Two more days crawled by. By then, Jina was near her breaking point.

I’m starving.

Since arriving at the safe house, the only real food she’d managed to choke down was a high-quality sausage another officer had purchased. She’d refused everything else. Frankly, it was a miracle she was still functioning.

Slumped against the sofa, Jina stared at the online articles flashing across the laptop Andy had provided. The headlines still screamed about the Liverpool gas accident. The death toll had risen, accompanied by a growing list of missing persons whose bodies had vanished without a trace.

They won’t find them.

With that grim thought, Jina searched “black dog” on social media. A few blurry photos appeared: small, dark canines prowling the ruins of the collapsed hotel. The missing bodies, she realized, must have become their meals. Jina held her gaze on the images for a long time before opening a new social media page.

A few clicks and keywords later, a friend’s account loaded. It was the friend who had been acting as a relay for her mother’s infrequent calls. Jina quickly jotted down the username.

I’ll have to ask the Inspector.

She couldn’t risk contacting the friend herself. Ian would find out. Her only hope was that the police could somehow approach them without drawing attention.

As she finished writing the list of IDs, a wave of dizziness washed over her, forcing her to drop the pen. She lay back and closed her eyes; the vertigo eased, but the hunger clawed at her, sharper than before.

I have to eat something.

It wasn’t a lack of appetite. The problem was that everything her body craved was…

Raw.

Jina had never been a fan of raw food. Truthfully, she’d always avoided it because her senses were far too sensitive to the quality of the ingredients. Now, her craving felt nothing short of disgusting. The Inspector’s file—the one detailing the monster’s preference for living things—flashed through her mind, haunting her.

Detective Howard, having returned from London, entered the room. She gathered Andy and the other officers for a low-voiced discussion. Jina tried to move closer to listen, but she was too exhausted to even lift herself from the cushions.

I need to eat.

Her mind conjured images of the foods she was starving for: beef tartare, the delicate texture of flounder carpaccio, or if not that, a thick slice of black pudding, dark and rich with blood…

Then, she remembered the last time she’d been out with the Inspector. Specifically, the bird that had cried out in the tree.

Catch that bird and…

…!

The thought shocked her upright. Jina sat bolt upright, horrified by the image her own mind had created.

I must be going insane.

What else could it be, if she was picturing herself swallowing a whole bird?

The officers finished their conversation and dispersed. Andy immediately approached her.

“Is something wrong?”

“The DNA analysis is back. The piercing belongs to that woman, and the leather… that’s your friend’s.”

It was the result they had expected.

“The analysis is finished before the witness ID is even ready?”

“Ah, we outsourced it to a private company. You know how fast we are.” Andy’s look suggested the police would never move that quickly, and Jina didn’t bother arguing.

Andy continued with a tired sigh. “Because of that, the search warrant will be issued without an issue. The Carrington family ring is proving more complicated. We’re trying to contact the Carringtons, but to explain how it’s in police hands, we have to drag up the Aylesford story again… God, my head aches just thinking about it.” He rubbed his temples.

“We’re also trying to contact Chairman Aylesford in Germany. But something’s off there, too. He used to do anything for his grandson. Now, he’s doing nothing, even after hearing the news from London. Worse, there are rumors he’s summoning local shamans…”

“Does that mean the Chairman has also caught on to something?”

“Maybe. For now, we’re planning to issue a summons to Britain for engaging in forbidden fox hunting. He’ll probably ignore it.” Andy went on, updating her on the situation at the mansion and in Liverpool.

But Jina couldn’t hear the words anymore. Her vision tunneled.

“Ms. Troll?”

“Ah, sorry.”

“Are you unwell?”

“It’s not that… I’m hungry.”

“Ah.” Andy suddenly remembered that Jina had barely touched any food in days. He scratched his cheek, then stood up and walked over to Detective Howard, saying something to her. The way he gestured toward Jina made it clear she was the subject of the conversation.

A moment later, he returned with a smile.

“Get dressed. We’re going for a meal. You too, Rob.” Andy had started treating Rob like a younger brother.

“Me too? Why?” Rob asked.

“Why?” Andy grabbed his coat. “Because we’re going for a meal.”

An hour later, Jina stood in the center of the small town square, her hand clasped over her mouth, overcome with sudden emotion.

A farmer’s market had opened. Was it the weekend?

Farmers from all the surrounding areas had set up stalls, piled high with vegetables and fruits. There were eggs, honey, fresh-baked bread, cookies, and even cuts of meat. Some stalls weren’t just selling ingredients but cooked dishes ready to eat.

“Can you eat all this?” Andy asked.

Jina didn’t answer. She bolted to the nearest bread stall, bought a sandwich stuffed with thick-sliced ham and cheese, and began to devour it ravenously.

Watching her, Andy just shrugged. “I guess I don’t need to ask if it’s delicious.”

Jina ate like a madwoman, slowing down only when she was finally sated. She started buying provisions to take back.

“You’ll be here for a few more days, so stock up. For the money…” Andy fumbled for his wallet.

Jina shook her head. “It’s fine. I grabbed a large wad of ‘blind money’ from that house before I left.” She flashed a casual glimpse of a thick bundle of cash in her bag. She pulled out a few fifty-pound notes and handed them to Andy.

“Buy snacks for the other officers inside, too. Rob, here.” She offered the money to Rob, with whom she’d become unexpectedly friendly.

His face lit up. “Jina, you’re the best! Thank you!” Rob grabbed the cash and sprinted off.

Andy watched him go with a sigh, then asked Jina, “Can I get some coffee beans too?”

“Buy whatever you want. Then go grab the snacks. I’m going to buy more food for myself.” The market was small; they agreed to shop separately.

I’m glad I brought money.

Jina diligently filled her bag: shiny apples, firm, well-dried sausages, and pungent cheese. Then, her steps faltered in front of a butcher shop.

Good quality.

She lingered, staring at the meat, which looked far superior to the usual supermarket fare. The safe house had a kitchen, but it was only equipped for boiling water or heating frozen meals. She wouldn’t be able to cook this properly, yet she couldn’t easily turn away.

She let out a shaky sigh. She knew her palate had changed. The cause was the problem. Her desire for raw food was growing dangerously excessive, and she couldn’t tell if this escalating need was truly her own, or a craving from the thing inside her.

Either way, it’s a terrifying problem.

Jina muttered the words to herself and finally forced herself to walk away.

“What’s wrong with her? Is she just tired? Honey, it’s no good. I think we should just go back.”

She overheard a conversation from a family passing nearby—a mother holding the hand of a young woman who looked to be her daughter, speaking with deep concern. Jina watched them for a moment with a wistful ache before turning her head. She pictured the fantasy she always clung to after escaping the mansion: boarding a plane, flying to a strange country, and seeing her mother waiting for her.

It was, of course, a fantasy. She didn’t know when she could get to Korea, or how she could meet someone whose location and contact were unknown. Still, in her mind, her mother was always at the airport. She held the strange belief that if she could just make it there, her mother would appear to collect her.

I have to find a way to contact her.

It was the only way to keep evading the monster’s attention.

As Jina reaffirmed her resolve, she heard the family’s voices again.

“Why aren’t you answering? Is your new job that difficult? You were so happy about it being a big company… Hey! Where are you going!” The mother’s voice rose sharply.

Jina turned, wondering what the commotion was. The young woman, the daughter, was now waving brightly at Jina and striding toward her with a wide smile.

What is it?

Jina thought she must know the woman, but no matter how hard she searched her memory, the face was a complete stranger. She glanced behind her—no one else there. Just as Jina was about to say that the woman had mistaken her for someone else—

“Jina Troll.”

…!

The woman stopped directly in front of Jina and spoke her name. Then, she reached into her pocket, pulled out Jina’s mobile phone—which was ringing with an insistent, vibrating buzz—and held it out.

“Take it.”

The moment Jina took the handset, a voice she knew all too well, a voice that sounded so pleading it might break into tears at any moment, came through the line.

“Jina, why does your face look like that?”

It was the voice of the monster she had run from.

While Rob headed for the cookies, Andy went to the coffee stall. The safe house was out of decent coffee anyway. Might as well stock up on something useful. Even his tea-only colleagues were starting to crave a strong caffeine hit. He justified the large purchase as a necessary and public-spirited act, buying a significant amount of beans, all in his preferred strong blend.

He moved to the snack stall and found Rob already there, ordering with fierce concentration. Standing next to him was a familiar face.

“Harry?”

“Oh, Andy. I thought you’d be stuck inside. You’re out?”

“Witness needed feeding, and I was going stir-crazy. You know the facilities aren’t exactly five-star. Being underground all day is enough to break anyone.”

“Tell me about it. More importantly, why are you here alone? I thought you’d gone back to London with the Detective.”

“The witness ID,” Harry replied, shaking the paper bag tucked under his arm. “It hadn’t arrived when the Detective left, so I stayed behind to fetch it.”

Andy’s face brightened, and he eagerly reached out. But Harry blocked him with a hand.

“No.”

“Come on. Just let me check.”

“Protocol says it goes to the Detective first.”

Andy ran a frustrated hand over his face. Harry was a colleague who practically lived by the police manual; he knew there was no arguing. “Fine. Do as you please. What do you want to eat, then? I’m buying.”

“I want a lot of things… Wait. You’re buying?”

“Our witness is feeling generous toward the overworked London constabulary.”

“Andy, you shouldn’t demand or receive goods or anything equivalent from the witness you’re protecting…”

“Stop. Is it a milk chocolate chunk or a white chocolate cranberry? Keep arguing, and I’ll buy you unsweetened oatmeal.”

“Triple chocolate for me,” Harry conceded instantly.

The principled man looked worn out; the constant commuting between London and the safe house had clearly taken its toll.

Andy asked for the remaining brownies and scones to be packed, then handed the load to Rob before turning back to Harry. “How was London?”

“I don’t know if the Detective mentioned it, but the atmosphere is insane. Missing persons are still cropping up near the Aylesford mansion. That whole Camden area—the Central North BCU—is completely overwhelmed. But that’s not the worst of it…” Harry hesitated, searching for the right words. Finally, he simply said, “I felt sick.”

“What?”

“I drove past the Aylesford mansion for a moment, and as I went by, this nauseating feeling hit me. It was subtly terrifying, too. For a second, I actually understood what you meant by ‘monster’.”

Andy’s easy expression hardened. Up until now, only the people who had been inside the mansion, or those who had read the old scripts, had reported anything strange about Ian. But for a completely unrelated person, one who only passed by, to feel something that bizarre…

Has the monster’s power grown stronger?

Andy began to seriously rethink Jina’s safety. Asylum overseas seemed impossible to secure through the Department…

A shout pierced the noise of the market. “Let go of me!”

It was Jina’s voice. Andy spun around. In the center of the square, Jina was struggling to pull away from a woman who had clamped onto her arm.

“Harry! Over there!”

Andy grabbed his colleague’s arm and bolted. Harry charged ahead, hitting the woman with his shoulder and peeling her away from Jina. In the minor scuffle, the paper bag of documents Harry had been holding tumbled to the ground.

“Ms. Troll? What happened?” Andy demanded, checking on Jina as Harry subdued the woman.

Jina was shaking, and she pointed to the mobile phone lying discarded on the cobblestones. “I don’t know how, but the monster called. That woman handed me the phone… Wait. She asked why my face looked like that, which means he’s looking this way…!” Jina whipped around and pointed at the woman, who, despite being held down by Harry, was staring intently at Jina. “That woman! Cover her eyes! Now!”

At her frantic shout, Andy didn’t hesitate. He ripped off his outer coat and swiftly draped it over the woman’s face.

The woman’s family was instantly in an uproar. “What are you doing! Let go of my daughter!”

“I am Detective Andy Haywood of the Metropolitan Police Department! Step back!”

The word police caused the family to flinch, but they didn’t retreat. Jina ran to them, her voice cracking with urgency. “Aylesford! Is she related to Aylesford?”

“What?”

“It’s urgent! Now!”

Jina’s insistent stare finally broke their composure. The mother flinched. “She did get a job at the Aylesford headquarters recently…”

“Damn it!”

Jina gritted her teeth. She tore open her bag, pulled out a protective charm she’d brought as a last resort, and immediately pressed it against the body of the woman pinned beneath Harry. The woman jolted violently, as if struck by lightning, then went completely limp. Harry, holding her down, looked utterly bewildered, wondering if he’d accidentally broken protocol one step too far.

Meanwhile, Andy casually scooped up the fallen paper bag. He emptied its contents into his pocket, then reached out and slipped the charm from Jina’s bag into the now-empty paper sack.

He tossed the bag back onto the ground. Grabbing Jina and a stunned Rob, he yelled to his colleague, “Harry! We’re leaving! You handle the aftermath!”

“What? Hey, Andy! What am I supposed to do alone—”

“Witness safety is the priority!”

He ignored Harry’s curses and dragged Jina and Rob toward the waiting car.

The car roared to life, tires screaming as they fled the market. Jina and Rob scrambled into their seats, snapping their seatbelts home without a word.

“Did either of you leave anything at the safe house?” Andy shouted over the engine’s whine. “Anyone leave something important?”

Jina shook her head. She kept everything with her anyway.

“Uh, I have my laptop,” Rob mumbled, “but the attack branch I made yesterday is still inside…”

“Good. Then everything we need is in this car,” Andy muttered, his eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. He wrenched the steering wheel away from the safe house’s direction. “Let’s run.”

Run?

Jina and Rob exchanged confused glances. They’d expected to return to the security of the bunker. Instead, Andy was driving away, telling them to flee.

“What do you mean, suddenly—huh? Wait! Aaaargh!” Rob, who’d been squinting at Andy in confusion, glanced out the side mirror, his expression twisting into horror. He shrieked. “Aaaargh! Behind us! Behind us! Floor it! Run!”

At Rob’s scream, Jina threw herself around and looked through the rear window. Then, she too slapped the back of the driver’s seat and bellowed, “Crazy! Go!”

Down the road, gaining on them with terrifying, frenzied speed, was the young woman who had just handed Jina the phone. None of the three registered the figure as human.

The woman was moving her arms like legs, scrambling on all fours like a frantic, dark beast. It should have been physically impossible for a human body to achieve that speed, yet she was relentlessly closing the gap on their accelerating car.

“My God, Lord,” Andy muttered, his jaw tight as he watched her in the rearview mirror. “To see that madness again.” He shouted, “Everyone, buckle up!”

He slammed the accelerator to the floor. The sudden jolt mashed Rob’s face into the headrest, and Jina’s body was violently tossed in the backseat. But neither uttered a single complaint. The woman was already right behind them.

Her hand narrowly brushed the rear bumper of the car.

The vehicle gained speed, taking a precarious turn onto the narrow two-lane highway. Cars coming from the opposite direction swerved hastily in surprise, their drivers screaming curses. Then they saw the woman chasing the car on all fours, frantically crossing themselves before speeding away.

Fortunately, after driving for a long stretch, the woman was finally out of sight. No matter how much she moved like a monster, she was still bound by the limits of a human body.

Though they could finally breathe, Andy maintained maximum speed. “Alright. I’m going to take you to your destination quickly and roughly. Keep those seatbelts locked.”

Rob, rubbing his painfully tweaked neck, grumbled, “Where is the destination?”

“The nearest international airport. From here, Luton Airport is closest.”

Jina shook her head. “Did you forget I don’t have an ID?”

“Rob, check my pockets.”

Rob rummaged through Andy’s coat in the passenger seat and pulled out three deep blue passports. He opened them and handed one to Jina. It was a passport with her name on it.

“You said this would take a long time.”

“Must have been a private job, I guess,” Andy said indifferently. “Just kidding. Superintendent Howard must have pulled some major strings. That passport came out fast enough for an SIS agent.”

“When did you get this? You didn’t say a word until we were leaving.”

“My colleague, Harry, the one I met at the market, was bringing it. Oh, right. I need to contact that guy. Rob, get my mobile phone.”

Rob retrieved the phone from Andy’s coat.

“In the contact list, find Harry Russell…”

“Harry… Russell…” Rob mumbled, about to search, when the phone began to vibrate wildly. It didn’t stop after one ring; it continued incessantly. Rob shrugged, looking at the screen.

“No need to search. He’s sending non-stop messages.”

“What do they say?”

“Am I really allowed to read these?”

“Read them.”

Rob started reading all the texts aloud.

“You son of a bitch, you’re dead when you get back. I’ll grab your head myself and shove it down the toilet bowl.”

Andy groaned. “Damn. He’s really pissed off.”

“There’s more. Should I keep going?”

“…Read it.”

“You bastard, if you don’t call me right now, don’t even think about drinking coffee at the station again,” Rob recited.

“Damn it, he’s exactly the type to follow through on that threat.”

The phone began to ring. Harry had apparently decided that texts weren’t satisfying enough.

“Don’t answer that call. Text Harry back. Tell him to put one of the amulets from the paper bag in his pocket right now, and to share the rest with the other colleagues when he gets back. Rob, you can explain how to use them.”

Rob’s fingers moved busily across the screen.

“Did you send all the texts?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now go to the Luton Airport website and check all flights departing in about two hours.”

Rob searched as instructed. “There are more destinations than I thought. Lots of flights, too. But where are these places? Skopje? Rzeszów? How do you read this… Pristina?”

“Since it’s a low-cost carrier airport, you get a lot of flights to remote cities or out-of-the-way places.”

“I see Ibiza and Barcelona.”

“Are you picking a vacation spot now? Find the flights that depart as quickly as possible to the furthest location!” Andy shouted.

Rob grumbled, searching again. “There’s one to Lisbon in two and a half hours.”

“Good. We’ll take that one.” He turned to Jina. “From there, we’ll look for flights back to Korea.”

Jina nodded, but a nagging thought bothered her. “But isn’t this wrong? We’ve been acting with Superintendent Howard’s permission all this time.”

“That’s how it should be. It should be… but I have a bad feeling.”

“Why?”

Andy recounted the missing persons in London he’d heard about from Harry and the unsettling atmosphere around the mansion. “And most importantly, that woman just now. She only worked at Aylesford for a short time, and look at her. How far can they control people…”

As Andy muttered, Jina recalled something. “Come to think of it, when I received the call, he asked why my face was like that.”

Andy scowled and spat out a curse. Rob looked at them, completely lost.

“Asking why my face is like that means they’re watching,” Andy explained. “It’s possible Ian can see what the woman is seeing, too.”

Andy’s explanation finally drained the color from Rob’s face. If Ian could control more people this way, it was only a matter of time before they were discovered again. They were surrounded by a growing network of walking surveillance cameras.

“Give me the mobile phone for now.”

Rob handed it over, and Andy unhesitatingly threw it out the window.

“What are you doing!” Rob yelled.

“What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m getting rid of a device that’s practically a tracker.”

“But, it was a new model…”

“It’s fine. I borrowed it from Harry for a while.”

At Andy’s brazen confession, Rob and Jina glared at him. Harry had yet more reasons to curse his name.

After driving for an hour and a half, planes were visible coming and going overhead, and the signs confirmed they were nearing the airport. Meanwhile, Jina checked the remaining items in her bag. The amulets and the money from the mansion were all accounted for. The charms were fewer after Andy gave some to Harry, but there were still plenty left.

Once we board the plane, there will be less need for them… She instinctively felt that once they crossed the sea, the monster wouldn’t be able to follow them as easily.

“We’re almost there. Where’s the entrance?” Andy slowed, turning onto the road that led to the Luton Airport entrance.

“…!” Jina felt a sudden, profound chill.

Why?

She lifted her head and stared toward the distant airport terminal. The moment she saw it, she knew. They were waiting for her.

“Stop!”

At Jina’s shout, Andy slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a halt with an unpleasant shriek, leaving thick skid marks on the road. The vehicles behind them had to brake sharply, their drivers cursing.

Andy quickly pulled the car over to the shoulder. “Why all of a sudden… Huh? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Jina’s face was deathly pale, slick with cold sweat. After a few ragged gasps, she regained her composure, her eyes fixed on the airport. “We can’t go there. Turn the car around. We need to get away immediately.”

Rob pulled out one of the amulets Jina had given him. “We have this. If we stick it on properly, they won’t see us. It’ll be fine.”

“No. That won’t be enough. There are too many of them inside the airport. It’ll be too hard to hide with just this. If we make even the slightest mistake…” Jina slowly scanned the massive complex.

Strangely, she could now feel the presence of monsters moving within the airport. The sensation sent a shiver down her spine. It was the extremely sensitive sense of a beast. But why…

As Jina stared at the airport in silence, Rob looked utterly frustrated. He ran a hand down his face, then buried his head against the dashboard. After a long moment, he lifted his gaze.

“Then you two go back,” he said, his voice quiet. “I’m going to the airport.”

“Rob?” Andy stared at him as if he were spouting nonsense.

“Where did all that bravado from yesterday go?” Jina asked, bewildered.

Rob mumbled, avoiding her gaze. “From now on, things like that will keep chasing us, won’t they? People next to you will suddenly become monsters…” His voice began to tremble.

“The Black Dog and Ian were always monsters, so that was one thing… but what do we do when people start changing like that? Kick them? Shoot them with a gun? I… I can’t do that.”

Andy looked at Jina, awaiting her decision.

Jina looked at the trembling Rob, reached into her bag, and handed him a wad of cash. “Take this. I don’t know if it’ll be enough for a departure ticket, but you’ll figure that out.”

“Huh? Can I… can I really go?” Rob was flustered, unsure what to do after expecting her to stop him.

“What’s the point of forcing someone who wants to leave?” Jina said. “Think of this as payment for saving my life at the mansion, and accept it comfortably.”

“But that was Superintendent…”

“Do you want to give it back, then?”

“…No.”

“Then the conversation is over. We’re taking the car, so you’re on your own from here.”

“Yes, yes!” Rob opened the door, got out, and hastily shoved his few belongings into his backpack. “Um, I’ll just leave my data here! My laptop too!”

“Oh, right. Thanks for thinking of us,” Andy replied in a gruff voice. Jina shook her head at his childishness.

With his backpack on, Rob announced he was leaving and headed for the roadside to flag down a car. Before long, an elderly couple stopped and rolled down their window.

“Is there a problem?” the elderly man asked.

“Uh… well. My companions and I have a difference of opinion, so I need to go to the airport alone. If you’re heading that way, could you give me a ride? I’ll compensate you.”

The wife in the passenger seat tutted sympathetically. “Oh dear. Still, you shouldn’t send a friend away alone like this.”

Andy glared at Rob, then forced a smile. “It just turned out this way. If you don’t mind, could you please take care of this one?”

“We can’t refuse when you ask like that,” the wife said. “We’re going past there. It’s a bit of a walk to the airport, but if that’s okay, get in. No compensation needed.”

