Yuki
There was something behind the wall.
He first heard it at night—a faint scratching, like nails dragging slowly across wood. At first, he thought it was his imagination. But by the second day, he couldn't sleep. That room—the one Rei avoided—seemed to breathe.
Yuki pressed the flashlight against his chest and moved forward. The air grew colder, heavier with damp and old dust. Each step awakened the creaking floorboards beneath him. He knew Rei was hiding something. He felt it in his eyes, in his silences, heavier each day.
He stopped at the cracked wall.
—"Who's there?"—he whispered, without knowing why.
The answer came as a breath, barely a sound.
"He remembers us…"
Yuki stumbled back. His spine hit the door, slamming it shut. Darkness swallowed everything. The flashlight flickered. And then something brushed against him—a cold breeze… or fingers.
He ran. Never looking back.
Rei
He woke up gasping.
The house had called again. Not in dreams. This time, with real pain—a sharp pulse behind his eyes. Ershem was near… but not like before. Not as a guide. He was unraveling.
Rei moved toward the west wing, where the echoes were strongest. The walls dripped with moisture, but also memories, twisted by resentment. Each room offered visions: hunched children, mouths sewn shut with black thread, white eyes staring even after waking.
The last door creaked open on its own.
Inside, a boy waited.
Pale, head tilted, a dead crow in his arms.
—"He no longer protects,"—said the boy, lips unmoving—"He consumes."
The creature twisted its neck unnaturally and vanished.
Yuki
Yuki reached the basement. He didn't know how—he had just run. But there, where echoes drowned footfalls, truth found him.
A row of rusted cots. Hooks hanging from the ceiling. Broken toys nailed to the walls. And at the center, a stone altar covered in ash and human hair.
The air smelled like burnt flesh.
And behind the altar…
A figure.
Tall, decomposed, with no fixed face. Pieces of child's clothing hung from its limbs like offerings. Its hands were long, wet, trembling. Its skin was not skin—but memories glued with hatred.
—"Yuki…"—it spoke in a voice that was neither human nor monster, but both.
Yuki trembled. Ershem.
—"What… what do you want from me?"
—"To remember. To avenge. To stay."
Rei
He had arrived too—but not by walking.
The house had dragged him. The floor gave way and dropped him among dried corpses. All children. All with mouths open in an eternal, unheard scream.
He looked up. And saw him.
Ershem.
Yuki stood before him. Paralyzed.
—"Yuki!"—Rei cried—"Don't listen to him!"
Ershem turned. Its face fractured—revealing many more: a child, an elder, a mother, a broken creature.
—"He was mine before he was yours,"—Ershem said—"I protected him when you didn't even know his name."
Rei felt the house inhale with fury.
Yuki was crying.
But not from fear.
From recognition.
Because something inside him… also remembered.