Royal Nation: Bloodline of the Bleeding Shadows

Chapter 1 – The Gathering

The rain came down in thin, needling sheets, slicking the cracked tarmac that led to Blackwood Asylum. The building loomed in the distance, a rotting carcass of brick and stone, its jagged rooftop cutting into the storm-dark sky. For decades, it had been left to crumble—its history too grim to bulldoze, too costly to repurpose. But for Royal Nation, the largest “family” on TikTok, it was the perfect stage for a night of ghost-hunting content.

Inside the convoy of cars crawling toward the asylum, laughter and excited chatter filled the air. People were meeting in real life for the first time—followers, creators, recruiters—faces that had only existed in squares on a phone screen. Many were young, phones clutched like talismans, ready to document every squeal, every flicker of shadow.

At the front of the group was Maddie Hart, one of the Royal Nation’s “captains,” a woman with a sharp jawline, sleek black hair, and an easy charisma that translated well on camera. She’d organized the event: a live-streamed ghost hunt followed by a midnight meet-and-greet.

“Stay together, people,” Maddie called, her voice echoing off the derelict walls as they entered through the rusted gates. “No wandering off. This place is dangerous even without the ghosts.”

Her warning fell flat against the group’s excitement. Some people broke off in twos and threes, slipping into shadowed corridors. The asylum seemed to drink them in, its yawning doorways swallowing their voices.

The entrance hall was vast, ceilings high enough to vanish into darkness. Paint peeled in great sheets from the walls, revealing mottled plaster beneath. Somewhere above, water dripped steadily, the sound echoing like slow, deliberate footsteps.

Phones went up. Lights came on. People posed for TikToks with the graffiti-covered walls behind them. A few dared each other to step into the darker rooms without their phone lights.

“Where’s the old operating theatre?” someone called.

“Down the east wing,” Maddie answered. “We’ll head there in a bit. First, we—”

A scream cut her off. It was sharp, human, and close enough that the sound seemed to rake at the air. Heads turned. Lights swung toward the source—a corridor leading to the west wing.

But there was no one there.

“Okay, very funny,” Maddie said, forcing a laugh. “Which one of you’s trying to be the first jump-scare of the night?”

Silence answered.

Some of the group shifted nervously. The atmosphere had changed. The shadows seemed thicker now, less like the absence of light and more like a presence.

Then, one by one, people began to notice that certain faces were missing.

Chapter 2 – First Disappearance

Maddie scanned the crowd. At least a dozen people had been gathered in the entrance hall only moments before, yet now the space felt emptier. She counted quickly—too quickly—trying to convince herself she was wrong.

“Where’s Liv?” someone asked from the back, their voice shaking. “And Jamie? Weren’t they with us?”

“They probably went to film something,” Maddie said, but the edge in her voice betrayed her. She turned to the west wing corridor, its mouth gaping like a throat, swallowing the weak glow of phone flashlights.

A man named Scott, taller than most and carrying a real video camera instead of a phone, stepped forward. “I’ll go check. Probably just wandered off.”

“No,” Maddie said sharply, surprising herself with how hard the word landed. “We stick together. Everyone, east wing. We’ll regroup there.”

But her authority was already cracking. Some people muttered about just popping in to find their friends. A girl in a denim jacket jogged halfway down the west corridor, her flashlight beam jittering against the wall, then turned a corner.

She didn’t come back.

“Maddie,” Scott said, lowering his voice, “this place is a maze. We need to get everyone outside, do a proper headcount before—”

Another scream cut him off. This one was shorter, almost muffled, like it had been swallowed by the walls.

The group surged toward the exit—only to stop dead. The great wooden doors they’d entered through were now shut. Not just shut—swollen in their frame, the wood bulging as if it had been soaking in rain for years. The iron latch was warped, rusted into place.

“That’s not possible,” Maddie breathed. “We just—”

Her words died when the overhead lights—long dead for decades—flickered on for a single, impossible heartbeat. In that brief flare, Maddie saw the west corridor, empty except for a figure at the far end.

It wasn’t one of them.

It was tall, thin, its limbs too long, its face blurred like an overexposed photograph. It stood perfectly still, watching.

The lights went out again, and the figure was gone.

Someone sobbed. A phone clattered to the floor and shattered.

Scott gripped Maddie’s arm. “We call the police. Now.”

“Already on it,” said a man near the door, frantically jabbing at his phone. Then: “No signal. Not even one bar.”

They all tried. Every phone read the same: No Service.

The asylum’s silence pressed in. Somewhere deep inside the building, a door slammed hard enough to shake the floorboards.

Maddie felt her chest tighten. This was supposed to be a brand-building stunt, a fun night out. But Blackwood Asylum wasn’t interested in their content.

And it was hungry.

Chapter 3 – The Locked World

Scott wasn’t the type to panic, but his breathing was ragged now. “There’s got to be another exit. Fire escapes, broken windows—something.”

They split into two tight clusters, moving through the east wing. The air here was colder, damp enough to cling to their clothes. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling with every step, and the smell—stale water, rust, something faintly sweet—was growing stronger.

They found a side door. Its hinges had corroded to orange dust, and a chain was wrapped tightly around the handles, padlocked. Scott swung his camera like a hammer, striking the chain again and again. The metal rang through the corridor, but the lock didn’t even dent.

“That chain’s older than me,” Maddie muttered, “and it’s still holding.”

One of the younger members, Kelsey, spoke up. “I swear I saw a broken window back in the main hall when we first came in.”

“Then we’ll smash it,” Scott said, already turning back.

But when they returned to the entrance hall, the window was there—and it was whole. Thick, grimy glass, sealed tight in its rotting frame. Not a single crack.

“That’s impossible,” Kelsey whispered. “It was smashed. I saw it.”

The rain outside had slowed to a drizzle. Through the glass, Maddie thought she saw movement—figures standing just beyond the tree line. Shapes in the fog. She cupped her hands against the pane, trying to see clearer.

They were gone.

A sudden pounding echoed from deep inside the west wing—three hard knocks, spaced evenly, like something with a pulse.

“We’re not staying here,” Maddie said. “If we can’t get out, we’ll make noise until someone hears.”

They tried. They yelled, screamed, banged metal pipes against the doors and walls. The sound echoed endlessly, but it didn’t feel like it went anywhere.

Then, faintly, through the noise—they heard sirens.

Everyone froze. Hope flared so suddenly it almost hurt.

“They heard us!” someone cried. “They’re here!”

But the sirens didn’t get louder. They circled, distant and distorted, as if moving in slow loops around the building without ever arriving.

Scott’s camera caught a flicker in the corner of the lens. When he rewound the footage, the group leaned in to watch the tiny screen.

Frame by frame, in the background behind them, a shadow moved—quick, deliberate, crawling along the wall like a living stain.

“That’s it,” Maddie said, grabbing the nearest pipe. “We stick together, we find Liv, Jamie, and the others, and we get out. Whatever this place is, it’s not just haunted—it’s playing with us.”

Somewhere upstairs, the sound of footsteps began. Slow, heavy, deliberate.

And they were coming down the stairs.

Alright — let’s bring the “police arrival” into play, but with a twist so the reader starts questioning reality.

Chapter 4 – The Search

The footsteps grew louder, thudding against the warped wooden stairs. The group backed away toward the east wing, every eye fixed on the shadowed landing above.

Then, a beam of light cut through the darkness.

“Police!” a voice called, deep and commanding. “Everyone stay where you are!”

Two figures appeared, descending the stairs. Their torches swept over the group, catching wide, pale faces. They wore standard-issue uniforms, heavy with utility belts, radios crackling faintly. Relief broke through the tension like sunlight.

“Oh, thank God,” Maddie breathed. “We’re trapped—people are missing—”

“Calm down, miss,” one officer said. His badge read Collins. “We’ve been getting reports of trespassers here. How many of you?”

“Fifteen,” Scott said, “but we’ve lost at least four. They just… vanished.”

Collins exchanged a glance with his partner, a younger officer named Harris. “We’ll sweep the building. Stay together.”

The officers led them through the west wing, their flashlights cutting through the gloom. But the corridors seemed different now. Maddie swore they were walking deeper into the building than the floorplan allowed.

At one point, Harris paused, shining his light into a doorway. “Over here!”

They crowded in. It was a patient ward—metal-framed beds lined up against the wall, each with a rotting mattress. On the far bed sat a woman.

She wore a hospital gown, her hair hanging in wet clumps around her face. Her eyes were open, but cloudy, and her lips moved in a whisper they couldn’t hear.

“Ma’am,” Collins said, stepping forward, “are you—”

The woman’s head snapped toward him so fast it made a sound, like wood breaking. Her mouth opened too wide, and a noise poured out—not a scream, but something lower, layered, almost mechanical. The torches flickered.

When the light steadied, the bed was empty.

“Let’s keep moving,” Collins said sharply, his voice tight.

They searched another corridor. Maddie noticed something—neither officer had called in their position over the radio. In fact, their radios didn’t seem to be tuned to anything; the static was wrong, looping in unnatural patterns.

They stopped at a set of double doors. Collins pushed them open, revealing the operating theatre—its metal tables rusted, old surgical tools still hanging from racks. The air smelled of copper and mildew.

In the far corner was Liv’s phone. The screen was cracked, the flashlight still on, beam aimed upward.

Scott picked it up. “Liv?” he called.

From somewhere above them, a faint laugh answered.

The officers exchanged another glance.

Then Collins turned to Maddie and said, “We need to hurry. Before the building notices you’re here.”

