Chapter 4: The Stillness Deepens

Waking up felt less like the gentle return from slumber and more like being dragged back from a great, empty distance. Lie Qiye's head ached, a dull, throbbing counterpoint to the silence that pressed in on them from all sides.

He shifted, dust motes dancing in the faint, ambient gloom that permeated the room. It wasn't truly dark, not pitch black, but a heavy, oppressive twilight that seemed to absorb light rather than merely lack it.

He blinked, trying to gauge the passage of time. Hours? Days? Sleep here felt warped, disjointed. Like falling into a shallow, stagnant pool instead of clean, deep water.

Ms. Wang stirred nearby, a soft groan escaping her lips. Xiao Liu was curled into a tight ball, shivering even in the stuffy air.

Manager Zhou, though… Manager Zhou was different.

Lie Qiye cautiously looked over at him. The wild panic that had contorted his face earlier seemed to have receded, replaced by a weary, hollowed-out expression. He was awake, sitting upright, eyes open but unfocused.

The frantic energy, the desperate attempts at authority, the raw terror – it was all muted now. He looked… calmer, if 'calm' was the right word for someone who looked like they'd seen the bottom of hell and found it profoundly boring.

"Manager Zhou?" Lie Qiye whispered, the sound swallowed by the room.

Zhou turned his head slowly, his gaze eventually landing on Lie Qiye. A faint flicker of recognition, maybe? Or just the default setting for a human face.

"Right," Zhou murmured, his voice raspy. "Still here."

That was it. No plan, no orders, no fretting. Just a simple, bleak statement of fact. It was unsettling in its own way, this strange, muted acceptance after the storm.

They were still here. Trapped. In a room full of forgotten things, behind a broken wall, with nowhere to go.

The initial surge of adrenaline and terror had ebbed, leaving behind a vast, empty space filled with uncertainty. What now? Huddle and wait? For what? The creature? The walls to collapse? Salvation that wasn't coming?

Ms. Wang pushed herself up, rubbing her temples. "How long…?" she trailed off, the question hanging unanswered in the air. Time had lost its meaning here.

"Doesn't matter," Lie Qiye said, the words feeling heavy and pointless. "We slept. Zhou seems… better."

Ms. Wang looked at Zhou, a flicker of concern crossing her face, quickly replaced by her usual tense resolve. "Okay. He's stable. That's something."

Something felt like nothing in this place. They were still adrift, anchored only by their shared misery and fear.

What were they even doing? Just existing? The thought was soul-crushing.

"We can't just… sit here," Ms. Wang said, voicing the thought. "We need to… do something."

But what? The room offered little inspiration. Stacks and stacks of dusty boxes, filled with paper, old ledgers, blueprints for things that probably shouldn't exist.

Xiao Liu whimpered softly from her corner. "It's so dark... What if... what if it comes back?"

The unspoken 'it' hung heavy. The wet, dragging shape. The severed leg. The face pressed into the darkness.

Lie Qiye swallowed. The memory was a cold knot in his gut. He didn't want to think about it. Thinking about it made the silence feel louder, the shadows seem to writhe.

"We just… look," Ms. Wang said, her voice lacking conviction. "Look through the boxes. Maybe there's… something useful."

It was a pathetic plan, a desperate attempt to inject purpose into their aimless despair. But what else was there?

So, they started again. Listlessly. The urgency they'd felt before was gone, replaced by a weary, almost bored resignation. Opening boxes felt like a chore in a nightmare.

Dust billowed with every disturbed box, thick and ancient, coating their clothes, their skin, their lungs. The air tasted stale and metallic.

Old paper, brittle and yellowed. Ledgers filled with columns of numbers that meant nothing to them. Blueprints for structures that defied geometry, lines twisting and folding in impossible ways.

More useless junk. Page after page of forgotten records, bound by string that crumbled at a touch. The sheer volume was overwhelming, burying them in the detritus of some unknown past.

It felt like digging through a grave, disturbing the long-settled dust of dead lives and dead projects.

Lie Qiye kicked a box lightly. It slid across the concrete floor with a scraping sound. What was the point? There was nothing here but paper and despair.

He crouched down, pulling open a flap on a random box. More papers. But wait… something solid at the bottom.

He reached in, his fingers closing around cold, heavy metal. He pulled it out. An old flashlight. Bulky, made of black metal, the kind you'd see in old movies.

A tiny spark of interest. An actual object, not just paper.

He thumbed the switch. Nothing. Of course not. It was old, probably dead.

"Find something?" Ms. Wang asked, looking over. She was sifting through blueprints, her brow furrowed in concentration that seemed more like distraction.

"Another Flashlight," Lie Qiye said, holding it up. "Dead."

He almost tossed it back in the box. Another useless artifact in a room of useless artifacts.

