Mysterious Awakening

No time remained for contemplation.

A bone-chilling dread was approaching swiftly from all sides, perceived not only by Miles but by everyone else as well. The ominous sound of the security room door creaking open and heavy footfall resonating through the halls was an unmistakable sign of impending doom.

The unspoken understanding among them was grim – they were the only humans left in the whole school.

So when William, Peter, Coral, and the others heard those footsteps, they knew with absolute certainty that they weren’t human. It was the ghostly tread of a ghost steadily closing in.

In the face of this harrowing encounter, Miles acted. With his teeth gritted, he bit into the eye lodged in his arm without any hesitation.

A sharp gasp escaped his lips at the biting pain of ripped flesh, making his muscles shudder. But he refused to succumb to the pain. As the agony rippled through him, he brutally detached the red eye embedded in his arm with his own teeth.

“Miles, you…” At his gut-wrenching scream, all eyes turned towards Miles.

The sight that met them was shocking. Bloodied arm, crimson stains around his mouth, skin peeling off in patches, and his eyes – inflamed with a red glow, were fear-inducing.

Had Miles been possessed?

The red eye, once in his arm, was now moving under his skin, carving crimson trails and leaving a sight that felt like something from a nightmare. His body seemed ready to crack open as the blood stained his clothes a striking red.

This torment was unbearable, much worse than when the ghost baby had bitten Miles, causing the eye to sprout from the wound. But this time, it was not the ghost baby that bit Miles, it was Miles himself.

And now, the red eye had vanished from his mouth.

Yet, something squirmed in the wound on his arm, the spot from which he had bitten off the eye. In a flash, a larger and more menacing eye had grown, filling the cavity with its eerie gaze.

A sixth eye had emerged, the new one growing in his belly.

With each of Miles’s agonized howls, a strange red light leaked from the spots where his skin was tearing. One, two, three… it spread across his body, creating a horrifying spectacle.

The floor beneath him was also affected.

This red light, eerily akin to dense fog, enveloped the floor, standing out starkly against the surrounding darkness.

Just then, unnoticed until now, a parchment updated with new text.

“At 5:30, after swallowing an eye, I successfully grew a sixth eye. A peculiar red light radiates from me, transforming every place it touches into a ghost domain – my ghost domain. But I fear the vengeful ghost is taking hold within me. I may soon lose myself, becoming a ghost.”

“As I establish the ghost domain, other ghosts draw near. One has already claimed a life.”

As though to confirm the parchment’s eerie account, a ghostly hand emerged from the darkness, gripping the throat of a trembling student, yanking the individual into the inky abyss.

“No, please, help me!” the student shrieked, flailing desperately, grasping for salvation that wasn’t coming.

His pleas were swallowed by the darkness, fading echoes that left behind a haunting silence.

Witnessing this, everyone else was struck cold, frozen by fear.

They had seen the grim reality but were too petrified to intervene.

Qian Wanhao, sobbing inconsolably, had lost all sense of reason. Panic-stricken, he attempted to flee without a care for where he was heading – anywhere away from this nightmarish place.

But as he turned, he bumped into a lifeless figure.

A cadaverous old man stood ominously in the dark, clad in a long robe, his face devoid of any emotion or life. His empty gaze held nothing but a chilling alienness.

Try as he might, Qian Wanhao couldn’t move. He was rooted to the spot as the old man slowly raised a withered hand towards him.

A blood-curdling scream echoed, freezing everyone’s blood.

“Don’t come near me, don’t come over, don’t come over,” a terrified girl cowered nearby, mumbling hysterically, her sanity crumbling under the weight of terror.

Even if she were to survive this, she would likely bear psychological scars.

Drained of energy, Peter just sat there helplessly, immobilized by his fear.

As for Grace, she’s huddled on the ground, covering her ears while sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.

Meanwhile, Coral clung tightly to Miles, oblivious to his frightful condition. The specters that could manifest from the darkness at any moment terrified her more.

Like before, a few students’ death seemed to halt the ghosts momentarily. But the darkness was relentless, and a disturbing silence prevailed.

The calm, however, was short-lived.

“Tap, tap-tap.” Footsteps resounded once more, now multiple sets, closing in from all directions.

Suddenly, ghostly hands erupted from the darkness. One grasped William’s shoulder, another tugged at a female student’s hair, and another seized Grace’s ankle. Each person became a target for the ghostly assault.

The time on the mobile phone read: 5:30.

Just as foretold on the parchment, by 5:30, everyone had met a grisly end.

“Get away!” A guttural roar pierced the silence, echoing a desperate struggle for survival.

At that moment, Miles rose, and his skin cracked like parched earth. Within those fissures, one could see what looked like hidden eyes. A radiant red light emanated from him, illuminating a five-meter radius around his figure and sending the ghost recoiling back.

A figure dressed in a black robe, his face marked with signs of death, took a step back as well to stay out of reach of that light. His vacant, grey eyes were now fixated on Miles.

Unfortunately, the elderly figure only hesitated momentarily before stepping forward again, breaching the red light’s boundary. This caused Miles’s ghost domain to waver, flickering on and off like a faltering flame until it died out entirely.

With the disappearance of the light, so too did Miles, Coral, William, Peter, and the remaining three classmates.

This left only the old man and his entourage of servants behind, as well as the eerie silence of footsteps from the owner of this haunted realm.

Unbeknownst to others, a fresh line of text materialized on the parchment in that critical moment: “5:30, everyone is dead. That’s of course impossible.”

“5:31 – I survived. Out of eight, I am the one who escaped the campus. Hehe.”

A strange smiley face then popped up on the parchment, only to disappear shortly after like a poorly written grim joke.