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Your legs are crossed as you sit there on the cushioned windowsill. A red throw pillow sat in between your lower back and the wall that your upper back barely touched. A book sat open against the palm of your dominant hand as your less dominant hand reached over to the book and gently flipped the pages. Your eyes skimmed through the printed words on the pages, sighing softly as you enjoyed your time alone with the peace and quiet.
Leo had been asleep for almost an hour now, curled up in his little toddler bed in his room just across the hall from yours. Leo was adopted, you and your past lover adopted him when he was just an infant, and for a year, everything was okay — until your lover disappeared without a trace. Three years passed since then, and all you’ve done is try and get used to the emptiness of their side of the bed. As much as you did enjoy the quiet, you missed having someone there with you. You didn’t miss it when Leo was around, but when he was asleep away in his room, you were all alone in your own room, missing the touch and company of your past lover, Alex.
You and Alex had been together for years before they went missing in that Spring three years ago. You missed them dearly, but you had to move on. It was time to move on, they were gone. After Alex had gone missing, you and Leo moved out of that terrible small town of yours, hated being reminded of Alex’s disappearance, being blamed for it as if you had something to do with it.
The day it all happened was in March, Alex was getting packed to head off on a business trip to Florida for two days. You didn’t think much of it, Alex’s job meant everything to them. Even if it meant more than you and Leo, too. You didn’t care, you just kissed them goodbye and they headed on their way to Florida. Something to do with transporting cargo on a ship to Louisiana.
But that night, when the boat had already left the bay in Florida, the boat was never recovered. It had just disappeared, something like the bermuda triangle or something like that. It was odd, and terrifying that there was just this mysterious, unbeknownst occurrence that may have caused your lover’s death. But as much as you wanted to believe Alex was okay — three years passed by and you had given up all hope for Alex and their whereabouts.
Now, you and Leo live in a peaceful, nice neighborhood in eastern Pennsylvania. You wanted to stay away from all of your past, moving on in a new city, a new state, a new home to raise and love your young son. Even though, in the end of it, you still missed Alex. They were, what you thought, your soulmate, the person you were meant to spend the rest of your life with. You were wrong.
You flip another page of your book, but you turn your head to the window beside you. You look out, seeing as it had started to sprinkle from the darkened sky. Raindrops splatter against your window, but you don’t flinch at all. You lean your head against the glass, sighing as you tried to keep in your cries, remembering the nights you’ve spent with Alex in your old home, living happily as each day was filled with joy and love, unforgettable moments shared between you both and your son, but now, alone in your room, every room in the house was dark except just one lit candle in your room, a candle you light every night in honor of your past lover.
Why did you leave me, Y/N?
You clung to your book, holding it against your chest as you cried softly, letting it all out. Your heart ached as you longed to see your lover again, their smile still engraved into your mind, never letting you forget them or move on from them — despite all you’ve done to forget it all.
But the voice inside your head — Alex was haunting you. Their voice was haunting your mind, speaking to you like they normally would, but they’re nowhere to be found. They’re not really there, you’re just going insane. But no one could blame you from what you’ve gone through these last three years. Just days ago, you were told you had some type of infection inside of you, a mold-like infection. It was definitely odd to hear, but you just thought your doctor was trying to scam you so you ignored it and thought they were just bullshitting you.
But Alex was still nowhere to be found, supposedly dead by now. Your heart ached for them. You missed them so dearly, you just wanted to see them again.
“Noni?”
You let out a small gasp as your shiny eyes widened, quickly away your tears before turning your head to the opened bedroom door. Leo stood there in the opened doorway, holding his stuffed animal raccoon in his arms. As you didn’t identify as either gender, neither did Alex, you chose a word, “Noni,” as it’s from the word ‘non-binary’ which worked perfectly for you. Alex’s was “Nopa” from the words ‘non-binary parent.’
You clear your throat, “Leo,” you give him a small nervous smile, “What are you doing up?”
“Someone’s at the door,” Leo answered. You furrow your brows, so you stand up from the window sill and head over to him. You usher him back into his room, whispering for him to head back to bed as you went off to answer the door. Who could possibly be here at this time of night?
You unlock the door, twisting the doorknob as you pull it open. A man, dressed in a very nice, black suit, stands there before you. His back turned as he spoke to no one. Not even an earpiece in his eyes or a phone held up to his ear, he was just speaking to himself — pretty loudly, you might say. He had long, grayish hair that fell down to almost his chin. He looked rather formal, though old.
“Hello?” You greet them in confusion, and the man quickly turns, a bit startled.
