A red VII had been carved into their chest.

Everyone gathered, and together, they found another corpse. Leaning against the wall sat the solver of the combination lock — or at least, what was left of her. She sat, her head drooped back and to the side. Blood was the least shocking element of her crime scene.

Her blood spilled everywhere, staining the door red and soaking through every page of the notepad they wrote in and the books Calina brought to her. The circumstances around her death were obscure, though suicide couldn’t be ruled out. A bullet lodged itself between her eyes — at least, what was left of them. Her face had been mauled to a point where she was nearly unrecognizable.

Additionally, a revolver sat next to her. The only thing missing was her supposed partner.

“Where’s Wright?” Dante asked, and he turned to Calina who had last seen them.

“I am not sure,” Calina answered. “Last time, I see them together. Now, he is gone.”

Dante nodded, then picked up the revolver from the ground. Looking it up and down, he noticed an engraving in the wooden grip. Carved into the side was an H engraved twice.

“H and H. Howell Herman,” Dante said, and he turned to the others with the revolver, saying, “So Wright killed Howell and took his gun. Then, he killed Baron and finally killed Aki. Now, he’s gone and disappeared. Who else could be Virgil but him?”

“One moment,” Misha said, and she took the revolver. With a snap, she opened up the gun to reveal that the chamber was empty.

Dante, however, was quick to refute.

“So what if it’s empty? Wright could’ve easily taken the empty casing, left the gun, and vanished.”

Misha’s response was to take the gun and wipe the barrel with a handkerchief. When she unfolded it, she revealed not a hint of gunpowder.

“He could’ve cleaned the gun and then left it behind,” Dante argued, and Misha shook her head no.

“Impossible. There’s no way to thoroughly clean a gun in such a short amount of time. And besides, this gun is so clean that it looks unused. In fact, from how difficult it was to open the chamber, it probably was never opened. It’s most likely an ornamental weapon — something to make its owner seem tougher than they are.”

“Then forget this gun,” Dante said. “Instead, why don’t we talk about the bullet wound itself? From the way everything’s placed, from the slumped corpse to the blood on the wall, it’s clear that she was shot here. There’s no possibility of her corpse being dragged over here from somewhere else like with Howell’s corpse.”

Dante, with the confidence of a detective, created his case.

“This is how things went down. Wright, after being left alone with Aki, shot and killed her before dropping Howell’s revolver which he stole prior.”

“If that’s the case, then where did he go?” Misha asked, and she pointed above to the balcony, saying, “We were up there, and when I looked down, I saw no one running away. The balcony above overlooks both entrances to the ballroom.”

Erika stepped in, asking, “What about the gunshots?”

“Gunshots?”

“There were two of them. Didn’t you hear?”

Dante turned back to the body, and to his shock, there was only one bullet wound. Calina, being a doctor, came over to verify that fact. Aside from being ‘faceless’, Aki was also missing their second bullet. Looking around, Dante found no evidence of a second bullet, which could’ve been lodged into the walls or even the roof above.

He bit down, hard, then came up with his most rational answer.

“There were two gunshots,” he proclaimed, “and while the first one hit Aki, the second one was a blank.”

“A blank?” Erika asked, and Dante nodded.

“You only heard it, and looking around, there’s no evidence of a second one. If the second one was a blank, then it’s possible to hear both shots.”

“A blank? Then how do you explain this?” Misha asked, and she strolled over, past the body, and towards a new set of clues.

A trail of blood. Small drops. They led from the body and towards one of the windows where a drop rested on the windowsill. Dante unlocked the latch, then looked out to find there was a depression in the piled up snow along with footprints. In the snow were scarlet drops of blood mixed with the snow-smothered Higanbana flowers that lined the outside.

“This! This is how Wright escaped!” Dante announced. “He shot Aki, somehow got hurt in the process, and escaped out the window — blood dripping from his wound. He probably fell and made this depression in the snow.”

“Good theory,” Misha answered, peeking her head out all the same. “Unfortunately, it looks like their footprints have been all but covered by the snow. It’s impossible to follow. You’ll only end up at a dead end.”