Chapter 5 – Wrong Turns

Maddie froze at Collins’s words. Before the building notices you’re here.
She opened her mouth to demand an explanation, but Harris was already pushing them forward, his flashlight beam jittering across cracked tiles.

The group followed reluctantly, their footsteps echoing. The corridors twisted unnaturally—Maddie knew they’d doubled back twice, but now the windows were gone entirely. Just endless plaster walls, scrawled with graffiti that looked fresher than it should.

“What do you mean, before the building notices?” Scott finally asked.

Collins didn’t slow. “Places like this remember. It knows when someone’s inside who doesn’t belong.”

“That’s not—”

The officer stopped suddenly, raising a hand for silence. From somewhere ahead came a dragging sound, like something heavy scraping across the floor. It grew louder, closer, then stopped.

Harris whispered something Maddie didn’t catch, and Collins nodded. “We’re changing route. Follow me.”

They turned left into a narrow hallway Maddie was sure they hadn’t seen before. It smelled stronger here—rot and something metallic, clinging to the back of the throat.

The single bulb overhead flickered. For one split-second of darkness, Maddie saw a figure at the far end—a shadow with limbs bent the wrong way, its head hanging low.

The light came back, and the hallway was empty.

Kelsey grabbed Maddie’s arm. “We shouldn’t be following them.”

“I know,” Maddie whispered. “But where else—”

Collins stopped again, this time in front of a heavy door. He fished a large brass key from his pocket. “This will keep you safe until morning.”

“No,” Scott said immediately. “We’re not locking ourselves in anywhere.”

Collins met his gaze, and for the first time Maddie saw his eyes clearly. They were pale—too pale—and his pupils were pinpricks, like someone staring into bright sunlight.

“Safe,” Collins repeated, voice flat.

Before anyone could move, Harris stepped behind them, blocking the hallway. His smile was too wide, fixed in place.

The group hesitated, caught between the two officers. The air in the corridor felt thicker now, harder to breathe. Maddie’s phone buzzed suddenly in her pocket—when she pulled it out, the screen was black except for a single line of text:

LEAVE THEM. THEY’RE NOT POLICE.

Her pulse slammed in her ears. She looked up—and Collins was watching her, his expression unchanged. Slowly, he slid the brass key into the lock.

Maddie grabbed Scott’s sleeve and yanked him toward the opposite end of the hall. “Run!” she shouted.

They bolted. Behind them came heavy, pounding footsteps—too fast, too loud to belong to a human.

They burst into another corridor, and Maddie realized with a sick twist in her gut that it was the entrance hall again.

Only now, there were no doors at all.

Just walls.

Chapter 6 – The Building Wakes

They stared at the wall where the main doors had been only hours—minutes?—ago. It was brick now, old and blackened with soot, mortar crumbling in places. Maddie reached out and touched it. Cold. Real.

“This isn’t possible,” Kelsey whispered. Her voice trembled like she was forcing it through a throat that wanted to close. “We came in there. It was right there.”

Scott was already scanning the hall with his camera. “Don’t look at the walls,” he muttered, almost to himself. “If you look too long, they… shift.”

“They what?” Maddie asked, but before he could answer, the sound came again—the dragging noise they’d heard before. This time it was closer, accompanied by a wet, deliberate breathing.

They all backed up until their shoulders pressed to the far wall.

From the west corridor, something emerged.

It moved slowly, as if savoring the moment, one long arm pulling behind it a length of chain that screeched across the floor. Its body was impossibly thin, the skin grey and stretched, as if it had been drained of everything but malice. The head lolled unnaturally until it jerked upright, and Maddie saw its eyes—milky, but focused.

The thing stopped, tilting its head. Then it dropped the chain, and the sound of it hitting the tiles was deafening.

It ran.

The group scattered. Maddie sprinted with Scott down a side corridor, the tiles slick underfoot. Somewhere to their left, Kelsey screamed—a high, tearing sound that cut off abruptly.

They didn’t stop. The corridor twisted, doubled back, and abruptly opened into a ward Maddie swore they’d never been in before. Rows of rusted beds lined the walls, but every mattress bulged strangely, like something lay beneath.

A faint tapping began. Maddie looked down. The floor between the beds was crawling—fingers, pale and skeletal, poking through cracks in the tiles, scrabbling at the air like insects.

Scott yanked her through the next doorway before they could see what the fingers belonged to.

They emerged into what had once been a day room—peeling wallpaper, overturned chairs, a fireplace choked with debris. The window here wasn’t bricked over.

“We smash it,” Maddie panted. “Now.”

Scott swung his camera hard. The glass shattered outward. Rain and cold air rushed in, stinging their faces. Relief surged—until Maddie leaned out.

There was no ground below. Just a black, yawning drop into nothing. No rain, no trees, no outside world at all.

She stepped back quickly. “It’s not real out there.”

The sound of footsteps returned—multiple sets now, pounding from different directions.

Scott grabbed a chair and shoved it under the door handle. “That’ll buy us—”

The door bulged inward violently, the wood groaning under impact. Something hit it again, harder. The chair splintered.

A hand pushed through the gap—no, not a hand. Too many joints, the skin stretched thin, the nails black and splintered. It reached for Maddie’s face.

Scott yanked her away just as the door gave way.

They bolted through a side exit, finding themselves in yet another hallway that didn’t match the building’s layout. Here, the lights overhead flickered in a slow, deliberate rhythm—on for three seconds, off for two. Every time they went dark, the hallway seemed to stretch farther ahead.

Somewhere behind them, a voice called, “Maddie…”

It was Liv’s voice.

Maddie stopped, her chest aching from the run. “Liv?”

Scott grabbed her arm. “No. That’s not her.”

The voice came again, closer now, the syllables warping like they were being pulled through water. “Maddieee…”

When the lights went out again, something brushed her shoulder.

She screamed and ran, Scott right beside her. The corridor twisted, turned, and spat them out into what looked like a small office. Filing cabinets stood rusted and warped, papers scattered across the floor. On the desk sat a single rotary phone.

It rang.

They stared at it.

“Don’t answer it,” Scott said.

It rang again, louder. On the third ring, Maddie’s phone lit up in her pocket—black screen, white text.

ANSWER.

Her hand moved before her brain could stop it. She picked up the receiver.

At first, there was only static. Then, under it, a voice—her own voice—whispering: They’re behind you.

Scott turned. The two “officers” stood in the doorway. Collins’s head was tilted at an unnatural angle, his pale eyes unblinking. Harris grinned, teeth too many, too sharp.

“You’ve been running in circles,” Collins said softly. “The building likes to watch them wear down before it eats them.”

Scott swung his camera at Harris’s head. It connected with a sickening crack, but Harris didn’t even flinch.

The officers stepped forward.

The lights flickered out.

When they came back on, Maddie was alone.

The office door was gone.

The phone on the desk began to ring again.

Chapter 7 – Rooms That Remember

The phone’s shrill ring filled the office like a living thing, bouncing off the walls in sharp, metallic bursts. Maddie stood over it, her hand trembling inches from the receiver.

She didn’t want to touch it again.

But the sound burrowed under her skin, into her skull. It wasn’t just ringing anymore—it was speaking. Beneath each tone, she heard syllables forming, voices braided together in a language she didn’t know but somehow understood.

It was calling her by name.

The fourth ring died into silence.

The office felt wrong now, as if the air had thickened. The walls, once pale with mold, seemed darker—wetter. Shadows clung to the corners like cobwebs.

Maddie backed toward the desk’s far side, eyes darting between the filing cabinets. She tried the drawers. All were locked—except one.

It slid open with a metallic sigh. Inside lay a single photograph.

Her photograph.

She was standing exactly where she was now, in this same office. Same desk. Same phone. Only in the picture, she wasn’t alone. Behind her stood a man in a hospital gown, his face entirely covered in surgical gauze, his head tilted toward her as though whispering.

Her stomach turned. She flipped the photo over.

In scrawled handwriting, the back read:

You’ve been here before.

The lights flickered. When they steadied, the desk was gone. The phone was gone. The photograph was still in her hand.

Now she stood in a narrow corridor lined with doors, each one closed, each with a small square viewing window at eye level. Something shuffled behind one of them.

A voice, low and wet, slid through the silence. “You’re late for treatment.”

Maddie stepped back, but the corridor stretched in both directions now, endless. She picked a door and looked through the window.

Inside, a man sat in a wheelchair, his spine arched backward at an impossible angle. His face was a gaping absence, skin folding inward where his features should have been. He turned toward the glass, and though he had no eyes, she knew he was looking.

She stumbled back.

Another door slammed open down the hall, and a figure shuffled out—a nurse in a starched uniform, her face pale and stretched, mouth stitched shut with black thread. She walked toward Maddie in slow, measured steps, her head tilting with each one like a clock’s pendulum.

Maddie ran.

The corridor bent and twisted, doors blurring past. Somewhere ahead, faint at first but growing louder, came the sound of TikTok notification chimes—familiar, almost comforting. She followed them, desperate for something that felt real.

They led her into a large, circular ward. Phones lay scattered across the floor, screens cracked, each one flashing unread messages from usernames she recognized. Some were her followers. Others… were people she knew had vanished tonight.

She knelt and picked one up. The screen lit with a video—grainy, shaking. It was Liv. She was crying, whispering into the camera, “Don’t follow them. Don’t let them touch you. And if you see your own face… run.”

The phone went dark.

Something moved in the reflection of the black screen—behind her.

Maddie turned.

She was standing face-to-face with herself.

The other Maddie was identical down to the tear in her jeans, but her eyes were wrong—solid black, like pools of ink. Her lips curled into a smile that didn’t belong to her face.

