Knock-knock!

Insomnia leaves you exhausted. Day after day, catallagization takes up more and more energy, while there is too little sleep. Here, in the middle of this dark forest, the night starts too early, but the darkness doesn't make it any easier to sleep. That night you once again woke up in a sweat, but this time not from a nightmare

The main door's distinctive creak breaks your dream. You pause your rest, listening intently. It's not the wind - you installed new weather stripping just yesterday to stop the constant drafts. The sound comes again, followed by three soft footsteps on the porch boards. They sound wrong, somehow - not the rhythm of a human stride.

When you move to the hall window, careful to stay hidden behind the heavy curtain, the porch light reveals fresh footprints in the thin frost coating the wooden planks. They start at the door and lead backwards into the forest, as if something walked in reverse up to your cabin. The door stands slightly ajar, swaying gently. Beyond it, between the ancient pines, you glimpse what might be movement.

The sensible thing would be to close and lock the door from inside. But the footprints are already beginning to fade, sublimating into mist despite the cold, and you know that if you don't investigate now, this evidence will be lost forever. These footprints could just be a play of your imagination, but what if they're not? What if there's an intruder in your forest? Your research demands documentation.

Current Time: 1:17 AM Active Lights: 8/12 Room Status: Main Hall Connected to: Porch, [Forest Path], Bedroom, Kitchen <Sanity Level: 94%>

You are in the study room. Books with pictures of the deformed animals that live in this forest are in front of your eyes on faded parchment. Insomnia has been plaguing you for a long time and you have to spend hours on your work at night to get tired enough to sleep. But today's insomnia is much more intense. No matter how painstakingly you keep meaningless statistics of living species, you don't want to sleep any more, even though your whole body is roaring with fatigue.

The old cabin's generator wheezes to a stop with a series of sputtering coughs. The sudden silence is deafening. You're in your study, surrounded by stacks of zoological journals and specimen jars, when the lights flicker and die. The darkness that floods in feels unusually thick, almost viscous. From somewhere in the depths of the house, you hear the distinct sound of floorboards adjusting to a weight that shouldn't be there. You feel as if someone has walked over your grave.

Current Time: 11:47 PM Active Lights: 0/24 Room Status: Study (Connected to: Hall, Library) <Sanity Level: 92%>

You'll hear too many noises this night. The creaking of floorboards, like someone walking through the cabin. The sound of a draft that sounds like a whisper. You know you're losing your mind. The best way to come to your senses is to double-check your diary and make sure your memory is strong.

The leather-bound journal sits open on your desk, its pages filled with your own hasty observations from the past week. Something about the forest has changed. The local wildlife has been exhibiting increasingly aberrant behavior - birds flying backwards, deer walking on hind legs alone. As you review your notes, you notice unfamiliar handwriting beginning to appear between your own lines, describing things you don't remember observing. The cabin creaks around you, and you realize the door to your right wasn't there an hour ago.

The voice in your head calms you down. That's normal. The house is constantly covered in gloom and your eyes are just not used to the darkness before. The house is huge and you just haven't noticed this room all this time. There's no point in panicking.

Current Time: 11:23 PM Active Lights: 8/10 Room Status: Office (Connected to: Unknown Room, Storage, Hall) <Sanity Level: 88%>

The forest is dying. It was as obvious to any forest keeper as it was to you. This forest is degenerating. There used to be a reserve here, but now the attractive animals are extinct. There are more and more swamps, trees rotting and drying. Rare species are almost impossible to find.

You're cataloging your latest forest specimen - what appeared to be a standard corvid until you noticed its impossible number of eyes. The formaldehyde-preserved bird sits in its jar on your laboratory table, all eight eyes closed. As you update your notes, the scratch of pen on paper is interrupted by a soft tapping. It's coming from inside the jar. The bird's eyes are open now, and they're not looking at you - they're looking behind you.

Current Time: 10:15 PM Active Lights: 11/32 Room Status: Laboratory (Connected to: Hallway, Specimen Room, Storage) <Sanity Level: 92%>

The forest surveillance monitors cast a blue glow across your observation room. You've been tracking nocturnal wildlife patterns for months, but lately, the infrared cameras have been capturing images you can't explain. It started with simple anomalies - heat signatures that moved too fast, shapes that seemed to fold in on themselves, creatures that registered as cold spots instead of warm bodies.

Tonight's footage is different. Camera 3 shows a perfect circle of animals walking in formation - rabbits, foxes, deer, all following the same invisible circumference. Camera 7 has been recording the same tree for six hours, but each frame shows it in a different season. Camera 12, pointed at the cabin's exterior, shows lights on in windows that don't exist.

The timestamp on the monitors reads 11:21 PM, but your watch says 3:47 AM, and the grandfather clock in the hall insists it's midnight. As you scan through the footage, you notice something odd about Camera 5's feed. The same figure keeps appearing in different locations, too quickly to be natural movement. It's humanoid but wrong - its limbs too long, its movements too fluid. In the latest frame, it's closer to the cabin. In fact, it's standing right outside the observation room window.

You turn to look, but the window shows only darkness. When you look back at the monitor, the figure is gone. Instead, every screen shows the same image: your observation room, from different angles that shouldn't be possible, and in each feed, something different stands behind your chair.