“Oh, my apologies,” a weird ass accent, but you went along with it, “I was speaking to someone over the . . . phone.” He took out his phone a bit from his pocket before clearing his throat and looking back at you. “My name is Karl, I was sent here to inform you of some very . . . awful news.” He informed you, but you just stared at him — and scoffed.
“What? You’re going to tell me Alex is dead?” You shake your head, stepping back so you could close the door, “You’re a little too late for that, buddy—”
“No, no,” the man put his hand on the door, stopping it from closing, “I have, well, good news and bad news. The good news is about Alex, your— your partner, I presume?” He asked. You narrowed your eyes at the man, confused on why, and how, he knew about Alex. They had kept it covered up since it all happened, not wanting to inspire any theorists to spark up new theories that may possibly cause break-ins and theft for secret files. So . . . how did this random ass guy know?
The case had been closed for more than two years now, it wasn’t worth talking about it all now. It was covered up, forgotten, and Alex’s disappearance had twisted into a story of make believe.
“How do you know about— Nevermind,” You shake your head, “What do you want?”
The man inched forward, “Look, Y/N,”
Your eyebrows raise as he says your name.
“I just want to speak to you about Alex and be on my way,” The man said, “So please, let me just do my job.” He was weirdly charismatic, but you paid no attention to his antics and just obliged, just wanting this to be over with as soon as possible. You stood back, opening the door wider so the man could walk in. He does, and you close the door. “So, Y/N,” he turns to you, “before I tell you, may I introduce myself?” You stayed silent with crossed arms. “Ahem, my name is Karl Heisenberg.”
You just stare at him.
“I’m, uh,” Heisenberg finds the words as he flails his hands around, “a detective— for the, uh, investigation.” He cleared his throat again, “And you’re Y/N L/N. Alex’s . . . partner.”
You squint your eyes a bit, “The hell are you implying?”
“Nothing!” Heisenberg replied back defensively, “I’m just trying to get all the facts right.”
“They closed the case two years ago,” you tell him before sitting down on the couch, shaking your head as you place your hand against your forehead, “Why are you— Why are you here?” You unfold your arms, leaning forward a bit. “Are you just here to remind me of what I’ve lost? Of the parent my son lost? What the fuck do you want with me?” You raise your voice, but you try to keep quiet as Leo was asleep just down the hall.
Heisenberg kept his composure, becoming a bit cocky. “But that’s the thing, kid.” He replied to you, stepping over to you, “I’m here because we reopened the case. It’s—”
You widened your eyes at his words, shocked. “Why would they reopen the case? It’s been two years— This doesn’t make any sense.” You tell him.
“It does make sense, Y/N.” He tells you, “Because we found them.”
You gasp.
“We found Alex.”
You and Leo hitched a ride from Heisenberg as you knew you wouldn’t want to wait for a plane ride or use up all your money on taxis and buses. You’ve been on the road for what seemed like forever, but it had now been six hours on the road, and yet there was still more to come. Heisenberg didn’t even seem tired, while you and Leo slept on and off throughout the trip.
Heisenberg’s car was an old, silver 1970’s AMC Hornet. Dark leather, cushioned seats, dirty windows that he refused to clean. Although, it was still in almost mint condition, probably worth thousands of dollars — you’re sure of it. It matched who he was almost exactly.
Heisenberg was a nice guy — to say at the very least. He didn’t seem too nice or . . . clean. And his suit didn’t exactly match his appearance. He had scars all over his face and arms — which you noticed once he took off his suit jacket. He’s jacked, but you kept that to yourself.
His accent was odd, how sometimes with certain words, he would emphasize sounds or add a totally different sound. When he spoke to you about his mother, Miranda, and how he was surprised he was able to sneak away from their village so quickly and without a trace, you noticed nothing more than how he said “Miranda,” adding an “er” sound instead of the “a” sound at the end.
He got along with Leo well. Not that it mattered. But he was sweet, and cared for others from what it seemed. He used his own money to care for you and Leo on the trip to Louisiana, taking money from his own wallet just to see you smile. There was a sudden liking in him that you found aching in your heart, knowing that no matter what you may think of him, you don’t think he’ll ever leave your life.
You didn’t want to ask him any personal questions, especially about his mother and the rest of his family — if he had any. Heisenberg . . . No, Karl. Karl was kind. He was sweet. There were parts of him that made you want to just hold his hand and never let go. He was someone you didn’t want to lose, but how could you have grown so attached to him so quickly?
