The House of the Raven was no longer merely an old structure; it felt alive, pulsing, as if it had eyes in every corner and hidden mouths in the walls that whispered with every creak of the wood. The three young men—Yuki, Rei, and Noah—had spent the night sleepless after the incident in the basement. No one spoke of what had happened out loud, but they all carried it on their skin.
Yuki had found a corner of the parlor where the shadows seemed less dense. Seated on a tattered armchair, he leafed through the ledger Noah had discovered—now expanded with notes, names, and dates that read like forgotten epitaphs. Each child listed there seemed to claim a space in the house. Many names were crossed out. Others had no surnames. Some entries were stained with what looked like old blood.
Noah, meanwhile, had taken up wandering the halls at night, as if trying to provoke something, to face it. He knew Ershem was watching, surrounding him. He felt it in the distorted reflections of mirrors, in the crooked portraits of the orphanage's former directors, in the measured creaks of the stairs. But he also knew that in unraveling the story, he had found purpose.
Rei, however, seemed dimmed. The connection with Ershem had left a deeper mark than he wanted to admit. He slept little, and when he did, he awoke soaked in sweat, shouting names he didn't recognize. He began to lose track of time. Sometimes he spoke to himself. Other times, he stared into nothingness, unmoving for hours.
That night, something changed.
One of the upstairs doors, sealed for years, opened on its own. A dry bang, followed by an icy wind, drew the three of them to the hallway. Behind the door, a room none of them remembered. The walls were covered in inscriptions in an ancient language, and in the center, a rusted bed bound in chains. Above it, hanging from the ceiling, floated torn photographs: children's faces, each with their eyes obscured by black ink stains.
Yuki stepped forward, but Rei stopped him with a gesture. "This is... part of what I was. Don't go in yet." His voice was low, as if afraid of waking something dormant.
Noah had already started recording. His camera captured everything, but the image shook, distorted, as if the lens couldn't hold what it saw. When he focused on the center of the room, a figure emerged from the shadows. Small, hunched, wrapped in bandages. The camera turned off by itself.
In the darkness, voices began to rise. Childlike, sobbing voices singing a broken melody:
"We played in the wind, we laughed through the night, but the King took our names and the house erased our voices..."
Rei fell to his knees. His hands covered his face as he mumbled in the same ancient language as the walls. Yuki wrapped his arms around him, feeling him tremble. Noah, for the first time, lowered the camera. He knew that this moment wasn't for documenting but for surviving.
Then, the house responded. A red light swept through the hallway, briefly illuminating the portraits and revealing that every child in them had closed their eyes. The stairs creaked as if something invisible descended slowly. And from the back of the parlor, a laugh echoed.
It wasn't a child's laugh. It was old, broken. And it knew their names.