Sofia walks carefully in the darkness, keeping her arms tucked and watching her surroundings. The screams echoed in the darkness and whispered that she couldn't make it out. Sofia is unsure at this point if this is real or if she is having a mental breakdown- if it was the latter, she wouldn’t be surprised.

She sees something that fills her with hope- light.

She quickens her steps to reach the light, trying to be careful not to put out the fire from her lantern. Sofia sees it now- the light is appearing from a faded white door. She was so close.

What she saw next was something that looked like a beast from legends.

Blocking her path to the door was a chimera-like beast. It had the body of a decaying lion, broken wings on its back, and horns like a bull that was caked with so much blood it dripped down on the floor. The most horrifying feature of this creature was that it had the face of a dead man- its skin was pale as ash, it had no lower jaw, its grey mangled long tongue stuck out, it had long greasy black hair, the teeth it had left was decaying, and its eyes hanged low as it was out of his skull- only connected to its face with rotten optic nerves.

Sofia dropped the lantern in fear. The chimera started walking towards her, breaking her lantern once it stepped on it. She tried to run away, but the chimera pierced her stomach with one of its horns, making her scream in agony. The chimera then threw her off its horn and she landed roughly on the ground.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Was this how she would die? Murder by this monster?

No one would care if she lived... There was no one left to care about her...

She began to think it was better to die, all she had to do was to close her eyes and let this chimera murder her. She wasn’t a fighter and frankly with the life she has there’s no reason to fight for it- she was an overworked woman who lost everyone she ever loved. With how weak she is now; dying to the monster would be better than slowly bleeding out to death.

As the chimera brings its claw down to kill her, she rolls away to avoid the claw.

‘No. I will not die... I want to live!’ Sofia yelled in her head.

Her hands began to feel heavy. Sofia looked down to see with the little light she could see from the door, two guns were in her hands.

No time to question how or why she had them in her hands, she begins to shoot the chimera, one of her bullets shoots the optic nerve connected to its left eye, causing it to fall on the floor. The chimera screamed in pain and ran into the darkness.

With little strength Sofia had left, she crawled towards the white door, holding onto her stomach, groaning in pain, she opened the door. She sees a man looking at her, his red eyes are emotionless as he shows no concern for her injuries.

“You passed.” The mysterious man huffed as he brushed his auburn hair out of his face, “Honestly, I was hoping you would die.”

Sofia looked at the man in shock. She wanted to ask him why the hell he would say that and why he didn’t help her. He must’ve heard her scream. However, with her severe injuries- Sofia fell on her face and passed out due to extreme blood loss.

The mysterious man sighed, annoyed that she passed out, annoyed that he now must take her to the medical room.

“Now I’m stuck with you.” He muttered.

The mysterious man grabbed Sofia’s short brown hair and began to drag her body inside.

Another century, another partner.