The corridor stretched endlessly before Hakiten, disappearing into a pale darkness that seemed to swallow distance itself. Dim ceiling lights flickered at irregular intervals, throwing weak bands of light across the narrow walls before surrendering once again to shadow. The air was unnaturally cold, stale enough to make every breath feel heavy inside his lungs, and the silence carried a strange weight that pressed against his ears until even the smallest sound became impossible to ignore. Somewhere far ahead, footsteps echoed softly through the corridor. They were slow, measured, and strangely familiar. Hakiten continued walking without questioning where he was going. One tired step followed another with mechanical obedience, as though his body already knew the path while his mind struggled to remember how he had arrived there. Something rested firmly in his hand, its edges pressing into his fingers, yet he could no longer recall picking it up. He held onto it instinctively, gripping it with quiet desperation, possessed by the overwhelming certainty that letting go would invite a disaster he could neither understand nor prevent. The place itself carried an unsettling familiarity, not like a location remembered clearly, but like a recurring nightmare that returned night after night until it became impossible to distinguish memory from fear.
Far ahead, a single door stood slightly open, its narrow gap revealing nothing except darkness beyond. Hakiten approached without slowing, his exhausted legs carrying him past it automatically while his gaze remained fixed on the endless hallway stretching ahead. For a brief moment he left it behind, convinced there was nothing waiting inside, until a faint murmur drifted through the silence and reached his ears. The voices were low, almost swallowed by the corridor itself, yet they carried a familiarity that stopped him immediately. His footsteps came to an abrupt halt, and he remained standing motionless while the distant echoes repeated themselves. This time they sounded clearer. Not loud enough to understand the words, but unmistakably human. His heartbeat grew heavier with every passing second as recognition slowly settled inside him. He knew those voices. He could not remember why or from where, but somewhere deep beneath conscious thought they belonged to people he had already met. Slowly, almost unwillingly, Hakiten turned around. The corridor behind him appeared darker than before, as though the shadows themselves had deepened while he wasn't looking. The half-open door still waited silently where he had left it, unchanged, inviting him back with unsettling patience. He stepped toward it cautiously, every footstep slower than the last, until he finally stood before the narrow glass panel running vertically through its centre.
Hakiten leaned forward, pressing himself close enough to peer through the small window. At first, the figures inside appeared blurred beneath the weak flickering light, little more than vague silhouettes moving slowly across the room. He blinked once, allowing his vision to adjust, and the shapes gradually sharpened into recognisable forms. The instant they did, the air seemed to vanish from his lungs. Inside the room stood two men. One of them was unmistakably Juson. The other remained unfamiliar, standing quietly beside a long examination chair beneath the pale overhead light while concentrating on something lying across its surface. Hakiten followed the stranger's gaze downward. His entire body froze. Resting motionless upon the chair was another man. Himself. His own body lay perfectly still beneath the stranger's hands while the unknown figure leaned over his head, performing some task Hakiten could not understand. For a single horrifying moment his thoughts ceased altogether. Fear erupted inside him with overwhelming force, sweeping away every trace of reason. Without thinking, he grabbed the door handle and pulled violently, desperate to reach the room before whatever was happening could continue. The handle refused to move. Locked. Panic surged higher. He slammed his shoulder against the door with all the strength he possessed, expecting it to burst open beneath the impact. Nothing happened. He struck it again. Then again. Every blow echoed thunderously throughout the endless corridor while the figures inside remained completely unaware of his presence.
"OPEN THE DOOR!"
His voice cracked unevenly as the words tore themselves from his throat. Neither Juson nor the stranger reacted. They continued exactly as before, never once turning toward the glass despite the deafening impacts shaking the corridor. Hakiten struck the door harder, his fists hammering against the wood until pain shot through his hands. With every desperate attempt, an unbearable sensation crept deeper into his mind. This wasn't merely frightening. It was familiar. Horribly familiar. The scene unfolding beyond the glass awakened fragments of something buried so deeply that he had forgotten it existed. Not imagination. Not déjà vu. Memory. A memory clawing its way upward from somewhere he had sealed away long ago. His breathing became ragged, every inhale shorter than the last as panic overwhelmed him completely. Again he screamed, demanding the door be opened, but something about his own voice began changing. It stretched unnaturally, growing louder with each cry until the sound itself no longer resembled a human voice. The corridor vibrated beneath the distorted echoes as fear transformed into something raw and inhuman, filling the endless hallway with a scream that seemed capable of tearing reality itself apart.