“What about the blood? We could follow a trail of blood.”

“Forget it. Didn’t you forget something more important than blood?”

Dante pulled his head back in, and with that, Misha shut the window, then did something he missed. She snapped the lock shut — the state it was in when they came to said window.

“Tell me, how did they lock the window from the outside?”

Dante turned to find the others all in their own stalemates. Calina knelt before Aki’s corpse with her hands clasped, praying for the proper departure of her soul. Iffrah stood and pressed both hands to her face while whispering a prayer of her own. Erika stood over the two, looked to Aki’s corpse, and finally shut her eyes — a tepid, almost defeated expression on her lips.

“I’m sorry. May you rest in peace,” Erika whispered, and she clasped her hands together, praying for a safe departure for her soul.

Seeing the three pray filled Dante’s heart with an unusual feeling, a mixture of both religious awe and creeping dread. Misha, however, clicked her tongue.

“Another impossible murder,” Misha mumbled. “It looks like Princess Higanbana won’t go easy on us. If there was any time to pray, now is it.” and she turned to Dante before reaching into her shirt to reveal a cross necklace. She brought the necklace up to his face with a raised eyebrow, as if it were an invitation.

“You’re not trying to convert me, are you?” Dante asked — half bitter, half pained. Misha, to his surprise, shook her head no.

“If anyone’s gonna do that, it’s Calina. I’m just leaving the option open for you — the option of repenting to whatever God you wish to pray to. Maybe then our princess will show us some mercy.”

“I don’t believe in any Gods or religions,” Dante muttered. “He hasn’t shown himself to me, the same way the Princess hasn’t.”

“You don’t think these impossible murders and magic tricks are the princess’ ways of showing herself to us?”

Dante paused, then mulled over everything.

“The invitations. They were all from Virgil, and each of them had that golden coin,” he said. “It’s hard to believe that a human could manage to get all nine letters sent to us all — people from all over the globe.”

“It’s possible. Oh, it’s possible,” Misha replied. “You’d be surprised. Criminals do the darndest things.”

“Then, there’s Howell,” Dante said, pushing past the invitations themselves. “He stepped back for a second, and in that short time frame he was killed. To have his frozen corpse pushed up against the door like that — it’s just sadistic.”

“Cats love to play with their food,” Misha said, arms crossed all detective-like. She turned to him with a frown, going, “Who knows. To the Princess, we’re just mice for a cat like her to toy with. Howell was most likely her sharpening her claws — a bit of practice.”

“Then, there’s Baron,” he mumbled, his voice softening. “Even while he locked himself in his room, the Princess got him, bypassing the lock and the chain. She even went ahead and cut him to pieces, stealing his head and leaving him in that horrible, evil circle.”

“I’d play rough too, if I had just freshly sharpened my claws like she had,” Misha replied, “and because of our silence to his testing questions, he went ahead and locked himself away. What was meant to be a safe haven was instead his coffin. I wonder how he feels, being a victim of an impossible murder?”

“If we’re not careful we’ll find out.”

“Then what about the next question?” she asked. “When the bell rang, you supposedly had a letter appear on the dining room table. What sort of trick did she pull to do this?”

Dante paused, then peered up towards the roof — which was the underbelly of the second floor. The floorboards looked tight, but had a gap wide enough to fit a letter, most likely. The flowers, however, were another question.

Just how did a bouquet fall from the sky?

“Forget the letter,” he said, turning to point towards Howell’s beheaded corpse. “That’s the next mystery. Did she really drop a corpse before us? We checked the upper support beams and there was no sign of a contraption that could do something like that.”

“Instead of the corpse, focus on the tape you heard,” Misha said, dragging his attention back to where it was needed. “Think. Just who was on that tape?”

“I don’t know. They were strangers. Noone here sounded anything like our Princess or Virgil.”

“Then that leaves us with two possibilities. Either they’re really who they claim to be, or they’re outsiders to the nine invitees.”

