Dawn arrived with a biting cold that seeped through the cracks in the windows. Yuki awoke with Rei's words echoing in his mind: "Don't fight. Not yet. I need you to see everything before you hate me."
He sat up in bed, his body still trembling from the encounter in the basement. It all felt like a dream, but the presence in the mirror was undeniable. Rei was still there, smiling that smile that both dismantled and terrified.
Yuki stood, determined to understand what the house was and what it wanted from him. But the house didn't make things easy. When he opened the door, the hallway twisted and the walls seemed to whisper his name in a forgotten language.
He walked with steady steps, the leather-bound notebook in his hand, the only tangible connection to everything happening. When he reached the main hall, the mist had invaded the space, making it seem more like a place between worlds than a real house.
From the depths, a figure appeared. It wasn't Rei this time, but someone different, yet with the same aura of melancholy and power. An older man, with gray eyes that seemed to hold the storm itself.
"Yuki," he said in a deep voice, "you have awakened what lies beneath this house. You are not the first, nor the last, but perhaps you are the one who can change fate."
Yuki swallowed hard, feeling the weight of those words. "What lies beneath?" he asked.
"A trapped soul, a memory that refuses to die, a bond that must be closed for this house to stop holding those who arrive."
The figure extended a hand and a ray of light emerged from it, illuminating a symbol carved into the floor: a circle intertwined with lines forming an intricate pattern, similar to those Yuki had seen in the book about "The Body and the Soul."
"That is the seal that binds Rei to this place. But not only him… also those he has marked."
"Marked others?" Yuki asked, confused.
"Every soul that comes, the house tests, and Rei seeks in them a fragment of himself to survive."
A shiver ran down Yuki's spine. Everything was beginning to fit, but the answer was still a chain with many loose links.
"And what do you want me to do?" he inquired.
"Let me guide you. But prepare yourself: you will see things that challenge your reality, your sense of possibility. This house is not just bricks and wood. It is memory, it is punishment, it is something alive."
With those words, the figure vanished, and the mist slowly began to dissipate.
Yuki took a deep breath, clutching the notebook tightly. He was ready to go further, to delve deeper into the mystery, even if it meant losing himself a little on the way.