image [https://files.catbox.moe/dd3v7j.png]
A first shot rang out before Cole could fully process the decision to pull the trigger. His accuracy ringing true under pressure, the bullet struck the monster’s face, gouging a crater in her gray flesh. Thick globules of a dark substance oozed out from the wound instead of anything resembling blood, viscous like tar, but she barely even flinched.
Impulses took over, two more rounds punching through her chest and neck in rapid succession. The impacts made her loose skin ripple like disturbed water, but whatever damage they did appeared entirely inconsequential. Each blast of sound echoed off the walls with a dull, wet sound, like if the very air had grown too dense to carry them properly.
“Shit!” Cole’s voice cracked, betraying the desperation he failed to keep in check. Her initial response to his aggression was a low, keening wail that emanated not just from her cavernous mouth, but from every breathing hole ruptured across her twisted form.
She had acknowledged his presence, an absent attention falling frighteningly down his unprepared eyes.
Her movements had an impossible speed for something so ungainly, crossing the distance between them in a single bound. For a fleeting moment, her only wing flared out, casting a shadow that eclipsed what little light illuminated the room. Cole barely managed to squeeze off another shot before her elongated arm swept out, catching him from his right side with the force of a sledgehammer.
The impact sent him straight into one of the rusted incubators, metal shrieking as it crumpled under his weight, and sharp edges biting through his uniform and into flesh. His gun clattered away somewhere in the darkness at some point, while he could only focus on drawing breath into his stunned lungs.
View blocked from her massive form obscuring the rest of the room, Cole’s body refused to respond as her torn face lowered towards him, jaw unhinging as the rows of teeth promised a merciless fate. Another wave of that acrid mist emanated from her holes, with him subconsciously halting his respiration to stop its sickening sweetness from infiltrating his organism.
Was this it? All his 24 years of struggle, dispute and dissension… Had they all been in vain? … Cole guessed he was tired, after all. Of everything. Though the pain remained terrifying, his inner voice subtly spoke out, repeating that this violent end was a fitting one for such a miserable piece of shit.
Obeying instinct rather than intention, his arms scrambled back despite their owner having partly given up, at least until his hands closed around a piece of broken incubator. Without thinking, he swung the jagged metal in a wild arc, catching part of her bloated stomach until rising to her exposed breasts.
Another strip of decayed skin was peeled off to reveal the withered meat beneath, and the creature reeled back with an ear-splitting shriek in response. Without the luxury to think what had been different from her previous wounds, Cole employed those precious seconds to regain his footing.
But for what reason? Even when his legs moved frantically, he wouldn’t be fast enough to escape this abomination for long —it was an exercise in futility, his body an irrational vehicle to sheer desperation.
Soon enough, before Cole managed to fully regain his sense of balance, talons raked across his back to shred clothes and flesh alike. Pain bloomed like a wildfire, distant yet piercing. His breath came in shallow gasps, forcing the sensation of blood flowing down his spine to the back of his mind.
Feet faltering in response to the impulse, he crashed into a medical cart, metal instruments scattering across the floor. His fingers sought to close themselves around anything substantial enough to serve as a weapon —finding purchase place on an IV stand, its base weighted and sturdy. As he heard the monster lunging for him again, Cole pivoted, swinging steel like a baseball bat straight into her jaw.
The impact reverberated up his arms, but any satisfaction from the hit was poisoned by the questions slithering through his mind. Why was his body refusing to give up? Was he fighting for the sake of fighting by this point? These thoughts felt foreign, yet familiar, like a devil on his shoulder speaking with his own voice. This wasn’t like him at all, he realized as much.
Internal struggle that was brought to a halt as the beast staggered back —hunched over that bloated abdomen of hers as if to protect it from further harm. What little he was able to pick up through the cacophony of inhuman growls, was enough to pierce his consciousness —a muffled whimper, heartrendingly human.
There was a child in there.
His moment of horrified realization proved costly. The monster’s claws found Cole again, dicing diagonally from left shoulder to right hip and nearly forcing him to lose his grip on the IV stand. It took clenching his teeth to keep himself from screaming as flesh parted like warm butter.