But something stopped him. Maybe the sheer lack of *anything* else. A working light… that would change things. Even a little.

He turned the flashlight over, looking for a battery compartment. Found it. Unscrewed the cap. Corroded batteries. Greenish-white crud coating the ends.

Gross. He shook them out onto the dusty floor. They rolled away like dead things.

"Needs batteries," he stated the obvious.

Ms. Wang sighed, turning back to her papers.

The task felt Sisyphean. Searching for a tiny, specific item in thousands of identical, anonymous boxes. It was ridiculous.

But the thought of a working light… it was a small, fragile tendril of hope in the suffocating dark. The perpetual gloom of the room felt less threatening than the absolute, impenetrable blackness of the corridors outside. A flashlight could push back the shadows, if only a little.

They kept looking. Now with a tiny, almost imperceptible focus. Not just for 'something useful', but maybe... just maybe... batteries.

The listlessness remained, but it was tinged with a new, faint possibility. The rustling of paper, the creak of cardboard, the scraping of boxes – the mundane sounds of their futile search filled the silence.

Zhou remained quiet, watching them with those vacant eyes. Xiao Liu still trembled, but she occasionally glanced towards the flashlight, a flicker of something in her expression.

Hours seemed to crawl by. They moved from box to box, a slow, shuffling process. The air grew heavier, thicker with dust and the scent of decay.

Lie Qiye's fingers were grimy, coated in the fine, grey powder. He felt a growing frustration, a helpless anger at the sheer pointlessness of it all.

He opened another box, sighing internally. Papers, papers, papers… wait.

Something else at the bottom. Hard, cylindrical shapes, wrapped in plastic.

He pulled them out. His heart gave a tiny, absurd lurch. Batteries. Four of them. D-cells, the right size for the flashlight.

They looked old, the plastic wrapper cloudy, but they weren't corroded. They looked… usable.

"Ms. Wang!" he said, his voice louder than he intended, breaking the quiet monotony. "Batteries!"

She spun around, her eyes widening slightly. Even Zhou seemed to shift his gaze towards the objects in Lie Qiye's hand.

Xiao Liu peered over from her corner, a fragile hope dawning on her pale face.

Lie Qiye fumbled slightly, his hands trembling a little with unexpected excitement. He grabbed the flashlight, unscrewed the cap again, and carefully inserted the new batteries.

Positive to positive, negative to negative. The simple, familiar logic felt alien in this place where nothing made sense.

He screwed the cap back on, his breath held tight in his chest.

He thumbed the switch. Nothing. His heart sank. Of course not. Too easy. Too good to be true.

He tapped the flashlight against his palm, frustration boiling up. Useless.

Then, a flicker. A weak, yellow light sprang from the lens, wavering for a second.

He held his breath. It steadied. A beam, weak but distinct, cut through the pervasive gloom.

It worked.

A collective sigh seemed to pass through the small group. It wasn't a cheer, not even a shout of triumph. Just a quiet acknowledgement of a small victory against the oppressive darkness.

Ms. Wang came over, looking at the beam. "Okay. Good. That's… something."

It was more than something. It was a tool. A way to see beyond the immediate, oppressive gloom.

The beam danced as Lie Qiye moved it, illuminating the towering stacks of boxes, the dusty floor, the dark, featureless doors lining the walls.

The doors. They had seen them when they first stumbled into this room, multiple dark rectangles set into the walls. They hadn't dared approach them in the dim light, uncertainty swirling around what might be behind them.

Now, with the flashlight, they could investigate.

The fear was still there, a cold, heavy weight. This place was a trap, and opening a random door felt like stepping further into the maze, deeper into the predator's territory.

But staying put… staying put felt like waiting for death to find them.

"We have to try," Lie Qiye said, stating the obvious conclusion. "We can't stay here forever."

Ms. Wang nodded slowly, her eyes fixed on one of the doors. "Agreed. Sitting here changes nothing. Might as well see what's… next."

Xiao Liu flinched but didn't object. Even Zhou gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.

The flashlight beam felt fragile, a thin line of defiance against the overwhelming darkness. It highlighted the dust motes, the rough texture of the walls, the ominous blankness of the doors.

They still had the scroll. The strange, disturbing parchment they'd found before. Lie Qiye had kept it clutched in his hand or tucked into his pocket since they found it. It felt important, though he didn't know why. A morbid souvenir, perhaps, or maybe… a key?

He touched his pocket, feeling the stiff paper beneath the fabric. Yes, he had it. He wouldn't leave it behind.

Armed with a weak flashlight and a sense of desperate necessity, they made their decision. They would try the doors. Randomly. What other choice was there?

The room, their temporary sanctuary, suddenly felt less safe. It was just another part of the prison, a holding cell before the next unknown. The doors were the only way out, or further in.