The double stepped closer, and with each movement, the ward darkened. The air thinned. Maddie backed away, tripping over a fallen phone.

The double tilted its head. When it spoke, it used Scott’s voice. “They’re waiting for you in the theatre.”

Then it lunged.

Maddie scrambled backward and fell through one of the ward’s side doors, slamming it shut behind her. She leaned against it, gasping, until the smell hit her—copper and rot.

She’d landed in the operating theatre.

The rusted tables gleamed wet in the dim light, though they hadn’t been cleaned in decades. Metal tools lay neatly arranged, their edges glinting. At the center of the room, under a single hanging light, was a covered shape.

She didn’t want to see.

But her feet carried her forward.

She pulled the sheet back.

It was Scott. His eyes were open, glassy. His mouth hung slack, lips pale. Around his neck were deep, surgical incisions—neat, deliberate, stitched shut with the same black thread as the nurse’s mouth.

The overhead light flickered, and when it came back, Scott was sitting upright.

“Your turn,” he said in Collins’s voice.

Every light in the theatre went out.

The dark was total, swallowing everything. Somewhere close, metal scraped on metal, and a dozen voices whispered at once:

We’re not done with you yet.

Chapter 8 – The Asylum Decides

The dark was alive.

It pressed against Maddie’s skin like damp cloth, the air hot and close, carrying the stink of old blood. She could feel movement around her—brushing her hair, grazing her arms, shifting just out of reach.

Her breathing came fast and shallow. She tried to move, but the floor was gone. She was standing on nothing, yet her feet felt rooted, as if the darkness itself was holding her in place.

Then—light.

A single spotlight burned down on her from above, blinding. She shielded her eyes. When her vision adjusted, she saw that she was no longer in the theatre.

She was in a long, narrow corridor lined with mirrors.

Each one reflected her—but not exactly.

In one, she was smiling, though she wasn’t smiling now. In another, her skin was grey, her lips stitched shut. Further down, she saw herself hunched over, crawling on all fours, her mouth open in a silent scream.

She took a step forward. All the reflections turned their heads toward her at the same time.

The sound started then—faint scratching from behind the glass. Fingernails. Maddie’s nails.

Her pulse roared in her ears. She tried not to look, but her eyes were dragged to one mirror at the far end. The version of her inside it was drenched in blood, eyes wide, mouth gaping. The figure lifted a hand slowly and pressed it to the glass.

A hairline crack appeared.

The others began to crack too—one by one, sharp fractures racing outward. Something was pushing from the other side.

Maddie ran.

The corridor twisted, and suddenly she was in the main hall again—except it wasn’t the same. The ceiling soared impossibly high, disappearing into black. Doors lined the walls all the way up like a giant hive, some swinging open and shut by themselves, others whispering faintly.

From one of the upper doors, Kelsey leaned out. Her hair hung limp and wet, and her eyes rolled loosely in their sockets.

“You’re part of it now,” she said, voice too deep. “Stop running.”

Maddie backed away, but the floor beneath her gave way with a violent lurch. She fell—straight down—into cold, stagnant water.

It was pitch black. Her hands slapped against tiled walls as she kicked upward, breaking the surface with a choking gasp.

She was in the hydrotherapy room. The pool around her stank of rot. Floating beside her was Jamie, or what was left of him—his face was half gone, skin sloughing away in the water, but his eyes still followed her. His lips moved soundlessly.

Something brushed her leg. Then another touch—cold, deliberate. Fingers.

She thrashed toward the steps, hauling herself out, coughing hard. Water streamed from her clothes, pooling on the cracked tiles.

From the far end of the room came the sound of someone clapping slowly.

Collins stood there. His uniform was soaked, his pale eyes reflecting the weak light. Harris was beside him, smiling in that fixed, skin-stretched way.

“The building likes you,” Collins said. “It’s shaping itself around you now. Your thoughts make the rooms.”

“No…” Maddie whispered.

“Think of the exit,” Harris said. “Go on. Imagine the front doors.”

Against her will, Maddie pictured the entrance hall—those towering double doors, the rain outside.

The walls rippled.

In an instant, she was there, standing before the very doors she had imagined. Her heart slammed in her chest. She reached for the latch.

It came away in her hand. The wood sagged forward like wet clay, revealing not the outside, but another hallway—identical to the one she had just been in, lined with the same doors, stretching into forever.

Collins stepped through behind her. “You can’t leave. Not really. But you can choose how it ends.”

The hallway doors began to open.

From them spilled the missing members of Royal Nation. Their bodies were wrong—limbs too long, skin loose and pale—but their faces smiled like they recognized her. They shuffled forward, arms outstretched, murmuring her name in a hundred different tones.

Maddie stumbled back. The floor beneath her feet pulsed—once, twice—like a heartbeat.

Every light in the hall snapped on at once, revealing that the walls weren’t plaster at all. They were flesh. Pale, stretched flesh, veins throbbing just beneath the surface.

The building was alive.

And it was closing in.

The air thickened until it was hard to breathe. Collins and Harris melted into the crowd of reaching bodies, their features blending into the others.

“Maddie…” they all said together, voices merging into one deafening call. “Stay with us.”

She screamed and ran, not knowing where her feet would take her, only that she couldn’t let them touch her.

The corridor twisted violently, and she crashed through a doorway—into the asylum’s courtyard.

Cold night air hit her like a slap. The rain was falling again, steady and real. The gate was there, wide open.

She bolted for it, her shoes slipping on the wet ground. She passed through the gate without resistance.

She kept running until she reached the road, where a lone car’s headlights cut through the fog. The driver—a middle-aged man—jumped out, shouting, “Are you alright?!”

Maddie turned to look back.

The asylum was gone.

Only an empty field remained.

But behind her, in the reflection of the car’s window, Collins stood smiling.

Chapter 9 – No Escape

Maddie’s chest heaved as she sank into the car’s backseat, hands trembling so violently she struggled to unlock the door. The man behind the wheel—call him Mark—kept glancing nervously at her, his mouth moving, but she couldn’t hear a word over the pounding in her skull.

She tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat. Outside, the empty field stretched under a heavy sky, the asylum’s silhouette erased as if it had never existed.

Mark’s voice finally broke through. “You’re safe now. You’re out.”

Maddie closed her eyes, willing herself to believe it.

But then—

A sharp, wet sound from the window beside her.

She snapped her eyes open.

In the reflection, Collins stood close behind Mark’s head, pale face inches from the glass, smiling.

“Don’t look,” Mark said quickly, locking the doors.

But Maddie couldn’t look away.

Her own reflection twisted and warped. The smile on her face deepened — a smile she wasn’t wearing.

Suddenly, the car’s interior temperature dropped sharply, her breath misting in front of her.

Mark’s eyes darted around. “What’s happening? What—”

The radio crackled, then exploded with static, drowning out everything. Through the white noise, Maddie heard whispering — her own voice, calling her name over and over, layered and warped.

“Maddie… Maddie… come back…”

She reached for the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge.

Panic surged. The world outside the window began to blur and ripple like water.

Then, impossibly, the window fogged from the inside out — and a handprint appeared, pressed flat against the glass, dripping with black liquid.

Maddie screamed.

The car shook violently, lights flickering, Mark’s face distorting as if melting.

Then the car flipped.

She hit the pavement hard.

Everything went black.

When Maddie awoke, she was somewhere else — or so it seemed.

She was lying on a cold metal table in a dimly lit room, the same one from the asylum’s operating theatre.

Her wrists and ankles were bound with thick leather straps.

The air smelled of antiseptic and decay.

A figure approached through the gloom.

It was Collins.

His smile was wider than ever.

“Welcome back, Maddie.”

She tried to scream but no sound came.

Collins leaned close, whispering, “You thought you escaped, but this place owns you now.”

Behind him, shadowy figures began to materialize — faces from her worst nightmares, distorted and hollow.

The walls pulsed again, alive, breathing.

Maddie realized with horror: The asylum’s nightmare wasn’t confined to the building. It had followed her.

And it would never let her go.

Chapter 10 – The Threshold Breaks

Maddie’s eyes flickered open, raw and stinging from the cold. The metallic table beneath her felt unforgiving, pressing into her skin like ice. She tried to move but the leather straps bit into her wrists and ankles, holding her fast. Panic surged in her chest, sharp and immediate.

The room was suffused with a dim, sickly green light that seemed to pulse, as if the walls themselves were breathing. The stale, antiseptic odor was overpowering, mixed with something far fouler — the unmistakable stench of decay.

Collins stood at the far end, his silhouette warped and shifting, like smoke caught in a weak breeze. His smile was that same unnatural curve, one that never quite reached his empty eyes.

“Welcome back,” he said, voice low and velvety, each word a slow, deliberate cut. “You’re closer now. The building likes to keep its favorites nearby.”

Maddie’s throat tightened. The silence was a thick shroud — until a slow drip echoed somewhere from the shadows. Drip… drip… drip.

A flicker of movement drew her gaze to the corners of the room, where shadowy forms writhed, twisting in the green light. Faces — faces she recognized, but distorted: Jamie’s half-melted features, Kelsey’s glassy eyes, Liv’s silent scream.

“You see?” Collins said, stepping closer, the floor beneath his feet seeming to ripple like water. “They’re part of you now. Part of the asylum’s… collection.”

Maddie fought the terror threatening to consume her, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might shatter her ribs. She strained against the straps, but they held firm.

Then, without warning, the room shifted.