“Thank you!” Rob quickly climbed into the back seat.

“Try to make up later,” the couple advised. “It doesn’t make sense for one person to be separated like this and go alone.” They drove off.

Rob opened the window, leaned out, and waved goodbye. “Stay safe until we meet again! Goodbye!”

Jina smiled and waved back at him. As the car disappeared, she immediately slipped into the passenger seat Rob had vacated.

“Phew. It’s better in the front than the back, which is full of luggage. It was good to send him off.”

Andy chuckled. “Why could you suddenly sense that? How? Can you also tell the number or who they are?”

“I don’t know the reason myself, but I knew the moment I saw the airport. What I can tell you now is, there are three beasts like Kushi. Humans… I’m not sure. The number is too great, and they keep moving. No, more importantly, do you believe me?”

“If I didn’t believe you, would I be doing this?” Andy slammed his hand on the steering wheel, looking annoyed. “Alright. In any case, using the airport is out.”

He knew that if monsters were already at Luton, they would certainly be at larger airports or at St Pancras Station, where one could take the Eurostar.

“They won’t be at all airports yet,” Andy argued.

“But Ian will arrive at those airports before we can visit them one by one.”

“…” Andy had no rebuttal.

Jina continued calmly, “Then what’s left is the port. Even Aylesford can’t monitor every port in an island nation. If necessary, we’ll smuggle ourselves out… and if that doesn’t work, I’ll swim across the English Channel holding onto a tube.”

“You’ll freeze to death doing that this time of year.”

“You didn’t say you wouldn’t come with me.”

“I suppose there’s no other way but by boat now. Shall we go to Dover then?”

“No. Wouldn’t they be there? There would be Aylesford’s affiliated branches everywhere. Let’s go to a very small village nearby. One that has a port but no Aylesford supermarkets.”

Andy shook his head at Jina’s logic. “I don’t know if there are places like that in the south. Anyway, let’s go. We can buy some coffee on the way.”

Jina shook her head. “You’re really addicted.”

You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

Rob wasn’t particularly talkative, but with him gone, the surroundings suddenly felt quiet.

Andy had just turned the ignition and was already pulling the wheel for a U-turn when Jina stopped them.

“Huh?” Jina, who had been staring back at the airport terminal, lifted a hand.

“Wait, just a moment.”

“You feel something else again?”

“I do… but this is…” Jina’s already pale face leached of all remaining color. The ominous feeling emanating from her was enough to make Andy instinctively look over his shoulder.

“What is it, Jina? What’s wrong this time?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she pointed a trembling finger down the road Rob had taken just moments ago.

A moment later.

“Andy! Jina! Save me!” Rob came barreling toward them, screaming frantically from inside a car absolutely drenched in blood.

The elderly couple who had been in the vehicle were nowhere in sight.

Thump. Thump.

Expensive, polished shoes, entirely unfitting for the massacre, crossed the safe house basement.

The man didn’t hesitate, stepping deliberately over the pools of the recently deceased’s warm blood.

As the squelching footsteps drew closer, Harry’s fists clenched, every muscle desperate to suppress the whimper threatening to tear from his throat.

The scene before him was nothing less than a slaughter. Four officers, excluding Harry, were dead.

If he hadn’t witnessed his colleagues being torn apart, the scene might have been less horrific.

After all, there was no longer a single recognizable human form left in the basement. Only blood, organs, and splintered bones remained. To look at it now, one might easily mistake the room for a particularly messy slaughterhouse.

The approaching footsteps stopped. Then, the person slowly bent down.

Soft blonde hair swayed, revealing a handsome, chiseled face.

It was the face Harry had scoffed at when he first saw the photograph, thinking, ‘Even the privileged have good looks.’

Now, Ian Aylesford stood before him, his expensive shoes soaking in a pool of his colleagues’ blood.

He bent further, picked up something white and wrinkled from the scattered human fragments, and swallowed it whole.

Then, he frowned and muttered.

“Jina has become so thin over the past few days…”

Harry wanted to bite his tongue off watching him mumble, as if the memory of Jina was being conjured right there in the carnage.

‘Was Andy’s word really true?’

When he’d first heard Andy talk about monsters, he’d pitied the man, thinking he’d gone mad from overwork or substituted coffee for cheap whiskey.

But every single thing Andy had said was true. Harry’s mind scrambled, trying to recall who could help him.

Detective Inspector Howard, who had rushed back to London for some urgent matter? Or Andy and the witnesses who had abandoned him, leaving him with a lunatic woman?

Harry decided to rely on the latter. He’d survived this nightmare thanks only to the strange piece of paper Andy had stolen from a passport and slipped into his own.

Annoyed, telling the man to stop talking nonsense, he had still tucked the paper into his inner pocket, just as instructed.

Thanks to that scrap, he could still avoid the gaze of these things. These monsters.

‘Once Ian Aylesford leaves.’

He’d leave this place immediately, report the situation, request reinforcements. He’d personally shove a gun down that monster’s throat.

At that moment, Ian turned his head. His piercing blue eyes met Harry’s, looking directly at him. Ian stared straight at him, his face utterly devoid of a smile, and asked,

“You guys didn’t pay much attention to her meals, did you?”

In the next heartbeat, Ian’s body split open and began to grow larger. Something black lunged. The mass was filled with countless, needle-sharp teeth.

That was the last sight Harry saw alive.

“H-huh. They, suddenly, cough!”

Jina patted Rob’s back as he struggled to breathe. After a few violent, racking coughs, he emptied his stomach onto the grass beside the road.

Andy frowned, his gaze fixed on the blood-soaked car they had parked out of sight. The vehicle was absolutely caked in blood, like a prop from a horror movie set. The dark red liquid was already beginning to congeal, dripping stickily onto the tarmac.

“What the hell happened?”

“Well, it was fine at first…” Rob started, his voice hesitant.

Everything was normal after the elderly couple gave him a ride to the airport entrance.

When it was time to get off, Rob, unnerved by Jina’s warning about monsters swarming the airport, attached the amulets she’d given him all over his clothes.

“Did you lose something?” the husband driving turned and asked as Rob rustled with the paper talismans.

“No, I just have something to prepare…”

“Honey! Ahead!” The wife’s sudden scream was simultaneous with a loud crash! that shook the car violently.

They had hit something.

The screech of the brakes threw Rob’s body forward against the seat, then pushed him violently back.

Rob, who hadn’t buckled up, nearly flew into the windscreen before being slammed into the back seat.

“Are you alright?”

“I—I think so. What did we hit…?” As Rob answered with difficulty, the elderly couple, faces ashen, repeatedly crossed themselves and opened the car door, weeping.

They were clearly terrified, convinced they had hit a person. But when they finally approached the front of the car, they saw nothing.

“What in the world is going on.”

Something huge had definitely lunged at them. It had been a collision with enough force to violently shake the entire vehicle.

It hadn’t been a hallucination.

“The bumper is this dented…”

A sudden brake doesn’t dent a bumper like this. The husband stared at the damaged metal in confusion. There was something stuck in the dent.

“What is this?”

Being an older man, he couldn’t see things clearly up close. His wife, who wore her glasses on a chain around her neck, quickly put them on and bent down beside him.

Meanwhile, Rob, having regained a sliver of composure, opened the rear door.

The airport was a stone’s throw away. Close enough to cross the road and enter the parking lot. He could get off here.

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help it.’

Guilt lingered over leaving the elderly, shocked couple after their accident, but he had to get off this land now.

Just as he was about to step out.

He heard the couple talking at the front of the car.

“What is all this black fur…”

Black fur.

The words made Rob instinctively recoil. They brought back the horror of the first creature he’d ever witnessed.

It was then.

Thwack!

A dull, sickening thud—a sound Rob had heard too many times before—echoed. The sound of something heavy colliding.

And then…

Thump!

Something heavy hit the car’s windshield. Rob whipped his head around.

The elderly couple, who had been peering at the bumper moments ago, were now stuck to the glass.

Roll.

The two, unable to comprehend the impossible, moved their eyes to scan their surroundings.

Then their eyes locked with Rob’s.

Rob couldn’t ask them what was happening. They had no idea why they were suddenly glued to the windscreen.

Pain bloomed in their bewildered eyes.

And the moment a look of horrific, soul-numbing shock appeared on their faces.

Drip.

The couple’s heads slowly slid down the slope of the glass. Long, red streaks remained where their faces had been pressed.

“……”

Instead of screaming, Rob held his breath, a survival instinct he had learned over the last few horrific weeks.

Grrr.

A moment later, black dogs appeared a short distance from the car.

‘Three of them.’

Jina had said there were monsters inside the airport.

‘Did they really… sense me?’

Rob held his breath, watching the black dogs loiter beside the car. Ravenous sounds came from out of sight, as they devoured the bodies of the couple who had fallen in front of the vehicle.

Meanwhile, Rob remained motionless.

Thank God he had attached the amulets just before getting out. Otherwise, he would have been torn apart by now.

After finishing the couple’s bodies, the dogs jumped onto the car’s hood.

‘A small Kushi.’

They were about half the size of the Kushi he had encountered in London.

But the ones now on the car exuded a sharper, more menacing aura. It was a raw, primal feeling, characteristic of newborns.

The small Kushis playfully nudged a severed head rolling on the hood a few times with their paws before opening their jaws.

Rob closed his eyes at the sound of bones crunching.

And he thought.

Why? Why are these things coming out this far just to eat people? Have they already killed everyone inside the airport?

He slowly opened his eyes and turned his head. The airport entrance was visible in the distance.

It was peaceful. People entered with luggage; others came out looking for family.

Planes took off and landed without issue. People moved freely inside the building.

‘So they came out intentionally…’

Jina had warned him something was waiting. The problem was that the Kushi had attacked even without her being present.

‘They wouldn’t attack Jina.’

He knew this from the confrontation with Kushi at the London mansion. The monsters Ian summoned could never harm her.

Proof: when they had brushed past her and caused a small scratch, they had immediately retreated, unable to act, even as they tore into other humans without hesitation.

So, these creatures must have been targeting him and Andy, the men standing beside her.

Cold sweat trickled down his spine. Watching the ferocious small Kushis greedily lick the remaining blood from the car’s chassis, he knew.

Ian Aylesford intended to kill him and Andy in the most cruel and painful way possible.

Because they were the ones who took his female.

Meanwhile, Rob felt the amulets he had attached to his clothes getting damp. Every time he sweated, the small Kushis wandering the hood sniffed more intensely.

The amulets Jina gave him were not meant for continuous use. The moment the written characters faded, their power was lost.

At this rate, it was only a matter of time before the small Kushis discovered him.

He tried to remain as calm as possible, waiting for a chance. The Kushis were restless, searching. Then, perhaps feeling hunger again.

As children stepped off an airport bus, the creatures crept closer, drooling as they watched.

The moment the Kushis turned away, Rob immediately scrambled into the front seat and turned the key that was still in the ignition.

The elderly couple’s car started with a rough cough, and Rob floored the accelerator.

He didn’t need to check the rearview mirror. One of them was already clinging to the driver’s side window.

Rob reached into his pocket, grabbed an extra amulet, crumpled it, and threw it at the creature.

Clang! It was effective.

Rob pressed the pedal down, again and again, hurtling back toward Jina and Andy.

After hearing Rob’s entire frantic explanation, Jina wiped a hand across her face.

The Kushi’s attack without her presence confirmed it: Ian Aylesford intended to kill Rob and Andy.

“We have to keep going together, then?”

Rob, having emptied his stomach, simply nodded.

The sun was setting again. Andy started the engine of the elderly couple’s blood-soaked car and put it in gear, heading toward a small, nearby river.

The old, ownerless car plunged into the river and sank completely.

Jina and Rob watched it disappear, making the sign of the cross.

“We need to minimize contact with others from now on.”

Andy said, climbing into their own car’s driver’s seat. Rob, choked with guilt, wiped his tears with his sleeve.

The three got back into their car, just like at the beginning. Jina now took the front seat.

A week after the airport, Jina stood rigid, teeth grinding, her gaze fixed on the distant, unyielding sea. They’d made it to a small town near Dover, only for the same sickening scenario to play out: a small Kushi was stalking the beach.

One of the beasts sensed their presence and charged, forcing the trio to flee once more. This had happened five times.

Jina finally realized the terrifying truth.

Ian was never going to allow her to reach the sea.

They were meant to keep running, trapped, avoiding him within the confines of this island. It was obvious who would break first.

She glanced back at Andy and Rob, both of them collapsed from exhaustion. Andy was nursing a canned coffee, pointedly not an Aylesford chain brand, bought from a vending machine tucked in a quiet corner of the town.

“Inspector,” Jina began, her voice low. “You know this running has no end, right?”

Andy took a quiet sip of his coffee, his eyes lifting to meet hers.

“So, what do you plan to do?”

Jina stood, brushing the road dust from her jeans.

“I’m going to stop running.”

“And then?”

“I’m going to kill him.”

Andy’s face went instantly grim. Who didn’t want that? But they were barely surviving the Kushis with their stolen, ancient knowledge. To face Ian was a guaranteed death sentence.

“By what means will you manage—”

“We go back.”

Andy stared at her, utterly blank, then jolted to his feet.

“…No fucking way you mean there?”

“Yes.”

Jina looked North, toward the place where everything had begun. The oldest, largest trap ever created by men still stood there. A place called Kno Diag, where fear itself had been imprisoned.

The three of them headed north. There was an unspoken understanding: anyone who wanted out was free to leave. But once Jina named Kno Diag, Andy stopped arguing. He pulled out a worn paper map, immediately checking their route. Rob, too, was already rummaging through his grandmother’s notebook, searching for herbs that might be found in the northern wilds.

Jina didn’t stand idle either. She devoured all the organized materials, memorizing what the monsters ate. Then, like Rob, she attempted to craft makeshift weapons. Rob’s grandmother’s notebook was an unexpected, incredible help. It was filled with what, by modern common sense, looked like utter nonsense.

“If you make the door in the south, you can block evil spirits. If you have to choose between right and left, choose right. But this only works on sunlit land…”

It read like something ripped from a children’s occult novel. Old wives’ tales: a rabbit’s foot for luck, or crossing your fingers for an exam. Jina had read those books as a kid, too, closing windows on certain days or chanting gibberish while facing west before bed. Naturally, they’d had no effect.

Thinking there had to be something stronger than these superstitions, she noticed a sign reading ‘Vacancy’ on the edge of a small village.

“Let’s stay here tonight,” Andy said. Jina nodded her assent.

Since the airport, they had avoided large cities and hotels. They ate in small towns untainted by the Aylesford chain and stuck to secluded B&Bs—places no sane traveler would ever book. The place they found today was an old barn, converted from a former family home into a guesthouse.

“It’s still a barn, structurally, but the interior is completely remodeled,” the owner said proudly. “Did all the repairs myself. Worked in London interior design before coming back home.”

He went on, complaining that booking apps were full of thieves—‘the commission they take!’—and insisted that privately run places like his were the only genuine places left, all while showing them the room. The price was steep, but Jina paid without hesitation. Money was, even now, the best weapon they had.

“Which one do you want?”

The two accommodations had different entrances but identical size and facilities. Jina suddenly recalled the line from the notebook. She asked the owner,

“Does this place get a lot of sun?”

“Two people burned to death last week,” the owner joked, confirming it got plenty of sun.

She let out a short, hollow laugh and chose the right unit. Choose the right side on sunlit land. This unit also happened to face South.

“I’ll take the one on the right.”

“Hey, that’s cheating,” Rob complained. “You only chose the right side because you looked at Grandma’s records, didn’t you?”

“You caught me,” Jina conceded.

The owner, who had lingered near the door, spoke up, his voice hesitant.

“Are you three… friends?”

Friends? Jina paused, searching for the right label. Comrades felt closer than friends.

“Why are you suddenly asking that?” Andy cut in sharply, sensing her hesitation.

“No, considering the people involved, you certainly don’t look like friends. And it’s not common for people to come all the way out here just to visit.” The innkeeper offered an awkward, apologetic smile, perhaps sensing he had pried.

It was an odd combination, undeniably. Two men and one woman. Their races were different, and their ages were subtly varied, creating a patchwork group. Jina clenched and unclenched her fist. Were they really that suspicious?

Just then, Andy replied, quick and smooth.

“We’re Whovians. We came to visit because there’s an Old Series filming location nearby.”

“Ah, is that it? Where exactly is that? I’d like to see it too.”

“I’ll check the exact spot after we visit tomorrow and let you know. It’s very old material, so we need to verify the coordinates before uploading.”

The innkeeper’s curiosity seemed satisfied. He waved his hand and disappeared, leaving behind a conversation Jina didn’t understand at all.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“You don’t know Whovians? The Doctor Who fandom.”

Rob chimed in quickly. “He’s saying that an old filming location for a sixty-year-old drama is around here.”

“Ah, so you meant you were drama enthusiasts.” Jina nodded in comprehension.

Andy and Rob said in unison, “Otaku.”

“Nerds.”

Then, high-fiving as if they’d made a great joke, they started muttering incomprehensible words like “Dalek” and “Tardis.”

At any rate, it was a perfectly plausible cover story for such an odd combination of travelers. Thinking she should use the same answer if asked later, Jina pulled her suitcase from the car. The bag, bought during her prolonged evasion, was now heavy with their increasing number of supplies.

“Then I’ll see you both in the morning.”

Since they had already eaten dinner, the three said their goodbyes and headed to their respective accommodations. Rob, entering the left-side unit with Andy, grumbled, ‘Are we drinking coffee again?’

The guesthouse itself was spotlessly clean and cozy. Once again, Jina thought that money was the only thing you could truly trust in this harsh world, and she quickly fell into a deep sleep.

Perhaps because she went to bed so early, she woke long before the sun had risen. She considered lying in bed longer, having paid a premium for the room, but decided it was a waste of precious time.

She got up, but there was little to do. They had to wait for Andy and Rob to wake up before eating and moving out.

Jina checked the amulet she had slept with, then opened her bag. Her mother had sent so many talismans that the paper box was overflowing; she still had quite a few left. But she knew they wouldn’t protect her forever.

Jina stroked her arms. She still lacked confidence in her decision. Was heading to Kno Diag the right path? Could they actually kill him? Wouldn’t it be safer to find a way to escape Britain, even now? Her mind became a complicated mess, suffocated by doubt.

Jina put on her outer clothes, packed her bag, and secured the amulets.

‘I should go out for a walk.’

Fortunately, the sky was beginning to lighten with the approach of dawn. Though darkness still clung to the air, it wouldn’t be a problem to walk around. She distinctly remembered thinking London had become quite warm, but perhaps spring was only visiting select places. As she stepped outside, a sharp, cold wind—unlike the warmth inside—whipped her.

Jina hunched her shoulders and started walking. It was a quiet, peaceful place. Despite the coolness, the fields were already tinged with green, and some eager flowers had bloomed, a sure sign of spring. She crossed a small stream, heard the bleating of sheep heading to distant pastures, and finally returned to the guesthouse.

Despite her long walk, the sky was still dark. Just as she was thinking of going inside for tea, Jina saw something moving by the door.

It was neither human nor beast. It made a strange, creaking sound…

‘A monster.’

Jina wasn’t surprised. In a world where monsters ate people in central London, what was strange about a small creature wandering in the remote countryside? Besides, this one wasn’t powerful; it wasn’t one of Ian’s subordinates. It would disappear the moment the sun rose.

‘At best, its power is probably just to cause nightmares.’

It was a weakling, incapable of directly harming people like Ian or a Kushi. If one tried hard enough, she thought, it might even catch a cold.

‘It must have been an object of fear once.’

In times when medicine was scarce, even a common cold could be fatal. So even that little thing, bearing the grand name of a demon, would have been terrifying.

Jina observed its movements. It wasn’t alone. ‘About ten of them.’

Then, she noticed a peculiar detail. Of the ten, only one was in front of Jina’s room, while the other nine were swarming the door of Andy and Rob’s room.

Right and left.

Furthermore, her unit faced south, while Andy and Rob’s faced west.

A moment later, the rising sun broke through the clouds, casting long, sharp rays onto the ground. The things swarming the door vanished without a sound. Strangely, the one in front of her room disappeared first.

A shiver ran down Jina’s spine. Those strange, trivial pieces of advice in the old notebook were, in fact, the survival records of people from long ago.

A wave of warmth washed over her as she entered the room. She considered washing up, but checking the time, she realized there was still a while until breakfast. Jina sat on the sofa and turned on the TV.

The gas explosion accident in Liverpool was no longer news. Only reports of political corruption, wars in distant lands, and yesterday’s football results played on a loop. Her eyes slowly closed.

And when she opened them again.

‘……!’

A hand was caressing her face.

A touch so gentle, as if handling the most infinitely precious thing in the world. With that touch, full of affection and love, she froze. He was right beside her.

‘Ian!’

The name of the terror that had pursued her for weeks. She had desperately tried to distance herself, yet here he was, sitting right beside her.

Her body froze, her senses numbed. All she could feel was the soft touch brushing against her cheek. It should have felt ticklish, but with every stroke of his long fingers, Jina couldn’t breathe. Unable to bear the sudden terror, she closed her eyes.

Had he not noticed she was awake?

The hand stroking her face continued its gentle, careful movement. His fingers swept through her hair, then fiddled with her forehead.

After tracing her round forehead for a long time, his fingers brushed her eyebrows and then her eyelashes. His hands moved ceaselessly, as if examining every part of Jina’s face.

This touch was not unfamiliar. In the past, after they had made love until she was exhausted in the mansion, he would often hold her and stroke her face like this.

She used to like the ticklish feeling. When she felt his touch in quiet surrender, she felt like she was an incredibly precious being. How utterly satisfied she had been then.

No matter how roughly he had treated her, ignoring her will during the night, the next morning he would caress her like this, and she would inevitably forgive him.

She knew this was Ian’s way of reflecting on his actions and seeking forgiveness. Realizing that she weakened under this affection, Ian had put considerable effort into the act after satisfying his desires.

His touch grew even more tender, and sometimes he seemed to anticipate this moment more than the intense intimacy that threatened to shatter his sanity.

‘Ah,’

As the memories she had buried resurfaced, her throat tightened. Back then, she truly felt every day was happy. The person who saved her when she had fallen to the absolute bottom of her life.

She had spent days joyfully swimming in the sweetness of his words, saying he would stay by her side, that he wanted her, even if their relationship would be short.

The days when she thought even his occasional excessive roughness stemmed from his overflowing love for her.

She missed and cursed those times when she had been happy, knowing nothing.

As Jina recalled old memories, the hand that had been tracing her nose moved lower.

His fingers swept over her lips, chapped and cracked from the harsh wind of her flight. Her body stiffened with tension. She remembered well what he did when he touched her lips like this.