But the pain brought him clarity. This wasn’t about his survival anymore. His police training… No, something deeper, dissipated that insidious fog clouding his mind. Faltering was not an option now. There was an innocent life at stake.
The beast pressed her advantage, herding him towards the kid’s half of the room. Now mentally prepared, Cole parried her lunges with the IV stand, each impact jarring his wounded frame, yet he held firm, purpose lending strength to his defense.
Tragically, his heel caught on a partially melted toy truck during the skirmish, sending him sprawling onto his back. This encounter exceeded his capabilities, and though he knew that, he had no use for those mental prisons now.
Looming over him, the creature’s horrible maw gaped wide enough to engulf his head whole. But Cole had a better read on her movements and behaviors now. With a growl of his own, he thrust the steel stand vertically in an upwards motion, muscles tensing as he strained every last ounce of strength he had. It gashed over her distended belly sickeningly, stopping only as it lodged into her jaw, closing it shut forcefully.
Her flesh split like wet paper, and through the tear in her abdomen, Cole glimpsed a confirmation of his fears and suspicions —a small, pale hand, fingers curled tightly as if in a restless sleep.
Such sight galvanized him even as the monster’s furious roar made the entire room tremble, something fierce ignited in his chest to drown out pain and fright.
Proving himself as capable? Vindicating his methods? None of those petty matters held any significance now —no worries about strength, control, nor any of the other bullshit he’d been mulling over until this point. There was a child trapped inside that thing, and like hell was he going to let that stand.
A new attack came down at him with renewed anger, her closed fist slamming the floor where his chest had been a split second before. Cole managed to roll aside, ignoring the many protests made by his wounds to scramble towards where his gun had fallen.
The creature’s unfurled wing swept out as she turned to chase, the leathery appendage catching his shoulders and threatening his equilibrium in the process. But he turned the strike’s momentum into a tailwind, employing that force to drive himself into a barely controlled spin. Fingers finding the fallen firearm mid-motion, muscle memory took charge in correcting his stance despite the tumbles.
His retreat ended once his back found itself against something solid —a bookshelf, surrendering its collection of large children’s stories to gravity. Eyes forced back into focus, Cole watched the monster advance, momentarily aimless, black paint weeping from her peeling flesh, each droplet hissing into smoke where it struck the floor. The tear in her abdomen had widened, revealing more of what she concealed beneath. A kid’s arm and part of a torso, slowly being pushed out due to her violent movements.
It was a boy, mercilessly still. Cole refused to entertain any possibility darker than unconsciousness. He was just sleeping. He had to. All Cole needed to do was to wake him up…
… Right after he took care of the monstrosity, that is.
His eyes narrowed as the faceless horror tried to pin down his now immobile position, breathing holes dilating in frenzied patterns to expel a new thick wave of that cloying mist. The IV stand still jutted from her skull, warped under the crushing force of her jaw. Either she prioritized hunting him over removing it, or the twisted thing was unable to even register pain anymore.
Cole raised his arm to shield his mouth and nose, while his other hand brought the gun level with practiced precision. Here was something familiar, at least —the weight of the firearm steady and true in his grip. Even as his heart hammered against his ribs, the tremors in his hands subsided. This, at least, he knew how to do.
That creature, the mother, was simple-minded and direct. Her attacks betrayed no higher reasoning, just raw, blind fury. It made her predictable, especially in that overzealous protectiveness over her child.
Time crystallized into sharp focus as Cole steadied his aim, each breath measured and deliberate. The chaotic frenzy that had dominated him earlier gave way to something colder, more calculating. This was the kind of clarity he'd found behind his service weapon countless times before —the one skill he'd never doubted, even when everything else about himself felt uncertain.
Mist writhed across the floor like a living thing, probing outward until it tangled around his boots. Cole watched everything with detached certainty, his legs’ muscles tensing, knowing what would follow. When she finally locked down his position, her massive frame launched at him in a frenzy, he was already squeezing the trigger.