The walls peeled away like pages in a book, revealing endless corridors stretching beyond sight. The metallic table was now a cold slab of stone in the center of a labyrinth. The faces in the shadows multiplied, chanting in low, guttural tones.

“Find the key, Maddie,” Collins whispered, his voice coming from everywhere and nowhere. “Or stay forever.”

The chant grew louder, shaking the very air. Maddie’s vision blurred, the labyrinth twisting, doors opening and closing in impossible sequences. Every turn she took led her deeper, and the voices followed — whispering secrets she didn’t want to know, memories that were not hers but felt like bone-deep truths.

A door at the maze’s center swung open. Maddie approached it, drawn by a force she couldn’t resist.

Inside was a room flooded with light — the asylum’s sunroom, frozen in time, bright and peaceful.

On a table lay a small, rusted key.

She reached for it, but as her fingers closed around the metal, the room shattered.

Glass exploded inward, and cold hands grabbed her, pulling her into darkness.

The last thing Maddie saw before everything went black was Collins’s smiling face, inches from hers, whispering:

“Welcome home.”

Chapter 11 – Vanishing Acts

Maddie jolted awake, gasping in the sunroom’s eerie stillness. The rusted key burned cold in her palm. But something was wrong.

The sunroom’s pristine illusion began to crumble—the light flickered, shadows pooling in the corners like ink bleeding through paper. The walls groaned, a low, tortured sound.

She pushed herself up and staggered toward the exit.

A voice echoed, faint and fractured: “Maddie…”

She spun around. It was Liv’s voice. But Liv wasn’t there.

The hallway beyond the sunroom stretched into a narrow tunnel lined with peeling wallpaper and rusted pipes. At the far end, faint figures moved—blurry, distorted.

“Liv?” Maddie called, but the figure faded into the darkness.

Her pulse thundered.

She ran down the hall, walls closing in, breath ragged. The distant echo of TikTok notification sounds pinged through the air — but now warped, slowed down, distorted into a sinister drone.

In the next room, she found Jamie’s phone shattered on the floor, the screen cracked like spiderwebs. When she tapped it, a grainy video started playing — Jamie whispering, “Don’t trust the doors… don’t trust the voices…”

The screen went black.

Maddie’s hands shook violently.

She kept moving, calling out names: “Kelsey! Liv! Scott!”

No answer but whispers, growing louder and angrier, circling her like vultures.

Down the next corridor, she saw Kelsey sitting slumped in a wheelchair, eyes wide and unblinking, mouthing silent pleas for help.

Maddie lunged forward, but before she could touch her, Kelsey vanished — like smoke sucked into the cracked walls.

Panicked, Maddie sprinted to the central hall where everyone had gathered hours before. The space was empty.

Her heart stopped.

One by one, the members of Royal Nation were disappearing.

No bodies. No signs of struggle. Just absence.

The walls seemed to breathe around her, alive with hungry intent.

A new voice called her name — soft, urgent, but not any she recognized.

“Find the others… before it’s too late…”

Maddie stumbled backward into a room that was not there moments before. Inside, mirrors lined every wall. Reflections flickered — not her own, but twisted versions of those lost.

A figure reached out from the glass, pale hand pressed against the surface.

Maddie screamed, retreating from the room as the glass cracked, spiderweb fractures racing outward.

The asylum was feeding.

It wanted to erase them all.

And Maddie was next.

Chapter 12 – The Whispering Hunger

Maddie’s footsteps echoed hollow in the empty asylum corridors, the silence heavier than any scream. The faces of her friends—the Royal Nation—flashed behind her eyes, one by one swallowed by the darkness.

The building had stolen them.

And Maddie was beginning to understand why.

She reached a room carved out from the thick stone walls, a forgotten chapel. The stained glass windows were cracked, but filtered an unnatural crimson light onto the floor. At the center, a massive pit yawned—black and endless.

Whispers poured from it, voices layered, ancient and hungry.

As Maddie approached, the voices sharpened into words, clawing their way into her mind:

“Feed us. Join us. Become whole.”

She glanced around, heart hammering.

On the walls hung photographs—old and faded but unmistakable. Faces from the asylum’s past patients, twisted in agony. Names scratched beneath: some dated back decades, others centuries.

Among them, she saw her friends’ faces: Scott, Jamie, Liv, Kelsey—all pinned like trophies.

Her stomach churned.

The pit pulsed, like a heartbeat made of shadow.

Suddenly, cold fingers gripped her ankles, dragging her toward the edge.

Maddie screamed and kicked, breaking free. She stumbled back, clutching the rusted key tight.

A voice whispered behind her, dry as dead leaves.

“They are not lost. They are claimed.”

Maddie spun to see Collins, or what he had become—his eyes black pits, his skin stretched tight like parchment, a cruel smile splitting his face.

“The asylum feeds on connection, on followers, on belief. Your Royal Nation—your family—they fueled it. Every video, every share, every new recruit…”

He stepped closer. “The more you grow, the hungrier it gets. And now, it craves you.”

Maddie backed away, but the walls began closing in, creeping toward her like living things.

She shouted, “Why? What are you?”

Collins’s smile widened, revealing rows of jagged teeth.

“We are the forgotten,” he hissed. “The echoes of those lost in here, bound by pain and fury. We survive by drawing others in, feeding on their fear, their hope… their very souls.”

Behind him, shadows coalesced—her friends, eyes vacant, mouths moving in silent screams.

Maddie’s hands trembled on the key.

The pit’s whispers surged, louder and more desperate:

“Come down, Maddie. Be whole. Be free.”

She glanced at the edge.

The darkness beckoned.

Her own reflection rippled in the crimson light—half-human, half-shadow.

In that moment, Maddie understood.

The asylum didn’t just trap bodies.

It devoured identities.

And it wanted her next.

Chapter 13 – Beneath the Flesh of the Walls

Maddie’s breath came in ragged bursts as she clutched the rusted key, the whispers from the pit still humming in her ears. Collins’s words churned through her mind: The echoes of those lost… feeding on connection… devouring identities…

There had to be more—answers hidden in this twisted place, secrets buried deep where even the asylum itself feared to tread.

She moved away from the pit and found a narrow door, almost invisible, hidden behind a tattered tapestry. The keyhole beckoned.

Her fingers shook, but the key turned smoothly.

The door creaked open to reveal a passageway no wider than a coffin.

The walls pressed close, cool and damp. Maddie crouched low and began crawling, the air thick with the smell of rot and old stone.

Faint flickers of torchlight danced ahead, though no flame was visible. The passage twisted like a serpent’s spine, the floor uneven beneath her hands.

Every breath felt borrowed, every sound amplified — the scuttle of rats? Or whispers?

Ahead, the tunnel opened into a vaulted chamber carved from raw rock. The walls were covered in carvings—symbols too ancient to understand, writhing shapes that seemed to shift when Maddie blinked.

In the center, a worn wooden table held faded journals, brittle with age.

She flipped through one, its pages filled with scratchy handwriting.

“Dr. Emory Wren, 1864. The facility expands — not merely for treatment, but for control. We delve beyond the mind, into the essence of the soul itself. Our experiments seek to bind consciousness, to trap it within these walls, to create eternal obedience.”

Maddie’s skin crawled. The asylum was never just a hospital. It was a prison — a cage for spirits, a nursery for nightmares.

Another journal revealed a darker truth:

“Patients who disappear are not escapes, but sacrifices. Their bodies serve as vessels to strengthen the building’s hold, feeding the dark entity beneath — the Whispering Hunger.”

The Whispering Hunger — the name sent a cold shiver down Maddie’s spine.

A low rumble vibrated through the chamber.

The walls seemed to pulse, flesh beneath stone.

Maddie glanced up.

Behind the carvings, the rock shifted — a hidden crawlspace revealed itself, a narrow slit barely large enough for a person to squeeze through.

Compelled by a mix of fear and desperate hope, Maddie slid inside.

The crawlspace was a living thing. Walls breathed, contracted, and almost closed around her. She pressed forward, scraping her hands bloody on wet stone.

Whispers clawed at her mind, fragments of screams, cries for help, laughter twisted by madness.

The passage opened into a cathedral-like chamber beneath the asylum — the true heart of the building.

Huge pulsing veins ran across the walls and ceiling, glowing faintly with sickly light. At its center lay a mass of writhing shadows — the Whispering Hunger itself.

It was a grotesque tangle of limbs and faces, eyes opening and closing like a grotesque choir, mouths chanting Maddie’s name.

She raised the key, trembling.

The words of Dr. Wren echoed in her mind: “Bind consciousness. Trap the soul.”

This key — it was not to escape, but to imprison.

Maddie realized the cruel truth: to free her friends — to end the asylum’s hunger — she must feed the Whispering Hunger.

But at what cost?

The chamber’s walls groaned as the Hunger pulsed, reaching out for her.

Maddie swallowed her terror.

This nightmare had only just begun.

Chapter 14 – The First Body

Outside, dawn was bleeding into the gray UK sky, but the air around the asylum was thick with dread. The police search teams had scoured every inch of the building — or at least what they could reach — but found nothing. No clues, no signs of struggle. Just eerie silence.

Then, from the tangled woods that edged the asylum’s grounds, a shout shattered the stillness.

Officer Daniels’s voice cut through the fog: “We’ve found one!”

Maddie wasn’t there, but the news rippled through the small town like wildfire.

The body was discovered in a shallow ditch, hidden beneath gnarled roots and moss. It was Jamie.

His clothes were torn, muddy and soaked, as if he’d been dragged. But what stopped everyone cold was the face.

Frozen in a contorted scream, eyes wide and glassy, reflecting raw, unimaginable terror — as if he had seen something so horrific it shattered his soul.