As expected, the fingers that had been fiddling with her lips dug between her teeth and entered her mouth.

After only a few in-and-out motions, his wet finger made a squelching sound. Her mouth had made a similar sound when she had bitten something much thicker and longer than that.

The difference was that back then, she had to strain her jaw to bite it and move her tongue with difficulty.

The inserted finger roamed inside her mouth as if it were its own home. It pressed and rubbed against the delicate mucous membrane, then pushed her tongue further inside. She desperately tried to suppress the wave of nausea that washed over her, but she couldn’t hide her trembling body.

“……”

The movement of the fingers that had been arbitrarily stirring inside stopped and then withdrew. Only then did Jina regain her senses.

‘What happened?’ How was Ian here? Had she been captured by him?

Jina tried to recall her last memory. She had clearly fallen asleep while watching the news… ‘I didn’t sense him at all.’ Now, she could sense even the smallest Kushis from afar. Yet, if Ian had approached, she would have known.

Then, she suddenly thought of the others. ‘Andy! Rob!’ She remembered the blood-soaked car Rob had tearfully driven back to the airport. Seeing that, Jina knew: Ian was trying to kill them, and in a horrific, brutal way.

The moment she recalled that fact, Jina tried to sit up. She had to make them escape somehow. But she couldn’t even move a finger, let alone sit up. No, she couldn’t even open her eyes. It was impossible to make a sound.

“……!”

She tried to twist her body wildly, tried to open her mouth. But nothing was possible. She couldn’t comprehend her body, which was unable to move, as if her mouth was gagged and her whole body was bound by spiderwebs.

And then she thought. ‘This is a dream.’

Only then did everything make sense. His sudden appearance without her sensing him, the reappearance of memories from happier times, and her current inability to move even a little. It was all possible because it was a dream.

As she grasped the situation, Jina let out a massive sigh of relief. This was a nightmare. Perhaps a pathetic nightmare summoned by the small demon at her door with its last bit of strength before vanishing.

If it was a dream, it was okay. Even if it was difficult while dreaming, she would eventually wake up.

Thinking so, she relaxed her body, and he, whom she thought had moved away, whispered in her ear.

“You think this is a dream?”

“……!”

More than his words, which seemed to read her very thoughts, the ticklish voice whispering in her ear tightened Jina’s heart. The breath and voice tickling her fine hairs were terrifyingly vivid. It was impossible to believe this was a dream.

“Then I must let you know.”

The fingers that had moved away touched Jina again. This time, not her face. He stroked under her chin and slowly moved his fingers downward. Then, playfully, he lightly pressed the center of her neck.

“Kk.”

Even though he pressed very lightly, her breath was instantly cut off. She had tried not to move or make a sound, but Jina had to gasp for air.

His hand continued downward without hesitation. Then, he unbuttoned her shirt, one button at a time.

After about three buttons, his large hand slipped inside and grasped her swollen breasts. The hand that gripped her roughly tightened its hold, kneading the soft flesh that filled his palm.

“They’ve gotten much bigger since I last saw them. They should yield well when squeezed.” Teasing was added with a cackling laugh.

“Hh, ugh, ugh!”

Her mouth, which couldn’t make a sound, managed only pained moans. Her white, ample breasts were brutally crushed in his hand.

“They say you need to loosen them up before squeezing, at the farm.”

Her breasts had started to feel engorged lately. She had left it alone because the feeling wasn’t yet severe, but sometimes a sharp pain would harden them. She had scowled at the sensation, and Andy had asked if she was in pain, but she couldn’t answer honestly.

His words about loosening them up weren’t empty; he held and shook Jina’s breasts for a long, torturous time.

He had always been unusually fixated on her chest. She never imagined it would continue even in a dream. As he roughly squeezed them, her nipples, unable to withstand the stimulation, stood erect.

His hand, which had waited until they hardened, seemed satisfied. He grabbed them with two fingers and began to slowly rub and massage them.

“Haak! Heut!”

As the intense stimulation was added to the already sensitive tips, Jina writhed, panting heavily.

This, too, was a familiar experience. When she was at the mansion, she had cried, saying she couldn’t take him inside her anymore. Then Ian would tell her to lie down comfortably and play with her exhausted body collapsed beside him.

Eventually, when Jina, with tears streaming down, began to flow again from below, he would let go and caress her weak, barely conscious body on top of him.

Along with the stimulation, the arousal from long ago returned. Despite thinking of him as a terrible monster, her breath quickened at his touch, and her lower abdomen tingled. Her body, tamed by months of confinement, instinctively tried to close her legs and hide the moisture that was pooling.

Meanwhile, Ian didn’t stop his touch. He rubbed the tips of her breasts, lifted and dropped them, squeezed them as if to burst them, and finally massaged them roughly, like milking.

“Ah, eu, euung! Ah! Aah!”

Jina’s body was becoming increasingly disheveled under his touch. Then, as his finger dug in, scraping the tip with his nail.

“Ah, aah!” She finally reached her climax.

Feeling the liquid flowing down between her legs, Jina felt a shame bordering on despair. Even if it was a dream, she had become aroused by his touch again.

Satisfied that he had brought her to the edge, his hands, shedding their previous roughness, gently stroked Jina’s body. His hand, softly rubbing the tender skin below her breasts, reached her heaving, rapidly moving abdomen.

“They’ve grown quite a lot.”

He stroked her swollen belly as if it were a cherished object and continued speaking.

“If just one is this big, how much prettier will it be when another one is inside.”

His hand, which had been stroking her belly, moved further down. His fingers slipped inside her pants and slid down, finding the parted lips and rubbing them.

“If I make you wetter, perhaps you can get pregnant again?”

A shiver ran down her spine at his giggling voice. It was impossible. There was no way another child could form in a belly already carrying one.

But he could make it happen. Because he was a monster.

A thick, fleshy pillar pressed against her buttocks. There was no need to doubt whose it was. It was undoubtedly his, which she had accepted countless times.

“So, let’s do more.”

Her pants were pulled down, and a thick pillar from behind penetrated her.

She couldn’t take it anymore. She had to push him away. She had to escape from here!

“……!”

At that moment, Jina opened her eyes.

It wasn’t her room. All she could see was perfect darkness, devoid of any light. In it, only a pair of cold blue eyes watched her.

“Hk!”

Jina opened her eyes again.

Instantly, the darkness vanished, and light flooded in.

[…Accordingly, the Prime Minister will visit China as early as next month…]

Blinking, she saw the cozy interior of the barn-turned-accommodation. Jina slowly sat up. In the empty room, the TV she had left on had changed from the news to a local broadcast.

‘A dream… I guess.’

Jina wiped her face, which was covered in cold sweat. What a truly nasty nightmare. Her sweat had soaked her clothes so thoroughly that the sofa she was lying on was also damp.

‘I need to wash.’

Only then would her dazed mind return even a little. With unsteady steps, Jina entered the bathroom and slowly undressed. Then, she looked into the mirror above the sink.

‘……!’

She saw her chest, marked with clear red handprints.

“……”

They say in moments of utter shock, you can’t even find the air to scream. Jina, her mouth hanging open, stared at her reflection. She had woken up with a strange haze in her mind, her body unusually aroused, but she’d dismissed it—it was just a dream.

Yet everything remained terrifyingly vivid. The raw handprints, the hardened, over-stimulated tips of her breasts, even the wetness pooling between her legs.

‘Was that really a dream?’

What if it wasn’t?

The moment the thought solidified, Jina bolted from the bathroom. She hastily threw on some scattered clothes, then ran outside and pounded on the opposite door.

“Officer! Rob!”

She hammered on the wood as if to break it down, scanning her surroundings. As expected, there was no sign of the evil spirit she’d seen at dawn, nor was there any sign of the pool of blood that always surrounded Ian. Still, if it hadn’t been a dream, there was no way the two of them would have been unaffected…

Just then, she sensed movement inside. A moment later, Rob opened the door, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Jina? What’s wrong?”

He looked exactly like a man dragged from a sound sleep, hair a mess, wearing a soccer jersey as pajamas, scratching his belly. He looked his usual, exhausted self.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

He was tired, but he was alive.

“Hurt?… Did something happen?”

He was about to yawn when Jina’s frantic question seemed to shake him awake. His eyes widened, and he looked around the room.

“No, that’s…”

“Haaawwwn.”

Andy appeared, stretching his mouth wide in a yawn. He rubbed his eyes, met Jina’s stare, and then asked,

“What’s wrong with your face?”

“What’s wrong with my face?”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost. No, that’s not scary anymore.” He yawned again, a long, deep one.

At the sight of both men unharmed, Jina’s body went limp with relief. She stumbled and sank to the ground in front of the entrance. Realizing something was seriously wrong, Andy and Rob rushed to help her up.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Andy brought her a glass of warm water. She took the cup with trembling hands, warming her cold fingers against the glass, and opened her mouth with difficulty.

“I saw Ian.”

“What… Ouch!” Andy jumped up in surprise, splashing hot coffee onto his hand. He ran to the kitchen, washed his hand under cold water, and shouted,

“Where! Where did you see him!”

“In a dream.”

“What?”

At Jina’s answer, he wiped his hands and grumbled resentfully, “No, you should have led with that!”

Rob, who had been scrambling for his bag of amulets, also let out a shuddering sigh of relief.

Despite his tone, Jina remained silent. She told Rob to hurry and wash up, as they had to leave. As Rob went into the bathroom, she lowered her voice and whispered to Andy,

“But, there are marks on my body.”

“Marks, what… Ah. Never mind.”

He’d been about to ask her to show him, but he closed his mouth upon seeing the dark shadows under Jina’s eyes, her flushed face, and the glimpse of red skin through her improperly fastened shirt. He understood instantly what kind of marks remained.

Jina briefly explained everything: from waking up for a walk at dawn to the horrific events in the bathroom.

“The dream is affecting reality. As soon as I realized that, I came knocking.”

“Christ… The monster is even upgrading now.” He ran a hand over his face and swore. A dream becoming reality. It was the first time that cliché had sent such a profound shiver down her spine.

“So that’s why you came running to us.”

“Yes. Because I thought Ian would kill you two first.”

He rubbed his dry face with both hands and spoke again. “Actually, I had a nightmare too. Rob probably did as well. He was groaning when I woke up.” He touched his neck.

It had been a truly terrible nightmare. Even in the complete, blinding darkness, he felt someone watching him.

With a cackling laugh, it became increasingly difficult to move, as if he were sinking into a swamp. Then the darkness covered his mouth and nose, and he couldn’t breathe.

He tried to open his eyes, but something felt like it was holding him down, preventing him from escaping his dream.

What finally allowed him to wake up was Rob’s scream.

“Ugh, ughh!”

A strange, strangled cry jolted his consciousness in the darkness, pulling him back to reality. Even though it was darkness, the darkness in the dream and the darkness in reality were entirely different. Andy, gasping for breath as if he had truly been suffocating, looked at Rob, who was writhing as if a lion had been shot.

It was then that Jina knocked on the door.

“I thought it was just a nightmare, but there was a reason behind it.”

“Yes. Anyway, I’m glad that you two only seemed to have had dreams…”

“Aaaargh!”

At Rob’s shriek from the bathroom, both of them got up and ran without a second thought.

“Rob!”

“What’s wrong!”

Rob, covered only by a towel around his lower body, burst out of the bathroom and turned his back to them.

“Here, here…”

Looking at his back, Andy and Jina both clapped their hands over their mouths. Displayed clearly on his skin was a long, diagonal line. It was a wound that looked exactly like a deep scratch from a beast’s claws. Fortunately, it wasn’t a grievous injury, but it was enough to leave a red mark for days.

“In the dream, a black dog chased me and tore at my back like this…!”

Jina and Andy exchanged horrified glances. Without speaking, they knew. Dreams were no longer a place of safety.

Immediately, the three of them began searching through the ancient records left by their ancestors for information about nightmares.

Andy, who could read ancient languages the fastest, sifted through the old materials. He downloaded files from various regional libraries and scrolled through the tablet screen, muttering about how much the world had improved.

When Andy found relevant records, Jina would search for them online to find more detailed interpretations or similar materials. Rob would procure the necessary ingredients or craft potential weapons.

In the meantime, the three of them had entered the Scottish region.

Andy looked at the map. “Let’s stop by near Glasgow. There’s a Gaelic scholar there who gave me some materials.”

“Won’t they be in danger if they meet us?”

“They’ll be fine. We’re planning to sneak in and steal it anyway. They’ll just be a victim of a break-in. I memorized the warehouse’s lock combination during my last visit, so it won’t take long. It looked like there was a lot of useful stuff inside, so let’s take it all.”

Jina and Rob no longer showed surprise at Andy’s blunt words. They merely gave him looks of weary resignation.

“Can we even call ourselves police officers at this rate?”

“We have to survive first, don’t we? And… I think I’m going to be fired soon, so I plan to go all out.”

“……”

At his words, Jina and Rob fell silent. They knew exactly why he was saying this.

‘The Metropolitan Police seemed to be holding back.’

Having long since discarded his mobile phone, Andy had to search for public telephones, which were nearly extinct in this day and age, as they traveled. Otherwise, he borrowed phones from shops.

That was how he learned that all the police officers at the safe house had been murdered, and only Superintendent Howard had escaped the disaster by going to London for a meeting.

He could feel the furious grief over her subordinates’ deaths in her voice over the phone. She seemed ready to drive a tank and flatten the Aylesford mansion if she could.

But even after five police officers had died, the Metropolitan Police couldn’t act freely.

‘Ian must be blocking them.’

Hadn’t she seen firsthand those who were close to Troll at the Sandringham hunting grounds? From the Queen’s favorite rogue son to former and current Prime Ministers, and other famous business figures. She didn’t think the Metropolitan Police could stand against them.

‘At least Superintendent Howard is trying to help somehow…’

Jina also felt that her contact with her had decreased recently compared to before.

‘We have to hurry.’ Before Ian could devour everyone around him, he had to be killed.

The car carrying the three of them stopped on the outskirts of a small town a short distance from Glasgow.

“Well then, let’s go and ransack the place.”

Waiting for nightfall, the three headed to the scholar’s warehouse, guided by Andy. It was a place the owner didn’t visit frequently, being a little distance from her house. Still, afraid of being caught, Andy approached the warehouse without a flashlight and muttered as he looked at the handle,

“Why isn’t the lock engaged?”

Just then, a voice came from inside.

“It’s open, so come in.”

“……!”

At the sound of a kind, elderly woman’s voice, Jina and Rob exchanged bewildered glances, questioning Andy with their eyes.

‘What is it? What happened?’

But seeing Andy’s equally stunned expression, it seemed unlikely she would get an answer from him.

Jina looked back at Rob and communicated with her eyes. ‘What should we do?’

Rob shrugged and mouthed, ‘Who knows.’

In the unexpected situation, the three of them continued to make eye contact, rolling their pupils without a word.

Then, a voice that seemed to urge them on came again.

“Our time is running out.”

At the word “our,” Andy fully extended his telescopic baton and gripped it tightly. He gestured to Jina and Rob to stay still and cautiously opened the barn door.

The Gaelic professor he remembered had said that Andy was the first person other than herself to enter this barn. Everyone else wasn’t interested, and he vividly recalled her saying she wouldn’t let anyone in.

But who was “our”?

The barn was dark. Andy didn’t enter carelessly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness. A moment later, Andy released his baton and fumbled along the barn wall.

Click.

With the sound of a switch being flipped, the barn filled with light. Jina saw a strange, murky figure running out into the darkness as the light flooded in. It was likely an evil spirit native to this land.

‘Why are these things becoming more… visible?’

Tearing her gaze away from the nameless things running into the darkness, Jina followed Andy into the barn. As soon as they entered, there was the distinct smell of old paper. And the smell of dried grass. Mingled with the smell of wood and other dried, unknown substances.

“This place is like a witch’s room.” Rob, who had entered first, muttered in awe. As he said, the inside of the barn looked exactly like a medieval witch’s lair often depicted in visual media.

Of course, there were modern differences. Modern books filling one wall, a laptop on a wooden table, and things like a radio and a coffee machine.

And…

An elderly woman wearing a respirator, an elderly woman in a wheelchair, and sitting in the middle, the Gaelic scholar Andy had shown them in a photo. Three elderly women sat in chairs, looking at Jina’s party.

Andy folded his baton and put it in his pocket. The three who entered could tell instantly. All three women sitting there were enveloped in a strong aura of death.

“What is going on? Could it be…?” Andy reached out, shielding Jina and Rob as if to protect them. He wondered if, like the scenes of carnage they had witnessed so far, there were many human corpses scattered around here.

As if reading Andy’s thoughts, the scholar in the middle spoke in a quiet voice.

“No. Don’t worry, nothing like what you fear has happened. We are just… cowards running away. We took poison ourselves.”

“Poison?”

“It’s ordinary. Just a mixture of a few common poisonous herbs from under our feet. I wish I had known it was this easy to make, I would have given it to my husband. He went comfortably first, from cancer.”

At the scholar’s words, the women sitting on either side let out weak laughter. Old, ancient letters were tattooed on their arms. Rob, looking at them, muttered,

“Grandma had them too.”

“She must have inherited the knowledge. You, being a boy, did not inherit it.”

Then the gazes of the elderly women turned toward Jina. One of them looked at Jina and let out a soft sigh.

“This one’s bloodline, which could have been severed, has continued.”

Even without any explanation, Jina realized they were talking about the Troll bloodline.

“Who are you?”

“Who are we? We are those who inherited ancient knowledge and guided people to survive. Now, instead of reading the stars, people check maps on their mobile phones, and instead of boiling herbs, they take medicine, so we are no longer needed.”

The old woman coughed dryly after saying that. They were extremely old. You could feel the years steeped in the layers of wrinkled skin.

“We weren’t sad. Our disappearance means that fear is disappearing. Honestly, at this age, it’s not easy to go around picking holly. I’d rather watch soccer at the nursing home, drink beer, and fall asleep.” The old woman’s face was filled with relief.

“Excuse me, Madame.” Noticing the strength draining from their voices, Andy approached, took their wrists, and checked their pulses. Realizing their slow, fading pulses, he let out a groan. Even if he took them to the hospital now, it would be too late.

Andy roughly ran a hand through his hair and faced the three women. “You knew we were coming. And you took the medicine at that time. Why did you do it?”

“Don’t question it too much. We endured it, wanting to die sooner.”

“Endured what?”

“Fear. That which crawled out from there. A world that has swallowed it all. We don’t have the courage to witness it.”

Despite their fading strength, the old women’s voices were clear. The scholar looked at Andy with pity.

“Last time you visited, you said many police officers had lost their minds. I chided you then, asking what you meant. Now I know why their minds broke. We all now see the future in our dreams. Being eaten, being eaten, being eaten… continuously being eaten in the darkness…”

Then the two old women on either side continued, speaking like a song.

“We are dying, but it has crawled out. Who on earth can stop it… We are too old now…”

Just then, Jina interjected into their words. “You wouldn’t have waited for us just to say you are dying.” She wasn’t particularly curious about how they knew they were coming. Just as she could see strange things, these people also possessed some kind of power to know such things.

“Why were you waiting for us?”

“To hand it over.”

“Hand over what?”

The scholar and the two old women pointed to a thick, bolted door attached to the barn with their fingers.

“You’re going to Kno Diag, aren’t you? And your powers have limits. Take what’s inside. And from now on…”

The scholar and the two old women opened their mouths and began to utter slow, drawn-out sounds.

At first, it sounded like groans, but they soon realized it was a form of prayer and song. Simultaneously, Jina found herself humming along to their song.

Even though it was an unfamiliar melody she had never heard before, she could perfectly blend her voice with theirs.

“As expected of Troll. What the bloodline does is much stronger than what we do. Just like Frida Troll did in the past.” She then muttered with a hint of pity. “If her daughter hadn’t died, this wouldn’t have happened. That child is probably still buried within the walls of Kno Diag.”

“Daughter?”

Come to think of it, her father had mentioned it. He said she had an older sister. But she had passed away at a young age, and since then, Frida Troll had stayed at Kno Diag for a long time, eventually divorcing her grandfather.

“Why in the wall…”

“It’s better to avoid the monster’s eyes there. Monsters hate that place terribly. What crawled out would go to Troll first and would have disturbed the corpse of her daughter who passed away early.”

Meanwhile, the songs of the other two continued. Eventually, Andy and Rob also began to hum the melody slowly. It sounded like a groan, yet also like the sound of the wind.

When the long song ended, the three elderly women sat the younger three before them.

“It’s time. Time to hear the histories of those who have lived long before us. Please…”

The voices of those who wished to share what little knowledge they had trembled with the effort.

“May you see the morning sun for a long, long time.”

The three of them moved the contents of the barn into the car without exchanging a single word.

While they worked, the three old men remained still in their chairs, eyes sealed shut against the coming day. They looked like men who were about to leave the world, yet they continued their desperate testimony until dawn broke. Jina recognized it for what it was: their last, frenzied act of atonement.

They had fled death in terror, but now, guilt had driven them to pass on anything that might help the survivors they left behind.

What the three men delivered was more helpful, more potent, than anything Jina, Andy, or Rob had scavenged on their own.

“Look at this. Holly, tar… everything we were searching for, it’s all here.”

Rob clicked his tongue as he loaded the gear from the barn. Every item was a priceless find.

The scholar had even been gracious enough to give them his car, the gas tank filled to the brim.

Loaded with all the necessary supplies, the three of them left the barn, abandoning the old men to the comfortable darkness they had run from.

Carrying the supplies—both reassuring and steeped in desperation—the three headed toward Kno Diag.

They assumed they would reach it quickly. They were wrong. The group did not drive straight from the scholar’s house to their destination.

That evening, thinking they only had one more day of driving, they stopped at a small B&B. Moments later, the owner burst in, his eyes rolled back in his head.

Fortunately, they escaped before the man could follow through with the axe he was carrying. Jina, sensing the wrongness, had quietly turned off the lights and suggested they leave without a sound.

Just in case, they took out their amulets and watched the lodging from a distance.

When they saw the owner—a monstrous roar tearing from his throat—creep in with the axe, realize they were gone, and then swing it wildly at the empty room, they understood. Staying in places like that was no longer possible. It was too dangerous.

While the owner went farther afield to search for them, they slipped back into the car and sped away.

They deliberately avoided heading straight for Kno Diag, instead driving farther north and circling back in a massive detour.

Today was the fifth day of that routine.

As the dawn sky began to lighten, the three packed up their campsite. Rob yawned repeatedly, kicking dirt over the campfire pit, while Andy meticulously stowed the collected camping gear.

