The corridor seemed to stretch forever, swallowed by the flickering lights above. Time twisted within the house's spine, distorting every second into something uncertain. Rei stood at the threshold of the old nursery, now a hollow shell lined with broken toys and shattered cribs. The wallpaper, once filled with stars and moons, peeled away like dried skin.
He crossed the threshold, and the room responded with a shiver. Dust lifted from the floor, dancing through a current that wasn't wind, but memory.
There had once been laughter here.
Whispers—soft, childlike—echoed through the space. Not haunting. Just... lost.
He stepped further inside, drawn to the far wall where a faded mural showed silhouettes of children holding hands beneath a crimson sky. The colors seemed to bleed now, thick and fresh. His hand grazed it—and the air changed.
A pulse of warmth and sorrow surged up his arm.
Then, he saw them.
Children. Dozens of them. Not ghosts—memories. They played, they danced, they wept. The room, as it had been, unfolded around him. Wooden blocks, lullabies, quiet nap times. In their center stood Ershem, not the specter Rei had feared—but something else.
A presence of calm light and smoke. Not fully human, not fully spirit. Ershem's body was undefined, its face a shimmer of shape and kindness. It moved among the children like wind through branches, cradling, soothing, protecting.
Ershem was the soul of the house.
It had been created by the collective longing of orphaned hearts—those who needed love, who needed someone to watch over them when the world turned cold.
But warmth could be twisted.
It started with punishment. A locked door. A missed meal. A scream that went unanswered.
When the caretakers discovered the basement, they turned it into a prison. Children were dragged down screaming, begging. Ershem could feel them suffer. The sorrow, the confusion. The injustice twisted his nature.
He begged. He tried to stop it. But he wasn't strong enough.
And then one child didn't come back. Then another. And another.
Ershem changed.
His protective instincts calcified into fury. His love into vengeance. The house no longer sang—it howled. The walls turned cold. The nursery was boarded up.
The children disappeared.
Not all died. Some were... taken. Others were "transferred." That's what the files called it.
Transferred to external custody.
A lie. A thin veil to cover abandonment.
Rei trembled. He reached for a nearby cabinet that hadn't been there before. Inside, wrapped in decayed cloth, were the lost records.
Elías, Margo, Luz, Damián...
The memories returned. Luz vanished after a night of screams. Margo stopped speaking. Damian was taken by strangers with no faces. One by one, the children left, and each time Ershem became less himself. Until only judgment remained. A presence punishing the living and searching for those who remembered.
And then—Yuki.
A single sheet. Blackened with mold, the ink barely legible. His name circled in red. A note scrawled at the bottom:
"Persistent silence. High potential for binding with entity."
Rei gasped.
Yuki had been here. Ershem had known him. Protected him. Chosen him.
A flash surged behind his eyes. The room collapsed inward. The voices of the children rose into a single cry:
"Don't forget us."
The light dimmed. Ershem's form reappeared, but now twisted—parts unraveling into shadow. His voice—soft, melancholic—echoed:
"I tried to keep them safe… but I was left alone."
Rei collapsed to his knees, heart pounding, the weight of the memories pressing down like a storm.
The house didn't just remember—it mourned.
And now, with Rei and Yuki back inside its ribs, it had begun to awaken fully.
Not to haunt.
But to reclaim.