Night. No one could foresee storm clouds as they crept onto the horizon.

Not a hint of wind. Not a sound of thunder.

Only the rain, beginning with just a few small pats, quickly turned into loud pummelling against the roof.

Tension filled the air. Mother nature could tell the incoming battle would be one to change fate forever. She wanted to be a witness to it. She wanted to feed her ravenous desire for unchangeable sorrow.

And a feast she would get.

– – –

Once she had ascended the basement stairs, Nyeander charged against the hidden door. “Hello?” she yelled out, “If someone’s on the other side of this wall, turn the clock and face midnight!”

Axel’s eyes widened in surprise on the opposite side of the wall.

“Nyeander? Why are you in the walls?”

“Turn the clock to face midnight or I’m dead!” she yelled, even more frantically.

Axel panicked and immediately turned the clock. The wall before him rumbled and swiftly pulled away to reveal the hidden set of stairs.

Before Axel could have got a good look at it, Nyeander burst through the hidden door with the mother’s corpse dragged behind.

“Close the door!” she screamed.

Axel froze. Only for a moment, however, as when he noticed Gren further down the stairs, rushing towards them with a crazed expression and raised cleaver, he swiftly changed the time on the clock.

The walls rumbled, and the hidden door slammed shut, just as Gren was about to go through it. She lunged forward to grab Axel, but the hidden door shut on her arm.

She cried out in pain. The walls ground her elbow together. Her bones crackled and snapped until they could not hold it anymore.

The walls shut close, tearing off her arm.

It fell to the ground, bloody squirting from the wound, right at the perplexed Axel. Was it the shock of the gore or Gren’s banshee’s howl on the other side that made him unable to move, he knew not.

He just stood there, staring at the torn-off arm.

Steps sounded from the stairs. A yawning Emma appeared with Heidl by her side.

"What's all the commotion?" asked Emma, a pinch of alcohol still in her voice. Noticing Gren’s mother, throat-cut and chained to Nyeander, her expression swiftly changed. She rushed to the mother to help her, but there was no helping a corpse.

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"Gren tried to kill me!" yelled Nyeander, stepping between Emma and the corpse. "She got a bunch of people chained up down there, each gutted and mutilated for dinner!"

"For dinner?" Axel recoiled.

"They eat human meat! They cut down people, then heal them back up, so they can be cut down again!" Nyeander tried to continue, but tears filled her eye. “It’s hell down there!”

She broke down, unable to talk.

The others stared at her, unable to mutter as much as a word. The fear in Nyeander’s eyes was genuinely horrifying, and the scene she described sounded surreal.

Only Heidl was an exception, being too naïve to understand fear. She crouched beside Nyeander and gently patted her head. This, however, only made Nyeander’s crying worse.

"Monsters," Emma whispered under her breath.

Axel nodded. To him, this was the worst night of his entire life. Not only did his past come back to haunt him with the ghost of his long-lost brother, but all his companions, whom he viewed as far stronger than him, were slowly cracking under the stress.

No more could he hide behind someone stronger than himself. He needed to take matters into his hand, and he knew it well.

There had only one plan. For him, it felt like the mature decision. But deep inside he knew, this would not end well. Not for him, in the least.

But by now, he felt like he had nothing more to lose. He did not care about his pride, or how others viewed him. There was only one thing on his mind.

Safety.

Thus, he gathered what little courage he had left.

"Guys..." Axel spoke with a shaky voice, "I... I think I have a plan."

Emma looked at him, eyebrow raised. "Huh?” she raised her voice, “And what is it that you're thinking of? Hiding in fear until we are half-dead and you can deliver the killing blow? Is that your grand idea?"

"N-No..."

"Then out with it already! This is your dumb quest you got us mixed up in, so you better be the one to get us out of it!"

Axel took a deep breath. Then, he said it. "I think we should run."

The whole group fell silent. Even Nyeander stopped crying. They gazed at Axel in disbelief.

"Excuse me?" asked Emma with widening eyes.

"Think for a moment,” Axel continued, “What if we are weaker than this enemy? What if they manage to defeat us? We are on their turf, yet we barely know a thing about them. If they win against us in a battle and, god-forbid, they get us alive, we'll end up like those people in the basement." Tears formed in his eye. "And I don't want to end up like that! I'm scared. Let's run!"

Nyeander lunged forward and tightly hugged Axel's leg. "Please," she cried, "Please, let's go! I don't want to end up like them!"

It seemed settled. Heidl could not vote in this, just nod like an average NPC. That meant only three people could vote, out of which two wanted to run. It seemed so simple, yet, it was not.

Emma ground her teeth together. She was fuming. Clenching her fists, she raised her hand and punched Axel in the face.

It was a forceful blow, sending the boy stumbling backward.

“Guh!” Axel yelped. "What the hell?"

"How dare you?!" shot back Emma, "How dare you be such a coward? We were just told people are being tortured under our feet! Yet all you can think of is running away?"

"I never said I would not tell the guard!" Axel argued. "I don't want to abandon those people, but also, I don't want to end up like them!"

"Telling the guards? The guards? Do you know how much time it would take to get back to the village? And the guards? What kind of hero are you?!"

"I'm not a hero! I never said I was one!"

"Pathetic..." Emma growled.

The earth shook under their feet. Gren’s crying ceased and a low murmur took its place.

Something hit the house, shaking its foundation. Again it did, sending the plates and mugs to the floor.

For the third time, the walls shattered, and the roof blew off. A brush of fire followed as a tall wall of meat emerged above the house, into the pouring thunderstorm.

Gren grinned manically atop the grotesque horror. Her wound was no more, her flesh connected to the eldritch monstrosity that was a hill of corpses mushed together into one giant organism.

The brain of that organism, herself.