The first shot caught her dead center in the jaw, the impact spraying rotted teeth and globules of paint in a grotesque arc. Before she could recover, he fired again, and again —each round precisely placed to tear flesh, forcing that cavernous maw to split wider until it hung loose and unhinged. The sound it made was wet, organic and brittle —like branches breaking under the weight of snow.
His next series of shots, the last bullets he had left, traced a deliberate pattern across her belly, threading the razor's edge of catastrophe. Each impact made her flinch and recoil, maternal instinct overpowering murderous rage as she tried to shield the unconscious form of her child. Cole could see it in the way she twisted, how her assault grew hesitant and defensive. The monster was secondary to the mother, and that was exactly what he counted on.
"Come on." He muttered, his emptied gun clattering to the floor, no longer useful. "Show me."
The opening came as she lurched sideways to protect her abdomen, exposing the junction of neck and shoulder. He surged forward, ducking under a wild swipe of those knife-like claws. Something raked across his back, a glancing blow from her contorting wing desperately trying to keep him away —but he wouldn’t be stopped now.
Cole’s hands found the IV stand still jutting from her ruined jaw, knuckles white as he wrenched it sideways with every ounce of strength he could muster. Metal scraped against vertebrae, then punched through the back of her throat. Her head tilted morbidly to one side, held on halfway by stubborn strips of gray cartilage and blackened gristle.
But still she moved. Still she fought. Breathing holes wheezed and bubbled as she staggered, wing beating frantically while the vestigial one twitched and spasmed. Her claws found purchase in his shoulders, digging deep —and despite how clumsy and agonizing— in strikes more than capable of turning his body to shreds.
His consciousness wavered, the world reduced to a darkening tunnel as his vision swam aimlessly. To keep going was madness, a necessary one. Perhaps this place had already begun to claim him, infected his mind with those horrible purple flowers, yet that hardly mattered now. With a roar that scorched his lungs, one hand seized her wet hair while the other gripped the ruined mess of her gums and shattered teeth.
There was no elegance to it, no practiced technique. Just the crude screams of his overtaxed muscles as he pulled with all he had left. Until finally, with the sound of someone tearing paper, her skull came free.
Her massive body swayed, then toppled backwards with a strange grace. Even in death, she made sure not to crush her child, those twisted limbs choosing to cradle rather than crushing as she collapsed. With her final ripples of life, that hideous wing now folded like a funeral shroud over her form.
Cole felt his stomach lurch as he dropped her head, the thud of it hitting the floor barely registering through the receding thunders of his pulse. The black substance that served as her blood chased him like guilty stigmas, marring his skin to elbow height.
Each breath sent fresh spikes of agony through his beaten and cut frame, yet he couldn't look away from her final pose. There was something hauntingly profound in it —a dark garden of tainted flesh and unyielding devotion.
“You protected him as best as you could.” He whispered, the words surprising him as they left his lips. "You did good."
His legs finally gave out, sending him to his knees beside her corpse. She was a monster, yes, but in that moment of quiet understanding, Cole saw past the horror to recognize their shared purpose.
At the end, the two of them fought for the exact same thing —to keep an innocent child safe from harm. She played her part, corrupted as she was. Now it fell to him to see it through, to guide this boy away from that nightmare.
With solemn care, he folded back the wing and widened the tear in her abdomen, taking his first real look at the boy as he emerged. Paper-white skin, completely untouched by the taint that had consumed his captor. Lanky raven hair, matted with grease and viscous fluids. Eyes sealed tight beneath darkened, sunken lids. Cole extracted him as gently as possible, holding him like something infinitely precious and fragile.
The child’s weight, or lack thereof, sent a pang through the police officer’s chest. Even with how ravaged Cole felt, lifting the boy took almost no effort —a worrying sign of disease, paired with a dark smog sizzling from the small cuts and bruises he had sustained.
But all of that, Cole chose to push aside. The kid was young, and he could feel his soft, weakened breathing. Sure he would heal once they got him proper care. No, he’d make it happen, somehow.
“I’ll take it from here.” He said to the fallen mother, her body slowly starting to transform, though he had no desire to witness whatever metamorphosis awaited, nor did it matter if anyone was left to hear his words. “I won’t let anything hurt him.”
>> “I promise.”