Meanwhile, Jina sat in the passenger seat of the car, trying to rest her eyes. It was her rightful due; she had been the one guarding and watching their surroundings all night.

Moreover, with her visibly swollen belly, no one would dare urge her to get up immediately.

When the car was loaded and the engine roared to life, Jina finally opened her eyes.

“Haaam. You could have woken me up.”

“How could we wake you when you were snoring like a walrus?”

As he said this and turned the steering wheel, Andy’s gaze dropped briefly to her abdomen, visible even through her thick clothes.

His stare was a noxious cocktail of pity, sympathy, and a healthy dose of fear.

Noticing it, Jina jerked her head to look out the window.

Anyone could see her belly was growing faster than it should. That meant whatever was growing inside her was not, by any definition, ordinary.

I should have gotten rid of it sooner.

Abortion was legal in their country.

But they had been too busy running, fleeing the country, fleeing death. There had been no time to visit a clinic.

Even if I had gone, it would have been impossible.

Ian would have found her before she could ever have the surgery. She was terrifyingly certain of it.

She knew the depth of his obsession with his offspring.

What would he do if she terminated the pregnancy?

The answer was obvious.

He would force her to conceive again.

Thinking of that time, her face flushed with a sudden, hot wave of shame and revulsion. In retrospect, it was something no human being should have to endure.

A night solely for conception. Acts closer to the brutal, driven struggles of beasts, devoid of love, purely for the purpose of propagation.

He knew how to make someone conceive. That was why he had kept her pinned beneath him all day, a frantic, relentless engine of will.

A beast might at least rest if its partner fainted from exhaustion, but he had seemed physically unable to bear not sowing his seed, anointing himself everywhere with her submission and his dark intent.

As the morning sun finally began to clear the hill, a large sign appeared by the roadside.

Ben Nevis 50 miles.

The sight of the marker made everyone swallow a thick, dry gulp.

Ben Nevis was the highest mountain in Britain. And Kno Diag was located between Ben Nevis and Cairngorms National Park.

Their destination was now brutally close.

“It’s still a ghost town.”

Andy stepped out of the car and surveyed the village, where there was no sign of human life.

This was the last village before they entered the stretch of road leading to Kno Diag.

“Judging by the state of things, it looks like no one has been here for months.”

Jina said, closing the car door and taking in the surroundings. Even when she had first come to Kno Diag, the village had been deserted.

“Then we’ll have to stay in the place we crashed before. Rob, let’s head there.”

“Got it.”

Andy and Rob took out the necessary items from the car and headed toward one of the scattered houses.

Rob retrieved a key hidden between the bricks under the mailbox and opened the door with the practiced ease of a career criminal.

“Wait, you know someone here?”

“Nah. Just a house I broke into the last time I was here.”

“…Right. Of course.”

Upon entering, they found a living room that was somewhat disheveled. In the kitchen, there were the dried dregs of an old coffee pot.

“Did you come here too, Officer?”

“Yes. I almost killed Rob right here.”

It turned out both of them had entered and stayed in the ownerless house without permission—just a few days apart.

“The money is still here. Looks like no one came back after we left.”

Andy shook the wad of cash he had left as payment for their lodging.

At first, Jina had thought people in this region simply went to bed early. Then, when she realized the village was entirely empty, she assumed most had gone to work in other regions.

But she finally understood the ugly truth.

They had all run away.

Perhaps because they lived so close to Kno Diag, they were more sensitive to the sheer energy of dread saturating the land.

They must have noticed the thing buried beneath the mansion stirring, waking up, and finally crawling out.

And from that day on, they must have fled like madmen.

Leaving behind fortunes accumulated over a lifetime, without the time to properly organize or pack, they had simply driven, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the awakening horror.

Jina remembered the lawyer who had come to her with her grandmother’s will.

After the accident at Kno Diag, he had demanded she reveal the inheritance she had received. After that, she had lost all contact with him.

Since she had seen his face a few times, she hoped appealing to his sympathy might work, so she repeatedly asked the trust company to put her through.

But the company told her he had quit, that he was preparing to immigrate, and that contact would be impossible.

Thinking back now, he, too, must have keenly felt the rising of the dread and fled to a very, very distant place.

Jina went up to the second floor and looked out the window at the village.

In the still, desolate space, only a few scraps of trash, discarded by passing cars, rolled around in the desolate wind.

Looking at the empty houses, Jina’s mind began to spin with cold, cynical clarity.

Why was there such a small village, with nothing around it, so close to Kno Diag?

It must have been a canary.

Like the birds miners used to carry long ago to detect poisonous gas, or the sacrificial fish in sewage treatment plants.

They were clearly kept here to confirm the approach of danger.

She wasn’t particularly curious about who had arranged it. She suspected that Frida Troll’s vast fortune and the suddenly-fled trust company lawyer had something to do with the whole sick arrangement.

Rob, after saying he would look around outside, soon returned with a bag full of snack bags for drinks.

“The pub’s the same. Just like I saw it before. Jina, can you eat this garbage?”

“No.”

“Ugh, you’re so damn fussy.”

Though he seemed to be grumbling, Jina couldn’t help but feel a flicker of warmth at Rob’s actions; he had been the first to look for her meal.

“We bought plenty of food at the last supermarket. We have enough for a week, so don’t worry.”

“……”

“……”

After Jina’s reply, the two men fell into a weighted silence.

Enough food for a week.

Then what about after that?

None of them spoke the words aloud, but they all felt it in the hollow marrow of their bones: After a week, it was highly unlikely any of them would be alive.

Nevertheless, the three did not run. They quietly began preparing to go to Kno Diag.

When noon arrived and the sun was highest in the sky, the three took their prepared belongings and drove the car toward Kno Diag.

Normally, they would have been exchanging stupid jokes, but the air was thick, heavy, and silent.

The only sound filling the quiet car came from the radio.

By the roadside, as soon as they entered the dirt track leading to Kno Diag, static began to interfere with the music.

The crackling grew worse as they drove farther in. And after passing a certain point, there was no more music, only a violent shriek of static.

Andy, confirming the area was still out of external signal range, snapped the radio off.

As the ear-splitting noise disappeared, the world became terrifyingly, utterly silent.

The land, now surprisingly green, had no bird song. No chirping. No buzz of insects.

The truck they were in drove over the muddy ground, frozen and then thawed. Mud clung to the wheels, and the engine strained as it climbed the final ridge of the hill.

The moment the car reached the top.

“Ah……”

The three let out a simultaneous sigh of stunned disbelief.

Far below, Kno Diag lay in the distance.

The largest, most solid trap ever built by human hands, now broken and shattered after releasing what it contained.

Andy looked at it for a moment, then stomped on the accelerator.

Vroooom.

The truck rumbled and descended the hill rapidly. On the ground devoid of any sounds, the truck’s tire tracks remained unnervingly clear in the mud.

A moment later, the three got out of the car and faced the mansion.

Despite having lost much of its physical strength and being visibly damaged, the mansion was filled with a strange energy that could not be described as merely eerie. It was a suffocating, primal dread.

Jina murmured, her gaze locked on Kno Diag.

“The monster has to be re-imprisoned. Here.”

As if time had flowed faster here, the mansion had become even more of a ruin in the interim.

The door, already smashed during the initial rescue operations, had completely rotted away and would crumble at the slightest touch.

The walls were covered in terrifyingly black mold, and thick, slimy moss filled every crack and crevice.

With the floor sinking with every step, they would have to break their way through with a hand axe from the car.

Going farther inside, they found the lobby, where the floor had long since collapsed into a massive pit.

“……”

The three looked down with somber expressions, the visceral memory of what they had seen here in the past flooding their minds. They silently gazed into the darkness.

The terror that had been trapped here had already been released. So this was merely a remnant, a trace, yet their bodies trembled with a sensation that was still horrific and profoundly frightening.

“……As expected, I can’t see a damn thing.”

Rob said with difficulty, leaning over to look inside.

It was just past noon. The sun was overhead, and its blinding rays shone directly through the broken windows.

Even at this hour, when shadows are shortest, the hole reached the bottom of the ground, swallowing light even in the brightest sunlight.

Jina looked down, then took a notebook from her bag and tore out a few pages.

Then, she borrowed a lighter from Rob and set the thin paper ablaze.

Fwoosh.

The paper caught fire and burned quickly. She immediately threw the flaming ball down into the pit.

The fireball fell into the deep darkness.

It fell much deeper than they had estimated, and its light was instantly extinguished the moment it hit the bottom.

“It’s still swallowing light. Does that mean its power remains, even though the prison is broken?”

“I suppose so. Haa, let’s go down for now.”

Andy looked up at the sky, his eyes narrowed.

There was still time before sunset, but if they tied a rope and went up and down, darkness would descend with brutal speed.

“Let’s hurry.”

The three moved with purpose.

They parked the truck as close to the mansion as possible, secured a sturdy rope, and lowered it to the bottom of the pit.

Andy and Rob played rock-paper-scissors to decide who went first. Rob finally let out a long, theatrical sigh. Then, wearing a helmet with a lantern and thick gloves, he gripped the rope.

“Ugh, why the hell did I pick scissors!”

As if greatly displeased about being the first to descend into the bowels of the earth, Rob grumbled continuously as he slowly lowered himself.

“Keep grumbling like that. It’s a good way to hear how far down you’ve gone.”

“Oh, I really will! Shine your flashlight around, mate!”

Andy chuckled and turned on a super-powerful flashlight he had bought in some village, its beam searing the gloom.

As light poured out, so bright it could blind anyone looking directly at it, the interior of the pit finally began to take shape.

Jina looked down from the edge of the pit and murmured, her voice laced with grim contempt.

“It looks like a garbage dump.”

Crumbling debris was piled up haphazardly, forming small, gray mountains.

Furthermore, discarded first-aid packaging, bandages, and tissues left by the rescue teams lay wet and scattered in the corners.

Then, on a cleared section of the floor, a large, wide black stain was visible. It was undoubtedly the trace of James McCoy, who had bled out here from a fatal wound.

In the end, they never found the severed arm. That’s why for a while, the third-rate tabloid newspapers wrote all sorts of ridiculous ghost stories.

They said a disembodied arm wandered around the mansion, searching for its body.

But now she knew where that arm was.

It must have eaten it.

All the humans who had disappeared here must have become Ian’s meal.

Rob soon reached the bottom. He looked around with his flashlight and shouted upwards.

“It still seems to be swallowing light, you can see it! The light doesn’t go far from here.”

“I see. Here, take this.”

Andy tossed the super-powerful flashlight he was holding downwards. After seeing Rob catch it, Jina called out to him.

“Rob! Shine it on the walls!”

When they had first been here, she had clearly seen strange, unsettling writing covering the stone.

She had asked the rescue workers who had gone down to examine it further, but in the chaotic aftermath, they had completely ignored her.

Rob shone the flashlight Andy had lowered toward the wall.

“Ah……”

For a moment, Jina felt a cold, exquisite horror seize her gut.

On every wall the beam touched, densely packed letters—a swirling, archaic script—were visible.

“What’s wrong? Is there something there?”

“What do you mean, what’s wrong? Don’t you see that?”

“See what?”

Andy looked bewildered at Jina’s sharp question.

“There are so many letters on the wall over there……”

“On the wall? Letters?”

“Yes, don’t you see them?”

“All I see are water stains and mold.”

After looking at each other for a moment, they shouted toward Rob below.

“Rob! Do you see letters on the wall?”

“Rob! Does it look like there’s something written on the wall?”

Suddenly, as the two shouted in unison, Rob, flustered, shone the light around and replied.

“It’s just a wall, isn’t it?”

At Rob’s answer, Andy gave a look that said, “See?” Jina let out a short, frustrated sigh.

“Only I can see them.”

“What kind of letters are they?”

“Just a moment. It’s hard to explain in words……”

Jina took out her tablet and, using the powerful beam from the surface, snapped a picture of the wall Rob was illuminating. Then, she opened the photo in an app and began tracing the black letters, exactly as she saw them.

After tracing the visible parts to some extent, Jina immediately handed the tablet to Andy.

“Can you read this?”

“……It looks like this?”

Andy looked back and forth between Jina’s drawn script and the underground wall, his expression one of shock mixed with fear.

To him, it was just a rough wall bearing the marks of time.

In fact, it was closer to dirt than stone. Yet, in Jina’s eyes, the entire surface was filled with letters, without a single blank space.

Just in case, Andy clutched the amulet remaining in his pocket and looked at the wall, but nothing changed.

Rob confirmed the same from below.

“It’s only visible to Jina……”

“Is this the power of bloodline they talk about? But it’s usually passed down through the maternal line, so I shouldn’t have any Troll Family power.”

“Even if it is passed down that way, Jina must be strong enough to see it. That’s why Ian too……”

Andy abruptly cut himself off, having spoken that far.

“I haven’t seen letters exactly like these before. But there are partial similarities, and if my guess is right……”

“Isn’t it ‘to grasp’?”

Jina answered before Andy could finish.

“Huh? How the hell did you know that?”

“……I just did.”

She hadn’t an option but to give that answer.

She’d skimmed the dossiers Andy and Rob had pulled together, running her eyes over the ancient script, but her study had been superficial at best; she hadn’t dared to delve. In a life defined by the daily hunt, by the sight of blood spilled before her eyes, it would have been a terrifying luxury to have found the focus for proper research.

Besides, though the characters now covering the stone bore a shadow of similarity to the recorded scripts, they were absolutely not the same.

Each symbol was so delicate, so complex, that it was a constant battle to distinguish script from sinister art.

Yet the moment Jina’s gaze landed on the wall, something in her gut knew what these things meant.

“This is something vast… a hunt? No. A slaughter.”

Jina whispered the observation, the sound absorbed by the echoing space.

Just then, a gravelly complaint rose from the darkness below.

“You two coming down or what? I’m scared!”

It was Andy who descended first, trading places with Rob, whose anxiety about being alone was more of a grumble than a plea.

“I can’t ask someone as heavy as you to take the lead.”

“Cheers, then.”

In truth, the constant strain of walking had started to take a toll. Perhaps it was the sheer relief of finally reaching Kno Diag that had shattered her tension, but a bone-deep weariness had settled in, bringing with it a subtle, unnerving queasiness she hadn’t noticed before.

“If something goes south and we’re all down here, it’s hell. Until we get a proper way in and out, one person stays above. Always.”

Truly anxious, Andy double-checked the rigging, connecting a few more ropes to anchors elsewhere.

While Andy worked, Rob began scouting the lower area. Jina, meanwhile, took a relentless succession of photos of the wall, meticulously copying the carved characters and organizing them one by one.

She hadn’t taken a proper inventory in her initial shock, but as she worked, a pattern emerged: beneath their elaborate, complex façade, a few core characters repeated with minor, agonizing variations.

Stranger still, every time Jina looked at the symbols, she felt their meaning pulsing through her. It wasn’t simple recognition or understanding; it was a visceral, chilling sensation.

Touching the photos on her tablet, Jina’s curiosity spiked.

These were symbols written so densely they seemed to cover every inch of this enormous pit’s walls. They had lasted for a long time, even on the soft, earthen surface.

What the hell were they written with?

“Hoo…”

Jina straightened from her crouch, rotating her shoulders to relieve the creaking strain of sitting and deciphering. She lifted her head, intending to survey the immediate surroundings.

Then, on the wall near the collapsed edge, she saw a faint trace, something like red writing.

In that instant, she was hit by a cold memory of what William had told her at the hospital—that old Ian had peed on the wall and it had collapsed soon after.

Looking around now, she saw intact writing. Marks that had been utterly invisible to her eyes when she’d been here before.

It’s only appearing now…

Jina’s expression hardened to bitter apprehension as she reached out to touch the characters. It was unbelievable that they could be so vivid, yet utterly unseen by others.

Then, the sickening realization hit.

The form of the writing was the same, but the characters on this wall were red, completely unlike the faded ones in the pit.

Why only this?

She reached out and grazed the wall. With a faint tearing sound, the painted characters cracked and crumbled, floating down to the floor.

Jina’s eyes narrowed. She knew this texture.

Dried blood.

She examined the symbols that remained. The ones clinging precariously to the surface yielded powerlessly to her touch.

According to Mr. Evans, the wall had collapsed right after it was defaced.

She brushed the crumbling fragments off her hands and stood.

Even without a detailed comparison, the characters written on the first floor’s walls and those in the pit were clearly the work of different hands, separated by a significant lapse of time.

She continued her examination.

The wall was covered with wallpaper, not paint. Carefully peeling back a loose edge, she found something written behind it.

It was a company name, a clear machine stamp.

The fact that it was written on wallpaper meant the writing above could have been done at most a few decades ago.

Frida Troll must have added this herself during her lifetime.

Was it some kind of repair work?

She wouldn’t have just drawn this out of boredom. There had to have been a reason.

Jina photographed the characters with her tablet without touching them again. She sat down and began the agonizing task of interpretation.

Her shallow knowledge and instinct alone wouldn’t allow for a proper translation, but she couldn’t afford to give up.

After a protracted struggle, Jina sorted the fragments she had interpreted, scrawling them onto a piece of paper. What she could grasp from the symbols was their abstract, chilling meaning.

Much like Chinese characters.

“This one must be prey or sacrifice… and this is completion? The end?”

Even the partial meanings were deeply unsettling.

She surmised that something was completed by offering something else. Jina recalled her grandmother’s final instruction.

When I die, leave it as it is.

After the house entirely collapsed, there would be nothing left to care for.

Then, what will be the last thing remaining in this house?

Suddenly, Jina shot to her feet.

Hadn’t things been continuously vanishing from this house?

People.

Though many had been eaten rather than simply disappeared… they were all people.

And the characters were written in blood.

Indeed, the most suspicious material was human blood. It wouldn’t have been difficult to obtain in ancient times.

In a barbaric era, they would have simply caught a passing Human and slit their throat.

Or it could have been self-offered.

In the past, it wouldn’t be surprising if they had stabbed themselves, calling it a glorious death.

Is it easier to obtain in modern times?

Hospitals kept blood packs. Someone with Frida Troll’s wealth and cunning could have easily procured them.

Just then, Andy, who was sweating and panting from the constant climbs, returned to the top and addressed Jina.

“The ladder’s installed. Want to head down?”

“Let’s. Who’s staying up? You or Rob?”

“I’ll go up!”

Rob’s shout echoed from below as if he’d been waiting for the signal.

“I’d prefer Rob to stay up here.”

“Ah, why! I went down first.”

“Andy seems better at the setup. And I want to hunt for what Mr. Evans asked us to find together.”

“Evans?”

“Yes, William Evans.”

Rob froze as Jina abruptly spoke the name of the colleague they’d experienced the horrific accident with, then asked in a flustered voice.

“William’s request?”

“He asked me at the hospital. If we ever came back to Kno Diag, to find the memory card he dropped here. I thought it was just the shock talking… but it turns out, we’re finding it.”

She had dismissed his plea as the gibberish of a man traumatized by the loss of his friends, but it was all true.

“Where’d he drop it? Andy, hurry up and get out! I’ll find it!”

His earlier insistence on going back up had vanished without a trace. He began shining his lantern into every dark corner, frantically moving debris aside.

Watching Rob’s sudden, frenzied enthusiasm, Jina gave a wry smile.

After Andy had climbed up and completely exited the lower area, Jina turned and began her careful descent down the rope ladder with footholds.

Even after only a few steps, the darkness enveloped her like a shroud. Her hands trembled with an instinctive, primal fear.

Taking a deep, deliberate breath, Jina descended slowly and looked up.

She’d descended about twenty steps, with each step roughly fifty centimeters. That made it about ten meters deep, give or take.

It feels twice as far.

The distant ground above felt subjectively double the distance.

Looking around, Jina offered a rare praise to Rob, who was digging diligently through the collapsed ruin.

“You certainly volunteered to come down here first.”

“Right? Right? It’s a truly unpleasant place.”

Jina genuinely respected Rob and Andy for their courage. The moment she stepped into this pit, she was hit by an indescribable ‘malignancy’.

Her expression hardened, and a cold sweat trickled down her face. Her mind screamed for her to get out of here.

But what baffled Jina most wasn’t the fear.

Why does this place feel familiar?

She had been here before, but never down here. Yet, in this pit, she felt fear, anger, and familiarity all at once.

Jina realized the emotions she felt were a form of trauma, as if she had been trapped here for a long, endless time.

“…”

She stroked her swollen belly.

Is it because of this?

This wasn’t her fear. It was the fear felt by the thing in her belly.

Even more absurd was the fact that she felt pity for its terror.

Jina bit her lip, pulling more talismans from the bag that held her mother’s charms, stuffing them into her pockets.

Then, as if nothing had happened, she began to explore the depths alongside Rob.

Darkness had fully descended. As the light faded, the outlines of all surrounding objects quickly blurred, and Jina and Rob hurried back up.

“Let’s head back.”

Andy looked just as drained from going up and down all day.

On the road, Andy turned on the radio again. It was only static until they passed a certain marker, and then a human voice mixed with the white noise.

When they hit the main road, the broadcast was, though still staticky, quite clear.

The voice on the radio spoke calmly about the government struggling with trade friction with China, the escalating civil war in Africa, and a major flood caused by abnormal weather somewhere on the globe.

As if it were all someone else’s problem.

Jina wondered what it would be like if the news about three foolish Humans making a fuss trying to catch a monster in Kno Diag was mixed in with that calm voice.

And that Ian Aylesford was that monster, a monster who had consumed many people.

She rested her chin on her hand and stared out at a distant peak.

She knew the announcer would speak calmly about that, too, as if it were simply someone else’s problem.

When they arrived back at the village, Andy stopped the car and told the two who’d gotten out first.

“You two wash up. I’m taking a run to the next village over.”

Rob tilted his head at the sudden pronouncement.

“Alone?”

“Need to pick up a few things, no need for all of us. You both look like death, so clean up and rest.”

“Did we need to buy anything else?”

“Uh… as I was setting things up, I realized I needed a few more bits and pieces. Anything you two want to eat?”

At Andy’s answer, Jina immediately knew he was lying.

But she didn’t press him. She understood exactly why he needed to go out alone.

“Buy some more beer.”

“Will do. Jina, anything for you?”

“I… just buy the most expensive fruit you can find at a nearby supermarket.”

Saying this, Jina handed him all the money she had left in her bag. It was no longer necessary for her. Money couldn’t stop monsters, after all.

“That’s too much.”

“Buy something that expensive with it. I suddenly have a desperate craving for pineapple or passion fruit.”

“Don’t know if they’ll have those this far into the backwoods this season.”

Andy accepted the cash with a wry, knowing smile. He also realized that Jina had seen through him but was granting him his privacy.

Watching Andy drive away, Jina had her answer.

It had to be to contact the police.

