The Party That Killed || Hyunlix

71 🕸️

Jeongin pov.
The silence in the room was almost suffocating. Despite having been here for a while, we still couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Old, tattered documents surrounded us, the words on them barely legible. The air smelled of mold and aged paper. Seungmin was rummaging through one of the shelves, and I still had the tapes in my hands—tapes that looked like recordings. My heart was racing just thinking about what could be on those tapes.

"Look at this," Seungmin muttered, holding up a folder. He pulled out a damaged piece of paper, and I moved closer to help him. My fingers paused on the names I recognized—some from newspapers, reports about disappearances from years ago.

“These... these are people from that cult,” I whispered, swallowing hard.

Seungmin nodded, as if everything was becoming increasingly real. He took one of the folders and began flipping through it, when I noticed something on the table that looked like photographs. I moved closer to examine them, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw what was on them.

These were pictures of rituals. People in dark robes standing in a circle, faces filled with madness, and behind them, the backdrop of crumbling walls. There was something wrong with it all.

"What the..." I started but couldn't finish. "This looks like some cursed place."

Seungmin glanced at me, his expression growing more serious.

"I think I found the answer," he said, pushing some papers aside. He found a document that caught my attention. It was a detailed set of instructions for a ritual, with guidelines for the next steps. Something about connecting to... something. Something that shouldn’t be summoned.

I didn’t know what to think. This was beginning to look like something we shouldn’t have uncovered.

"This can't be real..." I said, pointing at the document. "These are some twisted rituals. Something they should never have tried."

Seungmin took a deep breath and nodded, then turned to examine other documents. He found even more names—people who, as it turned out, had disappeared. They had disappeared in the past few years.

"This is starting to look like something that shouldn’t exist," Seungmin added, his voice laced with fear.

I didn’t know what to think, but then we heard something—a strange noise, like something was moving. The atmosphere grew even heavier. My breath quickened. We started looking around, but we couldn’t see any movement.

"What the hell...?" I whispered.

Seungmin looked at me, clearly uneasy. And then I felt it—something was missing from this place. I wanted to leave, but I didn’t know if that was a good idea. The noises were getting louder.

"What if what we’ve found isn’t everything?" Seungmin asked. "What if the cult had some other purpose? Something they wanted to hide?"

We stopped for a moment, staring into the darkness of the room, feeling the anxiety rising with each passing second. We were increasingly sure that discovering this cult was only the tip of the iceberg. I felt like there was no turning back—what we were uncovering could change everything.

The tension in the air hung thick, as if something intangible was waiting for the moment to consume us. The sounds from behind the wall now vibrated through the air with greater intensity. I began to realize that we weren’t alone. The wall in front of us, or rather what was behind it, was only a prelude to something I wasn’t ready to see. Then I heard a rustling, like someone was moving on the other side, and my heart began to race.

Seungmin was standing beside me, staring at the white curtain as though waiting for something that shouldn’t happen. When I touched the fabric, it felt hot, like it didn’t belong to this world. Gently pulling the curtain back, I felt my blood freeze in my veins.

Behind it... behind it was nothing I could have expected. An entity. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t something you could call an animal. Its body was torn and deformed, as if someone had experimented too long, trying to create something that shouldn’t exist. Its arms were too long, its legs disproportionate, as if the bones had grown uncontrollably. The skin was stretched over its body, gray and ragged. It had no eyes, just holes where sparks flickered, like something still alive was trapped inside.

And then... then something moved. The creature moved with such speed that my body couldn’t react. In one, striking moment, everything froze. At that moment, I felt like my soul had left my body, yet it filled it at the same time. The creature had something in it that wasn’t fear—it was more like being forced to look at something you had no right to see. We couldn’t move.

I realized that we weren’t just victims of this place—we were part of this brutal reality where such things existed. A sense of doom filled me. My body didn’t respond. My gaze remained fixed on the creature, but my brain fought to just disappear. I felt like I was dying, staring at it. I tried to look away, but it was like something was pulling me toward those eyes—eyes that weren’t eyes. It was something you couldn’t describe. Something that shouldn’t be alive, yet it was.

Seungmin was standing next to me, seemingly just as paralyzed. No words passed my lips. Suddenly, I felt my heart racing faster, and the fear trying to hold me back grew stronger. A shiver ran through me, like the creature understood we were afraid, like it was waiting for our reaction. Terrified, still unable to move, we stood there, staring at it—the thing that lived only to destroy us.

"We’re leaving, unless you want to stay here with this... thing."

I didn’t know what was happening with Seungmin. He stood there as though something was keeping him in place, not moving, not speaking.

"Damn it, Seungmin, I’m serious!"

I grabbed his hand, trying to pull him along. Honestly, I had no idea what he was still doing here. The ground beneath us trembled with fear, and a chill ran down my spine. I had to get him out of here.

When I finally managed to pull him, we ran, not looking back. We burst out into the cool air.

"There are two exits. Either I’m in some damn coma, and what we’ve experienced is just a dream, or our world is messed up, and these people are twisted..." Seungmin looked at me, but didn’t answer. Though, honestly, it didn’t really matter now.

"Then there’s only one way out." His voice was like steel—there was no doubt in it. "I don’t think we’re both dreaming the same thing. And besides, I don’t know about you, but I’m not going back there for anything."

I looked at him, feeling a sudden rush of relief. He was right.

"Me neither. After what I saw, I wouldn’t dare go back."

"Damn it, we’re going to have to."

Seungmin looked at me like he was sure of his decision.

"Are you crazy? I’m not going back there. What the hell are you talking about?" I stopped and looked at him, surprised.

Seungmin looked at me with full determination.

"We promised Minho and Changbin we’d tell them everything. Someone has to show them."

I felt all the tension return. What had we actually uncovered? How would they react? And what about us?

"Damn it..."