One final vow before raising his eyes to the door at the far end of the room. Stubborn pride or not, or even if doom awaited him at the end of that path —Cole now crystallized everything into new, resolute steps. If it meant delivering this flickering life to safety, he would gladly give the last drops of his own.
image [https://files.catbox.moe/dd3v7j.png]
For a moment, there was silence. A tense, knife-like quietude.
Then came the laughter, or the shrill mimic of it, not really coming from the obscured silhouette of Samantha Marlowe. The sound distorted and multiplied visually across the many screens illuminating the dark room, not transmitting any discernible joy. It was something else, darker —rage, despair, mania. Whatever it was, it sent ice flooding through Claude’s veins.
“Who am I?… You ask who am I!?” The indignant question echoed through the digital graveyard, crackling like veins of electricity with each syllable, in veins. “I’m the one they’ve been watching this whole time.”
>> “The only real Samantha! The brave girl that defies expectations!”
Sounds and images blended to a dirge of white noise, the floor beneath them acting like disturbed water under a glass container. Even the sculpture to their backs pulsed with an intense blue light, casting dissonant shadows that moved with a heart-like pulse.
“That?” She gestured dismissively at her own corpse, makeup-stained tears still frozen on her replica’s face. “That’s just a nobody. She gave up. Couldn’t take it anymore. Stopped posting… So…”
>> “… So forget about her, okay?” Her voice cracked with genuine anguish. “Just… don’t do the same with me. I promise that I will keep going. That I won’t let myself be left behind. That I’ll keep streaming long after I’ve clawed my way out of this prison.”
Claude’s hand instinctively moved forward, preparing a space from where Pendulum could manifest, yet hesitation stayed his motion. The girl before them was unraveling, that was a certainty, but she still bore the face of someone he longed to save.
Through the strobing lights, he could glimpse tears beginning to form in her eyes —real ones, not the performative kind meant for likes and shares.
"Samantha, please…" Claude tried. "Whatever this place did to you, I’m sure we can help. All I ask is that you calm down for a spell.” But he couldn’t keep himself from pressing on, ether. Though a part of him already knew the answer, he wanted to believe, to give her a chance to prove she was the real Marlowe. That it was all just a treacherous trap set by the mansion. “How about we think about something real? Your family, your—”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"How about you shut the fuck up!?" The scream exploded from her like shrapnel, making the room flash in alarming red. Monitors shattered in sympathy not soon after, glass tinkling down and submerging them into a deep darkness. “What could you possibly know about what’s… Real.” She mocked, blue lights returning to pierce the black, uneven like desperate mouthfuls of oxygen. “My followers. Those are my family.”
>> “What could be more real than thousands of people listening to your every word? They're the only ones who ever really saw me.”
>> “The ones who make me matter!"
Behind him, he could hear a weary sigh coming from Jagdhund, a slight tremor arriving to dominate his hands. Claude understood his feelings, that somber certainty warring the reluctance. LaCaze returned to his thoughts, the weight of his lost life hanging from his hands, barely even considered under all the adrenaline, and the strange happenings, and this new potential danger.
And of how much he didn’t want this girl to follow that same fate.
"Kid, just tell it straight." Though still gruff, Jagdhund’s voice emerged surprisingly soft, yet leaden. There was a reason why he usually left any mediation to him. The old man often worried his directness only worsened things. He probably couldn’t hold himself back this time —very much like Claude, mere moments ago. "… You’re dead, aren’t you?”
Something in his words struck deep, making the chamber feel even more unstable. What was left of the lights dimmed to a synthetic twilight, leaving only the heartbeat glow of the smartphone sculpture. Trick of the lights or not, Samantha’s silhouette appeared to flicker, her edges becoming less distinct in the partial obscurity.
"Dead?" The whisper fell from her lips in a corrupted timbre before dissolving into a skin-crawling giggle. "And what if I am? At least people will remember me.”
>> “Can you say the same, old man?"
The attack came without warning, not from Samantha herself, but from within the very structure. Dark tendrils surged forth from the walls, somewhere between data cables and a more liquid yet living tissue. They lashed out like massive tentacles in an assault that forced the detectives apart as the chamber itself twisted into something new.