When they first left the safe house, he had contacted Detective Howard once a day without fail.

But the frequency of those calls had gradually decreased.

She’d secretly overheard one call. She couldn’t make out Detective Howard’s replies, so she didn’t know the full conversation, but the woman in London sounded like she was struggling.

She must be worried.

Additional support would be impossible.

They themselves were a liability.

They might be brainwashed by Ian, or perhaps they would simply die.

Jina went into the bathroom. A while later, after washing the dust and terror off her skin, Rob was already sprawled on the sofa, snoring loudly.

After roughly towel-drying her wet hair, Jina gathered her clothes and amulets and went outside.

Still, only the rustling sound of dry grass brushed by the wind could be heard—no sound of any life at all.

The silence was a vacuum that made her feel as if she were the only one left in the world.

Jina moved to a chair on the terrace and sat hunched over, waiting for any small sound.

Even the engine of a passing car. Or perhaps the sound of Andy’s return.

But contrary to her desperate wishes, Andy did not return by the next morning.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Sitting on the terrace, waiting for Andy, Rob was blankly rapping the railing with a tree branch.

The rhythmic tapping was the only sound. Jina, also staring blankly at the empty road, checked her watch.

11:30 AM.

The closest village he could have gone to was about an hour away by car. He should have been back hours ago.

“…Is he dead?”

After a long period of heavy silence, Rob stopped his hand and muttered the question.

“Who knows.”

“Then was he caught?”

“…Possibly.”

“Then shouldn’t we go rescue him?”

At those words, Jina finally let out a soft, cold chuckle. It wasn’t a mocking sound.

It was because she found Rob’s naive faith—the certainty that Andy would never have simply run away—admirable and almost cute.

“No. We go to Kno Diag.”

Saying that, Jina stood up.

She went inside, retrieved the car keys with the worn doll attached, and came back out.

She had found the car yesterday in a house in the village, and thankfully, the keys as well.

She’d even charged the battery in case of any unseen circumstance, and now she had to use it immediately.

“Whether he’s dead or alive, the only thing left for us is to go there. This is all we have left.”

Rob nodded at Jina’s stark logic.

She was right.

If Ian had caught and killed him, they would soon be coming for the rest of them. They had to be at Kno Diag.

Even if Andy hadn’t been caught, it was only a matter of time before their current location was discovered.

The two moved the remaining equipment from another house into the vehicle and headed for Kno Diag.

Having visited yesterday, the eerie mansion felt oddly familiar. After getting out of the car, the two immediately decided on their tasks.

“I’ll go down first and look for the memory card.”

With that, he shoved a small crowbar, which he’d found in a village warehouse, into his backpack and went underground.

He was clearly more motivated than yesterday, driven by a specific object to find.

They had agreed to switch places after two hours, so Jina had to remain above until Rob returned.

She immediately returned to the characters at the bottom of the first-floor wall that she had been deciphering yesterday.

Perhaps because it was the second day, her speed of understanding was noticeably faster. Just in case, she picked up the red lacquer spray paint Andy had left behind and headed for the outer wall of the mansion.

Even though it wasn’t shaded, an eerie, cold aura lingered all day. Jina found an intact wall and stood before it.

“To block, to protect, to defend, darkness…”

She muttered, and began drawing the characters that held those specific meanings onto the wall.

Chik. Chiiik.

With every movement of her hand, red characters appeared on the wall along with the hiss of the spray.

A moment later, Jina looked around, her eyes widening.

“It’s brighter…?”

There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.

She had only been standing here for a few minutes. The amount of sunlight suddenly pouring down shouldn’t have changed, yet it was distinctly brighter around her.

As if the characters she had just drawn had exerted some tangible effect.

Jina quickly grabbed the notebook she had written in, and frantically began combining the characters, drawing them onto the wall.

Each time, the feeling of the surroundings shifted, albeit very subtly.

Sometimes she would return to the beginning, but one thing was certain: by simply copying them, they held a terrible power.

Chik.

How frantically did she draw?

The lacquer soon ran out of propellant, making a weak, final sound before no more paint would emerge.

“Damn it.”

Jina threw it away and slumped to the ground.

She had confirmed that the characters held power, but this was nowhere near enough to restore the weakened trap.

She wiped her face with both hands, stood up, and went to the toolbox. She opened it, found a long utility knife, and lightly sliced her fingertip.

A sharp stab of pain, and a bead of red blood bloomed on her fingertip. Jina walked straight toward the edge of the pit, to the section where Frida Troll had first traced the script.

Then, she traced the remaining script.

“……!”

The change was immediate. Before she could finish the first character, she felt it. A lightning-strike clarity.

“Jina!” Rob shouted from below.

“What the hell did you do up there?”

“What is it?”

“No, something… it feels wrong right now…”

Rob couldn’t quite name the sensation, but he felt the shift, the chilling, palpable power.

Jina swallowed a throatful of grit. Her voice was trembling. “I traced the script with blood. And something… snapped into place. You feel it, don’t you? That horrible, lingering atmosphere wasn’t just residue. It’s… breathing again.”

It was the visceral sensation of pouring water onto a completely withered plant and watching its dead leaves slowly regain vitality.

“……Wow.”

Rob made a low, appreciative whistle, then climbed up, his gaze glued to the blood-slicked characters. He shivered. “It’s effective. And utterly terrifying.”

“I was thinking the exact same thing.”

“So what’s the move?”

“The move? Hand.”

“What—what are you doing… Aagh! Ow!” Rob yelped, snatching his hand back the instant Jina pricked his fingertip with the utility knife.

“What the hell was that for?”

“What does it look like? I’m borrowing blood.”

“Ask first! When you pull a knife on me, I assume you’ve finally been brainwashed!”

Rob grumbled but immediately offered his finger again. Jina dipped her finger in his blood and traced over the symbols on a different wall.

Rob watched, his face filled with morbid anticipation.

A moment later.

“Hmm…”

“Uh…”

Both of them let out ambiguous sighs.

Rob’s blood also gave the script a surge of power, far beyond the useless lacquer. But it was undeniably weaker than Jina’s initial tracing, a fact even Rob couldn’t miss.

“Looks like it favors the homeowner.”

“Thank God for that. For a second, I felt like handing you the deed. Want it? It’s all yours.”

“I sincerely decline.”

As they exchanged trivial remarks, Jina handed Rob an adhesive bandage from the first-aid kit. At any rate, it was certain that her blood was far more useful than Rob’s.

‘Is this a Troll thing?’ She thought of the frantic scholar who’d ended his own life after surrendering his research, and the lore of the land’s sorceresses. The power, they said, was stronger down the maternal line. Was that the source of Frida Troll’s heartbreak over her daughter’s death? ‘If her daughter had just lived…’ None of this would have happened. None of it would have started. The house would have simply passed to the next Troll woman.

“In any case, it has to be done with my blood, but if I do the whole thing here… No, I’d be dead from excessive bleeding before I finished.”

“It is a bit extensive.”

She had to find a way. Rob went back down to the basement, and Jina racked her brain upstairs.

‘Get the beast’s blood. Test it. See if mixing works.’

Was there a way to intensify the blood’s inherent power?

Was she truly the last of the Troll surname?

It was, after all, a foreign name in this country. Thoughts flashed, frantic and wild. But no single answer emerged. She just had to act, starting with the immediate: finding the beast’s blood.

With her mind a maelstrom, Jina rose and began pacing the perimeter of the mansion.

Despite the great, gaping pit, the house was a truly colossal monument. She used to puzzle over why such a vast structure was built in such a remote place, but now the truth was brutally clear.

It was an ancient testament to a victory—a place where fear was once confined, and still had to be contained. At one time, it must have been nothing less than a temple.

Turning to the back of the mansion, she came upon a small, haphazard clutch of tombstones.

Perhaps it was Frida Troll’s final, obstinate gesture to leave the dead where they lay, but a surprising number of the Troll family were interred here.

Jina read the names carved into the stone without emotion. Most were children who hadn’t lived long. If her prematurely deceased aunt and Frida’s daughter were here, their names should be among them.

But as Jina read them all, a chilling anomaly stood out. Frederic. William. Jacob. Every name on every tombstone was male.

‘Where are the girls?’

Girls died, too. Their graves had to be here. But there were no women’s names.

The realization hit her like a physical blow, connecting three impossible dots: Frida’s instruction to be ‘left as she was’ inside the house; the death of her young daughter without a corresponding grave; and the sheer, impossible volume of script Frida had written, too much to have been sourced from a single person.

‘Could it be…?’

A shudder ran through her. No. It couldn’t be. Not a chance. Not possibly… The denial was a lie. Jina spun around and sprinted back inside.

Then, she snatched up the largest sledgehammer from the toolbox—the kind used to take down walls. She practically dragged it across the floor. She found the point on the first floor where the script began, ran her hand along the wall, and found a section where the mold-stained wallpaper was peeling away.

Ripping it off, she exposed a dirt and brick surface covered in an unsettling density of moss. Jina lifted the hammer with a savage surge of adrenaline, and without a breath of hesitation, she struck.

WHAM!

With that single blow, the wall—which should have been solid brick and clay—crumbled weakly.

WHAM! WHAM!

Jina hammered, the debris piling up.

“Jina! What in God’s name are you doing up there?” Rob’s shout echoed up from the pit, laced with pure alarm at the deafening sound. Jina didn’t even hear him, smashing the wall like a woman possessed.

After several blows, the wall began to yield, creating a deep indentation.

‘It’s thick.’

The space behind was the underside of the main staircase—a typical triangular storage closet. She cleared out the junk left inside.

Looking into the deepest part, she sighed: the space was walled off halfway back. It might have been plastered over for convenience, but Jina knew better. This inner wall served a purpose.

“Jina!” When she didn’t respond, a frantic Rob sprinted up the stairs.

Jina thrust the hammer into his hands. “I need this broken. Help me.”

“Are you insane? Why are you smashing a wall? This is directly under the stairs! If they collapse, we lose access to the second floor.”

“It doesn’t matter. Everything that counts is downstairs now.”

Her answer was cold steel. Rob hesitated, then took the hammer. “Stand back. Dangerous.” He easily lifted the massive weight Jina could barely manage and swung it with brutal force.

“Youth is a hell of a thing.”

“You’re acting old, and you’re barely a decade older than me.”

WHAM! WHAM!

The idle chatter continued as the wall dissolved into fragments. Then, as they punched through to the hidden section, Rob’s movements came to a dead stop.

“Look. This…”

Rob backed away, pointing at the cavity. Something protruded from the crumbling dirt and masonry.

“Bones.”

Not a rat. These were larger, bent at regular intervals, instantly recognizable from forensics shows. They were, without a doubt, human ribs.

Jina grabbed a smaller hammer and delicately cleared the remaining dirt. From between the remains, she retrieved a rusty, dirt-caked necklace pendant.

“Ava Troll…” Jina mumbled the name on the pendant, turning it over in her hands. “Hello, Aunt.”

It took a long, grim stretch of time to extract all the bones. Rob, initially shaken by the sight of “human bones!”, seemed to come to a strange, horrific form of peace. “No reason to be afraid of the dead, I guess,” he muttered.

“But why were they sealed in the wall?”

“Who knows. They wanted them hidden. I suspect all the Troll women—no, all the women—are sealed somewhere in this mansion.”

“What kind of monstrous thing are you saying now?”

Jina explained the tombstones and the sight of Frida Troll’s body upstairs.

“Ugh, glad I stayed down here… More importantly, what do we do with this? Burial?”

“No. We use it.”

“Use it?”

“Just… promise you won’t call me disgusting. I won’t blame you if you do.”

“What are you planning?”

“What else?”

Without answering, Jina picked up the hammer and smashed a bone fragment lying on the floor. She picked up a splinter, pressed it against her arm, and made a shallow cut. As the wound beaded, she dipped the bone into her blood and traced the script onto the broken wall.

Rob stared, mouth agape, and after a stunned silence, whispered, “Unbelievable… Why…”

The mold and moss on the section Jina had traced with the blood-laced bone vanished instantly. The crumbling wall snapped back to a pristine state, as if it had just been freshly constructed and wallpapered.

“Don’t ask me why it works this way,” Jina sighed, wiping the blood from her face. “It just felt like… a human being would be the highest quality material.”

“So the world really did need its tools after all.” Jina muttered, staring at the first floor, which had been transformed in a single, brutal day.

“Wouldn’t that be the difference in the material, rather than the tool?”

“Don’t argue with me.”

“I help you, and I get lectured.”

Talking like true siblings in the face of the unspeakable, they sat against the newly fortified wall, contemplating the restored first floor. They had found that small characters lacked power, so they’d used the remaining lacquer on the outer walls to test combinations until they found the precise alignment that exerted the necessary force.

Beside her, Rob, still murmuring prayers to God, worked diligently to pulverize Ava Troll’s bones. He’d hammered them into a coarse sand. Jina mixed her blood with the powder and wrote.

“…I suddenly feel like primitive people were more civilized and refined than we are.”

“…I suppose so.”

The cold realization that they were using human remains as raw material settled a profound existential horror over them both. The sky outside had begun to bleed red.

“We should go back.”

“Right. Andy might be back.”

“…”

Rob walked toward the car without a word. Jina followed, her steps heavy with the day’s terrible weight.

Andy didn’t return that night, either. They sat on the terrace, maintaining their silent vigil.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The branch rapped against the railing, a nervous tic hoping to serve as a beacon. They finally caught a few hours of sleep when dawn broke, before heading back to Kno Diag.

Rob refused to enter the pit before noon; the darkness and malevolence had accumulated overnight, and they needed time for the atmosphere to dissipate.

Rob, seeing Jina slump down in pure exhaustion, spoke with grave concern. “You need more rest. Your face is ghastly.”

Jina walked to the car and looked at her reflection. Her face, slicked with cold sweat, was corpse-pale even to her own eyes

. With no surgical means of harvesting, she had been deliberately creating new wounds to collect the flowing blood.

The process had given them the useless knowledge that human wounds heal much faster than anticipated.

Consequently, Jina had to make deeper cuts. Her arms were now a landscape of aching pain.

“I’m going to die of tetanus before Ian even gets a shot at me.”

“If that monster eats us while we’re sick, do you think it’ll catch a bug?”

“That… I honestly haven’t considered. Is it possible?”

Noon arrived. After a quick, simple meal, Jina announced she was going down.

“But—”

“If I stay up here, I’ll only find a way to bleed myself more. The job is nearly finished, and I want to re-trace the script downstairs. It might scatter the darkness, make finding that memory card easier.”

At the word ‘memory card,’ Rob snatched up the rope ladder and urged her to descend. Jina carefully climbed down and immediately made for the wall. Her lantern beam revealed a surface covered in black, ancient script. All of it, she knew, was written in blood.

‘It’s not just blood mixed with ink.’

This script had held a monster captive for over a thousand years.

Whose blood, whose flesh, whose bones had been ground into this wall?

The one certainty was that most of them bore the surname Troll.

Jina took the container Rob lowered: Ava Troll’s bone powder and a makeshift brush. She untied the dressing on her arm and forced a fresh bead of blood from the wound.

Dipping the brush, she drew a long, deliberate line directly through the ancient script. She was defacing the trap, intentionally breaking the link to prevent it from exerting its full, terrible power.

In that instant, the deep, heavy darkness that had pooled in the base of the pit vanished.

“Whoa!” Rob shouted down, astonishment ringing in his voice. The pit now contained shadows and light, an ordinary underground space flooded by the midday sun streaming directly into the massive hole.

Jina set the brush down and shrugged. “We’ll restore the power later. First, we find that memory card.”

“…Found it.” Rob held up the dust-covered memory card, his face a mask of disbelief. It was exactly two hours after Jina had shattered the darkness.

“Hurry up and bring it!”

“On my way!”

Rob tossed the shovel, pocketed the card, and scrambled up the rope ladder. Jina ran to the car and returned with her laptop. After meticulously cleaning the card, they sat side-by-side, faces tense, and inserted it into the laptop port.

Click.

The sound of the card locking into place was disproportionately loud. The recognition window popped up instantly. Jina found the folder.

“There it is.” Video files, all timestamped with the date of the accident, appeared on the screen.

Hoo. Both Jina and Rob released a simultaneous breath.

“Open it.” Jina double-clicked the first file. The recorded video immediately filled the screen, starting inside a car.

The camera shook erratically, as if being handled while driving, finally coming to rest on the dashboard. In that moment, a hand snatched it up. The person who took it filled the screen.

“…!” They both sucked in a sharp breath. The face staring back was Ian’s.

[Is this the new camera you bought?] He tapped the lens playfully.

[Don’t do that. You’ll scratch the lens.]

[Who cares? I bought it with my own money, so can’t I touch it?]

Ian instantly snapped into irritation at William’s mild comment.

[Ah, fuck.]

He roughly tossed the camera back onto the dashboard. They both rubbed their foreheads, watching the frantic, dizzying screen.

“It’s been a long time, but he’s still such a goddamn nuisance.”

“He was always like that.”

Even as she spoke, Jina couldn’t tear her eyes from Ian’s figure in the corner of the frame.

The face was identical to the man she had once loved. Of course. He was Ian Aylesford.

But she was acutely, chillingly aware that it was just a shell. The Ian in the video was as frivolous as the day she met him—the perfect embodiment of an arrogant, rich, and deeply annoying third-generation heir.

The sight sparked no flicker of warmth, only an intense, visceral annoyance that made her want to never see him again, even in a short clip.

The video cut out. Jina immediately clicked the second file.

The camera remained on the dashboard. The only difference was that Colin Parker could now be seen talking on his phone through the car window.

“Colin…” Rob watched the screen and began to openly sob.

Jina felt a strange, cold pull of emotion. All these people, now dead, were alive and moving in the video.

The clip ended. She played the third one, and the haunted, recognizable facade of Kno Diag finally came into view.

The camera, properly secured to her body, offered stable footage, a stark contrast to the violently shaking chaos of the earlier clips.

William headed inside after checking his equipment. Camilla, captured by the lens, was gesturing, explaining the house’s layout.

Jina had found Camilla merely annoying the one time they’d met. Now, remembering the bloodied earring found in Kushi’s mouth, she felt only a hollow surge of pity.

Jina continued to watch, the weight in her chest growing heavy. All of them… food. They were just food for the monster.

Finally, the footage they’d been bracing for appeared.

A faint voice could be heard—scolding Ian for being careless—followed by Camilla’s sharp gasp of surprise.

Then the world shook.

Darkness swallowed the screen, accompanied by a chorus of frantic screams. The beginning of everything. Both Jina and Rob held their breath, frozen.

Rob covered his mouth, a choked sob tearing through his chest as the groans and screams of the victims filled the quiet room.

Then, a sound, alien and chilling, cut through the noise.

“Blood.”

“Wait.”

Jina slammed the pause button, rewound the video a few seconds, and played it again. The voice came through once more.

“Blood.”

“Blood.”

“Blood.”

Rob’s face drained of color. On the screen, the person filming looked around in startled confusion. Now, the voice was unmistakable.

Jina listened to the chilling loop, biting down hard on her lip until she tasted copper.

It was a damp, low, rough voice—like something dragging itself across a stone floor. She knew the owner.

It was Ian’s voice, the one she’d encountered in London. More precisely, the one she’d hear in the blissful, half-conscious haze of their intimacy.

This was his real voice.

The monster’s true voice, uncorrupted, unborrowed from a human shell.

Amid the mounting terror, Camilla’s helpless plea and Ian’s panicked efforts to flee echoed loudly.

Then, the sickening sound of crunching and tearing, followed by James’s final, gut-wrenching scream.

“Disgusting taste.”

Jina pressed play, refusing to pause, forcing herself to witness the end.

Colin’s voice was the last to register. William must have moved, tilting the camera enough for the ceiling light and Colin’s descending form on a rope to become visible.

“As expected…”

As William’s muffled voice declared, he hadn’t run.

No matter his desperate hunger for glory or the thirst for success that had driven him here, he was a man who wouldn’t abandon his own.

Then, the darkness surged.

It coiled around the rope Colin was dangling from and yanked him straight down.

〈Help me! Help…!〉

The video starkly captured Colin hitting the floor, then being violently dragged away.

The thing—the darkness—was crouched on the floor, its mouth open, devouring him.

“Ugh.”

Rob, protected by the charm but positioned directly behind the screen, clamped a hand over his mouth, violently gagging.

Jina stopped the video, captured the frame, and frantically began adjusting the brightness balance on the editing software.

The shape of the darkness in the corner sharpened, becoming visible.

“I can see it…”

If she could clean up the video, others might finally see.

Jina immediately copied the video file and shoved the memory card deep into her pocket.

“Let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere. The nearest town with internet access is fine.”

Jina tidied up with swift, agitated movements and started the car.

She knew Ian was already tightening his grip on the world. Even if she uploaded the footage, the humans he’d brainwashed would likely scrub it clean within minutes.

Still, she was glad.

If one person—just one—could know what happened here. If they could know how they died…

Jina floored the accelerator before Rob even had a chance to close the door.

Desperate to escape Kno Diag and find the anonymity of a new city, Jina saw a car barreling toward them in the distance.

“Wait, is that…”

“Andy! It’s Andy!”

Before Jina could confirm, Rob erupted. He flung open the window and waved wildly at the oncoming vehicle.

“Andy! Andyyyyyy!”

As the distance closed, they realized it was him. Jina slammed on the brakes.

Andy screeched to a halt as well, running toward them.

“Andy! Where the hell have you been! We thought you were dead!”

She’d believed he was alive, but tears of raw, blinding relief flooded her eyes at the sight of him.

“Sorry, but take this first.”

Ignoring their emotional reunion, Andy met their joyful faces with a grim calm, thrusting a bag of gear into Jina’s hands.

“What is this?”

“Burner phones. Guns. Other things.”

“Mobile phones?”

They’d discarded them, knowing they were the easiest things to track. Now he was handing them back.

As they stared at him, confused, Andy hesitated for a single, heavy moment before the words dropped like stones.

“The London Metropolitan Police betrayed us.”

Back at the house, the truth he delivered was simple, brutal.

Andy had been restless when contact with Inspector Haywood grew increasingly sporadic. Eventually, all communication had ceased.

The cold certainty of unease had settled in.

The police, who should have been moving, were offering no support.

To get a definitive confirmation, Andy had driven to a remote town to make the call.

He couldn’t trust the London Metropolitan Police, but he trusted her.

Haywood had mentored him since he was a rookie, a bulwark against the political filth of the force. She’d exposed mountains of corruption, holding onto her Inspector position only to continue fighting the good fight on the ground.

“Inspector, I…”

“Detective Andy Haywood.”

The instant the Inspector used his full title, Andy knew.

They had never used real names or titles in their secure calls to avoid tracking.

