If you've ever had to run in shoes that didn't fit, you'd understand why most of the exorcists, myself included, didn't make it very far before the hound caught us. The Sin chewed through our number; a few braver exorcists tried to hold it back and lost their torsos for the trouble. Their sacrifice wasn't in vain, as most of us were able to escape and spread out amongst the abandoned factory complex. None of us wanted to be so spread thin, but the hound didn't care much for our complaints.

I made my way to the assembly building. I only had the dream to go off of, but it was far better than nothing. A shiver ran down my spine as I rounded the corner of the building. I found my Shadow looking down on me from the fourth-floor fire escape, standing where Emma should have fallen from. I guesstimated her trajectory from that point and looked around on the ground. Before I could find anything helpful, someone ran into my back.

I turned around to see a thin and spindly Albino woman carrying a sword, almost as long as she was tall. A red ribbon held her white hair in a ponytail, the only color in her appearance. As she righted herself, her red eyes looked at me accusingly, "You stopped."

"Sorry, I guess? I'm investigating. Why were you following me so closely? More importantly, who are you?" I asked.

"I'm Lilian." She responded

"Ok, hi Lilian, my name is Everett. Why were you right behind me again?"

"Looked like you were running to someplace instead of away," Lilian replied. "What are you investigating?"

"Well, A hunt typically operates in phases. Phase one is investigating the origin of the Sin," I explained.

"Mhm," She mumbled without moving.

Confused, I continued, "Sins are anchored to the world through their grudge, so weakening that connection makes damaging the Sin easier."

"Mhm," She muttered

"After we find enough evidence to put together what happened, we have to trap the Sin in its palace. We use that knowledge to weaken the grudge and execute the Sin, completing the hunt. All of this is covered in basic training. How did you not learn this?"

"I knew."

I begin to rub the bridge of my nose in exasperation, "then why make me explain it?"

"I didn't; you just kept talking. Also, you didn't answer why you stopped here," Lilian said, pointing at the ground for emphasis.

"I had a hunch that this is where the Sin was born."

"Tch," she clicked her tongue in disgust.

"You don't have to stay," I tell her. "It's hard to explain, but I know this is where the Sin formed. There are probably some clues to the grudge somewhere around here, and I plan to find them."

With another click of her tongue, Lilian leaned against the wall in what I assume was some form of concession to my point.

With Lilian watching my back, I began my investigation anew. My mind wandered as I searched the ground for something that might help us understand the situation. There was a lot that didn't add up about this hunt. Going against the CAIN doctrine was weird but not unheard of. What was more concerning was the fact that this was a CAT 3 Sin. No matter how I looked at the situation, that was far too strong of a grudge. Bullying was a common enough trigger for Sin creation, but it usually took years to progress to something SEER considered psychically significant. A murder would help explain the intensity of the grudge, but from what I saw in the dream, it didn't look like any of the girls took direct action to murder Emma. They forced her up the stairs, yes, but that was nearly as personally impactful as being stabbed or choked to death. That leaves two options: someone artificially increased the CAT of the Sin, or the dream hasn't given me the whole picture. The former would be a far bigger problem than something assigned to unproven exorcists, which leaves me with the latter. As I continued to pace around the fire escape, I finally found a bloody patch that I could only assume belonged to Emma.

"Found something," I said as I reached for the dried blood. "It seems like the psychic activity of the Sin being born preserved the scene. The Sin likely subsumed her body during its birth, but there are still some traces of her being here. My best guess is it's a little over a week old. But that doesn't align with the timeline SEER gave us at the briefing."

Right as I knelt, I heard the glass above me shatter. My eyes shot up to the first-story window I was standing beside as a stream of boiling blood came right at my face. A stopwatch's click filled my mind, momentarily freezing everything in place. As the world began to move again, I found myself lying on my back, Lilian having pulled me away from the stream of blood by the back of my coat. My mind was playing catch up with itself as it tried to understand what was happening.

In the instant that the boiling blood should have hit me, Lilian moved like a blur. She pulled me away from the blood and managed to slash at our attacker as it dove through the window. I looked up to find Lilian panting, her whole body fuzzy as if I were watching her through an old CRTV screen.

"Focus," Lilian said, aiming her blade at our foe with one hand.

I stood to get a better look at what attacked us. It was a pile of boiling flesh and blood arranged in a mocking depiction of a human body. It crawled around on all fours, each drop of blood that fell off its body burning a hole straight into the concrete beneath it. Its face was ever-changing, constantly switching between expressions of joy, horror, anger, and disgust. It also unmistakably wore the face of the girl who was holding the camera when Emma was exploring this place.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"A Myrmidon," I whispered as I drew my pistol and readied myself. I channeled psychic energy into my right arm and called for my Shadow. My Shadow slid behind the Myrmidon and formed a right hand from the smoke coming from its horn. With a roar, the Myrmidon charged at me and Lilian. I made a grabbing motion with my right hand as I aimed my handgun at the beast. My shadow reached out and tugged on the back leg of the Myrmidon, causing it to stumble but not stop its charge.

Lilian coated her sword with a thin film of psychic energy and slashed at the beast. A chunk of flesh and blood split off from the Myrmidon, but it used the force of the slash to turn and shoot another stream of boiling blood at Lilian. Lilian jumped out of the way, but a few drops of blood still fell on her left arm, causing her to scream in pain. I leveled my pistol on the beast and shot it twice to little effect. The beast readied another strike to kill Lilian but abruptly stopped, its eyes glowing a strange purple.

