The person most shocked by the sight of the wooden hatch in the center of the magic circle wasn’t me—it was Chang'an.

  Before I could even comment, he let out an involuntary yelp, his eyes locked onto the hatch like it might vanish again any second.

  After a moment, he shouted in excitement, “It’s back… it’s really back! I knew I wasn’t imagining it… Cheng, you see it too, right? You see it!”

  “I see it,” I replied simply.

  “…You don’t seem very excited?” He calmed down a little, then looked at me in confusion. “I thought you’d be the most into this kind of thing.”

  “I am interested. But right now all I’m looking at is a piece of wood.”

  I wasn’t about to start celebrating until I’d personally confirmed the basement Chang'an described. That said, my outward calm was just that—outward. Deep down, thanks to the basic trust I had in my friend, my blood was already racing faster than usual.

  I didn’t rush to open the hatch. Instead I crouched down and examined the magic circle on the floor first.

  It was composed of countless twisted lines and symbols, yet there was an unmistakable sense of deliberate order—nothing like random scribbles. My knowledge of Western occultism is patchy and unsystematic at best; analyzing this circle properly was beyond me. But one thing was clear.

  I reached out and lightly ran my finger along the edge of one line. A trace of the black pigment came away on my skin. After rubbing it between my thumb and forefinger, I was certain: this was blood that had oxidized and dried.

  Considering the gruesome murder that had taken place in this apartment before, was it possible the circle had been drawn by the killer—using the victim’s blood?

  If so, what was the killer’s purpose? And why leave the circle behind in the apartment?

  Was the killer still keeping tabs on this place?

  “Should we open the hatch and take a look?” Chang'an asked tentatively from the side, clearly unwilling to touch it himself.

  “Yeah.” I nodded, stood up, and stepped forward—right into the center of the magic circle.

  The wooden hatch had no handle or recess. I bent down, hooked my fingers into the narrow gap between the hatch and the floor, and lifted.

  The hatch came up easily. What lay beneath came into view.

  In that instant, I instinctively held my breath.

  Just as Chang'an had described: a pitch-black opening. And descending from it—a seemingly bottomless staircase leading into a basement!

  But this was the fifteenth floor!

  Chang'an seemed to be holding his breath too. Then, in a hushed voice as if afraid of waking something, he said, “You see it now, right? I wasn’t lying…”

  I stared fixedly at the stairs.

  They were made of bare gray-white concrete, completely unfinished. Part of them was visible in the light; the rest plunged straight into darkness, as though leading to some unknown, terrifying underworld. Just looking at it sent a chill crawling over my skin.

  For a moment, my mind was flooded with countless chaotic images.

  This bizarre sight struck my heart like a meteor crashing into a still lake, sending ripples spreading outward. Every effort I’d ever made to chase the supernatural came rushing back one after another.

  Even Alice’s earlier words resurfaced in my mind.

  —The biggest difference between this world and the apocalyptic one is spacetime itself. In the end times, time and space are warped—survivors can encounter bizarre, inexplicable phenomena at any moment.

  —The apocalypse didn’t arrive out of nowhere. There were signs, precursors—people in this era simply haven’t paid enough attention yet.

  —Bizarre phenomena, grotesque monsters… things like that must already be appearing openly in this time.

  Could this be one of the apocalyptic omens Alice had spoken of?

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  But judging from the magic circle on-site, this seemed like a man-made anomaly rather than a natural disaster… Wait—no, hold on. I was jumping to conclusions. Who said the apocalypse had to be triggered by natural catastrophe and not human action?

  Might this phenomenon be connected to the signs of the end that Alice mentioned?

  Slow down, slow down—my thoughts were racing too far ahead. Don’t leap to distant, unevidenced connections yet. What should I be doing right now?

  “Chang'an, wait here for me. I’m going downstairs to double-check something.”

  With that, I stepped out into the corridor—and left one “firefly” behind in the apartment.

  Even at this critical moment, I couldn’t shake a lingering doubt: what if this whole eerie incident turned out to be an elaborate hoax after all? So instead of immediately sending the “firefly” down into the hole to investigate, I first had it stay and monitor Chang'an.

  Meanwhile, I leaned on the corridor railing for a moment, letting the night breeze cool my overheated mind. Then I went downstairs and knocked on the door of the unit directly below, pretending I’d gotten the wrong apartment.

  When the resident opened the door, I subtly released another “firefly” inside and had it scout around.

  Just as Chang'an had said: no staircase descending from their ceiling. No hole at all.