“I’m sorry.”

The call disconnected with those two words.

Inspector Haywood, the one person he’d relied on, had betrayed him.

From that moment, Andy drove like a madman, acquiring every weapon he could.

Scotland’s rugged, complex coastline and sparse population made it a haven for smuggling.

Guns were easy enough to buy with cash.

Next, a burner phone store.

“Here, everyone take one. I splurged on the good ones. This is the last time, after all.”

Andy handed them the phones, pre-loaded with SIM cards.

“If anyone wants to say their last words, call them now.”

Jina, naturally, had no one to call. If she had to pick one person, her mother in Korea came to mind.

With a heavy sense of defeat, Jina dialed her mother’s old Korean number. But the line only rang, followed by a recorded message in a language she didn’t recognize.

Setting the burner phone down, Jina calmly closed her eyes.

Soon.

She could feel the air growing heavy, thick with a familiar, looming dread.

Ian was close. He’d probably arrive in a few days.

The moment the thought solidified—

“A few days?”

Ian’s voice purred from directly behind her.

“……!”

Jina’s gasp was a choked shriek. She scrambled backward, stumbling to her feet.

But he was faster. His arm shot out, snagging her waist, and he pulled her flush against him, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“I couldn’t wait that long, Mi Reina (My Queen). I came to find you now.”

Jina froze, the sudden assault paralyzing the scream in her throat.

Unbelievable.

Her body, hyper-attuned to the things born of darkness and fear, should have warned her. It was why she’d evaded his pursuit multiple times. Yet, she hadn’t felt his presence until his breath ghosted her skin.

His lips, soft and warm, lingered with a tender, predatory possessiveness before slowly trailing down her face.

He nuzzled her nose, playfully biting it, and she involuntarily squeezed her eyes shut, a sharp, choked gasp escaping her.

“You don’t seem happy to see me.”

He kissed various points on her face, muttering the words with an artificial lilt of disappointment.

His voice, like that of a long-lost lover finally reunited, made Jina’s blood boil.

The sheer, furious rage sliced through her numbness, sharpening her reason.

I need to find Andy and Rob first.

If Ian was here, they weren’t safe. She hadn’t heard their screams, so he hadn’t touched them yet. So—

“Are you worried about them?”

At that moment, as if he’d simply read the intention from her mind, Ian spoke.

Jina’s eyes snapped open. Ian’s blue gaze was fixed on her, unnaturally bright, gleaming.

Once, she would have shyly turned her head from his ardent stare. Now, she saw the truth clearly.

Beyond the sapphire blue, another light flickered—a light no human could possess.

Jina gritted her teeth, spitting the words at him.

“This is a dream. Right?”

She hadn’t said “a few days” aloud, yet he’d appeared, echoing her exact thought. And her concern for Andy and Rob—he’d reacted to it an instant later.

As if he had no intention of denying it, Ian offered a faint, unsettling smile.

“Does it make a difference even if it is?”

At his sarcastic, taunting voice, Jina hauled back and slapped his cheek with every ounce of strength she had left.

Slap!

His head whipped violently to the side. She’d wondered if he’d dodge it, if she could even touch him. She could.

The triumph was short-lived. He turned his head back. There wasn’t a mark, not a single reddening fingerprint. He stepped closer, wrapping his arms around her waist and trapping her against him.

“Let go! You crazy bastard…!”

She struggled, twisting to escape, but his arms tightened, cutting off her breath.

“Ugh…”

Her swollen belly pressed painfully into his rock-hard body.

Jina gasped, unable to pull in a proper breath beneath the sudden, crushing pressure. Ian paid no mind, just squeezed harder.

The force of her pregnancy-swollen organs being mashed against his firm torso made her violently nauseous.

A tiny bit more pressure, and she feared the meager contents of her stomach would erupt from her mouth.

After a long, futile struggle, she finally lowered her arms, desperately panting.

Her breath caught, mind reeling. Why was this torment so visceral, even in a dream?

Ian looked down at the mound of her stomach pressed against his body. Only when her resistance ended did he loosen his iron grip, just slightly. Jina’s body went instantly limp, her breaths ragged and shallow.

Despite being the author of her pain, Ian supported her as if in pity, his hand moving to gently stroke her belly.

“It’s gotten quite big. Was it difficult, my love?”

Her teeth ground together at the honeyed sincerity of his voice.

Even with his true nature revealed, the monster refused to drop the act of the loving partner.

As if nothing had happened.

As if he could make it so.

“What business is it of yours?”

“What business? It’s our child.”

Then, he cupped the back of her head and crushed his mouth to hers. His tongue, aggressive and cold, pried at her lips, then probed repeatedly between her clenched teeth.

Jina clamped her jaws shut, refusing him entry, refusing the surrender.

Then, his knee drove between her legs.

Unlike his tongue, his knee was a brutal, blunt instrument. It pushed forcefully into the deepest recess between her thighs, beginning a relentless rub and grind.

“Hng, ugh, ugh!”

Her body, starved of intimacy for so long, betrayed her, snapping back to old, humiliating sensations. He continued to work her lower body, as if trying to wedge himself into the nonexistent gap.

Despite the simplicity of the movement, a molten, agonizing heat began to spread between her legs.

Ian’s movements found a ruthless rhythm. He’d push hard, then give a brief, teasing release.

“Ah, ugh, ugh!”

She tried to bite back the sound, but the deeper he pressed the attack, the more intense the desperate sounds that escaped her throat.

He backed her against the terrace railing, caging her.

His hands finally released her waist, only to plunge unhesitatingly beneath her shirt.

As her belly swelled, so did her breasts. Sometimes, she’d wake up sticky, her chest damp with pre-milk.

Andy and Rob must have noticed. They’d simply pretended not to know.

He stroked her distended stomach once, then his hand moved up, roughly grasping her heaving breasts.

Her enlarged flesh spilled out between his long fingers, a mortifying, exposed display. His hands seemed to cup her entire chest.

His fingers savored the softness he hadn’t touched in ages. With each squeeze and release, a milky-white droplet of fluid appeared at the hardened tips.

Though the action was hidden beneath her clothing, just as the liquid was about to drip, Ian opened his mouth and clamped down, sucking her breast through the thick cloth.

His tongue, moving with greedy intent over the fabric, pressed hard against the painful peak beneath.

Even as his mouth worked, his hands were actively, powerfully milking her. As the fluid began to flow freely, it streamed down her chest.

“Ah, ahh!”

Jina thrashed violently as he squeezed her breasts as if to burst them, but he only pressed his face deeper into her chest, refusing to pull away.

How long did he feed? The part he bit was soaked, the fabric sticking to her skin, starkly revealing the outline of her distended nipple.

After what felt like an eternity of sucking her breast through her clothes, he pulled back, looking satisfied at the wet stain he’d created. A sweet, milky scent wafted up from the damp cloth.

Ian kissed the trembling peak with a loud, wet smack, a sound of vile possessiveness, then returned to her lips and drove his tongue inside.

Her resolve, forged moments before, crumbled to dust beneath the throbbing, agonizing pain in her chest.

Ian plunged his tongue deep, unhesitatingly, into her parted mouth.

“Ugh…”

A deep, violating kiss, familiar and terrifying, followed. His tongue scraped the delicate inner lining, pushing, pushing deeper.

Jina gasped for air again, her mouth full of him, consumed.

He was always like this.

As if he couldn’t be satisfied without filling her completely, invading every available orifice.

His tongue pushed inward, tickling the deepest part of her throat, a place a human partner could never reach.

The sensation of his tongue hitting her uvula made her gag, again and again, but he ignored it, violating Jina’s mouth until his cruel hunger was momentarily sated.

Only when a strand of saliva—the sickening sign of her lost will to resist—dripped from their joined lips, did he pull away.

“Haa, haa…”

Unable to breathe, her tormented body went slack.

Why, why was this dream so agonizingly vivid? How could she wake up?

Lost in the thought, she watched as Ian shrugged off his coat, spread it on the large, empty terrace table, and laid her down on it.

“What… what are you going to do…”

“You know.”

He climbed lightly atop her, trapping both her wrists with one of his hands. The other hand slipped inside her sweatpants.

His long fingers found her vulva and slid deep inside.

“Hah!”

Her body jolted violently on the table at the unfamiliar internal sensation.

Ian smiled, bright and awful, at her body’s raw, sensitive reaction.

“Looks like no other guy has been messing around in here. It’s still so tight. Damn, how many days is it going to take to stretch this open again?”

Her body trembled at the sudden, coarse language. He usually maintained a veneer of dignity, but once he got physical, his speech dissolved into a vulgar gutter tongue.

Even though she knew his taste was repulsive, the animalistic rage in his words made her lower body betray her, growing wetter faster.

It was happening now. Even knowing he wasn’t human, her stimulated flesh began to seep moisture. But it wasn’t enough for him.

Perhaps he was impatient. He removed his hand and ripped her pants down.

Her swollen belly meant she was wearing elasticated sweatpants, and the garment, along with her panties, came off easily, falling to the floor.

He grabbed her struggling ankles and spread her legs wide. With a sickening, lewd sound, her wet, sensitive cleft parted, and he brought his face between them, speaking just loud enough for her to hear.

“You haven’t washed, have you? It smells strong.”

Her face flushed violently, stained with deep shame.

Jina instinctively tried to clamp her legs shut, overcome by the humiliation.

With her vulva trapped, he stuck out his tongue and began a slow, deliberate lick from the inside. He gripped her thighs firmly with both hands, steadily working his way inward.

“Get out! Get out! You monster… Hah!”

As his long tongue licked her from below, Jina held her breath. His tongue was more lascivious, more thorough than she remembered. He licked her entire perineum, again and again, as if trying to scrub her clean.

His tongue, having savored the outside, soon pressed against her inner lips, parting them, and plunged deep inside.

“Ugh, ugh! Nghghh!”

Jina thrashed wildly against the strange, violating sensation of his tongue tickling her vaginal opening, but Ian only pressed his face closer, pushing his tongue deeper into her core.

The hole, which had been tightly closed because he hadn’t opened it, widened under the pressure, drawing a choked, wounded sound from her throat. But Ian had no mercy to spare for her.

His desperation was a crushing, physical thing, far heavier than her own fear.

After saturating her slick flesh with his saliva, his fingers invaded. One, then two, then a grueling three fingers stretched her open.

Her traitorous body—a fast learner and a good rememberer—began to yield, the reluctant channel gradually opening to his brutal satisfaction.

As a wet, desperate squelch filled the air, he withdrew his hand and buried his face between her legs. Slurp. Slurp. The sound of him greedily drinking the moisture clinging to her flesh was audible, obscene.

Jina screamed, thrashing, but her resistance was a useless dance. Ian, a traveler finding an oasis in the wasteland, frantically swallowed the fluid she yielded. The distinct motion of his Adam’s apple gulping down the sticky liquid was visible along his neck.

“Haa……” He inhaled sharply as he finally pulled his face away. His handsome features were smeared with the sticky, hot fluid.

He licked his palm clean, consuming every trace, then lowered his trousers. His greatly enlarged erection sprang out with a soft thump, throbbing like a serpent desperate to find its lair.

Guiding his heavy length with one hand, he aligned the blunt tip with the entrance he’d expertly breached moments ago. Then, in a single, tearing motion, he drove it home to the root.

“Haaak!” As the massive shaft slid deep inside, Jina’s mouth fell open in a soundless scream. The last flicker of her body’s will to fight shattered instantly.

“Hoo……” He let out a long, ragged exhale, buried completely to the hilt, savoring the tight, slick grip of her walls around his member.

“Ah, ugh, eeuk……” Overwhelmed by primal terror, Jina clutched her swollen stomach and instinctively curled inward. The monster inside her stretched her so brutally wide, the absurd, horrific thought flashed through her mind: if he pulls out now, the child will come with him.

The thought crystallized into blinding panic. Her mind was already fraying from the constant, desperate flight while pregnant. She hadn’t spared a thought for research on pregnancy or childbirth.

She didn’t know how much bigger her stomach would get, what the early signs of labor felt like, or how to push. She hadn’t intended to know. But the possibility of giving birth right here, right now, sent a suffocating, belated terror tightening around her throat.

“Pull, pull it out……” Her plea came out as a desperate, trembling whisper, and surprisingly, Ian obeyed, withdrawing his body instantly.

Even from that single, violent thrust and pull, his shaft was as wet as her insides. Naturally, his erection had not diminished; it stood stiff and ready.

He repositioned himself, dropping to the floor beside the table. He lifted one of her legs, resting her foot on his shoulder, and turned her body onto her side.

He looked down at her, her legs splayed even wider now, and swept a palm over her wet slit with sickening satisfaction. He gripped his shaft and aimed the blunt, swollen head at the entrance once more.

This time, he didn’t take her in a single violation. He entered slowly, unlike before, steadily forcing her wider with tiny, deliberate, torturous movements.

“Aaahh..haaa haaa ahhhh nghhh……” With every small, relentless push, Jina’s pained, strangled cries escaped her lips as she hunched further over herself. Her face was the color of bone.

Once fully embedded again, he began a slow, grinding movement, savoring the insides he had reclaimed after so long. He’d catch the thickest part of his glans on her vaginal opening, stretching and tearing, before rubbing the deepest, most sensitive recess to drive her to the edge of sanity.

Her own fluid, slick and hot, poured out between the straining parts of her body that desperately gripped his length, soaking the ravaged flesh around them.

“You like it this much, so how the hell did you hold back all this time?”

“Ngghhh! Aaahh!”

“You didn’t beg the little offspring inside you to fuck you, did you?”

As if his own taunt had enraged him, the speed of his thrusts began to climb.

Her vaginal lining, a needy, desperate thing, seemed to embrace the shaft she’d been denied for so long. Even with her advanced pregnancy and swollen stomach, her core craved more, and Ian was determined to gorge himself until satisfied.

He gripped the leg resting on his shoulder and, with a violent thwack, pulled out and plunged back in again.

“Aak!” Jina’s head snapped back as his shaft slammed inside, the sheer length threatening to pierce her belly. This was the limit. She couldn’t endure another second. The moment the thought formed, she came, a shuddering, violent climax that he’d forced her to hold back within her core.

Then, he leaned down and kissed Jina’s sweat-drenched face—an action that felt like a reward for her struggle. He guided her arm around his neck. Jina, finding a desperate anchor in his embrace, unconsciously pulled his neck closer.

His smile, utterly satisfied, was right in front of her. “You must have liked that. To be clinging to me like this.”

“……”

Exhaustion glued her lips shut. Unable to summon a single curse, she could only rasp for breath. Her entire body screamed, and her consciousness began to dissolve.

Was this the descent? Was she falling into a deeper dream as consciousness fled within this nightmare? Pondering the terrifying question, Jina finally slipped away.

She would soon have her answer.

“Akcchhhh!” Jina shot upright, gasping for air like a drowning person suddenly pulled to the surface. Silence reigned, thick and absolute. Above, the stars twinkled, cold and indifferent.

The village lights had long been extinguished. There was no artificial glow, only the quiet, ancient twinkle of long-dead stars in the clear country sky.

It was a dream. It had to be a dream. Otherwise, Ian, who had been holding her so tightly, wouldn’t have vanished in a split second.

After a few more frantic breaths, Jina hauled herself up. Her lower body throbbed with a dull, searing ache. She looked down: her legs were splayed wide and limp. Murky fluid was still dripping from between them.

The faint, metallic-sweet smell of semen—sprayed not only deep inside her but also slicking her stomach—wafted faintly on the cool wind.

“Crazy bastard……” Her hands trembling, Jina got off the table and scavenged for her clothing. Damn it. Her underwear had been torn to shreds. Her pants, however, were still intact, a small, twisted courtesy from the monster.

She hastily pulled her pants on, struggling to climb down from the table. “Euk……” Before she could take a single step, a sharp, heavy ache shot through her core. The sticky fluid continued its relentless drip.

Events from her dreams had always seeped into reality, but this time, the evidence was undeniable. He’s closer. Jina immediately bolted inside the house.

“Rob! Andy!” She’d expected them to be inside, perhaps making their farewell calls, but the house was empty.

As a fresh wave of panic hit her, a strangled groan echoed from behind the sofa. “Eu, eeuk!”

“Haaawwwk!”

She rushed over. They were both on the floor, writhing, eyes squeezed shut. They were caught in a nightmare, moaning and convulsing. Worse, fresh wounds kept appearing on their skin.

“Keok!” Andy suddenly choked, unable to draw breath. Clear, angry red handprints bloomed on his neck.

Jina didn’t hesitate. She lifted her hand and began to slap Andy’s cheek—Slap! Slap! Slap!—his limp face snapping back and forth. “Wake up! Wake up!”

When his eyes remained stubbornly closed, Jina snatched a water bottle nearby and emptied it directly onto his face. “Puhaw!” The water drenched him head to toe. Andy jerked, making a violent, sputtering sound, and began to cough, like a man pulled from drowning.

“What the hell, that monster bastard…… where……” His voice was scraped raw, a sound like grinding metal.

Seeing him conscious, Jina immediately uncapped a second bottle and poured it, unsparingly, over Rob’s head. Two bottles. “Haaak!” Fortunately, Rob’s eyes soon snapped open, pulling him from the hell. Wiping the water from his face, bewildered, he saw Andy and collapsed back onto the floor.

“A, a dream…… Ah, damn it!” Then he caught sight of the blood flowing freely from a gash on his arm and frantically searched for something to stem the flow.

After a few more agonizing coughs, Andy croaked, his voice still shredded. “Jina, how close do you think that bastard is?”

“Not very close…… but he’s approaching very slowly.” His subordinates had always been swift in their pursuit. But Ian, whose presence she felt like a tightening vise now, was taking his time.

“That son of a bitch. He’s going to play this game, huh?” Andy stalked to the sink and spat out blood-tinged saliva.

He remembered the psychological pressure tactics from police training: once the distance is closed, don’t rush the capture. Instead, keep the opponent acutely aware of your presence, then slowly corner them. It induces extreme anxiety and fear, leading to easy exhaustion and capture. That was Ian’s method now.

“How long do you think it will take for him to get here?”

“If he keeps moving like this…… two or three days.”

“He’s acting like he’s out for a goddamn stroll.”

Andy gritted his teeth, unleashing every vile curse he’d ever learned on Ian’s name.

Just then, Rob, his bleeding finally staunched, stumbled out of the bathroom. Jina immediately took his place, desperate to wash herself clean.

The sound of his voice—the one that had whispered how much he missed her scent—still echoed in her ears. I’m crazy. She knew his true nature. She knew the wreckage he’d created around her. Yet, the moment she heard that voice, the moment their bodies had rejoined just as before, she was appalled by how easily she had fractured. For a fleeting, horrifying moment, she had definitely clung to him.

“……Bastard.” Tears flowed, a hot, silent torrent—whether from frustration or a deeper sorrow, she couldn’t tell. Thankfully, the shower was pouring. She could tell herself it wasn’t tears.

When she emerged, scrubbed raw, Andy and Rob were already packed. Jina went straight to her room and changed. Then she took a slow look around.

In one corner sat a bulky suitcase, haphazardly stuffed with clothing and acquired belongings. She’d bought only necessities during her flight, piece by piece, and now the bag was full. There was nothing left to discard, but…

She stared at the suitcase for a long moment, then simply pulled out a thick coat, shoved the bag into the darkest corner, and walked out. The contents of that suitcase were necessities for survival. They were headed toward their death. They were no longer needed.

Downstairs, they loaded every single thing they had prepared to confront Ian—not for their own survival—into the car.

The supplies took up so much space, there was no room for all three of them. Rob had to steal a second car from a nearby garage.

In its place, they left a thick bundle of cash. The owner likely won’t return, but. Jina couldn’t abandon her last shred of conscience.

They left the remaining cash at the house they’d occupied. Whether it was for the owner or not, it would be more than enough compensation for someone to clean up the traces they’d left behind.

The three of them drove their respective cars toward Kno Diag. No one would have blamed them for turning around, for choosing a different route. But as if this was the only path remaining, three cars drove toward the end, without the slightest hesitation.

“Haa……” Ian opened his eyes with a slow, deliberate breath. He looked down. His cock was hard, fully erect. He’d come so violently in his dream, the front of his trousers was wet and damp.

He watched it for a quiet moment, then lowered his hand and freed his cock. Jina had cried out that it was impossible, that he had to stop, yet his thirst hadn’t been quenched—it had grown exponentially more desperate.

Just as her dream had bled into her reality, the brief coupling was vivid for him, too. Ian stroked the faint scratch marks on his neck with grim satisfaction. His long, slender fingers gripped his already stiffening erection.

As he stroked up and down, the sticky fluid he’d spilled moments ago spread across his shaft, making his hand slide smoother, faster. “Jina……” He called the name of his Female. The sound alone was enough to send a fresh wave of lust through him.

With a wet, sucking sound, his hand gripping his shaft began to speed up. Vein after vein swelled, making his member look more menacing, more monstrous.

He recalled the look on her face, her eyes rolling back in desperate pleasure the moment he’d plunged inside. Seeing that beautiful sight after so long, he truly wanted to fuck her until she died.

He could have.

He could have trapped her in a life where she never woke from the dream, forever gripping his member, forever writhing beneath him.

But the repeated, violent releases brought him back to composure. I won’t make a mistake again. She was prey that had escaped him once. He’d foolishly thought he would capture her quickly. He’d thought the pressure on her surroundings would force her to return. That was his colossal mistake. Jina hadn’t returned; instead, she had only accumulated more hatred for him.

Only now did Ian finally admit it. He had made a mistake.

“Jina……” Her name was a guttural sound, mixed with his ragged breaths. A flush of red, raw and disturbing, appeared in his usually calm, unruffled eyes. Tears welled up instantly.

His cock was reaching its limit. As his hand, which had been thrusting back and forth violently, gripped tighter, sticky semen spurted out with explosive force. At the exact same moment, the tears gathered in his eyes fell down his cheek and hit the floor.

“Haa……” He let out a long, shuddering breath, feeling the aftermath of his climax. Tears continued to stream past his chin and drip.

Having poured out the desire he couldn’t fully sate in the dream, he took out a silk handkerchief, cleaned his hand and his shaft, and tossed the cloth aside.

He looked down. The semen he’d sprayed onto the dry grass at his feet was a greater volume than what he’d spilled in the dream.

He wanted to spill all of this inside her. To make her already swollen belly even bigger. So massive that the child inside would be born completely saturated in his seed.

He clenched his fist for a moment. Jina’s wrist, which he’d held in the dream, was terrifyingly thinner than when she had run.

At first glance, she seemed to have gained weight, but her complexion was pallid. Worse, her arms were covered in wounds that were clearly self-inflicted. She wasn’t gaining weight; she was swollen. If left untreated, she could get an infection.