The mouth was twisted into a grimace of pure agony, lips pulled back to reveal clenched teeth.

The forensic team worked quickly but with reverence; it was clear this wasn’t an ordinary death.

Detective Harper stared at the body, unease crawling under his skin. “This… this isn’t natural.”

Back inside the asylum, Maddie was crawling through the living veins of the Whispering Hunger, the key cold and heavy in her palm.

Her mind flickered with images—snippets of Jamie’s final moments, his silent scream trapped forever on his twisted face.

Her hands clenched into fists. The asylum was spilling its darkness beyond these walls.

The Whispering Hunger pulsed violently, voices screaming, begging, threatening.

And Maddie realized with crushing certainty: the asylum was no longer just a prison.

It was a predator.

The lines between the living and the dead, the real and the unreal, were fracturing.

Maddie’s fight was no longer just for herself or her friends.

It was for anyone who might walk too close to the asylum’s shadow.

Chapter 15 – Fractured Minds

The whispers were no longer just voices in the dark—they were inside Maddie’s head.

At first, they were faint, like the hum of a distant radio, barely noticeable over her racing thoughts. But each step she took through the asylum’s living corridors made them louder, clearer.

“You’re alone… You’re nothing… They’re gone…”

The words twisted and echoed, bouncing through the hollow chambers of her mind.

She stumbled, clutching her head as the walls warped and twisted around her. Corridors stretched impossibly long; ceilings dropped low enough to suffocate.

Her reflection in a cracked mirror laughed back at her, a sinister grin that wasn’t hers.

“Stop,” she whispered to herself, desperate for sanity.

But the asylum had other plans.

Her memories blurred. Faces of her friends—the Royal Nation—shifted, melting into grotesque parodies. Jamie’s scream replayed endlessly behind her eyelids; Liv’s hollow stare haunted every shadow.

She questioned everything. Was she really crawling through flesh and stone? Or trapped inside her own breaking mind?

The key in her hand pulsed with cold fire. It was both anchor and noose.

Suddenly, the ground beneath her trembled.

From the shadows emerged Collins—smiling, but now fragmented, his face flickering like a corrupted video.

“Why fight, Maddie?” he whispered, voice folding into her thoughts. “We are all part of this now. You’ve felt it—haven’t you? The hunger… the pull.”

Her heart raced as the asylum’s dark essence seeped into her veins, threading through her thoughts.

“Join us,” the voices pleaded, “become whole.”

Her screams echoed into nothingness.

And somewhere, far away from the asylum’s grasp, Detective Harper stared at Jamie’s twisted face and wondered: was the real terror the asylum… or the madness it awakened inside?

Chapter 16 – Shattered Mirrors

Maddie’s breathing was ragged, the key slipping between trembling fingers like it wanted to fall and vanish into the abyss.

She staggered through a corridor that no longer made sense—walls bending, stretching, folding like wet paper. Every step echoed in a cavernous emptiness that swallowed sound whole.

The asylum whispered, not from the walls, but from within her.

Her thoughts fractured like shattered glass, each shard reflecting a memory—real or imagined, she couldn’t tell.

She saw Jamie’s face twisted in terror, Liv’s hollow eyes, Kelsey’s silent screams. They weren’t just ghosts; they were parts of her breaking psyche, bleeding into flesh.

She pressed her palms against a cracked mirror, and the reflection fractured with a thousand jagged lines.

But the image staring back wasn’t her own.

It was a face split in two—half terrified girl, half grinning shadow.

“Who are you?” Maddie whispered, voice breaking.

The shadow smiled wider.

“You’re not who you think you are. You never were.”

Her pulse thundered. The walls pulsed with that same slow heartbeat, alive and hungry.

Suddenly, voices crashed over her—her own, multiplied and distorted.

“You belong here.”

“Let go.”

“Be free.”

Her knees buckled, and she fell to the floor, clutching her head as memories and hallucinations collided.

She remembered laughing with Royal Nation, the hopeful videos, the late-night chats—then the darkness swallowing them all, one by one.

But now?

She wasn’t sure where Maddie ended and the asylum began.

Her screams echoed, swallowed by endless corridors, while somewhere deep inside, the Whispering Hunger smiled.

Chapter 17 – The Abyss Beckons

As Maddie lay crumpled on the cold floor, the key clattering beside her, the shadows around her thickened—folding, swirling like smoke caught in a slow dance.

Her mind slipped, drifting into visions that felt more real than reality itself.

She found herself standing in a vast hall, walls lined with mirrors—but not reflections. Instead, each glass pane showed a twisted version of herself.

One Maddie smiled, hollow and soulless, eyes black pits swallowing the light.

Another Maddie screamed silently, mouth wide and broken, eyes filled with unending torment.

A third Maddie sat motionless, trapped inside the glass, tears streaming down her pale face as ghostly hands clawed at the surface, begging to be freed.

The whispers grew louder, a chorus chanting her name, beckoning.

“Join us… Be whole… Be free…”

Her feet moved without her will, stepping toward one mirror where a version of her stretched out a hand, fingers dissolving into shadows.

She reached to touch it—and was pulled inside.

Suddenly, Maddie was no longer Maddie. She was weightless, drifting through endless darkness, suspended in a sea of whispering souls.

Faces swam around her—friends, strangers, forgotten victims—all trapped in the asylum’s hunger.

A cold, invisible force wrapped around her heart, squeezing.

Pain flared, then a terrible calm.

The voices shifted, now a single voice—a haunting lullaby promising peace, escape from pain, from fear.

“Let go… join us… forever.”

And Maddie saw her own face reflected in the abyss, peaceful yet empty.

The final surrender.

Then, in a flash, she was back on the cold floor, clutching the key.

But the vision lingered—an unbearable question searing through her mind:

If she gave in, would she lose herself? Or become something worse… a whisper in the hunger’s endless chorus?

The choice is hers.

Fight and risk losing everything, or surrender and become part of the asylum forever.

Chapter 18 – The Eternal Chorus

Maddie’s vision twisted again, pulling her deep into the abyss—the place where the asylum claimed its victims.

She was no longer herself.

Her body had dissolved into shadow, stretched thin like smoke drifting in a cavern of souls.

Around her, hundreds of faces emerged—each frozen in torment, their eyes hollow, their mouths locked in silent screams.

They were the surrendered—the forgotten.

Their voices no longer their own, replaced by the Whispering Hunger’s insatiable chorus.

“Join us… Join us…” it hummed, an endless drone.

Maddie tried to scream, to move, but her limbs felt heavy, insubstantial.

A spectral hand brushed her cheek—cold and cruel.

The face attached was her friend Jamie’s, eyes black voids, lips twisted in a cruel smile.

“Welcome,” he whispered, voice like wind through dead leaves.

“You are one of us now.”

The shadows around her writhed and danced, weaving into shapes—twisting into the forms of past victims who had lost their souls to the asylum.

They were trapped, forever bound to feed the dark heart of the place.

Maddie realized with crushing horror: surrender meant losing her identity, her memories, her self—becoming nothing more than a ghostly echo in the asylum’s endless hunger.

She tried to fight, but the darkness seeped inside her mind, rewriting thoughts, blurring memories.

Her last flicker of resistance dimmed as the chorus swallowed her whole.

Outside, the asylum walls throbbed, alive with a hundred trapped souls, their whispers rising to a terrible crescendo.

The asylum had won.

And Maddie’s scream was just another voice in the eternal chorus

Chapter 19 – Descent into the Abyss

The walls were no longer walls.

They were flesh.

Pulsing, breathing, alive.

Maddie’s fingers pressed into the damp surface, which throbbed beneath her touch like a living wound.

Each beat echoed in her chest, syncing with the frantic hammering of her heart.

She wanted to scream.

But her voice was gone.

It had been swallowed by the asylum.

Around her, shadows shifted and twisted—shapes emerging from the darkness, malformed and broken, their faces a grotesque collage of pain and rage.

They reached out with trembling, desperate hands.

Whispers clawed at her mind—fingers scraping the inside of her skull.

“Come to us. Be part of us. Forever.”

Her vision blurred as the air thickened with the stench of decay and old blood.

The floor beneath her feet rippled like a pool of black water, threatening to drag her under.

Desperation clawed through Maddie’s mind.

She tried to run, but the halls twisted endlessly, labyrinthine and maddening.

Every turn led her back to the same nightmare: the pit of shadows, the pulsing heart of the Whispering Hunger.

Her own reflection greeted her in the cracked glass—half human, half something else.

Eyes black as voids, mouth stretched into a cruel, unnatural grin.

She screamed inside, but no sound came out.

The asylum’s hunger seeped into her bones, filling every crack with cold fire.

Her memories shattered into shards of terror: the laughter of Royal Nation twisted into cruel mockery, the vanished faces watching her with hollow eyes.

She was becoming one of them.

A prisoner of the flesh walls.

A whisper in the eternal chorus.

But buried deep inside, a spark remained—a fragile thread of defiance, faint but burning.

The question was simple—and cruel:

How long before even that flicker was snuffed out?

Chapter 20 – The Flesh That Breathes

Maddie’s breath came in ragged gasps as she stumbled deeper into the asylum’s living guts. The walls weren’t just stone and mortar anymore—they were pulsing flesh, slick and cold, veined with black tendrils that writhed like serpents beneath translucent skin. Every heartbeat sent a shudder through the entire building, and Maddie felt it as a sick rhythm pounding in her chest, syncing her very life to the asylum’s monstrous core.