Current Time: [ERROR] Active Lights: 11/16 Room Status: Observation Room (Connected to: Control Room, Dark Room, Attic, Stairs Down, [REDACTED]) <Sanity Level: 82%>

You wake to the sound of the grandfather clock in the hall striking twelve. But as the echoes fade, it strikes again... and again... until you lose count. Your migraine has only gotten worse. The air feels heavier than usual, tinged with a faint metallic scent. It's hard to breathe in here. As you step into the hallway, the familiar layout of the cabin seems wrong. A corridor that should lead to the kitchen now stretches endlessly into shadows. The floorboards groan beneath your feet.

The lightbulb overhead flickers and goes out, plunging you into near-darkness. When you hurriedly flick on your flashlight, the beam catching movement in the corner of your eye. But when you turn, there's nothing there—only a door that wasn't there before. Its surface is covered in strange carvings that resemble claw marks. But you don't have any pets.

Behind you, a soft dragging sound begins. Turning, you see faint tracks forming on the dusty floor—like something crawling toward you, invisible to your eyes. The footprints are small and resemble the footprints of an animal? The door creaks open on its own, revealing a dimly lit room filled with mirrors.

Current Time: 1:37 AM Active Lights: 5/14 Room Status: Hallway (Connected to: [Unknown Room], Mirror Room, Stairs Up) <Sanity Level: 86%>

The faint sound of a lullaby draws you to the nursery, a room you never use but can't seem to remove from the cabin. The room where your grandfather once raised your father? Maybe. The melody is soft, haunting, and comes from a music box you've never owned. The door to the nursery swings open before you touch it, revealing the cradle in the center of the room rocking gently on its own.

On the walls, shadows of tiny handprints crawl upward, overlapping and shifting. The music box stops abruptly, replaced by a faint giggle. When you approach the cradle, it's empty—but the blanket inside is warm, as if something had been lying there moments ago.

Behind you, the giggle turns into a low, guttural laugh. When you spin around, the room has changed. The windows are now barred, the walls covered in scratches forming jagged letters that spell out your name. The cradle rocks harder, the sound of it scraping against the floorboards echoing through the room.

Current Time: 3:44 AM Active Lights: 6/18 Room Status: Nursery (Connected to: Hallway, Unknown Room) <Sanity Level: 72%>

The bathroom mirror is cracked, though you don’t remember breaking it. As you wash your hands, the tap runs cold despite the water heater humming faintly. When you glance up, your reflection doesn't meet your eyes. Instead, it looks past you, its expression frozen in terror.

The reflection moves on its own, raising a hand to point behind you. You spin around, but the bathroom is empty. When you turn back to the mirror, the reflection is gone entirely. In its place is a figure with hollow sockets where eyes should be. It reaches out, and cracks spiderweb across the glass, spreading until the surface shatters, leaving an empty frame.

From the hallway outside, you hear the sound of bare feet slapping against the wooden floor, moving toward the door. When you step out, the hallway stretches impossibly long, with a single dim lightbulb flickering at the far end. The sound of footsteps stops, replaced by slow, deliberate breathing right next to your ear.

Current Time: 1:03 AM Active Lights: 4/18 Room Status: Bathroom (Connected to: Hallway, Storage Room, Medical Room) <Sanity Level: 68%>

It's impossible to sleep with that noise. The cabin feels alive tonight. The walls emit faint creaks and groans, rhythmic and slow, like something exhaling. You brush it off as the old wood settling—until you feel a warm draft pass over your face, even though the windows are shut.

When you step into the kitchen, the smell of rot hits you. The cupboards are open, contents spilled across the floor. Jars of preserved specimens have shattered, their slimy contents slithering unnaturally across the tiles before disappearing into the cracks. It looks as if some wild animal has crawled into your kitchen and made a mess. An animal from the forest. As you bend down to inspect the mess, you hear it: a soft wheezing sound coming from inside the refrigerator.

Is your refrigerator breathing? No matter how many times you blink the kitchen clutter doesn't go away and the sounds from your refrigerator don't stop. Your mind tells you that there must be a wild animal inside the refrigerator. Who else would do something like this in here? But your experience as a zoologist tells you that animals don't make sounds like that

Current Time: 2:45 AM Active Lights: 5/22 Room Status: Kitchen (Connected to: Dining Room, Pantry, Back Door, Hallway) <Sanity Level: 87%>

The cabin is plunged into darkness. Most of the light bulbs seem to be burned out. The rustles in the silence only get louder and you're pretty sure you saw something looking at you from around the corner in the dark doorway. The dining room table is set in darkness, though you’re certain you never laid out plates or silverware. The chairs are pulled back, waiting for someone. At the center of the table is a steaming roast, its aroma both enticing and nauseating. The meat glistens unnaturally, and the longer you stare, the more it seems like something moving inside it.

You take a cautious step closer, and one of the chairs scrapes backward as if inviting you to sit. The roast lets out a low, guttural moan. Before you can back away, the table creaks. Thin, bony fingers emerge from beneath, gripping the edges. One by one, figures crawl out. They’re almost human but bent and twisted, their skin sagging like poorly fitted clothes. They take their seats, their hollow eyes fixed on you.

One of them gestures to the empty chair at the head of the table. The roast splits open, revealing a glistening eyeball that rolls toward you, its pupil contracting as if it’s focusing.

Current Time: 3:12 AM Active Lights: 2/13 Room Status: Dining Room (Connected to: Kitchen, Hallway, Patio) <Sanity Level: 62%>