Oh, how worried you were. How could you have done this? Why did you grow so attached to him? You only just met him hours ago, were you really that desperate for attention? Then again, you couldn’t blame it all on just yourself. You were all alone for three years, isolated with your young son to protect him from anything that may come too close and hurt him, take him away from his home, away from you. But now, as you look at him, you wonder if anyone ever saw him as scary.
His scars tainted his skin, the ones that could scare anyone. The way his eyes pierced a dark golden-like color, ones that could stare into someone’s soul and break them apart with just a blink. His skin looked rough and unclean, but his nails were almost as sharp as his teeth, very untaken care of, dirty and yellow — though his teeth were weirdly white. His long-ish hair was gray and silver, some blackness along with it. His sunglasses were black-tinted circles, and he smokes cigars. He was pretty much a total video game villain made for just cockiness and strength.
But you saw through it all, knowing what he truly was in this nicely suited form. He looked to be a normal person with that suit on. His hair was combed, and his face was rather handsome, even in spite of his scars. The scars just made him look strong, like he’s been through a lot. His skin was covered in them, from his face and down his arms, surely all over his body as well. You can’t help but feel so attached to him — though, you knew why. You’ve been alone for so long, you needed someone to comfort you through all this, and he . . . he seemed to be just perfect for it.
You didn’t want to use him, no. You wanted to love him for who he was, make most of the connection you two share between you both. You wanted to continue seeing him, you never wanted to lose him — why did you grow so attached to him? If you ever lose him, you'll surely lose it. You won’t be able to recover from it — you hated yourself for having such terrible attachment issues.
BUT WHAT ABOUT ME?
That thought wouldn’t dare to leave your mind. It was haunting you. You can’t move on now, it’s too late for that. I’m alive. I’m alive, Y/N. Why are you falling for a man you just met? Why are you betraying me? Why are you doing this? What did I ever do to you, Y/N?
They left me to raise our son alone for three years. Unintentionally or not — you didn’t care. You knew you’d live a better life with Heisenberg now. He was better, he was kind — why. do. you. get. so. goddamn. attached. You hated yourself for it. You’re emotionally cheating, aren’t you?
As you thought about forgetting Alex, there was something that wouldn’t leave your mind. Heisenberg had this familiarity to him, something that made you feel as if you’ve met him before, known him at a different time. You weren’t so sure, but you weren’t so worried about it either.
“Y/N,” Heisenberg glanced at the rear view mirror, “It’s dark out. Should we pull over and sleep for the night?” He clears his throat. Just by him speaking, he snapped you out of your thoughts of derealization.
Ever since Alex first went missing, you had been hallucinating, hearing voices inside your head like mentioned before — but those voices were no other than Alex. They took over your mind, detaching you from your reality and into a world of torment and pain, constantly being reminded of how you left Alex behind, trying to forget them and leave them in your dark past so you and Leo could live without pain — but that’s not how it works.
You’ve refused to see someone about your hallucinations, about the voices, as you were afraid that if you did, you’d be seen as an unfit parent for Leo — and you’ll lose him. You’ve already lost Alex, so you can’t afford to lose Leo, too. But now, it seems that Alex was alive.
So why won’t they leave your mind?
“Well,” you turn to look back at Leo who was sleeping peacefully in his carseat, “maybe we should stop by a hotel. Even a motel might work.” You look at him, but he’s silently confused. “Wait, Karl— Do you—” You stifled a laugh, “Do you not know what those are?”
“What?” Heisenberg looked over to you with a scoff, “Of course I do! I’m not as stupid as you may think I am!” He claims, “I’m a genius!” He roared, “It’s . . .” His voice began to trail off as his eyes looked from left to right quickly, “What is it?” He looked over to you for a moment.
You chuckle at him.
“A hotel is a place you stay at, usually for vacations and traveling. I’ve stayed at plenty,” You look over to him, but realize a saddened expression on his face, “Karl, what’s wrong?”
He snapped out of it immediately, “Nothing,” he composed himself, “just got lost in my thoughts, that’s all.” You knew he was lying, but you weren’t sure if you should ask about it. You decided not to ask, so you turned back forward, looking for a sign for a nearby motel or hotel.
It was barely dawn. You and Leo needed to rest somewhere more comfortable.
“There,” you point to the right at a sign glowing red and orange, the words ‘Sunset Motel’ glowed brightly despite the darkness surrounding it, “we can stop here for now.” Heisenberg obliges and pulls into the parking lot. You step out of the car once he’s parked and you head over to the front office to pay for the night. Once you returned, you found Heisenberg holding Leo closely to him with his right arm while he used his left hand to hold your suitcase that had you and Leo’s clothes inside of it. He looks to you, and you raise the key, “Room 104.” He nods, and you both walk over to the room. You insert the room key and open the door, holding it open for Heisenberg.