She was right. Either they were who they claimed to be, or they were really outsiders. Something was off — something Dante wanted to point out.

“The Princess, she communicates in two ways. Either through letters or through the tapes. Anyone could write the letters, but the tapes — they need the woman and the man to keep continuity.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“We wouldn’t want new people masquerading as our princess and butler, now would we? That would just be immersion breaking,” Misha said, a small smile appearing on her face.

“And if that’s the case, then… then…”

He racked his brain, only for no real outcome to surface.

“What does it mean?” he asked himself out loud.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find Calina who shuffled up to him, nervousness painted on her face.

“What should we do about Aki?” Calina asked. “If we leave her here, then princess will come steal her body. We can’t let her do that, can we?”

“Well, since there’s no police coming to save us, we may as well take things into our own hands,” Misha said, and she turned to him with a smile, asking, “Won’t you be a gentleman and help move her corpse away?”

“Move it?”

“To someplace safe,” Misha said. “Even if our princess can phase through walls and teleport corpses, it couldn’t hurt to put her corpse in a locked room. Then, the princess could go ahead and prove to us, once more, that she truly is a supernatural being.”

“I guess it’s for the best,” Dante mumbled.

With a huff and a deep breath in, he shut his eyes and moved close to the corpse. The scent of blood was overwhelming, and when he touched her arm, he felt a cold chill run down his spine and touch his hand. He pushed back every thought except one — the desire to bring their killer to justice.

With Aki’s corpse carried in his arms as if she were a princess, he followed Misha down the halls. Misha took the precaution of locking every single door she came across.

Dante felt sick when he heard the popping of Aki’s rigor mortis afflicted joints, and when he took the first step up a flight of stairs, her head rolled back and her jaws separated, opening up to reveal what was left.

Only a few teeth remained. Some of them had been punched into her tongue, as if her face had been beaten in with the stock of a rifle. He gagged at the sight of it and even Misha, their hard boiled detective, looked away.

All he could feel was a growing, burning wrath — wrath directed at Wright who he knew was roaming the halls of the castle uninhibited. As far as he knew, Wright probably possessed a secret master key of his own alongside the gun he used to kill Aki. He had to have set up every single event, carefully hiding behind his meek demeanor, tricking everyone into believing he was just a harmless man who could barely keep himself together.

Setting Aki’s corpse down and under the covers of the futon bed, Dante could do nothing but clench his teeth, bitterly, while he covered her entirely — ensuring that no one’s memories of her smile could be tarnished by the bloody remains of her face.

“What should we do now?’ Erika asked, standing by the doorway to the detective duo.

Dante turned to her and shook his head, saying, “Let’s stick together. There’s no point putting ourselves in danger by separating.”

“Shouldn’t we try to open that iron gate?”

“No point,” he told her. “Let’s just enjoy one another’s company till the snow storm blows over. Speaking of snow storms, how long do blizzards here last?”

“Five days,” Misha answered. “At least, that’s what Aki said.”

Being reminded of that, Dante could do nothing but nod. Everyone left, and he locked the room up once more. Under his breath, he whispered ‘rest in peace’.

The group gathered for dinner, again, and with a dreary soup to fill their stomachs, they were quick to return upstairs. They all split up and went into five bedrooms, their doors locked and their chains set. Each needed their own privacy — especially Dante after what had happened.

Laying in bed, the same bed he laid in last night, he stared up and out the window. Listening to the winter winds howl, he couldn’t help but feel defeated.

While he and Misha were earlier working together to piece out the mystery before them, he couldn’t shake the feeling of distrust he felt towards her. Staring up to the swirling snow outside, he took every snowflake and in his mind, tied them together to form a sort of constellation — one he quietly prayed could solve their mystery with a miracle.

Of course, it did nothing but distract his mind. That’s when he heard a knock and a familiar voice asking, “May I come in?”

Entering was Erika. He was surprised, but lacked the energy to poke fun at the idea of a noblewoman like her entering the room of a lowly commoner like him. She looked bothered, with her hair let down and her eyes a bit tired. Eyebags began to appear, acting as a shadow that opposed her long stemmed pipe.