Flowing like rearranging quicksand, the walls sealed any possible escape route with the finality of a closing coffin. In their place emerged new screens, countless displays boring their own constellation of staring eyes, tracking the detectives’ every motion. The floor beneath his feet turned into an unstable dune sea, betraying his footing under its rising and falling, refusing to hold still as dark shapes erupted from all directions across his peripheral vision —more tendrils coiling like predatory serpents, ready to ensnare and crush.
“They’re tuning in.” Samantha’s voice carried an unsettling glee, her gesture encompassing the many eyes pointed at them, blinking in response as if to acknowledge a master. “My loyal audience.”
>> “Shouldn’t we give them a show worth remembering?”
Distorted light traveled through the air like heat waves, reflecting off the inky surface of the slithering whips. Claude exhaled deeply, his heart running amok inside his chest. He realized this would be nothing like the encounter with LaCaze. The entire room had become their enemy, and he was absolutely not planning to find out what would happen if those things were to catch them.
Pushed to a corner, Pendulum’s rope manifested in Claude's grip with the effort of a mere thought, the white eye at its base fixing its unblinking gaze right back on him. Just like the tendrils wasted no second in their assault, so did him immediately start to swing the weapon in destructive slashes.
Carving through the shadow-stuff of the structure proved no more difficult than dicing flesh, severed appendages falling limp around his blackened storm to dissolve back into the floor. It felt even more natural than his first time, yet there was also the sentiment of something cold and venomous seeping into his being, of embracing a power he couldn’t even begin to understand, and of the price it took by spreading roots around his soul.
Each swing of the spectral weapon left behind a vivid pale-blue afterimage, hanging in the air like phantom wounds as Pendulum had tore reality itself. The traces resisted fading, creating a web of ghostly light that marked each of Claude’s strikes.
Though committed to his sword dance, Claude remained mindful of Jagdhund’s position, the old man taking on a defensive stance several feet away. Surprisingly enough, the veteran appeared completely impervious to any semblance of flinching or fear, his eyes staying fiercely locked ahead despite the tendrils darting in his direction.
“No, you won’t!” Claude yelled, forcing his way through the twisting landscape towards his mentor. Pendulum sang through the air in wide, protective arcs, Jagdhund still refusing to budge, as if predicting he’d come to his aid. Or was it sheer trust?
Still, for any tendril he managed to sever, two more emerged from the ruptured point, an endless hydra of corrupted decay.
Deftly, unaffected by any possible turmoil, Jagdhund’s aim was steadied behind his severe eyes. Before Claude could even finish the last motions from Pendulum, several shots rang out with devastating clarity —though the same couldn’t be told of their effectiveness.
In their trajectory towards Marlowe, the bullets appeared to have simply… Vanish, swallowed by the darkness in their path, or perhaps passing through her entirely like was nothing more than a projection. It was hard to say for sure amidst the chaos.
Without a hint of surprise, Jagdhund’s gun was casually lifted to scratch his temple. It was the look of a man who had anticipated this outcome, who had simply attacked to test out a theory.
But how? Why? The situation gave no opportunity to seek any answer.
“Don’t bother with me.” The veteran detective murmured. “You have to strike her with whatever that thing is you’re using to fight.”
>> “… Regular weapons won’t get the job done.”
Easier said than done, considering that the passing glimpse he was able to catch of Samantha’s face made his heart ache. Despite accepting the role of a predator, her expression still told of someone desperately lonely.
Of someone who traded everything for an empty, hollow approval. Of an addiction unbroken even by death.
But it was true that the time for words had long passed now. Whatever happened next, it would be written in violence and regret.
His instincts pressed at him not to leave his mentor’s side, screamed that separating them was exactly what the mansion wanted. Yet Claude still moved away, opening a path by Pendulum’s edge. Behind him, Jagdhund had backed himself against the smartphone totem, ripping a pole out of it by brute force alone, and using it to wrestle away any appendages that got too close.
