JULY 26th, 2014.

The both of them were frozen, unable to speak.

Was someone watching them? If so, from where? He kept his eyes peeled for any cameras, and none were visible to the naked eye, at the very least. A small pipe camera in a gap somewhere? No, that doesn’t sound right either.

A mantis or a roach… it’s a challenge.

They’re asking me who would win:

Me?

Or them?

I was right.

All this time, it’s just been a chess game.

And their pieces are the lives of people.

If that’s the case… then what are mine?

The text waits there for him to finish his thoughts, staring into the depths of his soul. Asking him, over and over again, that same question. He contemplates turning off the monitor, but there’s no real point to it. As far as he could tell, there were no cameras anywhere around the desk. Not on the monitor, not in a slightly open shelf, nothing.

Meaning, this was set up for him beforehand.

Ever since the killer authorized his access to dontcry.net’s secret, that’s when things were set in motion, he was sure of it.

There’s no other explanation.

Without any signs of prior malfunctioning, one of the bulbs overhead burns out, dimming the intensity of the room as a whole, with both of them turning their heads upward quickly to examine it. The sudden shift forces Seth’s eyes to refocus themselves, blurring and then clearing up once more, as the recess in brightness allows them to quit straining. Looking around the apartment once more, he can finally make out what the photographs on the walls were showcasing.

All of them were pictures of the victims.

Not just tied up, not just beaten and bruised, and not just bleeding.

No, there were some taken above them from a distance, on the top of some building. There were some taken behind bushes, behind corners, growing ever closer to their subject.

Even being able to see what they were showcasing didn’t add any sense or meaning to the pattern in which they were placed around the rooms. No, that isn’t quite right. Maybe there wasn’t even one to begin with.

“Have you ever been in a more unsettling place…?” Kat asks, trying to distract herself before she remembers this scene a little too vividly later.

“Not off the top of my head…” Seth replies, trailing off as he inches forward into the room. There’s another door to the left, past the computer desk. At first glance, it’s not a wooden door. It’s thicker, almost reinforced with some kind of heavy-duty material. That, and the bottom was flush with the floor.

Would pushing this… scrape against it? Why have something so…

Without answering himself, he rushes over to the door, taking the silver straight handle in his right hand and slamming against it with the weight of his body, through his shoulder. After a few more times, it still doesn’t budge. Taking a few steps back and heaving his shoulders forward, he exhales after leaning over.

“Damn, it’s like pushing a boulder… that door’s made out of concrete,” Seth explains, catching his breath. Physically, he isn’t the strongest person around by any means.

Kat raises her right arm forward with her fingers outstretched as a large, thick, grey, purple, and black-styled tombstone begins to form around it.

“That’s not a huge problem. Just listen for any knocking,” she proudly retorts before bringing her arm back, and then launching it forward in front of her, slamming against the concrete door and pushing it inward at an angle. The impact sends a wave of indentation, imprinting the front edge of the gravestone into the door. Not relenting in her advance, she punches again, and again, and again, until the concrete door is halfway open.

Behind it is a space fully encapsulated in concrete, from the walls down to the floor.

“The hell...?” he says upon seeing it in full for the first time, “I guess this explains the lack of noise complaints.”

The man from the recent posts was chained and bruised all over. His wrists and ankles bound by iron shackles, anchored into the wall behind him. He’s around his mid-20s, with brown, sweaty, uneven, and ragged hair. Bags under their closed eyes, worn from the abuse. Even with the lack of hand marks on the body, both Seth and Kat knew they were getting closer to the one responsible for all of these deaths. As he tries to walk past her to approach the man, she puts her left arm out to the side in front of him, stopping him in his tracks.

“Hey, don’t. That guy might be delirious… and attack us if he’s desperate enough,” she says, looking over her shoulder with a stern glare.

He looks down over his own shoulder in response.

Yeah, she’s right about that… it should’ve been my instinct, though.

Kat ignores him and carries on, stepping into the room. Upon a full look, the room is mostly barren outside of a set of tools that are stained in blood, hung against a board that’s half enveloped by the concrete at the back of the door. Each one has its set purpose, existing only to bring the most pain to the victims as possible. To the right of the entrance is a box of candles and multiple hand-held, long lighters, before a bare mattress that was clearly just thrown onto the ground, set near the closest corner.

Seth expected to see a camera around, but there wasn’t one.

With the amount of photos and the apartment being converted into the beginnings of a darkroom, he thought there would be signs of it actually being one. An enlarger, developer, focus finder, even printing tongs… but none of it was to be found. Any chemical agents that could’ve been here…

…Was it because they anticipated him?

No, of course, that had to be the case.

What other answer could there be?

At any rate, there was no killer to be found here. Any evidence they collect now would have to be processed, and that would end up taking days. Maybe even weeks.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“So… what do we do with him?” Seth asks, turning his body to face toward the chained male.

