But the house wasn't done. A pale, elongated face appeared in the strobe-like flicker of Sarah’s dying phone screen—a face with too many teeth and eyes like sunken pits. It wasn't a ghost; it was something older, something that fed on the very time they were trying to steal. At ninety minutes, the screaming started.

“Eighty-five minutes,” Mark’s voice was a ragged sob in the dark. “Almost there.”

For the first thirty minutes, it was almost boring. They joked about urban legends and local lore, their voices echoing off the peeling wallpaper. But as the clock ticked past forty-five minutes, the atmosphere shifted.

Panic set in at seventy-five minutes. The house began to breathe—a low, wet rasp that vibrated through the floorboards. The temperature plummeted, their breath turning to mist. One by one, their flashlights flickered and died, leaving them in a darkness so absolute it felt physical.

A door slammed upstairs, the sound sharp as a gunshot. They froze.

“Ninety-one minutes,” Mark said, checking his watch as they stood before the rusted gates of the Blackwood Manor. “That’s the record for staying inside. If we beat it, we’re legends.”

The manor was a jagged silhouette against the bruised purple sky. Inside, the air was thick with dust and the ghost of a thousand cold winters. They moved through the foyer, their flashlights cutting weak paths through the gloom.