At that precise instant, Juson opened his eyes.
The corridor disappeared without warning. Darkness shattered into fragments, replaced by the cold hardness of a wooden floor beneath his body. For several long seconds Juson remained completely motionless, unable to understand where the nightmare had ended or where reality had begun again. Pale morning sunlight filtered weakly through the windows of Hakiten's living room, spreading quiet bands of light across the floor while replacing the suffocating darkness with an equally unsettling silence. His vision remained blurred at first, refusing to focus properly, before gradually settling into clarity. Every part of his body felt strangely disconnected, not painful but numb, as though every nerve inside him had ceased functioning during the night and only now had begun returning one after another. He inhaled deeply. The air smelled stale and untouched. His fingers twitched first, followed slowly by his wrists, his shoulders, and eventually the rest of his body as sensation returned piece by piece. He pressed one palm against the floor and attempted to push himself upright, only to discover that even such a simple movement demanded far more effort than it should have. His muscles tightened painfully beneath the strain, refusing to cooperate until, after several failed attempts and long moments spent sitting silently while catching his breath, he finally managed to stand.
Morning light revealed a room that looked almost disappointingly ordinary. The flashlight remained exactly where it had fallen the previous night. The broken table still occupied the centre of the room. Nothing appeared disturbed beyond what he already remembered seeing before losing consciousness. That normality unsettled him more than any obvious destruction could have. The memories of the night before already felt strangely distant, unreal enough that he briefly questioned whether any of it had truly happened. Yet the heaviness lingering inside his body reminded him otherwise. Slowly he stepped out into the lobby. Sunlight entered freely through the open front doorway now, washing away most of the shadows that had dominated the house only hours earlier. Dust floated lazily through the pale beams, drifting without purpose inside the still air. Daylight should have brought reassurance. Instead it merely illuminated how unnatural the house continued to feel. Before he could move any farther, a soft sound drifted faintly from somewhere ahead. Juson stopped instantly. The quiet noise repeated itself. He recognised it immediately. The cat. Without speaking, he turned toward the kitchen and walked cautiously to its entrance.
The same black cat sat calmly near the broken window, quietly eating scraps scattered across the floor. Morning light reflected faintly within its yellow eyes as it chewed without urgency, showing no fear whatsoever despite Juson's presence. He remained standing silently in the doorway, neither approaching nor retreating, watching the animal while the house settled into another long stretch of uncomfortable stillness. For several moments neither of them moved. Then the cat suddenly lifted its head, ears twitching ever so slightly as it sensed him properly for the first time. Without making a single sound, it abandoned the food immediately, sprang gracefully onto the windowsill, and disappeared through the broken opening exactly as it had done during the night. Juson waited only a moment before stepping forward. Reaching the shattered window, he looked down toward the ground outside. The cat landed softly beneath the wall before vanishing behind the neighbouring fence and disappearing from sight. His attention shifted to the earth directly below the window. The disturbed soil remained exactly where he remembered seeing it during the night, but the strange shape that had rested there was gone. Completely gone. No body. No blue particles. Nothing except uneven dirt marked by whatever had once occupied that place. Somehow, the complete absence frightened him far more than any remaining evidence possibly could have.
A few minutes later, Juson stepped quietly out of Hakiten's house. He locked the damaged front door behind him without making unnecessary noise and walked slowly toward the car waiting beside the road. Before opening the driver's door, he turned back for one final look. Morning sunlight rested peacefully across the walls of the house, warming the broken entrance until it appeared almost ordinary from a distance. There were no flickering lights, no unnatural silence, no visible trace of the terror that had filled those rooms throughout the night. Everything looked perfectly normal beneath the daylight. That illusion disturbed him more than anything he had witnessed inside. Without allowing himself another moment to hesitate, Juson climbed into the car, started the engine, and drove away, leaving the quiet house standing silently behind him beneath the calm morning sky.