“Dunno, maybe—” Kat attempts to answer him, but is quickly interrupted by the slow groaning of the man in question.

Slowly raising his head, he bats open his eyelids as sweat flings off of his lashes. With bloodshot blue eyes, he stares at the two with a deadly intensity.

“Y-you…!” he growls, struggling against his chains, trying to rip them out of the wall.

Like an animal, scalding with rage and slamming against its restraints. Yelling in anger, only increasingly becoming louder and more direct.

“This guy… something’s wrong with him. What did—?”

Seth’s observation was decidedly cut short as soon as the man, breaking his forearm to do so, ripped the first chain restraining his left arm out of the wall as pieces of concrete tumbled to the floor. Both of their eyes widen in shock as their bodies instinctively take a step backward, bracing for what’s about to come.

YGGDRASIL?!

Ready.

“INTEGRATE!” Seth yells, placing both of arms in front of each other in an X-pattern— as Vain had done to protect himself in his first fight— while he does the special snap with his right hand. As the armor panels snap together across his arms from behind him, and quickly do the same over the rest of his body, the male in front of him tears his right arm away from the wall while his tongue whips out from his mouth.

“SIGNER…! SIGNER…!” he growls, dropping down and clawing his fingers against the floor, hard enough to rip the skin off as he struggles against the shackles around his ankles for just a moment.

As soon as the clockfaced halo appears above Seth’s head after the transformation has taken place, the male breaks out from his captivity and rushes Seth head-on, slamming his fist against his forearms as the two of them launch backward past the living room and into the wall behind the couch. Seth’s eyes wince, the impact of the fist pushing the armor inward against the artificial skin below it, which is where he feels the most pain.

What is up with this guy’s strength?!

With the two of them flying from the rubble of the wall into the air above the parking lot, the male snarls at Seth as his jaw unhinges, attempting to bite into the armor surrounding his left shoulder.

“Get… OFF, FREAK!”

Clawing against the side of the male, Seth finally manages to sink his sharp fingers in and throw him off before the two land in the parking lot, with the weight of Seth’s synchronized form creating a small crater. Asuga, who had gotten behind the hood of the black sedan he was just in front of, looks over beside it and cups her hands against the sides of her mouth.

“Seth…?! Are you okay?!”

Pressing his hand against the ground and sluggishly standing up, he clicks his tongue in annoyance.

“I’m… fine. You stay there.”

“Signer, signer, signer…”

The male’s voice distorts as he stands tall a few meters in front of Seth, twisting his torso to face him. He bends backward, leaning his neck over and cocking his head while continuing to let his tongue escape from his unhinged jaw. He chuckles like a madman.

“Worrying about another…?”

Unmoving from that position, he uses his ridiculous body strength to launch himself forward, like a missile, toward Seth. But it isn’t as if that stops him from continuing his deranged blend of laughter.

“YOU’RE ONLY INSULTING ME, AREN’T YOU?!”

Despite the blur he becomes during his rush, Seth remembered Vain to be a far more formidable opponent. As such, when he finally comes into arms-length of him, Seth launches a straight underhand jab to his gut, and his arms and legs fold forward in response, with the wind being knocked out of him.

“Shut up,” Seth spits back, snarkily snarling with his own tongue, past his spiked teeth.

“HOLD HIM STILL!”

Not even taking a moment before looking up, he spots Kat in mid-air with the blade of her scythe raised all the way behind her, getting ready to bring it down on top of the male. Just before she reaches him, however, he kicks against the ground in front of Seth and flips backward, tumbling away as the scythe cuts into the ground where he was. Only barely missing Seth.

“WATCH IT?!”

Kat, who balances on both feet on the edge of the snath, puts her hand behind her head and guiltily laughs it off.

“Ah… my bad.”

She turns her body over, shifting her feet on the snath to face the male who’d escaped her slash, watching him sluggishly get off the ground and relocating his right shoulder, walking forward past a cloud of dust as he does so.

“Ahhahahaha… Now, THIS is a welcoming gift… Who knew this body had such a FOLLOWING, HUH?!”

‘This body’...? Is he saying…?

Pointing forward into the cloud, toward the male, Kat reiterates his suspicions.

“Don’t try and capture this thing, it's not human anymore,” she warns, before crouching down against her scythe and bracing her hand against the lower part of the snath, “See, contracts are a scale, and the pneuma of a spirit and a human is what weighs down each side. But, if one outweighs the other? You get those...”

It shows off a hideous, wide-teeth grin with eyes that are painted with an insanity Seth had barely seen before as it steps forward, mockingly, like it was a puppet being pulled along by strings.

Like it was thinking, ‘Human legs are such a drag’.

Each movement is wrong and forced. Like a monster, not an animal, teaching itself how to walk for the first time on two legs. One sluggish step. Another sluggish step. Trembling all throughout, lacking the confidence of being its original owner.

“...Soul stealers.”