A Father's Love, as Steadfast as a Mountain-Until It Crumbles

The light in the corridor seemed to dim. A cold draft blew down from above, raising goosebumps. It was as if the control room at Nightmare Academy had turned the Air Conditioner down to its lowest setting.

When Chen Ge returned to the floor he'd been on earlier, he was surprised to find that someone had shut the emergency door leading to the corridor and slapped a brand-new seal across it.

"Locked? Are they planning to trap me in the stairwell?" Chen Ge stopped at the door and peered through its glass window into the corridor.

Figures flitted through the dim hallway. They were all different sizes, and each carried some kind of tool.

As the shadows in the hallway drew his attention, footsteps sounded in the stairwell again.

"Is someone following me?"

Chen Ge wasn't in a hurry. After a while, he realized that a child's voice was mixed in with the footsteps. It sounded as if the child had been separated from their father and was calling out through tears.

"There's something strange about that voice. It doesn't sound like a child, but it's much higher-pitched than an adult's. Like the child's voice hasn't fully developed yet."

Chen Ge closed his eyes and patiently tried to pinpoint the child's location.

"The child's voice upstairs has a faint electrical buzz beneath it. It's probably being played through a device. The voice coming from downstairs is unsettling too, but it sounds clearer. The child should be on the ground floor."

The farther down he went, the dimmer the lights became. The walls grew mottled, covered in large stains and strange markings that made him uncomfortable just looking at them.

Chen Ge also noticed something odd: a black incense burner sat at the corner of every floor, with three Broken Incense