Erika came and took a seat on a chair, opposite of Dante who laid on the futon bed.

“So, this is how it is, eh?” Erika asked, sitting sideways, leaning against the backrest of the chair, muttering, “The last thing I thought I’d be doing was cowering in a room, sheltering away from a murderer.”

“The last thing I thought I’d be doing was solving a series of impossible murders,” Dante replied. “At first, I felt like this mystery was possible to solve, but the longer the day drags, the more I realize that things are getting too out of hand.”

A silence filled the room.

The two sat, one on a seat, the other in bed and on the ground. It could be interchangeable. They were too shaken up by the events to pay attention to things that honestly didn’t matter. Erika sat and smoked, her coat pulled in tight for whatever warmth it gave her.

In that silence, the two occasionally glanced around, eventually meeting eyes. Erika still wore that cursed flower in her hair. Maybe she liked it so much she ignored the inherent danger that came with side stepping warnings from the occult.

“Tell me, do you think these crimes are possible for a human to commit?”

He turned to her with a pair of dull, unsure eyes, then shrugged.

“No matter how you look at it, it’s an impossible murder. There was nowhere for Wright to go.”

“We came in from both entrances,” Erika added. “The only other way out is through the window which was locked from the inside. How exactly is a human supposed to get away with a murder like that?”

He sat and thought. They had all arrived at the crime scene at the same time so that ruled out the possibility of the culprit being among them. Additionally, like Erika said, there was no exit for Wright to take that wouldn’t end up with him bumping into the others. Every room was locked by Misha who additionally placed a seal on searched rooms — slips of papers that proved whether or not someone had gone through said rooms.

That ruled out the possibility that Wright left through the two entrances to the ballroom.

“It has to be the window,” Erika said. “There’s no other way he could’ve escaped. But still, it was locked from the inside.”

“Then that means there’s a second culprit. Wright killed, left, and someone else locked the window from the inside — swapping places with him.”

“Then who exactly did that?”

There was only one reasonable answer, and with a breath in, he aired it.

“Princess Higanbana.”

His theory was final. Wright killed Aki with a gunshot, fired a second blank shot, then left a decoy gun on her body. With that, he left through the unlocked window, Aki’s splattered blood dripping off of him in a trail.

Once he left, Princess Higanbana took it upon herself to lock the window once more, creating their closed room.

“So, we have our Virgil — Wright,” Erika said. “The question is, who is Princess Higanbana?”

Dante paused, then it hit him.

“The window…” he whispered. “Did anyone see it and confirm it was locked?”

“Confirm? Well, Misha pointed it out, and —”

“Misha pointed it out,” Dante said, and Erika’s eyes widened.

“You don’t mean — are you saying that Misha, in the panic and confusion of everyone seeing Aki’s corpse, tricked us all by locking the window, creating the illusion of a closed room?”

“What else could it be?”

“But Misha is the detective,” she argued. “She can’t be the culprit. It breaks the ten commandments.”

Hearing that, Dante simply smirked knowing that he already broke a few of the commandments, then laid back and stared up to the ceiling.

“Perhaps she is. Perhaps she isn’t. However, if I had to guess, it has to be her. Noone else fits the position of Princess Higanbana better than her.”

Erika came over, slumping out of her seat to sit next to him on the futon bed.

“Even if she is, do you want to believe one of us nine are the culprit?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you rather believe it was a supernatural entity, rather than have one of the nine stab you in the back?”

Dante remembered it, how Misha pulled out her Octavian cross. It was an invitation to faith — to believing in a higher power, whether that be Gods or Demons.

“You know, all my life, I never believed in things like faith or miracles,” Erika said, sitting next to him. “Now that I’m here, however, I feel like things have… changed. I never understood why people grasped onto things like faith, but now I think I get it.”

“Oh? Then tell me — why do people believe in nonsense?”

