Aryan stood frozen before the glowing doorway. The whisper still echoed in his mind — "Welcome home…"
But whose voice was it? Why did it sound so familiar?
He took a deep breath and stepped inside.
The room was unlike the rest of the decayed mansion. It was strangely clean — untouched by dust or time. A faint blue glow radiated from an old oil lamp on a desk covered with yellowed papers and torn photographs.
He picked one up.
It showed a group of children — smiling, muddy, happy. And right in the center… stood someone who looked exactly like him.
Same eyes. Same faint scar above the eyebrow.
Aryan's hands trembled. "What is this…?"
The photo's back was scribbled with shaky handwriting:
"The Lost Ones — Summer 2008."
Suddenly, the door slammed shut behind him. The lamp flickered violently. He spun around — and saw a shadow standing in the corner of the room.
It wasn't moving.
It was just there, darker than the darkness around it.
"Who's there?" he whispered.
The shadow tilted its head — slowly, almost curiously — and then melted into the wall, leaving behind a faint whisper:
"Find the truth, before they find you…"
Aryan stumbled back, breathing fast. His flashlight flickered, and for a brief second, he saw writing etched into the wallpaper. Dozens of names… Aryan, Mia, Kabir, Rhea, and others — the names of his friends from the school trip.
But next to each name was a single word — Lost.
And at the bottom, written in blood-red ink:
"The Mansion keeps what it loves."
The temperature dropped sharply. Frost crawled over the windowpane. Aryan's breath came out in visible puffs. He heard faint laughter — children's laughter — coming from the hallway.
He ran out of the room.
The mansion was changing. Hallways twisted in impossible ways, doors appeared where walls used to be. The paintings on the walls now had different faces — terrified ones.
He heard Aryan's voice calling from somewhere far away, echoing through the corridors.
"Aryan! Don't trust the mirrors!"
"ARYAN?" Aryan yelled, sprinting down the hall. He turned a corner — and froze.
At the end of the hall stood a large mirror.
And in it — he saw not his reflection, but all of them.
His classmates.
Smiling. Waving.
But their eyes were hollow.
The glass cracked.
Their smiles vanished.
One by one, they started banging on the inside of the mirror — desperate, panicked.
Aryan backed away, terror flooding him. "This… this isn't real…"
The mirror shattered. The sound was deafening. A gust of freezing air blasted through the hallway, and when he opened his eyes again — everything was normal. The lights, the hall, the silence.
But the photograph he had picked up was now in his hand again — and this time, his own face had been crossed out.
He dropped it. His mind was spinning. The mansion wasn't just haunted — it was connected to him. Somehow, he was part of its story.
He turned toward the exit — but the grand door of the mansion was gone. In its place, a wall of bricks.
And faintly, from behind the wall, came that same piano tune again — now slower, sadder…
Like a lullaby.
Aryan whispered to himself, trembling:
"I need to find the others… before this place finds me."
And with that, he vanished deeper into the mansion's endless maze, unaware that the mansion itself was watching — waiting for him to remember what he had forgotten.