The air was thick with the metallic scent of blood and decay. Somewhere, far off but unmistakable, came the scraping of claws against bone. Maddie’s skin crawled. She tried to steady herself, but the corridors twisted in impossible geometries—hallways folded back on themselves, ceilings sank low only to open into vast cathedrals of darkness that threatened to swallow her whole.

Each step was a battle. The floor beneath her feet was uneven, sticky with something viscous that tugged at her shoes, as if the building itself was trying to hold her in place. She tried to run, but the asylum warped and contorted around her, labyrinthine and merciless. Doors appeared and disappeared at the edge of her vision, opening into rooms that defied logic—some filled with flickering shadows, others with the wails of forgotten souls trapped behind iron bars.

She pressed a shaking hand against the flesh wall. It rippled like water. A soft moan slipped from its depths, raw and hungry. Maddie recoiled as a handburst of black tendrils curled out and caressed her wrist, cold as ice, pulling gently, teasing. Panic slammed into her chest.

“Let me go!” she gasped, wrenching free.

But the tendrils clung, crawling up her arm like serpents. They whispered promises—twisted, broken fragments of voices she knew.

“Join us… be whole… be free…”

A flicker of light caught her eye. Ahead, a shattered mirror hung askew, reflecting her fragmented image. But it wasn’t her reflection staring back—it was a grotesque version of herself. Her eyes were hollow pits leaking darkness, her mouth stretched in a silent scream dripping black ichor.

The mirror cracked further with a sharp, sickening snap.

Suddenly, the room shifted. The walls contracted and expanded as if breathing, contracting like a monstrous lung.

From the shadows emerged figures—former patients and lost souls, their bodies grotesquely fused to the asylum’s flesh walls, faces frozen in eternal agony. Limbs stretched unnaturally, half-formed, broken, as if the asylum was still trying to consume and reshape them.

They reached for Maddie with desperate hands, their mouths opening in silent screams.

One figure stepped forward—an old man with eyes like empty wells. His voice rasped inside her mind.

“Escape… is a lie. We are the marrow of this place. The blood that flows through its veins. The bones it builds upon.”

Maddie stumbled back, gagging on a breath she could barely catch.

The tendrils coiled tighter around her wrists, pulling her closer to the living wall.

She screamed, a raw, animal sound lost amid the asylum’s growing cacophony.

Then the whispers changed—now a chorus of malevolent laughter, cold and mocking.

From every shadow, eyes blinked open—too many to count, all glowing with cruel hunger.

She fought with every ounce of strength left, tearing at the tendrils, kicking at the flesh beneath her feet.

But the asylum was patient. It had waited a hundred years for new prey. It would wear her down.

In a moment of desperate clarity, Maddie tore the key from her pocket and slammed it against the flesh wall.

A sharp crack split the air. The wall shuddered violently, and the tendrils recoiled as if burned.

But then the asylum retaliated. The flesh bulged, splitting open like a wound to reveal rows of serrated teeth grinding slowly in the dark.

A rancid breath hissed out—warm, foul, and alive.

Maddie scrambled backward, heart hammering.

The floor beneath her began to pulse, rising like a tide of flesh and bone, threatening to crush her under its weight.

Above, the ceiling groaned—a low, terrible sound like the death rattle of some ancient beast.

Maddie realized with gut-wrenching horror: the asylum was not a building. It was a living, hungry entity, ancient beyond reckoning, fed by the souls of the lost and the fear of the living.

And now it wanted her.

She bolted down a corridor that twisted impossibly, the walls closing in, the air thickening, pressing on her chest like a vise.

Her footsteps echoed endlessly, but no one answered.

Every corner she turned led to the same nightmare—a room filled with flickering images of Royal Nation’s missing members, their eyes vacant, their faces twisted in terror.

She screamed for them, but the asylum swallowed her voice.

Madie’s mind splintered under the relentless assault—visions bleeding into reality.

She saw herself trapped in an endless loop, forever walking these corridors, hunted by shadowy figures with clawed hands and broken teeth.

The asylum whispered, beckoned, promised release only through surrender.

But Maddie fought on, the key heavy and burning in her hand—a symbol of fragile hope in an ocean of madness.

The asylum’s grip tightened.

The line between her mind and the building blurred.

And the hunger… the hunger was just beginning to feast.

Chapter 21 – Fractured Shadows

While Maddie wrestled with the asylum’s living walls and creeping madness, the others from Royal Nation were scattered like broken shards across the building’s haunted bowels, each trapped in their own nightmare.

Liv was somewhere deep in the east wing, a place thick with darkness and silence heavier than death. She pressed her back against a cold, crumbling wall, every breath visible in the icy air. The flickering flashlight in her trembling hand barely cut through the gloom. Shadows moved just beyond its reach—half-glimpsed figures that twisted and melted away when she blinked.

Her phone was dead. No signal. No help.

She remembered Jamie’s terrified face—the last words he’d whispered before vanishing—something about “the walls listening.” Now, Liv knew what he meant. The asylum wasn’t just haunted. It was alive, watching.

Suddenly, a soft whisper drifted through the air—a voice that sounded like her own name, barely audible but dripping with menace.

“Liv…”

Her pulse quickened. She spun, shining the light into the dark, but found only peeling wallpaper and broken tiles.

A hand grazed her shoulder, cold and slick.

She screamed—but the asylum swallowed her cry.

Meanwhile, Kelsey was trapped in a narrow service tunnel beneath the building, a labyrinth of rusted pipes and crumbling bricks. The air was thick with the stench of rot and something far fouler—old blood, stale sweat, and whispered screams.

Her flashlight flickered as she crawled, every sound amplified: the drip of water, the scrape of something dragging across metal.

Behind her, the darkness stirred.

Something was following.

She dared not look back.

Every step felt heavier, like the weight of a thousand eyes pressed against her spine.

Suddenly, a guttural growl echoed in the tunnel, low and wet.

Kelsey’s heart slammed against her ribs. She scrambled forward, fingers raw from clutching sharp bricks.

Ahead, a faint light glimmered—a door, cracked open, leaking a sickly yellow glow.

She threw herself through the gap just as a clawed shadow lunged.

The door slammed shut, leaving her panting in a small, decaying room.

But the safety was fleeting.

The walls hummed with a terrible pulse, and faint scratching began behind the rusted pipes.

In the west wing, Ben and Zoe were huddled together in an old therapy room, its faded walls covered in peeling paint and sinister stains. The air was thick with dread and unspoken memories.

Ben’s hands shook as he tried to hold Zoe’s gaze.

“We have to find Maddie,” he whispered, voice cracking.

Zoe nodded, but her eyes betrayed her fear.

From the cracked ceiling, something dripped—thick, dark liquid that smelled of rust and decay.

The room seemed to breathe around them.

Suddenly, the therapist’s chair in the corner creaked, slowly swiveling toward them.

Neither moved.

Then the door slammed open with a deafening bang.

A cold wind swept through the room, carrying whispers—promises and threats tangled in one terrible breath.

“We’re not alone,” Zoe said, voice barely above a whisper.

Back in a hidden alcove deep beneath the asylum, Maddie finally found a moment to rest.

Her body was bruised, her mind ragged, but the key burned softly in her palm—a faint lifeline tethering her to reality.

She closed her eyes and let out a shaky breath.

But even in that fragile silence, the asylum’s hunger pulsed in the shadows, waiting.

Because here, no one truly rested.

Not for long.

Chapter 22 – The Next to Fade

The asylum’s hunger grew louder — a low, sinister roar beneath the pounding of Maddie’s heart. Every shadow seemed to twitch with anticipation, every whisper a promise of impending doom.

She had rested only moments, but already, the fragile thread holding the Royal Nation together was unraveling faster than she could chase.

The last message on her cracked phone made her stomach twist: “Ben’s gone.”

Ben. One of the strongest, the one who held the group together when chaos exploded. And now… gone. Vanished without a trace.

Maddie’s hands clenched the key until her knuckles went white. She staggered to her feet, forcing herself to move deeper into the asylum’s dark veins.

Voices echoed—fragments of the past, of her friends, of the asylum’s cruel laughter.

“Where are you?” Maddie whispered, tears blurring her vision.

She found Zoe alone, crouched in the therapy room, pale and shaking.

“He’s gone,” Zoe said, voice hollow. “I don’t know where. One moment he was here… then just… gone. Like the others.”

Maddie’s breath hitched. “We have to find him.”

Zoe shook her head, eyes wide with fear. “It’s the asylum. It’s picking them off, one by one. And soon it’ll be us.”

A sudden, guttural sound cut through the stale air—a growl, close and raw.

They spun around just in time to see a shadow dart past the doorway—too fast to catch, but real enough to chill their bones.

“We need to leave,” Maddie said, desperation creeping in.

But Zoe shook her head again. “We can’t. Not without the others.”

Maddie’s mind raced. The key burned in her pocket—a link to escape, or a trap.

Then, a terrible whisper curled around her thoughts.

“Choose one. Save the many… or lose yourself.”

The asylum was forcing her hand.

In the distance, faint screams pierced the silence—a sound both distant and terrifyingly close.

Maddie’s heart shattered. To save the rest, she’d have to make a choice that would haunt her forever.

Stay and keep searching in this endless nightmare—or sacrifice someone to the asylum’s hunger to buy time.

Her hands trembled as the weight of the decision crushed her.

The walls seemed to close in, the asylum’s breath hot on her neck.

And somewhere, beyond the darkness, the next soul was slipping away.

Chapter 23 – The Price of Choice

The air inside the asylum grew thick, almost viscous—like breathing through a thick veil of rot and despair. Maddie’s heart hammered in her chest, every beat echoing like a death knell.

