Chapter 1: Unearthed

It’s a bright, clear day on the outskirts of town as a construction crew works to expand the old highway. Among them is Nathan, a rugged contractor with sharp instincts but a deep sense of unease about this particular project. His crew is digging through what they thought was just farmland, but the earth here feels different—denser, almost as if it hasn’t been touched in centuries.

Suddenly, one of the workers’ shovels hits something solid. It’s not a rock, but a strange, blackened stone, engraved with worn symbols that none of them recognize. The team begins clearing more dirt, revealing what looks like a sealed, ancient door buried deep underground. The stone is cold to the touch, colder than anything Nathan’s ever felt.

Nathan’s curiosity gets the better of him, and despite a lingering sense of dread, he orders the door to be opened. With a loud creak, the door is pried open, releasing a cold gust of air from the dark void beneath. For a moment, the world seems to stand still as something stirs beneath the soil, something that had been waiting to be freed.

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Meanwhile, Samira is driving into town. She hasn’t been back to this small, isolated place in years. Her life in the city had kept her away, but now she’s returned to care for her aging father, Hassan, whose mental and physical health has been declining. Samira feels a pang of guilt as she pulls up to her childhood home—a weathered, creaky house at the edge of town.

Inside, the air is thick with dust, and Samira immediately notices that every mirror and reflective surface in the house has been covered. She finds her father sitting by the window, staring blankly into the distance. When she asks him about the mirrors, he mumbles something incoherent, but the only words she can make out are, “Don’t let it see you.”

Samira dismisses it as part of his mental decline, but the eerie atmosphere in the house unsettles her. She begins to feel as though someone—or something—is watching her.

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Back at his house, Nathan is trying to shake off the unease from the day’s discovery. He sits down to dinner with his wife and daughter, but his mind keeps drifting back to the strange door and the cold, hollow space beneath it. That night, he has the first of many nightmares.

In the dream, Nathan is standing in the middle of a vast, empty field. The wind is howling, and the sky is a dull gray. In the distance, he sees a figure—a tall, faceless figure dressed in black, its eyes glowing faintly. The figure doesn’t move, but Nathan feels its gaze burning into him. As the dream goes on, the field begins to collapse, and the earth opens up, swallowing Nathan into a pit of darkness.

Nathan wakes up in a cold sweat, his heart pounding. He tries to tell himself it’s just a dream, but the vision of those hollow eyes stays with him, as if they had followed him out of sleep and into the waking world.

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Unbeknownst to Nathan and the rest of the town, the creature—the entity known as The Watcher—has been freed from its prison beneath the earth. For centuries, it has been waiting, its power bound by the ancient stones that the townspeople had buried long ago.

Now that the seal is broken, The Watcher’s influence begins to spread, slowly at first. It can’t fully manifest in the physical world yet, but it can appear in reflections—in mirrors, windows, and even water. Its power grows with each person it watches, feeding off their fear and despair.

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It’s late at night, and Samira is having trouble sleeping. Her father’s cryptic warnings and the oppressive atmosphere in the house have unsettled her. She gets up to get a glass of water from the kitchen, her footsteps echoing in the quiet, empty house. As she fills the glass, she glances out of the kitchen window.

For a moment, she sees her own reflection in the glass, but something is wrong. Her reflection isn’t quite matching her movements—it seems to be staring directly at her, even though she’s not looking at it. Samira blinks, her heart skipping a beat, but when she looks again, her reflection is normal.

Shaken, she convinces herself it was just a trick of the light or her mind playing tricks on her. But as she walks back to her bedroom, she catches another glimpse of something in the hallway mirror—a figure, standing behind her, watching her with hollow eyes. She spins around, but no one is there.

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The next day, Nathan can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong. He tries to confide in one of his crew members, Mike, who was there when they uncovered the door. Mike brushes it off, calling it “just some old ruin.” But Nathan can see the fear in his eyes. Mike has been having nightmares too.

Determined to find out more, Nathan goes to the town’s church, where Father Gregory has lived for decades. Nathan has always been skeptical of the town’s old stories, but after the nightmares, he feels like he has no choice but to ask for help.

Father Gregory listens carefully as Nathan describes the door, the symbols, and the strange feeling of being watched. The priest’s face grows pale, and he mutters something under his breath—a prayer or a curse, Nathan isn’t sure.

“You’ve opened something that was never meant to be opened,” Father Gregory says. “That place… it’s older than this town, older than anything you can imagine. There are things in this world that should stay buried.”

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That night, Samira is lying in bed, unable to sleep. She keeps thinking about her father’s words, the strange vision in the mirror, and the unsettling quiet of the house. She gets up and pulls down one of the sheets covering the mirrors, determined to prove to herself that there’s nothing to be afraid of.

But as soon as she looks into the mirror, she sees it: The Watcher. The faceless figure stands behind her, its hollow eyes locked onto hers. Samira gasps and turns around, but there’s no one there.

She looks back at the mirror, and now it’s just her own reflection, but her heart is pounding. Something is very wrong.

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