Evan didn't realize he had stopped breathing until his lungs began to burn.
The corridor in front of him… inhaled.
Not metaphorically. Not in the poetic sense.
The hallway physically expanded, the walls stretching outward like a pair of lungs filling with air. The overhead lights flickered in a slow rhythm—on, off, on, off—perfectly timed to the corridor's impossible breathing.
A sound followed.
Wet.
Visceral.
Like someone dragging a soaked sheet across concrete.
Evan's pulse hammered so violently he could feel it in his teeth.
Behind him, the metal door he'd slipped through groaned as though some enormous weight pressed against the other side. Something was out there—on the stairs—something that had followed him since Chapter 6. The same thing that whispered through the vents. The same thing that scraped its nails across the metal grates whenever he tried to rest.
The same thing that somehow knew his name.
"Evan…"
The voice slid through the cracks of the world itself—thin, stretched, distorted, like vocal cords pulled apart too far.
He froze.
Every cell in his body screamed to run, but his legs wobbled under him.
The corridor exhaled.
A gust of warm, rancid air hit him full in the face.
And then the lights died.
Not dimmed.
Not flickered.
Extinguished.
Like someone had pinched the entire building's power between two fingers.
The darkness was thick—almost a texture—pressing in from all directions.
Evan's shaking hands searched his pockets. His fingers brushed metal. The flashlight.
He clicked it on.
And instantly wished he hadn't.
The beam of light struck the far end of the hallway—
Where a shape stood.
Tall.
Slender.
Wrong.
It didn't move.
It didn't breathe.
But its shadow did.
The shadow stretched across the floor like a living organism, branching toward him in thin tendrils, writhing like worms. The shadow moved even though the thing casting it remained perfectly still.
Cold sweat slid down Evan's spine. His throat tightened until breathing became a conscious effort.
He stepped back.
The shadow followed.
"Not real," he whispered. "You're not real. You're not—"
The thing's head twitched sharply, as if it had heard him.
Then it twitched again.
Then again.
Like something inside its skin was trying to escape.
"No… no no no—"
Evan stumbled backward until his shoulders hit the breathing wall. The plaster beneath him pulsed—slowly, like a heartbeat. The fleshy vibration moved through the wall and into his bones.
His flashlight flickered.
Evan slapped the side. "Don't do this. Not now—"
The shape at the end of the hall shifted.
Not stepped.
Not walked.
Shifted.
Its position changed instantly, like a frame glitching forward in a corrupted video file.
Now it was halfway down the corridor.
Evan's blood turned to ice.
He didn't think—couldn't think. His legs finally responded, and he ran.
The corridor stretched in front of him, impossibly long, like the building itself was rearranging its geometry to keep him trapped. His footsteps echoed in a disorienting delay—as though someone else was running behind him, just half a second out of sync.
He didn't dare look back.
Not even when the whispers began.
"Evaaaan…"
"Come baaaaack…"
"You left me…"
The voices multiplied, layered on top of one another, rising in pitch, in volume, until it sounded like a hundred distorted versions of his own voice were chasing him.
His flashlight beam bounced wildly across the walls, illuminating peeling paint, exposed pipes, and dark stains that dripped like blood even though nothing touched them. The floor beneath him vibrated. Something huge moved under the concrete, following his exact path with echoing thuds.
Evan skidded around a corner—
And fell.
He didn't see the drop. Didn't see the sudden broken floor where the concrete simply ended.
He plummeted into darkness.
His scream ripped from his throat as he hit something soft—too soft. A net? A sheet? A mass of fibers? He sank several feet into it before it caught his weight and held.
He tugged at it.
It clung to him.
His stomach dropped.
It wasn't a net.
It was a web.
Made of threads thicker than rope, warm, and faintly pulsating.
"Get off… get OFF—!"
He ripped at the strands, but they adhered to his hands like glue, stretching with him as though they were alive and didn't want to let him go. Something skittered in the darkness above. Something large.
His flashlight dangled from his wrist by its strap. It turned, weakly illuminating the space above him.
Evan's heart stopped.
A massive silhouette clung to the ceiling. Not an insect. Not a creature he recognized. Just a shape—hundreds of angles, limbs that bent the wrong way, eyes where no eyes should ever be.
It moved—
Straight toward him.
Evan tore violently at the webbing, ripping free with skin-burning force. He dropped from the last threads and sprinted across the uneven floor, tripping twice, nearly falling again.
Behind him, the creature descended.
The sound of its limbs striking the floor—
Tak. Tak. Tak. Tak.
Too many limbs.
Evan's breath shattered in his chest. He fled through a narrow passage, stumbling into another corridor. This one was smaller, tighter, smelling of rust and wet rot. Pipes dripped overhead, each drop echoing like a ticking clock.
He didn't stop running until his legs nearly collapsed.
He rounded another corner—and froze.
A door.
A real door.
Metal. Heavy. Industrial.
The only normal object he had seen in nearly two chapters.
A small red sign above it flickered:
EXIT 3B
Evan's lungs heaved. Tears burned his eyes. He didn't know if the exit was real, or just another layer of the nightmare, but he had no choice.
He grabbed the handle.
It didn't move.
He pulled harder.
Locked.
"No, please—" He rattled it until the metal screamed. "OPEN!"
Behind him, the corridor lights flickered violently.
The scraping began again.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Growing louder.
Evan pounded on the door with both fists. "Someone! Anyone! HELP!"
And then—
A click.
The handle turned… just a little. Not enough to open, but enough that someone—or something—was moving it from the other side.
Evan froze, his hands still on the handle.
Silence.
Then a whisper.
Right against the metal.
"Evan."
His blood went cold.
He stumbled back just as the door handle spun wildly. Something slammed into the metal from the other side—once, twice, again—denting it outward as if enormous fists were punching through.
The scraping behind him accelerated.
He was trapped.
Evan backed into the center of the corridor, trembling so violently he could barely stand.
The creature in the front.
The thing behind him.
Closing in.
The floor pulsed beneath his feet.
The walls inhaled.
The lights flicked off.
Dark.
Absolute dark.
Then—
A single voice, deep and cold:
"You shouldn't have come back."
The hallway erupted into movement.
And the chapter ends there.