Imogen hurried across the campus, her footsteps quickening as she made her way to Darren's room. The weight of unease settled in her chest, her heart thudding with each step. What could Julian have found? What had happened to their close friend? The uncertainty gnawed at her, a persistent ache she couldn't shake off.
She rounded the corner and slowed as Darren's door came into view. It was wide open. She frowned, confusion flickering across her face. She was certain she had closed it before leaving for class. "Julian must have gone in," she thought, her mind trying to rationalize the situation. But something wasn't right. The door, slightly ajar, felt like an invitation—but to what?
Imogen moved closer, her breath catching in her throat. A chill seeped into her bones, the unease shifting into something darker. It wasn't just the open door. It was the silence that pressed against her. As she neared the threshold, a creeping dread coiled inside her, like a slow, suffocating hand around her heart.
What if it wasn't Julian who had come in?
Imogen hesitated at the threshold, peering into the dim, shadowed room. At first, the space seemed normal—nothing out of place, just the lingering remnants of her friend's usual disarray. But then her gaze fell on something that made her breath hitch.
On the floor, near the corner, lay a familiar object—a broken pocket watch. Julian's pocket watch.
Her heart skipped a beat as her pulse quickened. The watch. The very one that had been with him the last time she'd seen him. It was shattered, the cracked glass glinting faintly in the low light, and its hands... they weren't moving. Frozen. Stuck at a time she didn't recognize.
Her fingers twitched, the desire to rush forward battling with the heavy dread that settled in her stomach. What happened?
The sight of the watch—the broken timepiece—was like a quiet scream in the silence of the room, a message she couldn't fully comprehend yet.
mogen stepped forward, her body passing through an invisible barrier—one that seemed to separate the light from the dark. It was subtle, like the shift in the air just before a storm, and it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She felt the change, like the room itself was holding its breath.
As she moved deeper into Darren's room, her eyes scanned the familiar surroundings. But something was wrong. The space felt off, disjointed in a way she couldn't immediately place. The most jarring change caught her eye—the mirror. It had been there before, a cracked and aging fixture. But now... it was gone. In its place was a strange symbol etched into the wall, its lines twisting in unsettling ways, like something both ancient and foreign.
Beneath it, a list was scrawled, the letters jagged, almost hurried. Imogen's breath caught as she leaned closer, her mind struggling to make sense of what she was seeing. The symbols on the wall seemed to pulse faintly, as though alive. The list... it was a jumble of names, places, and dates, none of which she recognized—except for one name. Her own.
Imogen's gaze fixed on her name—Imogen Rell. The letters seemed to glow faintly, as if they had been carved specifically for her, pulling her in. The rest of the list unfolded in a way that felt... deliberate. As if it had been written just for her, she thought, her heartbeat quickening with each new line. The words blurred for a moment before sharpening into sharp focus.
She read the first entry, her pulse rising as she continued:
03:00
4 candles
North
Light
East
Light
South
Light
West
Light
The sequence made sense, but in a way that didn't. Her mind raced—what was this? The instructions were almost simple, yet the weight of them hung heavily in the air. The more she read, the more the sensation of being drawn into something uncomfortably intimate pressed against her chest.
Then came the next lines, almost as if they had been written for someone else entirely, but now, for her:
Lay memory of self
Lay memory of person
Ask for guidance
Her fingers trembled as they traced the words. Lay memory of self? Of person?
She read on, her mind struggling to comprehend the final, chilling directive:
At 03:07, call his name.
They 'will' answer. He's too important.
The sentence sent a shudder through her. The words were too precise, too sure—who was this "he" they spoke of? Her breath caught in her throat as her eyes fell to the last few lines:
Join them.
Or he is lost.
A wave of cold fear washed over her as she realized what the list was hinting at. Julian. Julian was the one they were talking about. She had to act, but... how? Her pulse thundered in her ears as the sense of urgency became overwhelming. He was already slipping away, and this cryptic list might be the only way to find him.
Imogen stared at the list, her mind whirring with disbelief and reluctant understanding. The ritual—it was clearly occult, archaic in its structure yet disturbingly clear in its intent. She didn't want to believe it. Didn't want to believe this was the only path forward. But the way her name had been carved, the specificity of the time, the chilling certainty of "he is lost"—it all pressed down on her like invisible hands guiding her toward something inevitable.
Still, instinct fought against it. She pulled out her phone with trembling fingers and tried the only thing that felt normal: she called Julian.
No signal. A dry tone. A flicker of static.
Again.
Nothing.
Of course it failed.
The silence on the other end wasn't just digital—it felt designed. Like someone, or something, wanted to keep her from reaching him.
She slowly lowered the phone, her eyes drifting back to the list.
03:00.
she checked the time she had 3 hours left
She had three hours.
Three hours to sit with a ritual she didn't understand. Three hours to decide whether she believed any of it—or was simply unraveling.
Imogen closed Darren's door behind her and locked it, though the gesture felt useless. The room already felt wrong in a way she couldn't name—like walking into a space that had remembered something terrible before you arrived. The silence wasn't peaceful. It pressed in on her. Watching. Breathing.
She placed Julian's broken pocket watch on the desk, beside the strange list, and stared at it. The cracked glass caught the low light like a winking eye. The hands were still frozen—03:07—waiting, or warning.
The first hour passed in restless motion. She scoured the room and gathered what she could: four candles. None matched. One was halfway melted. They smelled faintly of old wax and dust. Still, she placed them carefully in the four corners of the room—north, east, south, west—following the list like she was tracing a map she didn't want to reach the end of.
Each placement felt heavier than the last, like she was sealing herself into something. She hesitated before placing the final candle, heart knocking against her ribs. Then she lit none of them. Not yet.
The second hour dragged. She sat on the floor, knees pulled tight to her chest, the list spread out in front of her. Its instructions pulsed with meaning she couldn't make sense of:
Lay memory of self.
Lay memory of person.
Ask for guidance.
Lay memory of self.
She didn't want to. She didn't want to think about herself—and especially not about where she'd come from. But her fingers moved on their own, reaching into her satchel until they closed around a soft, worn spine.
The journal.
Her mother's.
She hadn't opened it in years. Not since the funeral. Not since—
Imogen clenched her jaw and set it down, as gently as she could, in the center of the candle ring.
She hadn't read most of it. Only enough to know she didn't want to. The handwriting was like a voice she'd long tried to forget—sharp, detached, riddled with tangled thoughts. Her memories of her mother came in blurs and fragments: closed doors, sharp whispers, a presence that felt more like a shadow than a person. And now that shadow had become all that was left.
She didn't cry. She didn't feel like she could. But her fingers trembled.
Lay
She reached out again—this time for the pocket watch.
Julian's.
She hesitated for a long moment, thumb brushing the cracked face. A part of her didn't want to let go. But she laid it down beside the journal.
A piece of her.
A piece of him.
Ask for guidance.
Her throat tightened. She'd never been one to pray. Never believed in signs or fate or anything that came after death. But her lips parted anyway, and she murmured something she wasn't sure she meant:
"Please... I don't know what I'm doing. But if you're out there—Julian, anyone—just… don't let this be nothing."
The third hour crept in slow and suffocating. Shadows stretched in the corners of the room where the candles waited, unlit. The silence seemed to swell with anticipation, thick and pressing, like the world was holding its breath.
Outside, the wind picked up—but not against the windows. It groaned faintly through the walls, like something circling just out of sight.
She checked the time again.
03:00.
Imogen's fingers brushed the matchbox.
Then she lit the first candle.