“It’s because it’s better than the alternative. Do you think the others’ deaths were fated to happen or random coincidences out of sheer convenience for our culprit?”

He paused, then simply shrugged.

“What difference would it make?”

“Would you rather their souls disappear forever or go to Heaven?”

Dante, hearing that, reached into his coat to pull out a cigarette. He brought a lighter to the end, but before he could light it, Erika stopped him — handing him her fancy, gold sealed pipe.

He took that pipe and blew out a huff of smoke followed by a lung’s worth of coughing. Whatever tobacco she smoked, it was strong.

“You know, smoking’s bad for you,” Erika said, a hint of playfulness in her voice.

“I know,” he answered. “After all, it killed your father. Mister Portinari — dead from lung cancer. He left his ruined fortune to his only family, his only daughter.”

“And despite that, I still hold on,” she answered. “I’m a real glutton, eh? Smoking the same tobacco that killed my father — it’s like he died in vain.”

The two grew close. Dante sat up, then proceeded to wrap an arm around her.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “You’re still young. You’ve got plenty of time to make up.”

He reached up to her ear and brushed his finger against the legs of the spider lily.

“You know, at first, I thought a rose would fit you better.”

“A rose?”

“Beautiful. Elegant. Barbed with iron thorns,” he answered. “Looks delicate, but if I play rough and hurt you, you’ll pay me back tenfold.”

She paused, then ran a finger across her teeth, gliding over a set of awfully sharp canines fit for a vampire.

“I suppose. I’ve got quite the set of fangs,” she said, “but what do you mean, at first?”

“At first I thought a rose would fit you, but the Higanbana flower is far more fitting. Elegant, unsettling and impossibly beautiful. You’re a flower that blooms in Hell, one that guides people like me down the right path.”

“The right path?”

“Maybe I should rethink it all,” he answered. “Maybe it’s worth believing — to have faith that everything’s gonna turn out all right.”

Dante took in a breath, then fell backwards — pulling Erika down onto her back with him.

“I’m a man who came from nowhere, and as far as I’m concerned, I’ll disappear into nothingness,” he confessed.

Erika turned towards him, and one look into his eyes said it all.

“Dante Searcher,” she asked. “Just who are you?”

He paused, then finally he confessed.

“I don’t know.”

In a year’s time, so much can change. Whether it’s a baby’s first words or a rookie pianist’s first perfect performance, the world moves forward and everything is dragged towards tomorrow. Unfortunately, there are those who are trapped — trapped and unable to step forwards.

His whole life, he felt that way. From the first memories to the fateful day a letter arrived to his ‘name’.

Like an unsolved case, he one day woke up. With no memories to his name, he was an enigma, one that the local church took in. According to the priest who ran the place, he was picked up by a local fisherman who found him washed up on the beaches of the seaside city. Where he came from and who he was — they were answers they couldn’t shake out of him.

Out of empathy, the old priest took him in along with other lost souls, and for the longest time, he spent his days trying to remember memories that may or may not even exist. Trust in God’s plan, the priest had told him, but as the days rolled on, he just couldn’t bring himself to believe in that higher spirit.

That was until a letter marked with an ‘I’ appeared at the doorsteps of the church.

The priest was the first to see it, and seeing as it wasn’t for him he turned to the others. The others, however, all shook their heads in refusal, telling the priest it wasn’t sent to them.

That’s when the letter fell by his feet, and reading the letter, he felt his frozen heart beat again. He was the only one to take it and tear the seal open, revealing the coin, ticket and letter.

“To Dante Searcher,

I am in need of your services. A mystery eludes me and I require your assistance in solving this ‘crime’. I’ve spent enough time to know that this is out of my hands, and with that, I turn to the wisdom of others who’ve lived different lives in this massive world. Inside this letter is a coin made of pure gold, this letter, and a ticket towards your future.

Think of the coin as a down payment. In due time, when the curtains close and the spectacle comes to an end, you will be properly repaid. Your payment will not be gold, but something far more important — the very truth you were searching for.

With my Lady’s will engraved into my heart,

Virgil.”