The door slammed shut behind her.
Reiko's breath caught in her throat as darkness swallowed her. The sound of the door—clang—echoed like a coffin lid sealing. She spun around, hands fumbling for the handle, but it wouldn't move. The iron door was bolted from the other side.
A sick chill crept down her spine. The silence was unnatural—too still, like the air was holding its breath.
Then—
Click.
A single bulb above her flickered to life. It cast a narrow cone of yellow light, buzzing like a dying fly. The hallway ahead was lined with cracked concrete and rusted pipes that wept water down moss-covered walls. A spiral staircase loomed at the end, curving down into the earth like a throat.
Reiko's legs felt locked, but something pulled her forward.
Something… calling.
She stepped onto the first stair. Each creak beneath her foot echoed in eerie rhythm, like an old heartbeat. The deeper she went, the heavier the air became. It smelled like mildew and forgotten blood—like flowers buried alive.
The stairs ended in a vast underground chamber. Its walls were made of black stone veined with red mineral, glistening as if wet. Wax puddles from melted candles covered the floor, along with traces of chalk and blood runes half-scrubbed away.
In the center of the room lay a wide circular platform, raised just slightly from the ground, marked with a strange seal: overlapping irises, jagged thorns, and at the center, a crow with its wings outstretched and eyes gouged out. The crow was painted in a faded crimson pigment—dried blood.
Reiko's mouth felt dry. She recognized the seal, though she didn't know how.
Above the platform, chains hung from the ceiling, swaying gently despite the stillness of the air. They ended in metal cuffs. Shackles.
At the far end, against the wall, was an old blackboard.
Reiko stepped closer.
Names were written across it in a scrawl of old chalk. Most had been half-erased, but a few stood out:
Miyako Sakuma.
Seijiro Sakuma.
Kiyomi Arakawa.
Emiko Hyodo.
Subject #6 – The Watcher's Vessel.
Beneath those words, written in red chalk—"Only the blind may survive sight."
Reiko's chest tightened.
The walls around her felt closer. The room darker. She turned to leave, to find the stairs again—but something moved in the corner.
She froze.
There, standing by a half-burnt candle, was a figure in an old school uniform. Damp hair clung to her face. Her head hung low, obscuring her features.
Then she lifted it.
And Reiko gasped.
It was her mother—Miyako—but younger. Maybe thirteen. Blood smeared across her temple, her hands trembling.
"I didn't want to see it," the girl whispered.
Her mouth moved, but her voice sounded in Reiko's mind, as though echoing from a long-forgotten dream.
"We were just children."
Reiko stepped forward. "What did you see?"
"They said it was a blessing," Miyako's ghost murmured. "The eye in the chamber. They said it chose us."
The room vibrated with a low hum. The walls seemed to pulse like a giant lung, inhaling.
Reiko turned toward the platform again.
On it lay a mirror, large and shattered, wrapped in silk red as flesh. It was pinned down by four ceremonial nails. Curiosity—or something deeper—drove her forward.
She knelt and pulled back the fabric.
The mirror reflected not her own face—but her mother's. Miyako, screaming silently, bound in the center of the chamber with chains across her chest and eyes bandaged in black cloth. Veins like spiderwebs crawled across her skin, pulsing with a dark light.
Behind her… loomed something.
An eye.
It hovered in the blackness, vertical and massive, larger than a man, blinking slowly. Around it swirled a storm of shadows, faces, mouths, limbs.
It was alive.
Watching.
Waiting.
Reiko fell back from the mirror, heart slamming in her chest.
"What is this place?" she whispered.
The young Miyako ghost turned toward her. "This school was built above it. Keisuke knew. My father. He let them do it."
Reiko's head snapped toward her.
"My grandfather?" she asked.
Miyako nodded slowly.
"He founded the program. Said we were special. That we could open the gates between death and memory. That we could reach into the well. But we were just children."
Tears spilled from the ghost's eyes.
"Only I survived. They called me the 'vessel.' But I ran. I buried it. I sealed it."
Her voice twisted, deepened.
"I tried to forget."
Suddenly, a shriek tore through the chamber—a bone-chilling wail that came not from Miyako, but from beneath the dais.
Reiko turned slowly.
The mirror's surface cracked again—and behind the reflection now, she saw a door.
It throbbed like flesh. It bore the seal of the crow.
Blood began to seep from its edges.
The crow emblem on the platform pulsed.
Behind Reiko, the ghost of Miyako wept.
"I failed you. I failed Seijiro. And now… now it's waking again."
The candles blew out.
The chains from the ceiling whipped downward, clanging against the stone floor like whips. One of them struck inches from Reiko's feet.
Then—above, in the silence—the sound of footsteps echoed on the stairwell.
Someone was coming.
And they weren't alone.
---
To Be Continued.