The sounds of exhausted breathing, and the blood seeping through his reopened wounds made Claude’s chest tighten, but there would be no protecting anyone if he couldn’t neutralize the source —the girl looking down on him with a smile even as he swiftly closed the distance.
An entirely new challenge fell down on him once she was at striking range. Until now, his battles behind Pendulum had been straightforward —against beasts that attacked on pure animal savagery. Samantha was a different enemy altogether, eluding him with the calculated, almost mocking grace of a physical performer. Each swing of his chasing blade met empty air as she weaved and ducked at hair’s breadth, in movements playful in nature.
“Is that it? Sad.” She taunted, leaning forward to him after another failed strike. “Come on! Do something worth watching! A chase scene can only get us so far!”
The chambers’ walls continued to rotate with each dodge, eyes blinking and flickering as they captured new angles of the pursuit. Pendulum’s ghostly afterimages painted the empty space they struck, faintly luminescent scars in the air woven like a web behind their path.
“Sorry, I get camera shy.” Claude sarcastically replied, though his frustration was hard to conceal behind his gritted teeth. “Keep the spotlight on me for too long, and your subscriber count might start to drop.”
“You think that’s funny?” Her grin faltered, as if offended by his poor attempt at a joke. “That this is all just a game?”
>> “You don’t understand anything, do you?” She rambled on, too fast for any rebuttal. “This is our only way out. Once we’re branded in the collective consciousness, we won’t be trapped here anymore.”
>> “We’ll exist everywhere. In every feed. In every share. In every—”
“Stop!” Claude forcefully interrupted, both verbally and with another swing she just barely avoided. “None of that is real! Nobody is watch—”
"Quiet!" Another wave of reed took over the chamber as the scream was torn out of her throat. “You keep babbling on the same tired words. Real this, fake that.”
>> “Do you think they hold any value, if no one else but you cares about them? That precious little daughter of yours? Your so-called mentor?” Her lips curved into a cruel smile as she spoke. “Speaking of which…”
Claude’s attention snapped involuntarily to where Jagdhund held his ground. The veteran detective was now nearly overwhelmed, half-liquid tendrils having wrapped around both his arms despite his fierce struggle. His blood ran freely on the ground, drenching his lost improvised weapon.
That moment of distraction was all Samantha needed. An acute pain exploded through Claude’s shoulder as something sharp and cold pierced through muscle effortlessly. Looking down, he saw her index finger elongated into a nightmarish needle of black ink, its tip protruding from his back.
“Got you!” She squealed with almost innocent delight. “That’ll make for an excellent thumbnail!”
The removal of the appendage was just as painful, sending waves of agony through his senses. He could feel something caustic spreading through his inner flesh, burning like acid.
“You need proper pacing, no?” Samantha whispered as he fell to his knees, clutching the hole left behind in his shoulder, quickly drowned by blood. “Can’t have the fight end too quickly. My viewers need time to really feel it.” She continued, booping his nose. “That’s a really good expression. Very hopeless.”
>> “Don’t worry too much. I’ll make yours a story worth rewatching.”
Frustration muting the pain, Claude pushed himself forward, guided by an anger he didn’t think himself capable of. Pendulum’s edge carved a lethal arc mere inches from his own frame, so dangerously close that even droplets of blood ended scattered in its wake. Samantha’s eyes widened momentarily, enough to catch a glimpse of his fierce gaze reflected on them, framed between disarrayed strands of dark brown hair.
But of course, this too, had been anticipated by her.
Her body contorting with inhuman grace, she moved beneath Pendulum’s reach like a free-flowing shadow. In a fluid motion as she sneaked behind him, her arms elongated into obsidian whips, constricting around his ankles and sending him crashing face-first into the writhing floor.
“Feisty!” She continued to laugh, grating on Claude’s nerves. “I know I promised not to kill you in one go, but don’t you think you’re getting a bit too full of yourself?”
>> “What I meant is that I’m going to make it hurt. Very much so. For a long, long time. Enough to make you wish that last poke had pierced your skull instead.”
Before Claude could recover himself enough to retaliate, the tendrils gripping his feet began to crawl upwards, sprouting hooks and needles that pierced flesh and pulled skin to the height of his thighs. The agony he failed to subdue now greedily demanded all his attention, each racing heartbeat pumping that burning corruption to dissolve through his legs.
