Year: 1967 - The Forgotten Room
The man who would become Mr. Rivers was once called Tobias Gray. Long before he wore the calm mask of a teacher, Tobias was a student of mysteries, a boy from a broken home who sought answers in silence.
He first heard about the forest and the house when he was seventeen. A lost page in a university library book mentioned it: "Ashroot Wood - known for temporal folds and mirror apparitions."
The name stirred something in him.
He traveled to Ashroot under the guise of a field study. What he found was an abandoned village and thick, whispering woods. It took only three days for the forest to reveal the path.
The house accepted him.
Inside, Tobias discovered the room of seven mirrors. Each mirror showed a different version of himself: one laughing, one screaming, one aging in reverse. One of them spoke.
"You will seal what others awaken."
It was in the library where he met Evelyn Miller. She was older by then, wary and wise. She recognized something in Tobias—the hunger to understand.
"You think this place is a puzzle," she told him. "But it's a promise. And a punishment."
Together, they formed a bond. Evelyn taught him the rules of the house: never look too long into a mirror, never follow your echo, and never speak your full name aloud.
One night, the Shadow tried to enter. Evelyn and Tobias sealed the door with seven symbols, using blood and memory.
But seals weaken.
Years passed. Tobias became Mr. Rivers, the quiet literature teacher who watched over Jason from a distance. He kept Evelyn's journal hidden in a box in his study, along with a shard from the cracked mirror room.
He waited.
And when Jason entered the forest, Mr. Rivers knew the circle had begun again.
He whispered to himself, as he once had long ago: "We are the watchers, but never the masters."
He returned to the house one final time, and the forest let him in.