Adventures at Schreckenstein Castle Mystical Staircase and the Watchful Cat

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The Room with the Forgotten Staircase
He had followed the tolling of the bell, step by step, through corridors that he had considered dead ends the day before. The cat stayed close to his side, silent, like a shadow cast not by light but by premonition. Behind a scratched door, half-hidden beneath a tattered tapestry, he finally found the room. No window. No sound. No smell. Only a silence that could be heard—and a floor that shimmered. The room seemed larger than it should have been from the outside. The stone floor gleamed in a dull depth, as if there were something living and breathing beneath it. The light—where it came from, it was impossible to say—was soft, almost silver, and it seemed to constantly change depending on where he looked. Sometimes flat like moonlight, then liquid like mercury. The walls were smooth. No joints, no ornamentation. The room was empty—and yet it felt full. Full of what had been before anyone had arrived. Full of questions that were never asked. He set foot over the threshold. The cat lingered for a moment, then followed him. Its paws made no sound, nor did his footsteps echo. It was as if the room swallowed every sound. Then it happened. A barely audible click. A sound that vibrated more within than through the ears. And suddenly, right in front of him, the floor began to change. With the calm of a remembering, steps arched out of the stone. Not like something being built, but like something resurfacing. Step by step, shimmering as if carved from mist, a staircase rose upward—to where there was no ceiling. The boy stepped back. The cat crouched, hissing. But it didn't run. It, too, sensed: This wasn't a haunting. It was a decision. The stairs had no banisters. Each step was different: one shimmered like glass, one was riddled with cracks, one pulsed like a breath. Something invisible hung in the air above—a pressure, a feeling as if a door were waiting there, one that only existed when you weren't looking for it. Fine lines now appeared on the wall to the right. Like chalk drawings, old and barely legible. Signs, words, circles. And a sentence in a scrawled, alien script: "He who follows the stairs must know what he has forgotten." The boy stepped closer. He felt nothing beneath his feet—no weight, no resistance. The first step felt warm. The second vibrated slightly, as if it were listening. On the third, a thought struck him, clear and piercing: "You've been here before." He gasped. Staggered. Looked back. The floor was gone. The space beneath him was no longer the same. Fog rippled where stone had been. His cat was still downstairs, but its gaze was no longer merely attentive—it was worried. It meowed, briefly, softly. It sounded like a name. He didn't know if he recognized the name.