“Well, we’ve been invited.” Bunny chuckles. Her eyes scour the darkness inside, but fail to find anything.

“It’d be rude not to go in.” Anastasia adds. Ambrose takes a step forward and walks to the mill, the group following behind her. As Ambrose reaches the door, a crash reaches their ears, and Ambrose hears the skittering of something moving near the building on their left. Ambrose’s eyes make out the shape of a hunched figure before it disappears into the darkness.

“Should we investigate?” Anastasia asks carefully.

“It could be a trap.” Meize says. “One thing at a time.”

“Alright.” Anastasia says, the group turning back to the door. “Onward.” Ambrose alights the steps. Her eyes catch on the sight of blood scattered across the doors frame in large splotches. As she enters the building, the room immediately widening into a large spacious area. She looks down at the long streaks of blood that drag along the floor, their marks indicating something heavy was carried here.

The door closes quietly behind them, shutting out the world outside. The hue of the moon above turns red, and the world outside is bathed in its bloody glow.

As they step further inside Ambrose’s sight begins to adjust and she makes out a mechanical centerpiece farther inside, near a large container. Stairs extend upward to their right, leading up the top of the mill. She follows the trail of blood, leading to a dark corner of the room.

“Here.” Ambrose says softly, calling the others to her side. A large, metal table had been built into the wall here. Blood and grime clotted its surface, and nearby an array of torture tools were left at its side.

“It’s like a doctor's room.” Meize mutters.

“Doctor?” Ambrose asks, turning to him.

“A healer.” Anastasia answers.

“I see.” Ambrose nods, looking at the grotesque picture of cruelty in front of her. “Strange word.”

“It’s just the utensils.” Bunny speaks up. “They have many uses. Healing. Torture. Or…experimentation.”

“Over here.” Meize says. Ambrose turns to see he’d delved farther into the corner and come across another table. This one had strange objects on it, different tiny interconnected crystal-like structures. As Ambrose got closer, her eyes studied their shape.

“It looks a bit like those objects inside the villagers.” Meize mutters. “It can’t be a co-incidence.” As the group observes the items, Ambrose’s gaze drifts to the side and she discovers a notebook. It’s clean, unnaturally so as it stands out from the rest of the uncared-for objects. Ambrose gently brings it up and reads the words sketched into the front of it.

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Personal Diary of the Village Queen (me!)

Ambrose’s eyebrow raises as she looks at the unexpected writing. Her eyes caress the pages, feeling a sense of brittleness in its age as she rubs it. After a moment Ambrose opens the cover and looks inside the book.

Astiel made fun of me again today. Ma said it’s because he likes me, but I think that’s dumb. I’m going to hit him when I see him next.

Ambrose flips the page.

I hit him. I got in trouble, but it was worth it. The stupid look on his face was priceless.

“What’s that?” Anastasia walks over as Ambrose shows her the book, moving to the next page.

Astiel’s my friend now. I should’ve hit him a long time ago. Ma was wrong when she said violence is never the answer.

“Keep going.” Anastasia chuckles.

Ma broke her rule. She said it was my fault for breaking it first. Doesn’t make my bum hurt less…

Ambrose continues to flip the pages. It describes the owner's childhood with silly details, her focus in the book jumping from one thing to the next. But suddenly, halfway through the book, it cuts off. The words stop, and in their places is a messy, angry scrawl that draws all over the pages.

There are hints of words underneath it, but Ambrose cannot make out what any of them may have meant. This continues for many pages as Ambrose flips further, until the next page goes blank. And then the next one has a single word, splotches of blood splattered around it.

Alone.

Ambrose stares at it for a moment, before moving to the next page. The lines on this are cleaner, etched deeper like a hand forcing it onto the page.

Experiment Log 1

The body is cut open, its insides removed. The bone is grafted with the flesh, red substance mixed. Returned to body and sewn up.

“Saints forgiving.” Anastasia breathes as she reads alongside Ambrose. Hearing Anastasia’s words, Bunny and Meize walk over and start reading as well.

Experiment Log 2

Substance growing, its light shining through the stomach. Body shrinks. Husk. New body arrives, object transplanted using same process.

Each page describes the same thing. With every page the writing gets messier, the words jagged as they cut into the pages, as if the hands writing them grew less precise. As Ambrose reads further, the experiments begin to describe the process of forming strange red crystals, before they’re crushed and shaped into the objects they encountered inside the villagers.

“Who wrote this diary.” Meize mutters.

“The thing we’re hunting.” Anastasia answers, but Meize shakes his head.

“The descriptions are in third person.” Meize says. “These are written as an observer, not the experimenter.”

“The book is too clean.” Bunny adds. “No way this was here before.” The group think about the noise they heard about earlier. “You think…”

“There’s someone else here.” Anastasia says. “A third party?

“Look.” Ambrose interrupts them, pointing at the page in front of her. She’d gone through most of the diary by now, and near its end one of the logs stands out. The writing had become near ineligible, but two words had been written over and over as emphasis.

Experiment Log 47

Flame. Silence.