Veer didn't hesitate.
He stepped forward, his boots echoing against the rotting wooden stairs. The air thickened with each step, the scent of damp earth and something fouler creeping into his lungs.
Rudra followed, gun raised. Karan and Zayan moved in sync, their movements silent but their minds on high alert.
The deeper they went, the colder it became.
And the scratches on the walls?
They increased.
Some marks were so deep it was as if whoever had made them had shredded their own nails to the bone.
Then—
The stairs ended.
They stood in a narrow hallway, its walls breathing.
Not literally. But something about them felt alive. The moisture dripped too slowly, the air too thick—like the walls themselves were watching.
Ahead, a single metal door stood slightly ajar.
Something had forced it open from the inside.
Veer signaled.
They moved.
Karan went first, his flashlight cutting through the darkness. But the moment the beam landed inside the room—
He froze.
His grip on the gun tightened.
Because inside—
There were coffins.
Six of them. Lined up perfectly, each one marked with a single name.
And at the center of the room—
A chair.
An old, wooden chair.
With fresh leather straps.
Straps meant to hold someone down.
And on the table beside it—
A scalpel.
Veer's jaw tightened. "This wasn't just an orphanage."
Zayan exhaled. "No. This was a lab."
A place where experiments happened.
A place where children never left.
And just as that thought settled in—
The door behind them slammed shut.
The flashlight flickered.
And from inside one of the coffins—
Something knocked.
Knock. Knock.
The sound was slow. Measured.
Like something inside the coffin was… waiting.
For them to make a move.
The four men stood still, shadows flickering in the dim flashlight beam. Their breathing was steady—but the air felt wrong.
Veer's grip on his knife tightened. His gaze flickered to Karan, who was already stepping forward, fearless. Rudra exhaled sharply, cracking his neck, while Zayan ran a slow hand through his hair, his jaw clenched.
"We're opening it," Veer said, his voice firm. No hesitation.
Zayan scoffed. "Of course we are. What else? Sing it a lullaby?"
Rudra gave a humorless chuckle, adjusting his gun. "Just don't let whatever's inside grab your throat."
Karan pressed his fingers to the wooden lid. The knock had stopped. Silence weighed down on them.
Then—
He pushed it open.
The hinges groaned as the lid creaked back.
The flashlight flickered over the inside—
And their stomachs turned.
Because lying inside…
Was a child.
Or what used to be one.
The body was mummified, the skin stretched tight over bones, the eye sockets hollow pits. A withered hand lay across the chest, fingers curled as if frozen mid-reach.
But the worst part?
The nails.
They were torn and bloody, broken from the inside out—
From scratching.
From trying to get out.
Karan's fingers twitched. "...This kid was buried alive."
Veer's eyes darkened. "And we weren't the first ones to hear him knocking."
Because scratched into the wood, barely visible under the decayed fingertips, was a single message—
"IT WAS NEVER DEAD."
The words had been clawed into the coffin's surface.
Zayan muttered under his breath. "What the actual—"
Then—
The corpse moved.
No.
Not moved.
Jerked.
Its neck snapped upward, too fast, too unnatural.
The hollow sockets locked onto Veer.
Then its mouth—rotted, lipless, impossible— opened.
And the sound that came out wasn't human.
A deep, gurgling rasp, like dirt and blood choking in a throat that had forgotten how to breathe.
"You… shouldn't… be… here…"
The voice didn't belong to a child.
It belonged to something old.
Something hungry.
And then—
The other coffins rattled.
Every single one.
---
The Room of the Dead
"Move!" Veer barked, slamming the coffin shut.
Zayan was already yanking out a crowbar, wedging it under another lid, while Rudra kicked one of the coffins over—wood splintering as a withered body tumbled out, its jaw unhinged, shriveled hands still twitching.
Karan grabbed his knife, his expression twisted in disgust. "Tell me why the dead are still breathing?!"
Because they were.
Every single corpse inside those coffins was moving.
Not fully. Not yet.
But their chests were rising and falling—slow, unnatural.
Like they were learning how to breathe again.
Like they were waking up.
Rudra's hand hovered over his gun, but Veer stopped him. "No shooting. Not yet."
Zayan's expression hardened. "And if they attack?"
Veer didn't answer.
Because he wasn't sure bullets would work on things that had already died.
Instead, he moved toward the farthest coffin, the only one that hadn't knocked.
And when he yanked it open—
His stomach turned.
This one wasn't like the others.
The body inside was fresh.
A woman. Maybe in her late twenties. Recently dead. But unlike the corpses in the other coffins, she looked peaceful. Her hands were folded, her skin still retaining some color. Like she had only just stopped breathing.
But something about her felt… off.
Veer's eyes narrowed.
Then—
The corpse sat up.
Not slowly.
Not like something rising from a dream.
Instantly.
One moment she was lying there.
The next—she was upright, her face inches from Veer's.
Her eyes snapped open.
And they were pure black.
No white. No pupils. Just a void.
Then she smiled.
And from her unmoving lips—
A whisper.
"He's watching you."
A sharp, violent wind slammed through the room. The flashlight flickered, died.
The shadows shifted.
And from the farthest corner of the room—
Something moved.
Something tall.
Something wrong.
Not a person.
Not even close.
A shape, too thin, too jagged, with arms stretching too far. It watched them from the darkness, its head tilting, its grin stretching too wide.
The woman in the coffin laughed.
Not with her mouth.
But inside their heads.
And then—
The black-eyed corpse lunged.