Originally titled “Bleak, Beak, and Blur - Chapter I” (Later struck through with a different colored pen and renamed to “The Last Task of Evenfall.”) [Some transcribers debate the validity of the crossing out, but most adhere to the initial title, perhaps out of a sense of archival loyalty or literary purism.] For me, however, “The Last Task of Evenfall” is more than just a name—it is the distilled truth of the story itself, an unwavering reflection of its core. I will not deviate from this belief; it aligns with the principles I hold.
(These excerpts are transcribed verbatim from the writings discovered by Vidhrant Trug—a first-year undergraduate student studying literature—who mentioned: “I found these diaries buried in my old room. There’s an air of enigma to them; no one knows how they arrived there, and the diaries provide no clue—no room number, no name, just a series of cryptic notations.”)
First Diary: The text has been preserved in its entirety—no grammatical corrections, no edits to punctuation, no alterations of any kind. What you read is what was found. Moving forward, any sections that appear missing, torn, or otherwise damaged will be noted as <torn page>.
Start:
“Well then, of course, today must be the day I leave my fate for good,” he scribbled at the bottom of his daily task list, right beneath Attend the HUL201 Lecture. His blue pen, nearly dry and darkening with each stroke, left a faint smudge where his hand lingered, still and deliberate. “I’ve written in the TODO list now, it has to be done.” The hour ended, and the classroom erupted in a chaotic rush as the students in the front row scrambled to pack their bags and got up to leave, the discordant sounds slicing through the muffled fog that had settled in his mind. His thoughts were a somber theater replaying the scenes over and over—how it would unfold, how each step would proceed, every reaction, every word. His vacant eyes stared ahead, calculating how to make the process as seamless as possible. It has to be done, and anything that could disrupt it must be avoided. It wasn’t a detailed strategy—just a simple, resolute decision born from an unyielding weariness—but it would suffice only it must be done with little to no fuss. The Professor’s voice, thin and almost ghostly, floated somewhere in the background, but he hadn’t caught a word of it. Perhaps the Professor knew this too; maybe that’s why he spoke so softly, resigned to the fact that the students were there in body but rarely in spirit. He loathed them for it, made a few remarks in dull manner, but No time to think about it—the professors who insisted on attendance but demanded no real engagement matters close to none. They played with the idea of learning, turning it into a hollow obligation, a mere trade-off for the freedom of time—No more. A wretched game, really. But not for much longer. he muttered under his breath, hoisting his heavy bag over his shoulder as he slipped through the chattering mass of bodies, weaving his way out of the door and into the suffocating world beyond.
…
He finally arrived at the hostel—a four-story concrete structure wedged between two opposing wings of dormitories. The last traces of daylight had vanished, and the sky was now a deep, uninterrupted black, like an endless void unfurled above. Slipping through the front gate, he took a sharp left toward the North Wing and moved through the balcony that ran along its length. His room was on the first floor, close to the ground, assigned to him arbitrarily, like the rest of the hostel’s occupants—scattered without thought. The corridor was engulfed in an eerie silence as he reached his door. “Either everyone’s gone out, or they’re dead in their rooms,” he muttered to himself, a grim thought that echoed his own intentions—soon, he too would be as silent and still as this place felt now. It didn’t really matter to him where anyone was; their absence was a small mercy. He unlocked his small, ill-constructed dorm room, stepped inside, and bolted the door from within. The room was no bigger than a rat’s burrow, cramped and suffocating, with barely enough room to turn around. A narrow, man-sized bed and a rickety table-chair setup filled almost every inch, leaving only a sliver of space for the door to swing open. The walls were covered in a murky, mottled color, stained with dirty marks and smudges that hinted at the lives of the many who had passed through this space before him. If one looked closely, they’d see it wasn’t even a proper paint job, but rather a few rough, horizontal strokes of a swampy, unmixed white substance hastily slathered on, an attempt to mask whatever history lay beneath. The window hinges were rusted and jammed, and the glass itself was cracked at the edges, turning nearly opaque with age and neglect, obscuring any view of the outside world. Mosquito nets hung loosely from the ventilators, riddled with gaping holes large enough to let in not just the mosquitoes but perhaps even a rat or two. The door felt fragile, the wood soft with rot, yet the lock was stubbornly tight, as if it were the only thing in this room still determined to serve its purpose. Everything here was worn out, dilapidated, clinging to some former semblance of utility, but now inadequate, unable to be what they once were. And yet, none of this mattered to him—not tonight, not ever again. The room was as irrelevant as the peeling paint, as irrelevant as he himself would be in just a few hours, when all of this—every scuffed wall and broken hinge—would be nothing more than a fading, distant memory of a life that never quite belonged here.
He sat on his bed, trying to settle into a restless, anxious calm, his eyes half-closed but far from sleep. The minutes dragged on, heavy and thick, as he lay there, waiting for the end of a day he had meticulously planned for months. It was Wednesday, and a long weekend was approaching—a four-day break that would empty the hostel in an instant. Most students would leave for home on a three-day holiday, but with a four-day stretch, the place would be deserted, hollow. He had chosen this timing carefully; there were no major exams, nothing to keep anyone back. I want my body to be left alone, untouched, undiscovered until much, much later, he thought. He took out his task list, a crumpled piece of paper he’d scribbled on over time. At the very bottom, one line stood out, written just a few minutes ago: Well then, of course, today must be the day I leave my fate for good. It was the final task. He pulled out a blue pen and drew a long line through the words, crossing it out from start to finish. That’s all. It all ends now, he told himself, feeling a strange mix of relief and dread. This was the perfect day—the best of all possible days. At least three days would pass before anyone, if they bothered, would think to look for him. It was a flawless plan, and he took a grim satisfaction in it. Reaching under his bed, he pulled out a plastic bag and opened it clumsily. Inside was a rope—long, smooth, and taut. He took it out, laid it on the desk, and nodded to himself. All good now.
A scream tore through the stillness outside his window, a piercing sound that seemed to crack the glass. He jolted upright, yanking the curtain aside—nothing but darkness. Then, the entire campus plunged into blackness as the lights cut out. The generator sputtered, a low hum breaking the eerie silence. He opened the window, leaning out, squinting into the shadows. Below, footsteps—rushing, frantic. His pulse quickened. What’s going on? He flung his door open, sprinting up the stairs to the third floor for a better view. “Call an ambulance!” a guard’s voice bellowed, panicked, barely cutting through the rising chaos. The generator roared to life, and the lights flickered back on. His breath caught.
On the pavement below lay a body—stuck heap of flesh and shattered bones, the skull caved in crushed, fragments of muscle bursted out, slick with clotted blood. Eyes broke their socket, splayed unnaturally at twisted angles, bones piercing through skin like splintered branches bursting from a rotten trunk. Fingers twisted backward, snapped in multiple places, clawing at the air as if they had tried, in the final moments, to grasp onto life itself. Blood didn’t just pool; it oozed and spread—thick, syrupy, blackened—filling the cracks in the pavement, a web of dark veins slowly devouring the stone. The air was heavy with the stench of iron mixed with a burnt, acrid scent—scorched flesh mingling with the sickly sweet tang of bile. A thin vapor, or perhaps some ghostly mist, rose from the body, curling and twisting as if the very soul were evaporating into the night. His stomach churned, a cold, nauseous twist clawing its way up his throat. This wasn’t just death; it was a defilement—a spectacle so grotesque, it felt like it had crawled straight from the depths of hell itself, an abomination of life violently undone.
removed parts from middle and rest, sorry about that - solanki