Chapter 1: The Watcher in the Walls

Chapter 1: The Watcher in the Walls

The silence in apartment 3B was a physical weight. It pressed in on Trevor, thick and suffocating, a constant reminder of his isolation. He’d been in the new town for three weeks, and the summer emptiness of the university campus had seeped through the thin walls of his building, leaving him stranded on a residential island. Unpacked boxes slumped in the corners of the room like tired sentinels, monuments to a life he hadn’t yet bothered to start.

His only real company was the trinity of monitors casting a blue and purple halo in the dim room. Their glow painted his face, highlighting the dark circles under his anxious eyes and the slight tremor in his hand as he adjusted his headset.

This was the solution. Or, at least, the one he’d landed on after seventy-two straight hours of listening to his own breathing. Streaming. It wasn’t about fame or money; it was about noise. It was about filling the oppressive quiet with the synthetic crackle of gunfire and, hopefully, the ping of a chat notification. A digital ghost to prove he wasn't completely alone.

He clicked the ‘Go Live’ button. The red icon blinked on, a small, artificial heartbeat in the corner of his screen.

“Hey, what’s up everyone,” he began, the words feeling foreign and clumsy in his mouth. He cleared his throat. “T-Rev here. Back with another run at Ashen Judgement. We’re going for the Umbral Knight tonight. No-hit run, let’s see if we can do it.”

He forced a laugh that sounded more like a cough. The viewer count remained stubbornly fixed at zero.

For over an hour, the only response was the frantic clicking of his mouse and the explosive sound effects from his speakers. He navigated corrupted cathedrals and dodged spectral beasts, his character’s desperate fight a perfect mirror for his own battle against the crushing loneliness. He kept up a running commentary, a one-sided conversation with the void. Each joke that landed in silence, each question met with emptiness, chipped away at his resolve. The viewer count felt like a judgment: VIEWERS: 0.

He was a ghost talking to ghosts.

Just as the despair began to truly set in, a sour taste at the back of his throat, the number flickered.

VIEWERS: 1.

A jolt, sharp and electric, shot through him. He almost fumbled his controller. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of pure, unadulterated relief. Someone was there. Someone was watching.

He leaned into the microphone, his voice suddenly less shaky. “Hey, welcome to the stream! Thanks for dropping by.”

He glanced at the username in the chat list. wx11flow3r_75. A strange, almost random-looking string of characters. Probably a bot. Still, it was something.

“Just heading into the Knight’s antechamber now,” he continued, trying to sound casual, professional. “This guy’s a real piece of work. You gotta watch for his phantom lunge, it’s got a weird tell…”

He played on, his focus sharpened, his movements more precise. He was performing now. The presence of that single, silent viewer was a spotlight in his dark room. He narrated his every move, explained his strategy, even threw in a few bits of game lore he’d picked up.

But wx11flow3r_75 remained silent.

Minutes stretched into a half-hour. The viewer didn’t leave, but they didn’t type a single letter. The initial relief began to curdle into a low-grade anxiety. A lurker. That was fine, lots of people lurked. But the silence from his only audience member felt different. It was heavy. Watchful. The zero had been empty, but the one… the one was an unknown presence. It felt like an eye on the back of his neck.

He finally defeated the Umbral Knight, the creature dissolving in a shower of pixels and triumphant music. Trevor let out a genuine whoop of victory.

“Yes! Got him! Told you we could do it.” He grinned at the webcam, feeling a flush of pride. He looked at the chat, expecting a ‘gg’ or at least an emoji.

The chat box was still empty. The viewer count still held at one.

Then, a notification pinged. A new message.

wx11flow3r_75: I like watching you when you think no one is there.

Trevor froze. The blood drained from his face, leaving his skin cold and clammy. It wasn’t a compliment. It wasn’t a joke. The sentence was grammatically simple, but it landed with a chilling, invasive weight. It was too specific. Too personal. He read it again, the friendly glow of the monitor suddenly feeling predatory.

“Uh… haha, yeah, well, glad you’re enjoying the show,” he stammered, his streamer persona cracking like cheap plastic.

He waited for a reply, for some context that would make it less creepy. Nothing came. wx11flow3r_75 was just… there. Watching.

And then he heard it.

A sound, so faint he almost missed it over the hum of his PC fan. A dry, scraping noise.

Scraaaape. Scritch.

It came from the wall directly behind his monitors.

Trevor muted his mic, pulling one side of his headset off. His apartment was old, one of those post-war brick walk-ups with questionable plumbing and walls made of what felt like chalk and regret. It was probably a mouse. Or the pipes. It had to be. A past break-in had left him with a lingering paranoia, a deep-seated fear of noises that didn’t belong. He told himself not to overreact.

Scritch. Scraaaape. Drag.

This wasn’t random. It was rhythmic. Deliberate. Like fingernails dragging slowly across drywall from the inside. The hair on his arms stood on end. His gaze darted back to the chat. wx11flow3r_75 was still there. Silent. Waiting.

A cold dread, slick and oily, coiled in his stomach. He couldn’t shake the impossible connection forming in his mind. The message. The sound.

“I’ll be right back, guys,” he said to his one-person audience, his voice a tight whisper. He pushed his chair back, the squeal of the wheels on the hardwood floor sounding like a scream.

He knelt, pressing his ear against the cool, grimy plaster of the wall. The scratching was louder here. Sharper. It was right there, just inches from his face. It sounded like something was methodically, patiently, digging its way through.

He pushed his monitor stand aside, the heavy base scraping against the floor. He needed to see. He needed to prove to himself it was just his anxiety running wild.

And that’s when his eyes locked onto it. A small, pale mound of dust on the dark floorboards. Plaster dust. It was fresh.

His gaze traveled up from the dust. There, about level with his desk, was a hole. It was new. He was sure of it. He would have noticed a hole in the middle of the wall he stared at for eight hours a day. It was small, no bigger than a quarter, a jagged, splintered crater in the off-white paint.

His heart was a frantic bird beating against the cage of his ribs. This was impossible. This was insane. Was he losing his mind? Was the loneliness finally making him hallucinate?

Driven by a terrifying compulsion he didn’t understand, he leaned closer. He had to know what was on the other side. He squinted, trying to peer through the jagged aperture into the pitch-black void of the wall’s interior.

For a moment, he saw nothing but darkness. Then, the darkness shifted. Something within that black void caught the faint, flickering light from his monitors, reflecting it back with a wet, perfect sheen.

It was an eye.

A human eye. Glossy, black, and unblinking, it stared directly back at him from the splintered hole, utterly devoid of emotion or recognition. It wasn't looking at the wall, or the room. It was looking, with an ancient and impossible stillness, right into him.