The bell rang again.
But this time, it wasn't the usual screech or chime.
It was a low, guttural pulse that seemed to crawl under my skin.
I followed the crowd—not because I wanted to, but because resistance here was pointless.
Everyone walked like zombies, eyes glazed, mouths shut tight.
They led me to a classroom on the very edge of the school—a room that didn't appear on any schedule, in any handbook, or on any map.
The door was black, chipped, and cold to the touch.
I pushed it open.
Inside were empty desks.
Not one notebook.
Not one chair occupied.
Just silence.
The walls were covered in scratched numbers and names—roll numbers etched deep into the paint, like scars.
Then, he appeared.
A teacher.
Not a man.
Not quite human.
His eyes were hollow voids, reflecting everything and nothing.
His voice was calm but edged with something feral.
"Welcome, Ayaan.
This is Class Zero.
The class that never existed.
The place where the forgotten learn the truth about themselves."
He gestured to a blackboard that gleamed under flickering lights.
On it:
"You are both the subject and the experiment."
He told me the curriculum:
No textbooks.
No lectures.
Just forced self-confrontation.
Forced exposure to the darkest parts of your psyche.
Every lesson was a test of endurance.
Every question was designed to break you down and rebuild you—or destroy you trying.
The classmates?
Shadows, phantoms, echoes.
Whispers of students who had come before and never left.
"Here," the teacher said, "you learn that psychology isn't about helping you heal.
It's about understanding how to control the chaos inside you."
I sat down.
The chair was cold metal.
The room, an unending void.
The lesson began.
Psychology Lesson One: The Mask of Sanity
The teacher's voice echoed:
"Everyone wears a mask.
The trick isn't to find the mask—
but to discover what you hide beneath it.
Because in darkness, everyone's truth is uglier than their lies."
And so, I learned.
Not the psychology you read in books.
But the raw, brutal truth:
The mind is a battlefield.
Sanity is a fragile mask.
And every day at this school is a war to keep it from shattering.
CHAPTER FIVE — Part 2
The Class That Never Existed (Deeper Shadows)
The teacher didn't give us assignments or homework.
He gave us tasks—mental trials that burrowed into your skull and refused to leave.
Today's task was simple in words but impossible in execution:
Identify your deepest fear.
Easy, right?
But not here.
I sat alone in that empty classroom,
the blackboard's words glowing like a warning:
"Fear isn't what you think.
Fear is the part of you you refuse to see."
I closed my eyes.
The silence became deafening.
Images flashed in my mind—
a childhood memory of being left alone in a dark room.
The stifling loneliness after my parents argued.
The crushing weight of feeling invisible in a crowd.
And then something darker.
Not a memory, but a feeling:
What if I'm never enough?
What if the cracks inside me grow until I shatter?
The realization hit like a punch:
My fear wasn't spiders or heights.
It was myself.
The monster I couldn't fight because it lived inside me.
The teacher's voice echoed again, softer this time:
"When you face your fear, you become it.
Then you learn how to control it—or it controls you."
The room tilted.
The empty desks stretched and twisted, becoming mirrors.
Each mirror reflected a different version of me—
broken, angry, numb, desperate.
I touched one mirror.
It cracked.
Pieces fell like shattered promises.
And in that fracture, I saw the path ahead:
To survive this school,
I must confront the darkness not just around me,
but the darkness within me.
The bell rang.
Not a sound of freedom—
but a summons deeper into the abyss.
CHAPTER FIVE — Part 3
The Class That Never Existed (No Escape)
The bell's echo faded but the dread didn't.
I was trapped in that classroom longer than time allowed—
or maybe time didn't exist here at all.
The teacher's hollow gaze never left me.
His voice became a chant, weaving through my thoughts:
"There is no escape from who you are.
Only the choice to hide... or to break."
I tried to stand.
The room resisted.
The chairs stretched their metal limbs, wrapping around my ankles like cold chains.
"You think you can run from your mind?
Your thoughts are your prison."
The walls began to close in—
each step heavier, each breath a battle.
I forced my eyes open, refusing to surrender.
And then—
The mirrors shattered simultaneously.
Pieces flew in every direction.
But from the shards rose a new reflection.
Not broken.
Not shattered.
Ayaan—whole.
Dark, scarred, and raw—but unyielding.
The teacher smiled—if that's what you could call it—
and said,
"Good. You've learned your first lesson.
Darkness isn't your enemy.
It's your most honest ally."
I walked out of the classroom.
Or maybe I was pushed.
The hallways felt colder.
The air thicker.
The shadows longer.
But now, something inside me had changed.
The fear hadn't vanished,
but I'd stopped running.
Because in this school—
to survive,
you don't need to be the strongest.
You need to be the darkest.
CHAPTER FIVE — Part 4
The Class That Never Existed (The Lesson Settles In)
The corridor outside the classroom was empty, but the silence was heavy, like the kind that settles after a storm—thick with unspoken threats. I could feel the weight of unseen eyes watching my every step, waiting for me to slip, to crumble.
But I wouldn't.
Not yet.
I ran my fingers over the diary's worn pages, now stained with a mixture of sweat and ink—my only weapon and my only witness.
The teacher's words echoed relentlessly:
"Darkness isn't your enemy. It's your most honest ally."
But how honest was this darkness?
The kind that whispers your failures in the dead of night,
the kind that makes you question every motive, every breath, every choice.
I thought about the others—
the students who vanished, erased like bad memories.
Their shadows lingered here, in this room that never should have existed,
reminders of what happens when you let the darkness win.
And maybe that's the real lesson:
Survival isn't about fighting the darkness.
It's about bending to it, shaping it, and mastering it—
before it devours you whole.
The bell rang again.
A sound that now felt less like a call and more like a sentence.
I steeled myself, knowing that every step deeper into this school's twisted heart
was a step further from the boy I used to be.
And yet, somewhere beneath the fear, beneath the shadows,
I felt the first spark of something dangerous: power.