  At the same time, through the “firefly” watching Chang'an, I received the crucial confirmation: during that time, he hadn’t closed the hatch. The opening—and the stairs—remained clearly visible.

  That settled it.

  This hole truly led to a space that did not exist in reality.

  —

  The supernatural phenomenon I’d dreamed of, searched for tirelessly, and only ever seen in fantasy stories… it actually existed!

  I’d imagined this moment countless times—finally proving it with my own eyes. But now that it had happened, the overwhelming joy I’d expected didn’t come.

  It wasn’t fear, and it wasn’t that my passion for the impossible had suddenly cooled at the decisive moment. I think what I was feeling is actually quite common.

  They say that when people experience sudden, massive life changes, they don’t react the way movies show. Someone who wins the lottery jackpot, or receives news of a family member’s fatal accident—they don’t immediately burst into ecstasy or collapse in grief. It takes time—sometimes a long time—to process something so enormous.

  Like floating in a dream. That’s probably the best way to describe my state of mind right now.

  I couldn’t even tell whether my feet were properly touching the ground.

  Today was an extraordinarily important day in my life—even this sensation of walking on air felt precious. If I could, I’d want to linger in this dreamlike state as long as possible.

  But I had to regain clear thinking quickly. The more bizarre and uncanny the situation, the more a calm, rational mind is needed. Plenty of horror-story characters die because they let excitement cloud their judgment—I had no intention of joining them.

  Besides, I now had to face a very serious question head-on.

  If Chang'an was telling the truth, then the credibility of Alice claiming to be a “jinx” rose sharply as well. And if she really did bring disaster to those around her, could that effect extend to “the people around the people around her”?

  In other words—was the reason Chang'an encountered this anomaly because he was my friend?

  I met Alice last night. Chang'an experienced his strange event the night before that. Chronologically, his incident predates my encounter with Alice, so it doesn’t form a normal cause-and-effect chain. But when dealing with the supernatural, ordinary logic doesn’t apply. You have to consider the possibility of reversed causality.

  That is: because I met Alice last night, Chang'an encountered the anomaly the night before—and the purpose was to draw me into the supernatural through him today, in response to Alice’s jinx nature. In the world of the uncanny, such twisted cause-and-effect might actually hold.

  If that were true, how should I handle my relationship with Alice?

  —

  I returned to the apartment with the hole. Chang'an was standing just outside the opening, shining a flashlight down cautiously, as though afraid something might crawl out. When he saw me come back, he finally relaxed. By then I’d mostly sorted out my own state of mind.

  “Sorry, Chang'an,” I sighed. “Maybe I’m the one who dragged you into this.”

  “What? Why say that all of a sudden?” He looked stunned.

  “I’ll explain later.” I already had some ideas about what to do next. “For now, let’s focus on what’s in front of us.”

  He didn’t press further and turned his attention back to the hole.

  With the flashlight beam, I could clearly see what lay below. The drop was only about three meters; the bottom was gray concrete flooring. It really did look like a basement.

  I stared at the opening in silence.

  Once I accepted its supernatural nature, the hole exerted an irresistible pull on me. It was like pulling the plug on a full bathtub and silently watching the water spiral down into the dark drain—as though my own mind might get sucked in after it.

  While savoring that almost hypnotic sensation, I took another step closer for a better look.

  Suddenly, someone grabbed my arm from the side. I turned—Chang'an. He was holding me back, his expression unusually serious.

  “You want to go down there?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?”

  There was no way I didn’t want to see what was down there.

  He stared at me in disbelief. “What the hell are you saying? I didn’t bring you here so you could climb down into it!”

  “You dragged me all the way here—how could I not go down and investigate properly?” I countered, then suddenly understood.

  Right. From my perspective, encountering something supernatural without personally exploring every inch of it was unthinkable. I assumed others would expect the same of me. And of course Chang'an, as my friend, knew my habits better than anyone.

  But this time was different. Having experienced the anomaly himself first, Chang'an had unconsciously formed the strong impression that “you absolutely cannot go down there.” When he told me about it, he’d projected that judgment onto me without realizing—never imagining anyone would actually want to descend.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not as reckless as you think. Even if I want to go down, I’m not jumping in right this second.”

  As I spoke, I shifted my body to block his line of sight and sent a “firefly” drifting down into the hole.

  But at that moment, something impossible happened.

  The instant the “firefly” crossed into the space below—into that “area that doesn’t exist in reality”—the mental link between us snapped. The little spark simply winked out, vanishing like a candle flame snuffed by the wind.