Becky spun toward the door, heart hammering.
Locked.
No handle.
Just smooth wood, cold and unyielding.
Behind her, the butterflies had vanished.
The table and the box
-gone.
The room wasn't the same anymore.
It had changed.
No longer four walls.
No longer a classroom.
Just shadows, stretching out into an endless, shapeless space. She was standing in the middle of something that wasn't real
-but also wasn't a dream.
A voice
-not loud, but close
-whispered:
"You were warned."
She didn't recognize it. It wasn't the same presence from before. This voice was older.
Distant.
As if it didn't belong to one person
-but many.
A pale light appeared ahead, like a single candle glowing far away.
She walked toward it, cautious but pulled by something stronger than fear.
As she neared, the candlelight revealed them.
Eyes.
Dozens of them.
Floating in the dark.
Watching her.Blinking slowly, in perfect silence.
No bodies.
No mouths.
Just eyes.
Each different. Human, animal, inhuman.
Becky froze.
"What do you want from me?" she asked, voice shaking.
The answer came not in words
-but in thought.
You are the fourth. The last to refuse. You carry what the others could not.
She didn't understand.
Then the candle flickered.
And the eyes all blinked at once.
Then silence.
She fell.
Becky hit the ground with a gasp.
Her head throbbed. Her skin burned with cold.
She was outside.
Back on campus.
Lying in the grass beneath the trees behind the library.
But no one was around.
No table. No box. No butterflies.
Only a single card in her hand
-creased, damp from her palm.
Same words.
"Too late to refuse."