She stood in the cold corridor, the flickering light from a broken lamp casting grotesque shadows that danced along the flesh-walls. Zoe was close, trembling beside her, eyes wide and unblinking. The silence between them was heavy—laden with the absence of those who had vanished before.

Ben was gone.

Jamie was gone.

Liv was gone.

Each disappearance a cruel reminder of the asylum’s insatiable hunger. Maddie could feel it gnawing at the edges of her sanity, clawing at the fragile threads holding her together.

The key burned hot in her pocket, an unbearable weight.

Then came the whisper.

“Choose one. Save the many… or lose yourself.”

The voice wasn’t just in her head. It was the asylum itself—alive, watching, judging.

Maddie’s mind spiraled.

If she tried to save everyone, she’d be swallowed whole, just like the rest.

If she made a sacrifice, someone would be lost forever—but maybe, just maybe, the others could escape.

She closed her eyes, the darkness behind her lids swirling with impossible images.

Jamie’s twisted face.

Ben’s hollow eyes.

Liv’s whispered pleas.

And the faces of the others, their terror etched into every memory.

A sickening rage welled up inside her—at the asylum, at the cruelty of fate, at the helplessness squeezing her chest.

But rage wasn’t enough.

She had to choose.

Maddie’s eyes snapped open.

“We have to make a sacrifice,” she whispered, voice raw and trembling. “One of us… has to stay.”

Zoe gasped, shaking her head.

“No. No, Maddie. We can’t—”

“We don’t have a choice,” Maddie cut her off. “If we don’t, the asylum will take us all.”

Zoe’s breath hitched as the walls seemed to close in.

Maddie looked around desperately. They were trapped—no way out without a price.

Her gaze landed on Zoe.

“I’m sorry,” Maddie said, voice breaking.

Zoe stared at her, terror blossoming in her eyes.

Suddenly, the asylum’s voice roared inside Maddie’s head—louder, harsher.

“Choose now, or lose all.”

The tendrils beneath the walls writhed violently, reaching for them, hungry.

Zoe screamed.

“No! Don’t make me—”

But Maddie pushed her toward the door of a small room, its frame pulsing like a beating heart.

“You have to,” Maddie said, tears streaming down her face.

Zoe stumbled inside, the door slamming shut behind her with a finality that shattered Maddie’s soul.

Alone in the corridor, Maddie sank to the floor, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

She heard Zoe’s muffled screams—raw, desperate, tearing the silence.

The asylum’s voice whispered again, cold and cruel.

“One soul for many. The price is paid.”

And then—silence.

Hours passed.

Maddie curled against the wall, the key cold now, useless in her hand.

She was alone.

The others were gone.

Her mind unraveled—visions bleeding into reality.

She saw Zoe’s face twisted in terror behind the door, heard her screams echoing endlessly.

The asylum’s flesh walls pulsed around her, alive and hungry.

The shadows whispered secrets—promises of release if she gave in, threats of eternal torment if she resisted.

Maddie’s resolve cracked.

She saw herself, not as Maddie, but as a hollow shell—one of the asylum’s many prisoners, trapped forever in the endless chorus of suffering.

Her skin prickled.

A cold breath brushed her neck.

“Join us,” the voice hissed.

Her body froze, terror rooting her in place.

She felt cold fingers on her wrist—gentle but unyielding.

The asylum was claiming her next.

A sudden noise snapped Maddie back to the present—a scraping, dragging sound, slow and deliberate.

She scrambled to her feet, heart pounding.

From the shadows emerged Zoe—pale, eyes wide and empty, mouth moving in silent scream.

But it wasn’t Zoe.

The asylum had taken her.

Her movements were jerky, unnatural.

Her face twisted into a grotesque mask of pain and hunger.

Maddie screamed.

The creature lunged.

The last thing Maddie saw before darkness swallowed her was the asylum’s endless hunger—an abyss that never closed, a nightmare that never ended.

Chapter 24 – The Shredding of Zoe

The silence that followed Zoe’s disappearance was worse than the screams.

Maddie sat trembling, her back pressed against the cold flesh wall, heart pounding like a war drum in her chest. The key was a lead weight in her palm—its faint warmth mocking the growing chill in her soul.

Then, from the shadows ahead, a slow, ragged shuffle broke the silence.

Maddie’s breath caught.

A figure emerged, grotesque and broken.

Zoe—but not Zoe.

Her skin was pallid, stretched tight over sharp bones that jutted like knives beneath her cracked flesh. Jagged tears ran down her arms, raw muscle and sinew exposed beneath the ragged remnants of her clothes. Her eyes were black pits—empty voids that swallowed light and hope alike.

A sick, wet sound accompanied every twitch of her shattered limbs—the grinding of shattered bones, the tearing of flesh, the gurgle of blood pooling in ragged wounds.

Her mouth hung open in a silent scream, a ragged maw dripping with dark ichor.

Maddie’s stomach heaved.

But Zoe’s distorted form didn’t stop.

She lunged.

Maddie barely dodged, stumbling backward as Zoe’s clawed hands tore through the air, scraping the wall with nails broken and jagged like shattered glass.

Her movements were jerky and unnatural, like a puppet with its strings cut but still forced to dance by some cruel master.

Maddie’s eyes burned with tears as she tried to comprehend the horror before her.

This wasn’t Zoe.

It was the asylum’s hunger made flesh.

Zoe’s mouth opened wide in a gurgling scream—a sound like a death rattle mixed with the wet tearing of sinew.

Her face convulsed, muscles spasming as something monstrous writhed beneath the surface of her skin.

Suddenly, her jaw unhinged with a sickening crack.

A long, black tongue slithered out, tasting the air like a serpent.

Maddie’s breath hitched in pure terror.

She raised her shaking hand, clutching the key like a lifeline.

“Zoe… please…” she whispered, voice breaking.

But the creature only snarled, a guttural sound that chilled her to the bone.

Then it lunged again.

This time Maddie didn’t dodge.

She screamed as Zoe’s claw raked across her forearm, tearing flesh and sending sharp pain screaming through her veins.

Blood poured, hot and sticky, dripping onto the asylum’s pulsating floor.

Maddie’s vision blurred.

But she forced herself to stand, forcing panic back down into a cold, burning resolve.

She swung the key like a weapon.

The metal caught Zoe’s cheek with a harsh clang.

The creature recoiled, head whipping around in unnatural jerks.

Then it began to scream—an unholy sound that rattled Maddie’s bones.

Zoe’s skin bubbled and split like melting wax, exposing raw muscle and twitching nerves.

From beneath her flesh, black veins writhed, pulsating with a sick light.

The asylum’s corruption was eating her alive.

Maddie backed away, horror rooting her feet.

The creature’s mouth opened again, wider this time.

Inside, rows of jagged, broken teeth gleamed wet and sharp.

A thick, viscous saliva dripped down her chin, smelling of rot and iron.

Maddie’s mind screamed at her to run, but her body refused.

This was her friend.

Or what was left of her.

Suddenly, Zoe collapsed to the floor with a wet thud, convulsing violently.

Her chest heaved, lungs struggling for air.

Maddie rushed forward, heart breaking, reaching out to her.

But as her fingers brushed Zoe’s twisted face, the creature’s eyes snapped open—black orbs blazing with unnatural fury.

Zoe’s hand shot out, grabbing Maddie’s wrist with terrifying strength.

The nails dug deep, drawing blood.

“Help me,” Maddie begged, tears streaming.

But Zoe only hissed—a guttural, inhuman sound—and pulled Maddie toward the gaping maw.

Desperation exploded in Maddie’s chest.

She slammed the key into Zoe’s temple with all her strength.

A burst of sickening crunch echoed through the corridor.

Zoe’s grip slackened.

Maddie tore free, stumbling backward as the creature writhed and screamed.

But the asylum was far from done.

From the torn flesh of Zoe’s back, black tendrils erupted—slimy, pulsating, alive.

They snaked toward Maddie like hungry serpents.

She screamed, spinning away, her breath ragged.

The asylum was claiming her friend—and now, it wanted Maddie next.

The corridor warped and twisted as Maddie fled, the asylum’s monstrous hunger chasing every step.

Behind her, Zoe’s screams echoed—a twisted, horrifying symphony of flesh and madness.

Maddie’s skin prickled with cold sweat.

The asylum’s grasp was relentless.

And it was closing in.

Chapter 25 – The Abyss Below

Maddie stumbled through the twisting corridors, the asylum’s monstrous grasp clawing at her sanity with every step. The grotesque echo of Zoe’s screams haunted the air behind her—half agony, half rage—a sound she knew would never fade from her mind.

Her breath was ragged, each inhale a rasp through cracked lips. The key was cold now, weightless in her palm, as if its power had drained with each soul claimed by the asylum.

Ahead, the corridor ended in a heavy, iron door—rusted, ancient, sealed shut for decades.

Her fingers trembled as she reached for the handle.

A sudden pulse vibrated through the walls, like the slow heartbeat of a beast awakening.

She pushed.

The door groaned open, revealing a vast descent—a spiraling staircase carved deep into the earth, swallowed by shadows and silence.

This was the abyss below.

The origin.

Step by trembling step, Maddie descended into the asylum’s dark heart. The air grew colder, thicker—a suffocating mix of damp earth, decay, and something far fouler.

Faint whispers curled through the gloom—half-remembered voices of the broken, the lost, the condemned.

At the bottom, she found a cavernous chamber, walls slick with moisture and stained with dark, ancient blood.