Nails crawling roughly across the floor, Claude fought the nausea to turn and sneer at Samantha’s smug grin, calculating if the distance and angle were appropriate for another defensive swing. There wasn’t any time for this. He was meant to be fast and effective. Any second now, Jagdhund could…
The thought drew his gaze subconsciously towards the older detective, a glimpse Claude immediately regretted.
Even more tendrils had coiled around the veteran’s form, almost completely swallowed into a smothering cocoon that drank greedily from his wounds —appendages entering the opened flesh of new and previous wounds, forming a puddle of the red liquid beneath him. Yet despite it all, the old man’s expression remained disturbingly serene, almost accepting.
Or that was at least until their eyes met. Claude felt shame washing through him, more bitter than any poison; but the transformation in Jagdhund’s gaze was harsher, something more intense than his usual fierceness being let loose in those weathered features.
Something inscrutable. Terrible and inevitable.
Like the gathering of thundering clouds, the chamber trembled under feral growls and howls, birthed from within Jagdhund’s restraints. They were the sole, short-lived warning before three massive heads exploded through the half-liquid tendrils, their jaws working their way out with the screech of rust-eaten machinery awakening to hunger.
Plates of reddish-brown steel tore free from the cocoon’s grasp, each shredded appendage revealing more of the monstrosity behind their destruction —a Cerberus of industrial decay that rivaled even Jagdhund’s hulking frame.
Instead of eyes and ears, only grotesquely large snouts dominated each head, yet they held an awareness unbridled by the reigning penumbra. Glimpses of wet, sanguine black fur peeked through its carapace of corroded metal, but it was the rows of serrated fangs and claws that commanded attention —leaving deep furrows in the mansion’s structure as testament to its frenzy.
Their battle pushed to the background, Claude and Samantha could only stare as the phantasm fixed its attention upon them.
Though the creature had deliberately avoided Jagdhund in its ravaging, Claude’s muscles coiled with instinctive dread, uncertain if that mercy would extend to him. Samantha fared worse —color draining from her, each backward step calculated yet insufficient.
But vulnerability was fleeting in her world of performance. A smile swiftly regained control of her features, twitching under barely suppressed nervousness —or was it just the euphoria?
“Ha! Some real production value!” She crowed, voice pitching higher as she retreated from Claude. “To think I’d get quality content of you, you dying old fart!” The monstrous hound immediately pivoted to follow her, allowing the younger detective a breath of relief after confirming it held no interest in him.
Despite its bulk, the Cerberus moved with terrifying speed. Before long, its three sets of jaws snapped at the empty air, Marlowe barely twisting out of harm’s way. Her movements remained unnaturally seamless, but Claude could see the calculation necessary to accomplish each dodge now —she was forced to work for her evasions, much more than she had to do with him.
The beast’s attacks were relentless, multiple heads allowing it to strike from different angles simultaneously, while its noses displayed an unsettling proficiency at tracking her every movement.
“Bad dog!” Though her taunt cracked with strain despite the bravado, dark tendrils rose around her like a defensive crown, readying themselves to strike back. “You oughta be leashed and muzzled, freak mutt!”
But in her focus on the gnashing teeth and slashing claws, Samantha failed to notice her careless retreat carrying her straight into the ethereal web of Pendulum’s lingering traces. As she spun away from another lunge, and her frame crossed directly to the afterimages of Claude’s previous attacks…
image [https://files.catbox.moe/vwb102.gif]
Foreign words resonated through his skull like distant church bells, less demanding than the last yet heavy with portent. Their meaning, however, was quickly dismissed in exchange of the new knowledge they brought. There wasn’t any time to dwell on their enigma —not when a far more pressing revelation crashed into his consciousness like a tidal wave.
Without hesitation, not fully understanding his own motions, Claude commanded the rifts to reopen. The air shuddered and split as dozens of ethereal blades materialized simultaneously, each one retracing its lethal path through Marlowe’s unsuspecting frame. They were recursions, doorways from where the Death Pendulum could complete its arc in reverse.
