A new term begins at the Academy of Literature and the Arts, and three students discover that room 113 is not behaving like a room at all.
It was early October, and the Academy of Literature and the Arts still carried the smell of fresh paint under the older scent of dust, paper, and wet leaves tracked in from the courtyard. Patrick crossed the threshold for the first time with a folder tucked under one arm and the uneasy feeling that everyone else already knew where they were going.
Inside, students leaned against pillars with paper cups of coffee, arguing over timetables and the best place to disappear for an hour between lectures. The noise was bright and careless. Patrick felt like he had arrived in the middle of a conversation that had started long before him.
In the lecture hall, he took a seat and tried not to look too lost. To his left sat Lena, with long purple hair and a notebook thick with dragon sketches and half-finished symbols. To his right was Matthew, tall and distracted, headphones resting around his neck as if he had stepped out of another world and forgotten to come back. They exchanged the brief, careful glance of strangers who recognise the same boredom, the same nerves, the same instinct to stay alert.
By the time the lecturer mentioned the semester project, the three of them were already listening to each other instead of the room.
After class, they drifted together toward the library. The corridor was old and narrow, its windows streaked with pale afternoon light. Halfway down, Lena slowed.
Room 113 stood slightly open.
A flicker of colour spilled through the gap in the door, too vivid to belong to the corridor lights. Not yellow, not white, not anything Patrick could name. The glow pulsed once, then vanished, then came back stronger, as if something inside the room were breathing.
"Did you see that?" Lena asked.
Matthew stepped closer before either of them could stop him. Patrick leaned in through the crack.
The workshop room beyond was wrong. The walls seemed to stretch and ripple, the bookshelves drawn long and thin like they were being pulled away by invisible hands. Colour moved across the floor in slow waves, bright as spilled glass. In the centre of the room, a thread of light wound toward the far wall and disappeared into a darkness that did not match the size of the room.
Patrick pulled back. "This is not a normal room."
Something moved behind one of the shelves.
Too fast to make out. Just a blur, a shape, the sharp suggestion that someone - or something - had been watching them from inside.
Lena's breath caught, but the fear in her face was edged with something else now, something sharper than caution. Curiosity.
"Are we going in?" Matthew asked quietly, already reaching up to take off his headphones.
Patrick's hand had found the door handle before he realised it. The light inside flickered once more, brighter this time, and from somewhere beyond the threshold came the faint sound of footsteps moving deeper into the room, as if waiting for them to follow.