The door shuddered beneath Aarav's hand, its surface damp and warm like living flesh. Each breath it released made his chest tighten, as though the air itself didn't want him here. He pressed harder.
The wood split—not with the creak of hinges, but with a wet tearing sound, like skin being ripped apart. A gush of fetid air sucked him forward, and before he could pull back, the door yawned wide and devoured him.
Darkness engulfed him.
When the dizziness settled, Aarav realized he was no longer in the corridor. He stood inside a vast cavern bathed in a sickly green glow. The walls weren't stone. They were faces.
Hundreds of them.
They stretched endlessly, fused together, their skin pale and waxy, their mouths frozen mid-scream. Eyes darted in their sockets, some following him, others staring blankly as tears of blood leaked down. The whispers from the diary now rose in a deafening chorus, echoing around the abyss.
> "He shouldn't have come."
"He doesn't belong."
"Take his face."
Aarav stumbled back, nearly tripping. The floor beneath him was soft, spongy, like the inside of a rotten fruit. Each step released a muffled groan, as though something was alive underfoot.
Then, one of the faces on the wall moved. Its lips cracked open, and a trembling voice gasped his name:
"...Aarav..."
He froze. The face was familiar—his own mother's. Her eyes were wide, wet with horror, but her expression twisted unnaturally, as if puppeteered by something else.
"Help... me..." she whispered.
Aarav's chest tightened, his breath shallow. But before he could reach for her, the other faces stirred. Mouths stretched into impossible grins. Eyes bulged. And then—they began to sing.
The melody was jagged, broken, like glass scraping across stone. It grew louder, vibrating through his bones, until the cavern itself began to pulsate with it.
The diary burned hot in his hand. Its pages flipped on their own, stopping at a line he had never written:
> "The abyss doesn't take lives. It collects them."
The floor beneath Aarav split open. A deep pit yawned wide, revealing a writhing sea of faceless bodies clawing at one another in silence. Their movements were frantic, desperate, but none had eyes, none had mouths—just smooth, empty flesh where their identities should have been.
A skeletal hand shot up from the pit, grabbing his ankle. Aarav screamed, kicking free, but more hands reached, pulling, dragging him closer. His nails tore against the spongy floor as he struggled.
And then, from the wall of faces, his mother's twisted visage screamed—not in fear, but in laughter.
The pit howled with her voice.
The last thing Aarav saw before the ground collapsed beneath him was a reflection in the green glow. His own face… already etched into the wall.