He had to take her to a hospital, and quickly. It wasn’t just the wounds. For a safe childbirth, she had to return now. Ian thought of the nest, the home he would take her back to.

Did she know? That by the time she’d fled, the bare branches of London’s trees had already sprouted into lush green leaves.

That the dilapidated mansion had been restored to its original, pristine neatness, exactly as it was when she had first arrived.

“I didn’t know you’d hate it so much.” So he had painstakingly restored it to the way it was when she had first admired it. Now, that place would no longer be tainted by the fear she imagined. The twisted humans were gone—eaten by him, or shared among the Kushis. Now that it was clean, there would be no more ‘strange’ things in the mansion for her to fear.

Achieving that cleanliness hadn’t been easy. Most of all, the chairman, who had been holed up in Germany, had returned and caused a screaming scene.

〈You! Who are you! Where is my grandson!〉

He’d returned wearing a necklace engraved with strange, unfamiliar symbols. Seeing Ian, he’d cried out in shock.

The men with the chairman were no different. Dressed in clothes that looked clearly ancient, they shrieked at Ian in a language he didn’t recognize, then turned tail to flee.

Among them were the brave ones. One shielded the chairman and threw a handful of strange, dry herbs. Ian caught it. His hand stung and, for a brief, agonizing instant, his true form was revealed. The chairman’s eyes went impossibly wide.

〈Their words were right! My grandson has something strange upon him……〉

〈You are mistaken.〉 Ian shook his head, correcting the foolish human. 〈It’s not upon me; it was consumed by me.〉

〈Since when……〉

〈You know, don’t you? Since the day this trash finally satisfied your expectations.〉

At his answer, the chairman began to foam at the mouth.

His grandson, who had returned injured from performing some dark ritual, had behaved in a manner surprisingly pleasing to the chairman from that day forward.

He’d believed his blood relative had finally come to his senses. Instead, something else had entered him. And swallowed his beloved grandson whole.

〈This can’t be, it can’t be…… Ian! Ian!〉

The chairman—a man who valued his own blood, even if he treated all other humans as disposable machinery—could not withstand the shock.

The crushing realization that his grandson was dead, and he had doted on a monster without recognizing it.

Ian watched the Chairman’s collapse with idle disinterest.

Despite belonging to those who reigned among Humans, the Chairman’s despair was no different from that of any other human Ian had swallowed. Boredom set in. He approached and opened his mouth.

That was the end of Chairman Aylesford.

Being an old Human, he hadn’t been very palatable. Tough, stringy meat. For a smooth, inconspicuous disposal, Ian had only devoured the Chairman’s lower half. The upper part, still dressed and decorated with funeral flowers, was placed in a coffin to greet the mourners before being buried in the ground.

With that final task completed, there was nothing left in the mansion to interfere with him.

He recalled his Female, the one he had lost for a moment due to his own arrogance.

The way her face contorted when he whispered I love you was a unique kind of beauty.

It sent a strange, disturbing thrumming through his core.

Ian placed his hand over his heart. That relentless, fragile drumming was what he had always loved to tear out and devour from a warm chest. When he ripped the core of life from a living thing and swallowed it, the victim, moments before full of vibrant energy, would immediately lose all strength and cease breathing.

It was only natural, living with something so delicate that a mere squeeze could burst it. He had even considered tearing it out of his own chest and living without the useless organ.

But with this heart, he had discovered new sensations. A single, careless touch against his body could send his blood racing. A lone smile directed at him could cause his chest to tighten into a painful knot.

When a warm, soft body embraced him without guard, the immediate, familiar urge to snap her neck and swallow her whole would arise. Yet, an agonizing uncertainty would follow: how to hold her without breaking her.

The only thing he had kept alive beside him since his existence began. The thing that made him feel a raw, breathless wonder with every minute he possessed it.

Now, Ian knew that feeling was love.

It was a strange, nonsensical emotion—a pathetic possession of weak prey—yet he was hopelessly addicted to it. He could not bring himself to swallow and erase the warmth that had finally entered his life, a life that had only ever known the cold, empty void of hunger.

Ian raised his hand and wiped away a lingering tear. Dawn was breaking on the distant horizon. The high peaks and vast wilderness he had roamed fearlessly in ages past greeted him, utterly unchanged.

Ian took a slow step forward. It was time to find his love.

Arriving at Kno Diag, the three immediately built a bonfire and planned their final stand. As if having shed every personal burden, they exchanged increasingly destructive proposals with zero regard for any distant future.

“I’ll prepare to set the entire perimeter on fire. You two handle the mansion. A young person like me should be doing the heavy lifting.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m young, you caffeine addict! Stay inside!” Andy scowled, challenging Rob’s suggestion that he was old. Rob chuckled, clapped him on the shoulder, and headed for the hill, a gas can swinging in each hand.

“Jina, you’re going down to the pit, right?”

“Yes. I’ll restore everything that was intentionally damaged for the ritual, and I’ll reinforce it so this place’s power to hold him becomes much stronger.”

By now, that was no longer a difficult task for Jina. Was there truly power passed down through bloodlines? The archaic letters she’d begun to understand were no longer cryptic. She could instinctively grasp what to draw to enhance the power, and conversely, what would weaken it.

A pang of regret hit her. While this power was monstrous, she wondered if things might have turned out differently, better, if she had met Frida Troll earlier. A torrent of what-ifs flooded her mind, each one terminating at her oldest, most defining mistake.

“Mom…” Jina murmured, fiddling with the burner phone in her pocket.

She wanted to hear her voice one last time. She wanted to apologize for years of deliberate silence, for ignoring her mother out of hatred for her leaving. It wouldn’t have been difficult to make a single phone call over all those long, wasted years…

As she chewed on the bitter pill of regret, Andy approached.

“What are you thinking so deeply about?”

“What else? Regretting things too late. Speaking of which, Andy, have you contacted your family?”

Apparently, Rob had reached his parents. The problem was, they only repeated, “Where are you?” like broken automata. Ian had already intervened. And he hadn’t even tried to hide it.

“Ah… I don’t have one. I came here as a refugee. My parents were deported back to their home country. They were killed in a war not long after they returned. I was in local welfare custody, so I stayed in Britain. Nowhere else to go, eventually granted refugee status, then citizenship.”

“No wonder you live like there’s no tomorrow.”

“It’s the people who have nothing to lose who do these kinds of things.” He shrugged, as if stating an obvious, universal truth. “That’s why I relied so much on Superintendent Howard. He used to invite me to his home every Christmas. The last few years, though, I’d just stayed in London, using missions as an excuse not to go.” Andy spoke with a soft, reminiscent smile.

“You still like the Superintendent a lot. I thought his name would make you curse.”

“What fault does the Superintendent have? I know why he abandoned me… Between me and the thousands under his command, if he had to choose, he’d choose the latter. I’d do the same.”

Andy smiled bitterly, recalling his last, awful call with Superintendent Howard. Beyond the Superintendent’s voice, which had briefly called his name and apologized, he’d heard the terrified whisper of his granddaughter, whom he’d met before, murmuring, “monster.”

Thanks to that, he knew what Ian was holding hostage.

Clever monster offspring.

Ian treated people differently based on their usefulness. Humans he deemed disposable were left with the bare minimum of intelligence, looking visibly strange, their obedience absolute.

But for those he intended to keep and exploit—those with a certain level of ability—their intellect needed to be preserved. Superintendent Howard was one such asset Ian planned to keep under his thumb.

“It’s fortunate.”

Andy hadn’t wanted his friend’s final resting place to be a corpse discovered underground.

He pulled the mobile phone from his pocket and showed it to Jina. “These were all sent by the Superintendent. He probably won’t answer my calls out of guilt… but he gave us a chance to connect with the world one last time.”

“What’s the point? We’re here now. We won’t be able to connect any further.”

To Jina’s disgruntled whisper, Andy gestured toward the car’s trunk. Inside the open trunk sat a bulky, metallic object—a machine.

“What is that?”

“A signal amplifier. You should be able to use the internet here now. Watch whatever you want to see one last time.”

At Andy’s casual words, Jina let out a hollow chuckle and looked at her phone. There was one faint bar of signal, which should have been instantly severed upon entering Kno Diag territory.

Seeing it, Jina shoved the mobile phone into her pants pocket. For now, she had to focus on the terrifying preparations for Ian’s arrival.

The three, arriving before dawn, worked without rest. They ate, rested briefly, and immediately rose to their feet, needing no prompts or orders.

Jina rummaged through the car, found a pair of wireless earphones, and played a “music list good for working” from a video site. Humming softly, she sliced her own arm and mixed Ava Troll’s bone powder with her blood, smearing the potent ink on the walls.

She was doing something crazier than any movie ever filmed.

Andy, unlike Rob, focused on setting up weapons and traps throughout the mansion. “I hope at least one shot hits that bastard,” he muttered, fiddling with the mechanism of a crossbow. Jina had painstakingly scribbled small, potent letters on the arrowheads with her own blood.

As the sky began to turn crimson with the rising sun, the three gathered again to prepare their final dinner.

Rob poured water into all sorts of instant noodles, declaring he’d always wanted to sample them all, taking a bite out of each. He then snapped a picture and uploaded it somewhere.

“What are you doing?”

“Just… leaving a record anywhere. Without writing a name, or even mentioning that this is Kno Diag. I thought maybe if someone stumbled upon it later, they’d look at the photo and wonder, ‘What is this bastard?’”

“Is this the human instinct to leave a trace? Like ancient graffiti?”

“Is it? Jina, want to try a bite?” Rob offered her the remaining contents of the one that had tasted relatively good. “You’re too thin lately. And you’ve been bleeding a lot today. Eat this. Carbs are what make blood and flesh. Unhealthy things are so goddamn delicious.”

Rob looked at Jina, who was chewing a stick of raw celery, as if she were the most pitiful soul in the world. When she bit into raw broccoli, he even made the sign of the cross. He’d never offered her anything before, always scolding her for wanting junk food.

“If you don’t know how delicious this is, you’ve lived your life in vain.”

“Who said that?”

“Me.”

At Rob’s shameless retort, Jina giggled and accepted the cup of noodles. As she stirred the contents with a fork, the dry ingredients puffed up, and the distinct, savory instant aroma hit her nose. It was a smell she had avoided her entire life. Normally, she would feel revulsion…

“Looks delicious.”

Slurp. Jina lifted the noodles and swallowed them in one go, then gulped down the broth.

Andy, watching Jina do something utterly out of character, stared, his eyes wide with surprise. Rob, finding his expression hysterical, chuckled, retrieved a chamomile tea bag from his bag, and offered a cup of hot water to Andy.

“Andy, this one.”

“Ugh.”

“What? Drink something healthy like an adult.”

“You give Jina something unhealthy, but why the hell do I get this!”

Watching Rob try to force Andy to drink chamomile while Andy desperately tried not to open his mouth, Jina happily finished her cup noodles.

Andy, who eventually succumbed and drank the tea, scowled and sipped the warm water. Rob watched him with satisfaction, then suddenly bit into the celery stick Jina shoved into his mouth, his face collapsing as if the world had ended.

“Blech! Ugh, get that grass away!”

“You have to eat it too! You said try things you haven’t done before!”

The three bickered for a long time before finally getting into the car and burying themselves in their sleeping bags. No one voiced it, but the thought was shared: It was a mercy to be able to fall asleep amidst joy and laughter, rather than despair and sighs.

The next day, the three resumed their work as soon as they woke up. It wasn’t difficult. They were simply finishing the preparations they had diligently begun. While Rob and Andy completed their checks, Jina was busy alone.

“Ah…” Her arm had swollen from the continuous cuts, and a fever was beginning to set in. She had created wounds with human bone powder and wallowed in thousand-year-old dust; she must have gotten an infection.

“There are no animals, but there seem to be germs.” She found it bizarre that her feverish mind was curious about such useless trivia.

She ate all the fresh provisions for breakfast. Now, only two miserable tomatoes remained.

It’ll be tough to last until tomorrow.

And the bleeding was continuous, an agonizing ordeal. And… beneath her thick clothes, her tightly bound belly was visible. Andy and Rob wouldn’t know yet. That her stomach had noticeably swollen immediately after the dream.

He must have done something. Or perhaps the thing inside her had simply grown on its own. In the novels and movies, as soon as a woman discovers she’s pregnant, tears flow and maternal love blossoms, but she couldn’t summon the feeling.

Can I love this?

Could she cherish and raise it, even though it was born of her, its seed a monster’s?

Guilt, doubt, resentment, and a fierce, burning anger. All manner of corrosive emotions swirled within her.

What was certain was that if prenatal education truly affected the fetus, the child in her womb could become a monster no less than Ian.

Feeling suffocated, Jina ripped off the belly band she’d been wearing. Her belly felt instantly lighter, and she could breathe properly. Perhaps it was because of his torment in the dream; her body felt heavy, and she had the sensation of something slipping out.

It felt as if she might give birth right here if she relaxed even a little.

Jina stared at her swollen belly, her gaze flickering between it and the bone shard in her hand. She was running low on Troll’s remains.

Ava Troll had been annoyed, asking why she hadn’t been twins. But then the realization struck her: one Troll was currently inside her.

With the thought that occurred to her, Jina pondered for a moment before re-tying the belly band around her stomach.

“…I can’t become a monster too.”

Whatever was inside her, she herself had to hold on to her humanity.

Jina busied her hands again. If she used her blood directly, she would die before filling even one side of the pit.

So, she diluted her blood with holy water that Andy had diligently stolen from a nearby church, using it as ink. Holy water, in the end, was probably just salt and a priest’s mumbled blessing, but it was surprisingly more potent than plain water.

Thanks to her obsessive efforts, Jina was able to restore all the writing in the pit before the sun had completely set.

Andy and Rob, watching her from above, were speechless.

“What’s wrong? Is there something wrong?”

“Uh, well… it really looks powerful, Jina…”

The two had felt a profound shift since Jina began the restoration. Since she had only cleared away the darkness, the pit’s appearance was sharp, clear.

Just like when she’d restored the letters on the first floor, the pit’s walls were scrubbed clean. As if the Humans who first dug this place had just written the letters moments ago.

There was no more rotten stench, only the distinct scent of damp earth. And a faint smell of blood.

The smell of living things, of something fresh. The most vibrant thing in this desolate land, devoid of the sound of insects or any flying bugs.

Confirming that everything had returned to its original state, Jina defaced the letters representing light that she had additionally inscribed. Immediately, darkness flooded the pit. A deep, consuming darkness that made only her immediate surroundings difficult to illuminate, no matter how strong the light.

“It was like this when we first came…” Rob murmured. She climbed up. Her body, slick with sweat, instantly felt the cold.

Sitting by the bonfire the two had lit, she ate the remaining tomatoes and listened to the final rundown of Andy and Rob’s traps.

“First, I rigged the entire hill around the mansion to catch fire. That should be enough to catch the small Kushi, right?”

“I wrote letters on the bullets, like I saw in London. Since your blood has the more precise letters, it should have a greater impact than the Kushi we shot back then.”

Listening to their words, Jina knew. Those things couldn’t defeat Ian.

Knowing how mercilessly cold the Scottish wilderness was at night, Jina stubbornly wet a towel and scrubbed away the dust and sweat. It wasn’t that she couldn’t sleep because of the grime. She just remembered Ian, who had so eagerly approached her in her dream.

After tidying herself to a reasonable degree, she got into her sleeping bag. Her swollen belly made it difficult to climb in, and it wasn’t until Andy helped her that she was fully tucked in. Jina immediately fell asleep.

But it was only for a moment.

“…!” Her senses snapped taut. Jina instantly sat up.

“Why?”

Ian was approaching rapidly. And ahead of him, other things were rushing toward their location.

“What’s wrong?” Rob, who was on watch, exclaimed, startled.

At his shout, Andy, who’d been asleep, sprang to his feet.

“The Kushi are coming!”

Rob scrambled up without a backward glance and ran toward the nearby hill. He clutched the few remaining talismans in his pocket.

Dozens of glittering eyes were approaching in the darkness. The speed at which they ran down the hill left all three speechless.

“Those bastards run like the wind.” Andy muttered roughly, and Jina and Rob could only agree. There was truly no other way to describe them.

“You two fall back! I’ll handle this!” Rob screamed, pulling a lighter from his pocket.

“Light it and come back to the mansion immediately!”

“Got it!” Hearing Rob’s reply, Jina and Andy ran toward the house. While Rob bought them time against the Kushi, they had to take down as many as possible from behind. Then, they would immediately set fire to the ring she had prepared around the mansion.

Whoosh!

Ian watched his despair with idle detachment.

Despite belonging to the ruling class of Humanity, his anguish was no different from that of any other human Ian had consumed. Boredom settling in, he approached the old man and opened his mouth.

That was the end of Chairman Aylesford.

Being an old human, the flavor wasn’t great. Tough, too. And for the sake of a smooth, inconspicuous disposal, Ian had only swallowed the Chairman’s lower half. The upper torso, dressed in finery and adorned with flowers, was placed in a coffin to greet the mourners before being buried in the ground.

With that final task, there was nothing left in the mansion to obstruct him.

He recalled her, the one he had momentarily lost due to his mistake. The sight of her contorted face every time he whispered “I love you” was a kind of beauty that sent a strange, painful throb through him.

Ian placed his hand over his heart. That strong, insistent beat was what he had always happily torn out and devoured. When he ripped the life-force from the chests of living things and swallowed it, the creature, which had been moving so energetically moments before, would immediately lose all strength and stop breathing. It was only natural, living with something so fragile that a mere grasp could shatter it. He had even considered tearing it out and living without the burden.

But with a heart, he had discovered new sensations. A single, accidental brush of her body could make his blood race. A single smile directed at him could cause his chest to tighten into a knot.

When a warm, soft body embraced him without any guard, the familiar desire to snap her neck and swallow her whole would surge—yet, he would find himself uncertain of how to hold her without breaking her.

She was the only thing he had kept alive beside him since the beginning of his existence. The thing that made him feel a raw, baffling wonder with every breath he took.

Now, Ian knew that feeling was love.

It was merely a strange, pathetic emotion possessed by weak prey… yet he was helplessly, hopelessly addicted to it. He could not bring himself to swallow and erase the warmth that had finally entered his life, a life that had only ever known hunger.

Ian raised his hand and wiped away a tear. Dawn was breaking in the distant sky. The high peaks and vast wilderness he had once roamed fearlessly greeted him, utterly unchanged.

Ian took a slow step forward.

It was time to go find his love.

Flames spread instantly through the oil-doused branches. As beautiful bands of blue and red fire wrapped around the perimeter of Kno Diag and burned, the approaching Kushi stopped dead in their tracks.

From within the inferno, Rob snatched the crossbow from the ground and fired it toward the hesitant monsters.

Kyaaaaaak!

The Kushi at the very front was struck by the bolt and instantly vanished, melting away as if it were snow in midsummer. Where the creature had been, the crossbow bolt, its target gone, lay inert on the ground. The other Kushi, as if unwilling to even graze the tainted bolt, groaned and retreated to the sides.

They ran frantic circles, desperately seeking a path through the flames. Perhaps because of the mistletoe branches mixed in, the Kushi couldn’t leap the fire, even though it was not very high.

“Wow! You bastards!” Was he releasing all the rage he’d accumulated? Rob screamed like a madman, firing arrows indiscriminately. As a few more Kushi dropped, the others quickly retreated, concealing themselves behind the rocks.

“Come on! You sons of bitches! Eat me like you’ve eaten people until now!”

Rob held his crossbow, panting, glaring at the hidden monsters. Suddenly, one of the Kushi seized a smaller one in its mouth, dragged it over, and hurled it into the fire Rob had set.

Kyaak! Kyaak! The victim screamed in agony, writhing in the flames. Then, the Kushi that had thrown its comrade leaped onto it, using its burning body as a gruesome stepping stone to jump again.

Krrrrrk! It landed right next to Rob and instantly bared its teeth, ready to strike.

Bang! At that moment, Andy, who had been watching from a distance, fired his gun. The Kushi that was about to pounce on Rob disintegrated and vanished into the ground like melting snow.

“Rob! Come back!” Jina also snatched up a gun Andy had prepared and screamed the command.

But as if her shout were a signal, Kushi from beyond the flames began to leap the fire again, using the same barbaric method.

Rob shouted back at Jina and Andy, who were now rushing toward him. “Go back! Don’t come any closer!” He then lit a stick he had placed on the ground and tossed it to the side.

Fwoosh!

This created a second, inner ring of fire between them and the mansion. As a result, the Kushi who had breached the first barrier, and Rob himself, were trapped between two burning rings.

“Rob!” Jina screamed from the direction of the mansion.

Rob shouted back. “I’ve set up another camera over there so you can watch! These bastards are weak to fire! Half of them died trying to cross, and most of them will die here now!” Rob’s throat burned from the shouting. At the same time, the intense heat seemed to scald everything inside his body. He kept screaming.

“So if you set one more fire inside, most of the Kushi won’t be able to cross! If you’re lucky, even that bastard Ian won’t be able to cross!”

Of course, the fire wouldn’t last forever. It might not last very long at all. But for that duration, the interior of the mansion would be a sanctuary.

A strained smile appeared on Rob’s face.

The colleagues he’d met when he first entered society had died. He had bowed his head in grateful submission to the monster that had eaten them. How pathetic he must have looked to that creature, bowing without remembering a thing.

Furthermore, after he had escaped, he had made fools of his own parents. He couldn’t bear to hear their voices, constantly asking where he was, any longer because the pain was too much.

If I had surrendered to that guy, the outcome would have been different. Like most people in London now, they would have been living in blissful ignorance, waiting for the day they would be bred and consumed. Perhaps they would have been happy.

But he had chosen to forgo that life himself. Because he couldn’t live as a beast.

Rob looked at the largest Kushi, which stared at him from within the flames. Now that he thought about it, the one he’d seen in London was about this size.

“You unlucky bastards.” Rob wiped his burning cheek with the back of his hand and raised his crossbow toward the Kushi staring at him. The Kushi’s mouth split open into a terrifying, starfish-like maw.

He laughed at the monster’s desperate will to swallow a human, even in this imminent death trap. The first time he saw it, he had been too terrified to even run, dissolving into tears. But now, he could face it and kill it.

“This is pretty good, isn’t it?” Rob remembered Colin Parker, his team leader, who had clapped him on the shoulder and congratulated him on getting the job. He had come down into the darkness to save his colleagues.

He remembered William Evans, meticulous and always grumbling, but who had taught him so much, from camera work to editing. He was the first to try and clear his colleagues’ names, to escape the monster’s control.

