The night whispered like a dying radio signal. Aarav sat at the edge of his bed, staring at the journal—Adrian's Journal—its pages trembling slightly as if breathing. The ink marks weren't still anymore; they twisted into words that weren't his.
> "You are not the writer. You are the written."
Aarav's breath hitched. The room seemed to stretch—walls pulsing, corners deepening into voids that watched him back. The mirror in front of him fogged up from the inside, letters appearing one by one:
> "Come back to where the mind broke."
He didn't remember when the lights went out, or when Aisha appeared beside him. Her reflection didn't move in sync—when she turned, it stayed still. When she blinked, it smiled.
"Aarav," she whispered, "you never left the house."
He turned sharply. "What are you saying? We burned it down!"
Aisha tilted her head. "Did we?"
The window behind her showed not the city skyline, but the house—the old colonial mansion, charred yet standing tall in the mist. Its windows flickered faintly like eyes half-awake. The door was open. Breathing. Waiting.
They reached it again. The door exhaled cold air when Aarav touched it—like a sigh of relief, or hunger. The moment they stepped in, the corridor rearranged itself. The walls bent inward, forming veins, pulsing faintly as if alive. The floorboards whispered their names in reverse.
"Adrian," Aisha muttered.
"No," Aarav said, "don't say his—"
But it was too late. The lights shattered like glass rain, and when they opened their eyes, Adrian stood before them—his figure half-formed, dripping ink, face a blur of shadow.
"You took my story," he said, voice crawling through their skulls. "You stole the breath from the door, the ink from my veins."
Aarav took a step back. "You're dead—"
"Dead?" Adrian chuckled. The laugh echoed like static. "Then why do you still dream me?"
Aisha grabbed Aarav's hand, her skin icy cold. "Don't listen to him," she hissed, "he's feeding on your memory."
But Adrian was dissolving now, melting into the walls, becoming part of the house again. The ceiling opened up like a wound. From above, hundreds of pages fell—each one filled with fragments of their lives. Aarav's childhood drawings. His handwriting. His thoughts.
The journal in his hand burst open.
> "To rewrite is to resurrect."
Aarav's body stiffened. His head throbbed violently, images flooding in—him, writing under candlelight; him, speaking Adrian's words; him, killing Aisha and then resurrecting her in the next chapter.
It wasn't a haunting anymore. It was a loop.
The realization hit like a scream: They were characters Adrian had written long ago. Every chapter they "lived" was just another draft. Every "choice" they made, a line of dialogue in his eternal story.
"Then who's writing now?" Aisha whispered, voice trembling.
Aarav looked up at the ceiling, where faint handwriting was appearing as if from an invisible hand. The words burned across the plaster, glowing red:
> Chapter 34: Mind's Abyss
Aarav realizes he's fiction. He refuses to be controlled.
He screamed and grabbed a pen lying nearby. "If I'm a story," he snarled, "then I'll write my own ending!"
He plunged the pen into the wall. Ink splattered everywhere—but the wall bled. The ink ran upward, forming sentences he didn't write:
> You cannot kill the author, Aarav. Because you are the author.
The room collapsed inward.
Aisha's scream was distant now, echoing through the folding corridors. The air thickened with ink and whispers. Aarav felt his mind split, voices overlapping inside his skull—Adrian's laughter, Aisha's cries, his own inner monologue arguing against itself.
> Who's real?
You are.
No, you're the character.
Then who's reading this?
He fell to his knees, the journal open before him. The words rearranged themselves one final time:
> The house breathes because you give it breath.
The ink writes because you bleed it.
You are the door now, Aarav.
The walls pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat. Every thud echoed through the wood, through the corridors, through the paper.
He looked down—his veins were darkening, filling with liquid black. Ink, not blood.
---
When Aisha woke up, the house was silent. No Adrian. No Aarav. Just the sound of faint scribbling coming from the walls.
She turned toward the door—it was closed now, but a new name was carved into it:
> Aarav Malhotra – The Writer.
She touched it. It was warm, pulsing gently, breathing.
From inside, a voice whispered through the crack:
> "The mind is an abyss, Aisha. And I've finally learned to fall."
The door sighed, and the sound of pages turning filled the air.