In the center, a grotesque altar—a mound of shattered bones, rusted tools, and fragments of old medical devices twisted into monstrous shapes.

The room pulsed with a sick light, emanating from something buried beneath the altar.

Maddie’s stomach twisted in dread.

This was the asylum’s heart—the source of its hunger and madness.

Suddenly, the floor trembled.

From the shadows emerged shapes—twisted remnants of former patients, their bodies mangled beyond recognition, faces frozen in eternal terror.

They moved slowly, dragging broken limbs, eyes hollow and glassy.

The air filled with their rasping breaths and hollow moans—a chorus of despair.

Maddie’s skin crawled.

But worse was what lay beneath the altar.

With shaking hands, she pulled aside a rusted grate.

Beneath it was a deep pit, lined with jagged teeth-like stones, dripping with black, oily liquid.

The pit exhaled a foul mist, curling around Maddie’s feet like living smoke.

From the darkness, a voice slithered into her mind—cold, ancient, hungry.

“Welcome home.”

The pit’s blackness began to stir.

Slowly, from its depths, a figure emerged—shrouded in writhing shadows, a mass of twisted limbs and torn flesh, eyes burning with baleful light.

It was the asylum’s core—a monstrous entity born from centuries of pain, madness, and cruelty.

Its voice echoed inside Maddie’s head, scraping her sanity raw.

“You sought answers. You sought salvation. But here is truth—the price of your curiosity.”

The creature stretched out tendrils of shadow, each ending in grasping, clawed fingers.

They reached for Maddie.

Her vision blurred.

Memories, faces, screams—flashbacks of every torment, every soul the asylum had devoured—assaulted her mind.

She saw Jamie, twisted and broken; Ben, lost in endless darkness; Zoe, shredded and remade.

And herself.

Her own face, twisted in despair, screaming into the void.

Maddie staggered back, heart pounding, tears blurring her vision.

She knew now—the asylum didn’t just feed on bodies. It consumed hope, sanity, the very essence of being.

It was an endless hunger, a prison that trapped souls in eternal torment.

And she was next.

Summoning every shred of strength, Maddie clenched the key.

A sudden surge of light burst from it—a pure, searing glow that cut through the shadows.

The creature recoiled, howling in rage and pain.

The altar cracked, bones shattering, shadows splintering.

Maddie’s voice rose, trembling but fierce.

“You won’t take me.”

The chamber shook violently as Maddie faced the monstrous core.

The asylum screamed in agony, walls crumbling, darkness fracturing.

But Maddie stood firm, the key blazing in her palm—the last hope for escape.

Chapter 26 – The Last Light

The cavern trembled beneath Maddie’s feet as the monstrous heart of the asylum writhed and screamed in fury. Its shadowed tendrils lashed out, twisting and writhing like living nightmare, but the key burned fiercely in her hand—a beacon of desperate hope.

The grotesque entity loomed, a towering mass of shredded flesh, bone, and darkness, eyes like smoldering coals fixed on her with malevolent hunger. The air was thick with the scent of rot and burnt metal, the chamber echoing with a cacophony of voices—the tortured souls trapped for centuries.

Maddie’s breath came in sharp gasps, but she planted her feet, eyes burning with fierce determination.

“You won’t have me,” she whispered, voice shaking but resolute.

The asylum’s core roared, tendrils smashing toward her with crushing force.

Maddie dodged, pain exploding in her side where a claw grazed her ribs. She gritted her teeth and raised the key high.

A blinding light burst forth, pure and searing, flooding the chamber with harsh white radiance.

The creature shrieked, recoil twisting its monstrous form, the shadows splintering and cracking.

For a moment, Maddie felt hope.

But then, something twisted beneath her skin.

A coldness creeping into her bones, like icy fingers curling around her heart.

Memories flooded her mind—sharp and jagged like shattered glass.

The faces of the Royal Nation, screaming in agony, disappearing one by one.

Her friends, lost to the asylum’s hunger.

The whispered promise of surrender, the offer of escape if she gave in.

And then the crushing realization: the key’s light wasn’t just a weapon.

It was a beacon.

A call.

The asylum’s lure for new souls to feed its endless hunger.

Maddie staggered, pain flaring through her limbs as the icy darkness crawled inward.

The entity’s voice whispered, seductive and cruel.

“Give in, Maddie. Join us. Become one with the asylum. Find peace in surrender.”

Her vision blurred as she collapsed to her knees, the key slipping from her fingers.

Darkness crept at the edges of her sight.

But then, a flash—sharp and sudden.

Her own voice, fierce and unyielding, echoed in her mind.

“No.”

Summoning the last shreds of her strength, Maddie reached deep within herself—not for escape, but for defiance.

She clasped the key once more.

This time, the light that burst forth wasn’t just pure—it was her own.

Memories of laughter, friendship, and hope ignited the glow, burning away the shadows.

Her friends’ faces flickered in the light, guiding her will.

The monstrous heart convulsed, tendrils writhing in agony.

The asylum screamed, walls cracking and bleeding.

But the key pulsed, a living thing in Maddie’s palm, feeding on her resolve.

Maddie rose, eyes blazing, and faced the creature.

“I am not yours,” she spat, voice echoing like thunder.

The asylum faltered, shadows tearing away, revealing something beneath.

Beneath the monstrous flesh and nightmare, Maddie glimpsed a fractured soul—trapped and begging.

The entity howled in pain, collapsing inward.

And then—the twist.

As the asylum shattered, the key slipped from Maddie’s grasp, falling into the pit’s black depths.

A whisper filled the chamber.

“The key chooses its bearer.”

Maddie reached out, but the darkness swallowed the key.

The chamber’s light faded, replaced by cold silence.

And Maddie realized—she hadn’t freed herself.

She had only become the next keeper.

The asylum’s hunger was eternal.

Her vision blurred, Maddie’s mind fracturing as the shadows claimed her.

She felt the cold tendrils wrap around her soul, pulling her into the endless void.

But somewhere, deep within, a spark remained.

A promise of resistance.

Of hope.

Outside, the sun rose over the abandoned asylum.

The police found the building empty—no sign of Maddie, Zoe, or the others.

Only a faint glow pulsed beneath the earth—an eternal heartbeat of darkness and light, waiting.

The Royal Nation would never know what truly happened.

And the asylum waited. Hungry.

Chapter 27 – Keeper of Shadows

The world slipped away from Maddie like sand through desperate fingers. Darkness swallowed her whole, cold and endless, but beneath the void, a pulse—a heartbeat—called to her, steady and relentless. It was the asylum’s heart beating through her veins now, binding her soul to its eternal hunger.

Maddie opened her eyes.

The air was thick and heavy, smelling of rust and decay. The cold flesh walls of the asylum pressed in, pulsating like a living creature. Her limbs felt foreign, heavy with an unnatural stillness. The key—her last weapon, her last hope—had disappeared into the abyss, but its power was no longer hers to wield.

Instead, she felt something else—something ancient, writhing just beneath her skin.

She was no longer a victim.

No longer a wanderer.

She was the asylum’s keeper.

A whisper curled around her mind, soft and seductive.

“Welcome home, Maddie.”

The voice was not cruel but chillingly calm, like the cold embrace of a shadow you can never outrun.

She struggled, but the asylum’s grasp tightened—fingers of darkness curling inside her, wrapping around her very soul, knitting her into the fabric of its nightmarish existence.

She was both prisoner and warden now.

The screams that once haunted the halls—the cries of the lost and broken—were hers to command.

Her vision cleared, revealing the chamber she had destroyed, now warped and twisted into a throne of bone and shadow.

The monstrous core had dissolved, but the hunger remained.

Endless, insatiable.

Maddie rose, feeling the weight of countless souls pressing against her, begging, pleading.

She could hear their memories—whispers of despair, moments of fleeting hope.

Each one tethered to her, feeding her power and madness.

Her hands trembled, fingertips tingling with unnatural energy.

The asylum had changed her.

No longer merely human, Maddie was something more—a bridge between worlds, a keeper of dark secrets, and a beacon for the lost.

Outside the asylum’s rotting walls, the world went on unaware.

The Royal Nation’s phone screens blinked with missed calls and unanswered messages.

News reports speculated about the disappearances, rumors swirling of supernatural forces and government cover-ups.

But no one knew the truth.

No one knew Maddie’s fate.

Inside, Maddie’s mind drifted through the endless corridors—hallways that shifted like living veins, rooms that breathed with dark memories.

She saw faces—her friends, distorted and broken, trapped in the asylum’s grasp.

Her heart clenched with unbearable guilt.

But she was powerless to free them.

The asylum’s laws were cruel and absolute.

A cold laugh echoed through the chamber.

Then, a new presence.

A flicker of movement—another soul drawn into the darkness.

Maddie’s eyes narrowed.

The key had chosen again.

And somewhere, far away, the Royal Nation was stirring.

Their next adventure was beginning.

But Maddie—keeper of shadows—was ready.

Her voice rose, low and echoing through the hollow halls.

“Welcome to the asylum.”

The walls shuddered.

The hunger stirred.

The game was far from over.

The truth was clear.

The asylum was no longer just a place.

It was a living nightmare.

A prison.

A predator.

And Maddie was its new master.

She stepped forward, her figure dissolving into the shadows that writhed like serpents around her.

Behind her, the walls whispered secrets of madness and torment.

But Maddie was no longer afraid.

Because now, she held the darkness.

And the darkness held her.

Outside, a text notification blinked on a Royal Nation phone:

“Maddie? Are you there? We found something. We need you.”

The screen flickered, then went dark.

The asylum waited. Hungry.

To be Continued ….