When Nero awoke, the room was cold — too cold.
His hands trembled slightly, not from fear, but from something worse: realization.
The dream hadn't ended. It had *bled* into waking.
He blinked twice. The cracked mirror from the dream? It was now reflected in the glass frame across his room — untouched, but not *unseen*.
The time on the wall clock read **19:47**.
Exactly the number scratched into the wall in his nightmare.
No coincidence. Not anymore.
---
Nero pulled out the photo again, flipping it over. He'd already studied every inch of it, but this time… this time there was something new.
A faint line had appeared on the back, likely brought out by condensation. Invisible ink.
He heated it slightly with his lighter. Slowly, a message emerged:
> **"Meet me where the silence hears. Midnight. Come alone."**
Below it, a simple symbol — a triangle with a line through it. He knew it.
**The Observatory.**
---
The place had been abandoned for years after a fire gutted half of its interior. Locals said it was haunted — Nero always found that hilarious. They feared ghosts. He feared the living.
He arrived ten minutes before midnight. The wind whipped through broken windows, and somewhere in the dome above, a wire sang like a violin string in the breeze.
A figure was already there, sitting on a rusted chair in the middle of the floor.
A woman. Young, sharp-featured. One green eye. One cloudy white.
Nero stayed near the shadows. "You left the photo?"
She didn't move. "If I say yes, will you believe me?"
"No. But I'll listen anyway."
The woman stood. "I didn't leave the photo. But I knew who would. And I knew you'd follow it. Because you hear things others don't."
"Why?"
"Because *he's* awake again."
Nero stiffened. "The man with the glass smile?"
She nodded. "They called him *The Mind Weaver*. Once, he was a doctor. Now, he's something else. He doesn't kill for pleasure — he kills to test if the human mind can break and still remember how to lie."
Her voice dropped. "And now he's looking for you."
---
Thunder rolled outside. Nero processed quickly — her eye, her posture, her calm.
"Former patient?" he asked.
"Former experiment," she corrected. "My mind was hollow once. He carved it like stone. Left echoes behind. And now…"
She paused, her voice nearly a whisper.
"…now I hear them, too."
---
Suddenly, the dome above groaned — loud, metallic.
A recorder fell from a beam, crashing to the ground, playing a warped, glitching voice on loop:
> "Nero Kavanagh… Nero Kavanagh… Remember Room Zero…"
The girl paled.
"Do you know what Room Zero is?" Nero asked.
She didn't answer.
But the silence screamed louder than any word could.