Chapter content warning: unsettling supernatural imagery involving an infant.

“It’s me. The lock—”

Before she could finish, the door opened. Someone grabbed her wrist, pulled her inside, and took the key from the lock. The lights snapped off.

A girl’s low voice hissed, “Are you out of your mind? You already have two warnings and you still dare to come back this late. I was about to put my earplugs in. What if I hadn’t heard you and you stayed outside?”

Ava lowered her voice as well. “I got injured. I couldn’t turn the key. I’ll try to come earlier from now on. Thanks anyway.”

“You hurt your hand?” The voice softened. “The first aid kit is still in the bathroom. Quickly bandage it and go to sleep. Use the small lamp. These nights the staff are extra strict. Don’t get up unless you have to.”

She paused, then added more quietly, “Facilities finally approved it. The locksmith’s coming tomorrow. I’ve been asking for a week. Until then, be careful.”

She handed her a rechargeable lamp and pushed her toward the bathroom.

Using the soft light, Ava rummaged through the first aid kit. Now that she had time to look at it properly, she realized how bad it was.

The skin across her knuckles was split and swollen, already darkening with bruises. Two fingers bent at slightly wrong angles.

She did not know how to treat an injury like this. She wiped away the blood, smearing red across her skin as her fingers shook. The skin was tight and hot with swelling. She tried to wrap the bandage once, twice, but her hand refused to cooperate. The gauze slipped, her grip failed, and each touch should have sent agony up her arm.

It did not.

The pain was there, but blunted, as if a layer of fog lay between her and the injury. Distant. Muted. Enough to warn her, not enough to stop her.

She caught the gauze between her teeth and pulled. Her jaw strained as she twisted it tight, forcing her fingers into place. She tied a rough knot around them, binding them together, trapping them straight so they would not move.

Only then did she pause and speak to the system.

“Didn’t you say my body is set to the best condition? My hand doesn’t look in very good shape after being stepped on once.”

The system replied, “Best condition within human capabilities. Your fingers can still move, which would not be possible if you suffered the same injury in real life. Do not worry. Once you leave the level, it will be as if it never happened.”

“How much time do I have to uncover this story? Are there any new rules, apart from not interfering with the past?”

The system’s voice cracked, low and metallic, almost twisting in the air. “28 hours…” it paused, each word dragging unnaturally. 

 “…You need only… survive.”

It continued in the same clipped, mechanical tone: “Exiting the campus results in the loss of one life. Death caused by an attempt to interfere with the past will trigger respawn at the same location after three minutes. All other deaths in this level, including death caused by leaving the campus, will trigger respawn in your room after three minutes.”

Ava frowned. “Something in your words makes it sound like you think I won’t make it to the end, even with five lives, unless I’m extra careful.”

She left the bathroom and lay down on the empty bed without pulling up the covers. Her roommate was already asleep. Ava reached up and tapped the second level lock. The interface unfolded in the air.

Score: 0%

Story title: Twinkle, Little Star.

No photos. No names.

  She opened the photo of the rules and scanned them again. The elevator chimed softly outside. Light footsteps moved down the hallway, then reversed and vanished back into the elevator. When the doors closed, silence returned. 

It must be the staff making their rounds, she guessed, her eyes fixed on the rules. The ones that mattered were simple. Being caught outside after 10 p.m. earned a warning. Three warnings meant immediate suspension from the dormitory—originally for a different period, but someone had crossed it out with a marker and replaced it with a month.

Another line forbade girls from entering boys’ floors and boys from entering girls’ floors. A note in marker added that breaking this rule would be counted the same as being caught out after curfew.

Zooming in on the poster, she saw how sunlight—probably seeping through the lobby’s glass windows—had dulled the printed rules. The marker, however, cut through the fade, sharp and dark, as if it had been added only recently.

Something must have happened recently to make the rules stricter. Her roommate’s voice was low, sharp with warning. “Be cautious,” she said, her tone carrying the unspoken message that the locksmith was coming only because something had already happened.

Ava would have to ask around tomorrow, carefully.

Shrouded in darkness, she finally drifted to sleep.

She woke to a sound that made her stomach tighten: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, sung in a distorted, warped way, like a broken music box. The voice was unmistakably a girl’s.

It came from the hall, drifting under the door, but strangely, there were no footsteps. The melody floated as if the singer were gliding. She hesitated, weighing the possibility of losing a life—not even a night into the level—but I have to know the time to trigger the fragment, she told herself. Slowly, she approached the door, ear pressed against it, unwilling to risk losing an eye if she tried to peek through the keyhole.

Something moved along the floor—sliding, scraping—once, twice, three times, from different points along the corridor. The sounds drifted toward the stairs, fading slowly as they merged into a single, impossible rhythm beneath the warped lullaby. Ava froze, realizing the movement did not obey any natural law. Her heart tightened as the eerie music and scraping seemed to pulse through the building itself.

Ruling out the possibility of humans, she lamented silently. How was she supposed to stay outside long enough to find the spot where the fragment would trigger when three ghosts—or whatever they were—roamed the building? Each stepless motion, each warped note of the lullaby, felt like a warning not to step outside. And on top of that, she had to avoid the random staff checks. Five lives suddenly seemed far too few.

At least they were polite enough not to enter the rooms, giving her a safe place to respawn if she lost a life.

She waited five minutes after the sound stopped, gripping the small lamp. Slowly, she cracked the door open and slipped out, leaving it slightly ajar so she could retreat if possible. At night, the corridor was kept on emergency lighting only, a thin, constant glow meant for safety, not comfort.

The hallway looked empty. She moved close to the wall, every step quiet, until something suddenly pressed against her leg. The emergency lights were enough to show her a shape at her feet, but not enough to explain it.

  Her feet refused to move. The warped lullaby returned, hollow, now layered with the thin, piercing agonized cry of a baby.  She knew she was losing a life—definitely.  

Determined to make the most of it, she forced herself to act. She tightened her grip on the lamp and shone the light down to see what held her. Something small and wet clung to her pants. A cold, sticky weight. Her breath hitched. Please, let it be a doll, she whispered, but her voice was swallowed by the echoing corridor. 

Blood glistened on the floor, tiny droplets leading her gaze downward. The song thickened, twisted, accompanied by a scraping sound that slid across the corridor like something alive, wet, and deliberate. She forced herself to look—and bile burned at the back of her throat.

A tiny, pale, bloody arm—clearly a baby’s—clutched her pants. Its fingers squeezed like iron, slick with coagulated blood, knuckles white, fingernails dirty. The skin looked impossibly fragile, yet the grip was unrelenting. There was no body, no torso, nothing but the arm, horrifyingly alive in its own right. The baby’s cry layered over the distorted lullaby, stitched together from pure pain and fear, piercing her ears.

Her scream lodged in her throat. The lamp wavered, casting frantic shadows over the floor. She snapped a picture, trembling, every nerve screaming, as movement behind her—the sliding, scraping—stopped abruptly, leaving a suffocating silence.

 She collapsed to the floor, numb, the lamp rolling slightly beside her. Pain shot through her chest. The place where her heart should have been felt hollow, a gaping emptiness, as if the corridor had reached inside her and taken it. Her vision swam, the smell of blood and cold air clinging to her skin.