Lie Qiye stood up, the flashlight beam steady now, casting long, dancing shadows. He could feel the eyes of the others on him, waiting.

He took a deep breath, the dusty air scraping his lungs. Time to see what horrors lay behind these silent, waiting doors.

He aimed the beam towards the nearest one, a rectangle of deeper blackness in the already dim wall. It looked utterly unremarkable, just like the others.

But in this building, unremarkable usually hid something terrible.

They approached the first door cautiously, the beam trembling slightly in Lie Qiye's hand. The wood was rough, unpainted, cool to the touch.

No handle. Just a smooth, blank surface.

Ms. Wang tried pushing it. Nothing. Tried pulling. Nothing. It was sealed, or locked, or simply a fake door set into the wall.

"Locked?" she murmured, frustration evident.

Lie Qiye ran his hand over the surface. Solid. No seams he could detect, no lock mechanism. It was just… a wall shaped like a door.

"Maybe it doesn't open," he said, the disappointment sharp. Another dead end.

They moved to the next one. Same thing. Blank, solid, unyielding.

And the next. And the next. Door after door, they were met with the same frustrating, silent refusal. Some were clearly just outlines painted or pressed into the wall, others seemed solid but offered no way in.

It felt like a cruel joke. Doors everywhere, but none leading anywhere. The building mocking them, showing them potential exits it had no intention of letting them use.

The hope ignited by the flashlight began to flicker, threatened by the persistent, disheartening reality of their situation. Trapped was trapped, light or no light.

They tried perhaps half a dozen doors, moving along the walls of the archive room. Each one a renewed disappointment, a confirmation of their helplessness.

Ms. Wang swore under her breath. Xiao Liu looked ready to cry again. Manager Zhou just watched, his expression unreadable.

Lie Qiye felt a cold dread creeping back in. Were they truly stuck here? Was this room their final cage?

He shone the light on the last door on that wall. Just like the others. No handle, no visible way to open it.

He leaned against it, weary. It felt solid, final.

He sighed, running a hand through his dirty hair. "Guess these are all…"

As he spoke, leaning his weight against the door, it moved.

Just a fraction. A faint, scraping sound, barely audible over the oppressive silence of the room.

His heart leaped into his throat. He pushed tentatively. It swung inward, slowly, silently, into absolute blackness.

They all froze, staring at the newly revealed opening. It wasn't like the others. It was real.

The air that drifted out was different. Cooler, maybe? And it smelled… less like dust and decay, more like damp stone. But underneath that, something else. Something difficult to place, vaguely organic and unsettling.

The flashlight beam sliced into the void beyond the doorway. It didn't reveal much. Just a narrow passage, walls unseen, floor unseen, swallowed by the impenetrable dark.

The passage seemed to curve almost immediately, hiding whatever lay further inside.

It was a door. A real door. A way out of the archive room.

But a way into what?

The thought was terrifying. Stepping through that threshold meant leaving their known, however terrible, space for a completely unknown one. The creature could be waiting. The walls could close in. This building had proven nothing was safe, nothing was what it seemed.

Yet, staying put was a slow death. This was a chance. A terrifying, potentially lethal chance.

Lie Qiye looked at Ms. Wang. Her face was pale in the reflected light, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and grim determination.

He looked at Xiao Liu. She was trembling violently, her gaze fixed on the black opening, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

He looked at Manager Zhou. His eyes, still distant, seemed to hold a weary acceptance. He didn't look scared, just… ready for whatever came next.

The passage felt strange, even from the entrance. The darkness within seemed deeper, somehow. More absolute.

But it didn't feel like the oppressive, malevolent darkness of the corridors where the creature lurked. It was just… dark. Mysterious, yes, and undoubtedly dangerous given their location, but perhaps less actively hostile than the rest of the building.

It seemed… less creepy, somehow. A strange thought to have about a pitch-black, unknown passage in a killer building, but it was the feeling that settled over Lie Qiye.

This wasn't the pulsing dread of the main halls, the feeling of being watched by the very walls. This was just… an opening.

A leap of faith into the dark. Or a step into the next trap.

They had to try. There was no alternative.

Taking another shaky breath, Lie Qiye gripped the flashlight tighter. The beam seemed pitifully small against the vastness of the unknown corridor.

He looked back at the archive room one last time. The towering stacks of boxes, the perpetual gloom, the silent, useless doors. It was a cage, but a known cage.

The opening ahead was the unknown. And in this place, the unknown was usually where the real horror began.

But they had the light now. A small defense. A way to see what was coming, if only for a few feet ahead.

With the silent agreement passing between them, born of desperation more than courage, they prepared to leave the pathetic sanctuary of dust and paper.

Into the dark they would go. With a shaky beam of light, and a scroll they didn't understand, they would step through the only door that opened.