The diary lay where she had dropped it—face down on the rug, pages fanned like broken wings. Riya stared at it for a long time, trying to calm her trembling hands. She told herself not to touch it again. She told herself it was just her mind playing tricks.
But the room was too quiet.
And the silence pressed against her skull like a weight.
Finally, she crouched and flipped it open. The grotesque sketches leered up at her, their faces warped in impossible shapes, eyes too wide, mouths stretched in soundless screams. Beneath them, jagged words filled the margins.
> Patient 9: Convinced his brother speaks from the walls. Whispers lead to violence. Do not follow the sound.
Her breath caught. Brother.
The word dragged her back to the one night she had spent her whole life trying to forget—the night Aarav vanished. His scream had rattled the old house, followed by whispers she couldn't trace. Everyone told her she had imagined it. But she knew what she had heard.
Her hands trembled so violently she almost dropped the book again.
And then it came.
At first, faint, like electricity humming through the walls. Then sharper, more human.
"Riya…"
She spun, heart hammering. The apartment was empty, shadows stretching in unnatural angles across the floor. The whisper came again, closer this time.
"Riya… help me…"
Her throat closed. She stumbled back, pressing herself against the wall.
"This isn't real," she whispered. "It's not real."
But the shadows were lengthening. Crawling. And from the dark cracks in the plaster, she heard it again—clear, undeniable.
"Riya… it's me. Aarav."
Her heart stopped.
She screamed and threw the diary across the room. It hit the wall with a dull thud, falling open to a page she hadn't seen before. Her eyes locked on it, wide with terror.
A sketch of her apartment. Her desk. Her chair. Herself—drawn in exact detail, sitting exactly as she was now.
She staggered forward, staring in disbelief. Words scrawled beneath the image twisted her stomach into knots:
> She will hear him tonight.
The light above her flickered, then burst with a sharp pop. Glass rained down around her, plunging the room into shadow.
And in the black reflection of her window, she saw her own face smiling back at her—though she wasn't smiling.
Then came the knock.
Three slow, deliberate knocks. Not on her door. Not on her window. From inside the wall.
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