Samantha jerked and twisted as her body was carved from all directions, caught in a maelstrom of ghostly razors. No blood flowed from the deep gashes opened across her frame. Instead, her flesh separated cleanly, edges dissolving into wisps of blue flame that curled away like burnt offerings. Carefully kept pink hair scattered alongside her mutilated limbs, layer after layer cruelly torn away.
“No… No! This isn’t how the story goes!” Her voice rang out, pitched high with disbelief rather than pain as her body crumpled with a sickening thud. Static crackled all around them, screens shrieking in sync with their dying master. “The heroine has to survive! She has to—”
After the triggering of Pendulum’s ability was finished, the trinity of jaws of the rusted Cerberus obscured what remained of her, mercilessly ripping away with the viciousness only a wild beast could muster.
Rapidly abandoned by anger, Claude felt the heaviness settling inside his chest once more. Dead or not, deceit of the mansion or truth, the finality of her destruction left him freezingly cold, forcing the detective to divert his gaze —anywhere would do.
Before his eyes, the chamber’s disorientating illumination gradually stabilized, screens going dark one by one like closing eyes, walls smoothing back to their original state as doors reopened, as if suggesting the nightmare had lived only inside their heads.
Gritting his teeth against the burning pain in his legs, Claude brought himself back to his feet. The wounds from Samantha’s barbed tendrils throbbed in protest, making him aware of the blood flowing down his punctured flesh —but he had to stand up, he needed to bear witness to their former companion’s final moments. He refused to let cowardice run rampant.
Its purpose apparently fulfilled, the monstrous dog faded like mist into the darkness, leaving behind the weight of sadness and regret —and a girl he’d seen smile so vibrantly mere hours ago, now broken beyond repair.
“Claude…?” Her voice drifted, meek and powerless, barely more than a dying whisper. “I… I gave them a good show, right?” There was a desperate hope in her voice, or a twisted mockery of it that made his heart constrict. “They won’t forget this… Will they?”
>> “Can you swear it for me?… That you’ll remember?”
He wanted to answer, he truly did. To at least offer a semblance of comfort in the wake of tragedy. Yet the words caught in his throat as her mangled body began to dissolve in the floor, the surface leveling as if Samantha’s consumption were irrelevant —a drop of water against insatiable thirst.
For a moment, Claude stood motionless, grappling with choices that stung even more than his wounds. Had he made a mistake, along the way? Could this have been prevented, somehow? Or was this simply another scene in the mansion’s grand performance?
Whether she had been real, or just a haunting echo born from undead obsession, Claude still mourned. A life had been unequivocally devoured in this room, prey of forces he couldn’t stop in time.
The sound of labored breathing snapped him back to the present —Jagdhund’s.
After rushing to the older detective’s side, Claude struggled to help the larger man to his feet. Despite his small shoulders, he managed to provide enough support for the old man to find his balance, though not without considerable effort from both sides.
“Hell of a thing.” Jagdhund’s voice was quieter than usual, hovering between mystification and exhaustion. Still, Claude’s gaze drifted towards Samantha’s original corpse, partially submerged at the base of her smartphone tombstone. “There was nothing we could’ve done.” There was no issue with that assertion by itself. What came after, however… “Time works differently in here. That month thing she said? Wasn’t a lie.”
As he spoke, Jagdhund’s eyes focused on something beyond the chamber’s walls —as if the old man himself was still processing how he knew such a thing.
“We’ll give her a proper burial, once we’re done here.” He added, perhaps trying to silence both their disquiet. “She deserves that much, at least.”
A heavy pause stretched between them before Claude spoke again, voicing the question that continued to gnaw at his spirit.
“You think there’s an end to all this?”
He immediately wished he hadn’t asked —for the answer could render all their sacrifices, all the sweat and blood, completely meaningless. What little hope he still held felt fragile, just as the promises of fame that led Samantha to demise.
“There is.” Jagdhund finally answered, voice steeled with certainty as they began to stagger towards forward. “I’m not sure how…”
>> “But I can smell it.”
image [https://files.catbox.moe/dd3v7j.png]