He remembered Camilla Jenkins, often unpleasant, spending her days dressing up instead of working, but who had, like an older sister, asked him if he was coping with living alone in London. She had been eaten by a Kushi while watching something he had sent.

And Ian Aylesford. “You damn idiot.” No matter how he looked at it, he had no good memories of that guy. Not the old Ian, nor the current one.

“I’ll remember you all.” Rob fired his crossbow into the mouth of the monster that was lunging toward him.

From across the flames, the Kushi’s pained shriek and Rob’s shout as he charged were heard simultaneously. And then, screams.

A moment later, the space across the flames was silent.

“Rob….” Jina called his name, tears flooding her eyes as she recognized his choice to die. Even though he had accepted his death, the sorrow was a physical blow. The young man who had frowned at her celery just last night was gone, eaten by a Kushi. And he had taken that Kushi with him.

“How many are left… on the other side?” Andy asked, his voice thick with emotion. Jina focused her senses on what lay beyond the flames.

“There aren’t many left. The remaining ones are weakening. There were about twenty or so….” How meticulously she had packed the mistletoe and holly into the kindling! The oil-fueled fire was devastatingly effective against the unholy black dogs.

“You’ve become the hunter who has killed the most Kushi in human history at once.”

“That doesn’t really suit Rob. Something like the Guardian of Cup Noodles, the Hater of Celery, maybe.” If Rob could hear this, he would probably grumble, demanding proper recognition. Now, his voice would never be heard again.

“By the way, where is Ian?”

“He’s coming. He’s entering the Kno Diag from the road now.” Her breathing grew increasingly rapid, shallow. She recalled an old zombie movie she had seen once on television. The zombies chased the living slowly. So slowly one could easily escape by running. She thought that was far scarier than a fast-chasing zombie. Death that would inevitably arrive, no matter how slow. She felt the same paralyzing dread toward Ian, who was approaching now.

Andy stopped asking for his location. Jina’s increasingly pale, trembling body told him how close the monster was. The two held their breath and stared beyond the dying flames.

How much time passed? The inner ring of fire Rob had set began to subside. Across the flames, now only about waist height, a man with bright blonde hair slowly walked toward Kno Diag.

He reached the fire, stopped, and looked at Jina and Andy.

Jina gasped, seeing Ian exactly as she had seen him in her dream. His blue eyes were fixed only on her.

“Jina.”

Bang! The moment he opened his mouth, Andy, as if he’d been waiting for the signal, shot him.

At that instant, Jina instinctively grabbed Andy’s arm.

“What are you doing?”

“Surprise attack,” Andy said, as if stating the obvious. It was the only logical action. When facing a non-Human thing, was there a time for civilized questions about attack timing? This wasn’t a sport; it was a hunt. They had to inflict damage before the predator struck. Yet, why was she so shocked by the shot fired at Ian?

Jina returned her gaze to Ian and gasped: one of his shoulders was shattered, hanging loose and ruined.

“Among the things the sorceresses left behind, there was that unknown iron powder, right? The one in the glass bottle.”

“Ah.” Andy had seen it among the belongings he’d retrieved. It was stored in a carved wooden box, hinting at its value to those who had ended their lives. “I buried it just in case, and it seems to be more effective than I thought.” Muttering this, Andy now aimed at Ian’s face.

Jina turned her head away, unable to watch. Because of that, she didn’t see the faint smile that touched Ian’s lips as she averted her gaze.

Bang! Andy fired, praying this time Ian’s face would be blown clean away.

However, contrary to his expectation, Ian suddenly vanished from the spot where he had been standing.

A moment later, Ian reappeared a few steps closer. His face was whole. The problem was that his shattered, ruined arm was also perfectly intact, as if nothing had ever happened.

Bang! Bang! Andy fired again and again, but the bullets only managed to slow Ian’s relentless advance; they didn’t bring him down. He wasn’t flustered.

“Jina, I’m sorry.”

“What—Ah!” Jina cried out in surprise, recoiling from the sharp, stinging pain on the back of her hand. Her blood immediately stained the arrowhead Andy held.

“Let’s see how much Troll’s blood affects that thing.” Saying this, he picked up another crossbow he had placed on the ground and fired it at the monster. This time, Ian tried to vanish. But before he could, the arrow struck his body.

“Kk!” For the first time, a sound of agony escaped Ian’s lips. Andy clenched his fist in triumph.

“As expected, blood is the best!”

Jina said to the cheering Andy with a look of utter disgust. “Don’t say that with a face that looks like you want to cut my throat to get some more.”

“I’m glad—Kk!” Andy, mid-sentence, suddenly stiffened, a violent tremor running through him.

“Andy!” Jina stared in shock. Ian was still far away, yet strangely, something that looked like a black branch had pierced completely through Andy’s abdomen.

Ian, standing yards away, opened his mouth. “Who do you think you are, to injure me?” A deep, terrible rage emanated from him, potent enough to shake the very air. Ian’s gaze was locked on the back of Andy’s hand, which he had just deliberately scratched. As Jina’s blood dripped onto the ground, Ian’s face twisted further, as if her pain were his own.

“You’re not going to die easily.” Upon seeing Ian’s face, Andy realized he had truly provoked the monster and sighed. A terrible pain began to spread through his chest. Simultaneously, a chilling coldness, as if his mind were freezing, emanated from the part touched by the black energy.

Andy reached out and forcefully shoved Jina away. This shock—seeing the thing protruding from his abdomen—made Jina stumble and snap back to reality.

“Run… Go, inside….”

“Andy!” Cough. Red blood spilled from Andy’s mouth. Her hands, which had reached for him, were instantly drenched in the blood flowing from his abdomen and lips.

“Go!”

Go? Where? All the offensive weapons had been prepared by Rob and Andy. The only thing she had prepared was a single, giant trap to capture Ian. The Kno Diag. This vast pit.

Her hands, which reached for the rope ladder, were slick with Andy’s blood, making it impossible to grip the rope properly. Because of that, halfway down, her hand slipped, and her body fell hard to the ground.

“Kk!” Along with the extreme shock, a sharp agony surged through her abdomen. “Hoo… Ugh.” The impact of the fall seemed to have jolted the thing inside her belly.

Jina curled up and dragged herself to a corner.

Thump. Thump. Calm, measured footsteps sounded from above. The footsteps of the monster who had just crushed and killed a man.

“Jina.” He called her name from the edge of the pit. “Come up.”

“……”

“Hurry.”

“……”

Seeing him extend his hand as if in concerned offer, Jina gritted her teeth. Then, she sneered and spoke. “You can’t come down, can you?”

“……” This time, he was silent.

Jina looked around at the surrounding darkness. The smell of damp earth and blood permeated the air.

Ian knew exactly how long this place had held him captive. Ironically, the trap meant to hold him captive had, in turn, become Jina’s only sanctuary to avoid him. If she stayed here, he wouldn’t be able to catch her. But she also wouldn’t be able to leave. She would eventually die here.

Damn it! So be it. What reason did she have to cling to life now?

But… Jina fumbled around the floor. Her fingertips soon touched something long, hard, and light.

It was the bone of Ava Troll, which she had carelessly left behind. The very shard that had scored her arm countless times.

Picking it up, Jina looked up. She couldn’t die like this.

So many people had died. How many had been toys for that monster?

Even though she hadn’t released it into this land, she had made it love and obsess over her for a while.

For Jessie, who had died because of her, for the others, she intended to fulfill her responsibility.

Jina deliberately called him in a voice filled with the deceptive love she had once shared. “Ian, aren’t you going to come down?”

“……” She could see him biting his lip.

“Ha.” A hollow laugh escaped her. Looking at him like that, he was exactly what she knew him to be: a man desperately in love, horribly conflicted.

The hateful—and sickeningly lovable—mask she’d been deceived by for months.

Jina raised the jagged bone shard high.

“If you won’t come down.”

“Jina.”

“Then I’ll just die here, now.”

The words were barely out before her hand slashed toward her neck. Just before the sharp edge kissed her skin, a sound cut the dark.

Clack!

Ian’s hand clamped down on her wrist.

At the same moment, the vast pit began to fill with strange, wet, guttural sounds. Jina laughed—a choked, victorious sound.

Finally.

The darkness had been snared. It was trapped in this hell-pit with her.

This is my victory.

It was humanity’s, too. She was about to give in to the desperate, manic burst of laughter when Ian, with an utterly calm, unfazed expression, brushed a finger across her cheek. He plucked the shard from her grip and tossed it aside like a spent match.

He looked up from within the inky black, his pale eyes catching the faint light.

“You’ve made it well.”

“Why—aren’t you… bothered?”

“I am bothered. I am simply accustomed to it. And it was difficult when I was alone here before…”

Ian spread his arms and pulled Jina into a suffocating embrace.

“Now, you are here.”

“…”

“There were so many things I wanted to do when we met again. First.”

His hand fumbled over the painfully swollen mound of her belly.

“Make one more offspring.” His hand tore ruthlessly at the remaining fabric of Jina’s clothes. “And whisper how much I love you throughout the entire process.”

His hand pressed Jina down onto the stone ground.

“And teach you continuously while we are together. How much I can endure, as long as you are here.”

Ian held Jina, who was staring blankly at the dark ceiling, as if he were basking in a glorious ecstasy.

He whispered, his breath hot against her ear. “As long as you are here, this place can no longer inflict pain upon me. So…”

Ian’s voice was a shudder of raw pleasure.

“Let’s spend a long time together here.”

At his words, Jina, who had been catatonic, finally began to struggle, a sudden, fierce thrash of defiance.

“Let go!”

But to him, who had finally found the world that would be theirs, even her panicked screams sounded like beautiful music. He smiled—a terrible, hungry sight—and finished stripping her bare.

Jina knew now what fate awaited her.

Death was not permitted. Not for her. In this absolute darkness, she would be forced to accept his seed forever, creating more monster offspring, again and again.

Forever bound, receiving a twisted, horrific love that no one else had ever, or would ever, receive… As the crushing weight of that endless horror settled upon her, she thrashed more wildly, hysterically.

Just then, the mobile phone she had shoved deep into her pocket fell free and rolled across the ground, stopping within reach.

“Help me, help…!”

Jina frantically reached out, her blood-soaked hand stabbing randomly at the screen.

Beep… beep…

Had Andy set it up for emergency use?

She heard the signal catch. The sound of the phone ringing, which had never registered as particularly long before, felt like an eternity now.

Please, please.

She knew no one had been able to help her until now. The few who had even noticed her predicament had either turned their backs or died.

In this pit of endless night, who could possibly help?

But her body, terrified by a future worse than death, desperately reached out against all logic, seeking someone, anyone, to save her.

A cold hand fumbled roughly over her writhing body.

All sense of shame had vanished long ago, but as if to ensure she felt the indignity of it, his hand caressed and pinched her most sensitive parts.

With each violation, her resistance grew fiercer, yet it was as if the entire darkness had become an extension of his body, and only the parts he was toying with expanded, her despair deepening with every touch.

“Hah!”

She was pinned, stomach to the floor, her legs brutally spread. A thick pillar pierced through Jina’s body from behind without warning.

“Ah, hck…”

The arm that had been straining for the mobile phone trembled and fell back. Her greatly swollen belly cried out in pain as it was pressed into the rough ground, but the greater, more visceral agony was felt between her legs.

As Jina struggled for breath against the crushing, rough impact, Ian began to move his hips in a slow, deliberate rhythm, as if to savor the pain.

“Ha, h-hck, ah, ah!”

Even in this terrifying violation, her body—diligent and tamed over the past few months—began to react quickly, overriding the fear.

Ian moved slower than she remembered, targeting only her weakest, most responsive points.

Her senses, already heightened to a terrifying degree by the darkness and the fear, received the intense sensations he gave her more strongly than usual.

Jina shuddered, a ragged sound escaping her lungs.

Ian, as if seeking to swallow that last sliver of air, pressed his face close, grabbed her neck, turned her head, and kissed her.

A slippery tongue invaded her mouth, filling her throat.

He did what no human could, dominating her as he pleased in this suffocating darkness.

“Kuh, hck!”

She thought he was kissing her, but he was blocking the air, stealing her remaining breath, refusing to let go.

Meanwhile, her lower half was being subjected to a frantic, primal collision.

Jina, impaled, her legs spread like a beast on a spit, swayed helplessly. As her breath reached her chin, her consciousness began to waver.

The sheer terror that she might suffocate and die here dominated Jina’s mind, even as a searing pleasure, mixed with the agonizing pain, spread deeply through her core.

Their bodies, pressed tightly together, shook frantically on the cold floor.

Her brain, starved of oxygen, slowly began to surrender to the void. In her fading consciousness, everything was erased, and only Ian, attached to her body like a monstrous leech, remained.

“Haaak!”

He thrust in one final, forceful spike and trembled violently above her.

Simultaneously, an unbearable, white-hot wave of pleasure ravaged Jina’s brain.

“Haa…”

Her eyes rolled back into her head, and her open mouth let out a primal moan, an inarticulate sound that no human should make.

Was this what it felt like when the brain completely melted?

She had lost consciousness several times while entwined with him, but she had never reached this extreme of sensation, this catastrophic pleasure.

As Jina lay limp, forgetting even the will to struggle, overwhelmed by pleasure beyond her limits, his phallus, penetrated to the very end of her depth, ejaculated a torrent of semen into her already greatly swollen belly.

An amount that defied human physiology poured inside her, a sickening, impossible flood.

From the tightly locked opening, where no gap should have been, sticky, slick seed fluid dripped and foamed, an overflow she couldn’t possibly swallow or contain.

Ian fumbled below, scraping up the dripping fluid and viciously pushing it back into the gap.

Jina, unable to move a single finger, gasped for air, meekly accepting his thrusts back into her.

A scent, richer and more cloying than ever before, saturated the air around them.

After ensuring the seed fluid he had ejaculated was all contained, without any leakage, he finally withdrew and laid Jina down on the floor again.

“It hurts, ah, please…”

As her belly was pressed down, a cry burst out of her instinctively.

“Help me, help me…”

Her melted brain could form no other words.

Jina began to struggle again, her hands frantically scraping the floor. It was a pathetic, futile movement, the desperate wriggle of a legless, dying insect.

Her hands, fumbling and sobbing, finally grasped the mobile phone that had fallen nearby.

Beep… beep…

The signal sound, which she was certain had been cut off, continued. With violently trembling hands, Jina brought the device to her face.

In this oppressive darkness, this tiny screen was now her only light. Stained with her own blood, she couldn’t even tell who she was calling, but Jina clutched the last remaining flicker of hope.

The heart that had accepted death had already died the moment she resigned herself to this darkness with him.

All that remained was pure, blind instinct.

Help me.

Please.

Please.

A desperate prayer, offered to no one, continued. Then, a sharp sound cut through the noise.

Click.

The signal sound, which had felt like it would last for an eternity, stopped. A new sound came from the other side. It wasn’t the call cutting off. Someone had answered.

She had been completely isolated from the world for weeks.

Because of this, she had convinced herself every moment that she might be the only one left. Looking out at the desolate wilderness, she had thought that perhaps everyone else had already been devoured by monsters, and only she and Ian remained.

But the moment someone answered the phone, tears flooded her eyes as she felt a sudden, brutal reconnection to the world.

“H-help… please…”

Her body, still shuddering violently from the aftermath of pain and pleasure, managed to force out a sound.

It didn’t matter who had answered. She just prayed that a human, not a monster, would respond to her voice.

The person who answered the phone was silent for a moment. Then, a familiar, trembling voice broke the silence.

📱“Hello? Jina? Is that Jina?”

Jina’s eyes widened, her entire being jolting at the sound of her name. A voice she could never forget. A voice she had always resented. Yet, a voice she had desperately missed.

“Mom…”

Jina choked out the name, her voice thick with tears, calling to the owner of the voice.

It didn’t matter if it was a hallucination conjured by a consciousness that could no longer hold on.

Jina blurted out words she had never dared to speak, words she’d always considered too pathetic.

“Mom, Mom! Mom!”

She called out to the one she missed like a madwoman. Anything was fine. Just calling her name would have been enough to ground her.

📱“Jina!”

As if answering her desperation, a wailing, broken voice came from the other side.

Thinking back, her mother had always been there, a strange warning system when danger was near.

📱“It’s hot today, stay home.” “It says it’s raining heavily, how about taking the subway instead of the bus today?” “The bicycle wheels seem strange, just walk.”

As a child, her mother used to say things like that, like any other protective mother.

Sometimes she followed the advice, sometimes she didn’t.

What was certain was that when she ignored the warning, something—always—happened.

Those pieces of advice continued even after her mother left her side.

Even without a reply, her mother kept sending texts. Always advice for Jina to avoid some impending accident or danger.

Out of sheer defiance, Jina often did the opposite. Naturally, accidents, both big and small, occurred each time she did.

Yet, she never truly listened to her mother’s words until the end.

Thinking back now, it was a cry. I won’t listen to you, I will keep getting hurt and suffering. So please…

Come back.

But after a while, the texts began to decrease.

Instead, more often than not, better things happened when she did the opposite of her mother’s advice.

So, when friends occasionally asked about her mother, Jina would scoff dismissively and say she sent random nonsense.

But each time, a core of fear grew cold in her heart.

Was her mother no longer worried about her? Was that why she sent random messages?

Perhaps…

Maybe she’s sending wrong advice because she hates me now.

From the moment that terrifying thought occurred, Jina could no longer even manage a short reply.

But at this moment, staring at the bloody screen, she finally understood.

She sent it on purpose.

Her friend had told her that she had given her mother her address instead of hers. They had been in contact to that extent, so there was no way her mother wouldn’t have been told what happened.

So she must have realized.

That Jina would deliberately ignore her mother’s advice and return hurt or wounded. That’s why she deliberately reduced contact and began giving her the wrong advice.

Because if Jina did the opposite, she wouldn’t get hurt.

She should have realized when her mother, forgetting even to speak indirectly, contacted her like a madwoman.

“Mom…”

Jina fumbled, offering a desperate, late apology.

“I-I’m sorry. I… I… was scared… I just… wanted to see you…”

Her voice, choked with tears and still muffled from the shock, flowed out with agonizing difficulty.

📱“Jina, where are you? Where? Mom will… come pick you up! Even if I go crazy, I should have just come to get you! Jina!”

At Jina’s mumbling, her mother muttered, then began to wail like a creature possessed.

She must have realized. She must have known the state Jina was in right now.

“Mom, uh, Mom… save me…”

She sobbed, clutching the mobile phone like a talisman. The suppressed terror exploded outward again.

Yes, if it’s Mom.

She might be able to pull me out of this deep darkness. Didn’t she have a strange power, like the others of the Troll Family?

If I can just hold on a little longer.

If she could just endure without dying in this darkness, Mom would come to save her.

Thinking that far, Jina screamed like a madwoman, a raw, animal sound of sheer desperation.

“Save me! Mom! Save me!”

It was Mom who sent the paper with strange powers. It was someone who knew all about my danger.

Mom. Mom. Please…

Jina clung to her last remaining, fragile hope.

Just then, Ian, who had been watching her struggles with rapt, chilling attention, let out a low growl upon hearing her mother say she would come to pick her up.

It was a guttural beast’s sound, drawn from the bottom of hell, filled with ominousness and consuming darkness.

Although there were no human words, Jina understood the venomous meaning behind that terrifying sound.

Ian was threatening Jina’s only hope.

She gritted her teeth and glared at Ian, who still hadn’t withdrawn from inside her.

Mom will come.

A single piece of paper sent from afar had allowed Jina to escape the mansion and made others see the truth.

It had helped her evade constant pursuit and served as an excellent weapon.

Even with just paper, her mother had shown such power. Therefore, she could surely kill this ancient monster.

For the first time since knowing his true, terrible nature, Jina’s shattered heart filled with genuine hope.

Finally, finally, she could kill that thing.

Mom is here.

That belief made Jina’s bloodied lips curl into a broken smile.

As a child, she was afraid of nothing. Even if thunderous lightning tore through the sky, even if contempt, curses, and ridicule were directed at her for being a half-blood, as long as her mother was by her side, her fear vanished as if washed away.

An absolute being who could protect her from all dangerous things. The safest world.

Now, there was nothing to fear.

Her Mother would surely come here to protect her child.

Ian’s eyes, glowing a predatory pale blue in the darkness, stared at Jina’s unusually defiant, confident figure for a long, terrible moment. Then, he snatched the mobile phone she held and brought it close to her face.

“–.”

He let out an inarticulate, weeping sound.

“––.”

His weeping grew longer, an inhuman howl.

“–––!”

It began to contain a deeper, consuming anger. Though it was merely a sound with varying pitches, hearing it, Jina began to tremble uncontrollably.

She couldn’t have understood it before. What she had thought was just the cry of a beast, she could now partially comprehend its devastating meaning.

The monster was enraged.

This is mine.

My female.

Bound to my soul.

The first and last thing I will own.

Jina trembled with raw fear at the hellish sounds that flowed between the cries.

But she did not lose her final hope.

Mom, Mom will come to save me.

She will.

Definitely…

As she desperately clung to her reason and endured, the monster continued its terrible, suffocating growling without stopping.

Then, the monster’s sound ceased.

Simultaneously, thump!

The mobile phone fell next to Jina’s face. Looking at the screen, the call was still connected. Although her body trembled, that fragile, broken smile still lingered on her face.

No monster could possibly defeat the safest and strongest being everyone has. As long as Mom is by my side…

Just then, her mother’s voice came across the line.

📱“Jina.”

Her mother’s voice was utterly shattered. The bravado of shouting that she would come here immediately had vanished without a trace, replaced by pure terror.

Her voice, calling her daughter’s name, was mixed with wretched, violent tears.

📱“I’m sorry. I’m sorry… I, I… that thing… that fear…”

Rough, violent sobs echoed through the phone.

Her mother was crying helplessly, broken. Just like when Jina first faced the truth—helpless and desperately afraid.

The sobbing continued, a raw sound of surrender. And then…

📱“I’m sorry.”

After dozens of repeated apologies, the sound on the line cut off.

Beep, beep, beep…

A sound that should not have been heard. The short signal indicating she was completely isolated from the world again.

And Jina realized.

Her hother… had run away. Abandoning her.

“Mom…?”

From far away, the sound of her world collapsing began to be heard. All those who could be called humans were dead. Now, all that remained in the world were prey whose truth had been castrated.

Jina’s consciousness also began to crumble slowly.

As she refused to accept that her last, burning hope had been extinguished, the monster leaned in and whispered to her in cold, human words.

“Jina, you have no mother now.”

“You will be with me forever.”

“You will make love with me.”

“You will be the mother of my child. So….”

Jina’s body was dragged into the darkness.

The giant trap confined the monster and his Female together.