slowly pull off his fingernails one by one while smiling.
He looks at his hands. Still intact. His nails are still there. But suddenly, a sharp pain pierces his ring finger. Blood begins seeping from beneath the nail—though he hasn't touched it.
"What is happening to me?" he sobs.
The text returns—but now it's no longer black on white. It's dark red, pulsing.
The ritual has begun. The first stage is Denial. The second stage is Distortion. The third stage is Submission. Aris, you downloaded this file. By opening it, you invited 'Us' into your nervous system. You are no longer a moderator. You are the content.
Aris tries to cut the power. He crawls under his desk and unplugs the cable. The computer dies. The room plunges into darkness.
But the monitor stays on.
Even without electricity, it emits a painful red glow. The text continues scrolling.
Do not try to escape the fate you wrote yourself. In Chapter 5, you will lose your left ear. But don't worry, that's only the beginning. By Chapter 100, you will realize the real Aris died in that accident ten years ago—and you are merely a digital copy trapped in an endless loop of suffering.
The hallucinations reach their peak. Thousands of eyes open across the walls. Different colors, different sizes—all staring hungrily at him.
He feels his skin peeling, as if shedding into something else. Inside his head, a strange melody plays—music without instruments, only growls and clashing metal.
He crawls back to his chair, as if pulled by a magnet. His trembling hand grips the mouse again. This manuscript feels like his only anchor to reality—even if that reality is destroying him.
"I'll keep reading," he whispers in a voice that is no longer his. "I'll finish all 200 chapters."
On the screen, a closing line for Chapter 1 appears:
Good, Aris. Let's see how long you can hold onto your sanity before you realize the door to your room is gone—and you are trapped in a void with no escape.
Aris turns toward the door. Where there should be a brown wooden door leading to the apartment corridor, there is now only a smooth, cold concrete wall. No gaps. No hope.
He is trapped inside his own novel. And this is only the first page of thousands to come.
Aris begins typing. No longer as a moderator, but as a slave to his own words. The author's name is no longer just a username. It is his new identity—as a Servant.
The world outside his window falls silent. The stars disappear one by one, leaving absolute darkness—lit only by a single thing: a monitor screen hungry for souls.