"It's all yours," a male voice spoke through the Myrmidon. The beast twitched and writhed as it fell to its knees and offered up its neck in surrender. Lilian didn't hesitate a moment as she decapitated the beast and spat on its corpse.

"Sorry about that. I didn't think it would run away so suddenly." A man asked as he stepped through the broken window. He was tall, probably around six foot, and built like a linebacker. The buttons on his shirt almost looked like they were about to pop off from being stretched so tightly over his chest. He gave us a friendly smile as he waved his crossbow at us and ran a head through his blonde hair, "Lucky thing, we decided to pursue it, right, Casey? Oh, the name's Dylan, by the way. You two alright?"

"I would've been fine," Lilian muttered.

"A bit more warning would have been nice before you picked me up and started running after it. Also, my name is Case, not Casey." The same voice that spoke from the possessed Myrmidon said as he gingerly made his way through the broken window. Case was short and gangly. His greasy brown hair and bags under his purple eyes made him look like he hadn't slept in weeks. He carried a ceremonial dagger that was almost as long as his forearm.

"I assume we have you to thank for stopping the Myrmidon?" I asked Case, earning a short mumble from Lilian.

"Oh yeah, possessions kind of my thing. Though it leaves me defenseless when I do it, so I prefer if we don't rely on it."

"We?" Lilian asked.

"Yeah, don't you guys think it's better to be together?" asked Dylan. "Strength in numbers and all that."

"What were you two doing out here?" Case asked.

I filled them in on my deductions about Emma falling and spawning the Sin nearby, the week-old blood, and how the face of the Myrmidon was one of the girls Emma came to the factory with.

"And you got all this from a hunch?" Dylan asked skeptically.

"We are a group of psychics," I ask, exasperated. "Why is it ok that Case can possess someone, but weird when I happen to know things?"

"I'll believe you when you've got a bit more evidence to back it up," Case joked as he pat me on the back in feigned pity.

"We should move inside," Lilian suggested.

With a group nod, we made our way into the dilapidated assembly building.

----------------------------------------

There was little to see on the ground floor of the assembly plant. Most of the machinery and product had long been sold off or looted, leaving only the truly broken hardware and the bits that weren't worth the trouble to sell.

"You two see what happened to the rest of the exorcists, or better yet, know where the hound is?" I asked as we stumbled around the first floor.

"There's a sizeable group trying to stake out the hunt in the office building. Most have given up hope on the hunt and are trying to survive till exfil," Case said as he kicked some debris out of our way. "It's not a bad plan, more sane than thinking we can fight a Sin two categories higher than us."

"It won't work," Lilian said.

"Why won't it?" Dylan asked, looking at Lilian skeptically. "If all the remaining exorcists work together, I think they have a good chance of holding out."

"Cause I said so," Lilian said with a shrug.

"A fine argument," Case replied. "As for the hound, it's anyone's guess where the thing ended up. None of us are powerful enough to banish it to its palace, so we should assume it's still hunting us."

We silently made our way up the rest of the building, checking each floor as we went. We made it to the roof without trouble, but as Case opened the door to the roof, he froze in terror.

"What's the problem," Dylan asked as he made his way past Case. When his eyes found what stopped Case, he let out a defeated laugh and whistled, "Yep, that doesn't look good."

When Lilian and I pushed our way past the other two, we found an entire team of exorcists impaled and hanging on pikes made of rebar and excess steel. The hound had arranged the exorcist's bodies in a circle around a crucified girl. Her skin was all but flayed off, leaving naught but muscle and scabs to act as flesh. I felt a shiver run down my spine as my Shadow dashed to the crucified girl, urging me forward.

As I stepped forward, the other three silently followed. Dylan examined some of the exorcist's gear while Case looked at their wounds. Lilian waited a few steps behind us, sword drawn and ready. As I got closer to the crucified girl, I had a sinking feeling I recognized her. As I stood before her body, I knew this was what became of Caitlyn. If this was supposed to be the hound's vengeance, then there was a solid chance some of Caitlyn's personal items were nearby. After a bit of searching, I found a bag shredded and hidden under layers of her shaved-off skin beneath the crucifix. Sure enough, after a little rummaging, some schoolbooks, makeup, and a wallet with an ID belonging to one, Caitlyn Meyers turned up. It was odd, though, in my dream, Caitlyn hadn't brought any bags with her on the test of courage, meaning the hound must have left its palace to grab her stuff or Caitlyn left the abandoned factory and returned later.

"Just confirmed with psychometry, but none of these exorcists came with us," Dylan said as he made his way to me. "From what I could gather, they were the team initially dispatched to deal with the hound, but things got out of control."

"That would explain why the category is so high," Case said as he reconvened with us.

I disagreed; the category should only have been able to increase by one level from exorcist intervention, and it would still take a far more powerful grudge than the one I saw in the dream to spawn a CAT 2 Sin. I still needed pieces to this puzzle.

"Dylan, you mentioned you could do psychometry. Would you be willing to look into this bag?" I asked as I offered up Caitlyn's stuff.

"Sure, let's take a look," Dylan mumbled as his eyes glazed over. His face began to twitch in pain as he channeled psychic energy. With a sigh, he continued, "That wasn't pleasant. Most of the memory associated with this stuff is filled with the pain the owner felt at the hound's torture. The only exception is that she felt a strong urge or a need to return to the abandoned factory like she had left something here unfinished."

Before I could tell him about the bag's owner, a blood-curdling screech snapped my attention to the side of the building. In a storm of anger, the hound raced its way up to the roof, knocking me over with its sheer speed and positioning itself right between us and the stairwell down off the roof.