chapter 1

The Apartment with the Flickering Hallway Light

The hallway light outside apartment 304 blinked exactly six times before dying again.

Leah stared at it from her doorway with the exhausted expression of someone already one inconvenience away from becoming a forest witch.

“This building is haunted,” she muttered.

The old landlord looked offended.

“It’s not haunted. The wiring is just old.”

“The wiring whispers.”

“It does not whisper.”

“It literally hissed at me yesterday.”

He ignored her and handed over the final key.

The apartment itself was small but clean enough. Wooden floors. Narrow kitchen. A window overlooking rain-soaked streets and tangled electrical wires stretching between buildings like spiderwebs.

Leah dropped her bags near the couch and sighed.

Three months ago, her illustrations were everywhere online.

Now she was living in a suspiciously cheap apartment building with a dying career and exactly forty-three rupees worth of emotional stability left.

Something white caught her attention near the door.

A folded piece of paper.

She frowned and picked it up.

The handwriting was messy enough to qualify as a medical emergency.

You looked like you were about to fight the hallway light.

Welcome to the building.

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