You close the door behind you, locking it for safekeeping, before you turn and watch silently in awe as Heisenberg gently lays Leo on the bed, covering him up with the blanket. Slowly and carefully not waking the young boy up, Heisenberg leans back as a small smile curves from behind that scruffy beard of his. He looks to you and clears his throat, noticing your gaze. “You hungry?” He asked as he walked over to the other bed, “I can go pick something up for you both,”
But you hum, giving him a sly eye, “Something tells me you’re not American.”
Heisenberg laughs, “Well, you caught me. I’m actually Romanian,”
“You’re from a romanian village then?” You furrow your eyebrows, “What’s it like?” You sit beside him, wanting to know more about the man.
“Not as good as you might think,” Heisenberg lowered his head, “But enough about me. I’m just someone getting you to your partner, I’m not someone you should really involve yourself with.” Was he pushing you away? “I’m not a good person.”
“No one is a good person.” You stated, “Everyone’s . . . everyone’s made mistakes.” You look off somewhere else, remembering your own mistakes regarding Alex, and leaving them behind in the past, giving up on them when they needed you. How could you? You hated yourself so much for it.
How could you become so attached to him? You can’t be with him. You have me. I’m . . . I’m alive, and now you’re becoming attached to a scruffy man in a hat? What is wrong with you?
Why are you doing this, Y/N? How could you do this to me? I thought you loved me. I thought we were supposed to be together forever. I thought we were a family. But we’re not, right? Not anymore? Or were we ever a family at all? So as you fall for him more and more as the hours pass by, how are you going to tell him? How are you going to tell him that you still love me? That you’re still obsessed with me like you’ve always been?
HOW ARE YOU GOING TO TELL
HIM THAT YOU CAN HEAR ME
INSIDE YOUR HEAD, Y/N?
“Y/N,” Heisenberg suddenly said to you, snapping you out of your thoughts. “It’s really not that simple. I wish it was, but I’m . . I’m only going to end up hurting you, and I can’t do that to you.”
“I don’t think you can ruin me more,” You joke, but you let out a breathless laugh. “I’m okay to love again, and I don’t care if you hurt me or not because I know you won’t.” You give him a gentle smile, “I want to give you a chance to love, too.”
Heisenberg looked away, “Y/N . . . I don’t want to hurt you.”
“And you won’t.” You tell him, “I know you won’t.”
But . . . your thoughts are still pounding inside your head.
As your thoughts continued to race inside of your mind, you can’t help but wonder if all this was just a hallucination, too. Was Heisenberg even real? Was all of this even real? This can’t be real. Alex is dead. Alex is gone. They’ve been gone for three years. They’re supposed to be dead. This can’t be the truth. This can’t be. You have to stop this. Wake up, Y/N. Wake up. Wake up!
“Y/N, we’re here.”
Your eyes fluttered open just before you rubbed them. Your eyes strained from the bright sunlight coming in from the window. You looked over to the driver’s seat, seeing Heisenberg sitting there, taking the keys out of the ignition. You glance around, seeing Leo asleep in his seat in the backseat of the car. You looked at him, “Wait, how—”
“You fainted when we were talking last night. I let you sleep for a while before I put you and Leo into the car and continued the trip to Louisiana.” Heisenberg explained to you, “I didn’t want to wake you both. You guys slept, well, about thirteen hours.” He chuckled at your expense.
You huffed, unbuckling your seatbelt. You didn’t doubt that you slept for that long, and you didn’t doubt anything that Heisenberg had told you. Your derealization, your severe depression and anxiety because of what happened to Alex — it’s made it hard for you to sleep for more than three hours at a time. Thankfully, you were able to rest during those thirteen hours.
Heisenberg stepped out of the car, and you looked back at Leo, sighing before you stepped out of the car as well. You looked him up and down, noticing how he’s changing into just a loose-ish white t-shirt that had a few undone buttons under the neckline. A cigar holder hangs around his neck, and he wore brownish pants.
He looked more scruffy than he did before. It honestly just made you want to laugh, but at the same time, you liked that he was in more casual clothes for him. You could tell he felt more comfortable in those clothes rather than how he must’ve felt in that suit. It didn’t suit him, really.
“Y/N,” Heisenberg stopped and he looked into the distance, “I’m going to wait in the car.” He turned back and headed to the car, you wondered what had gotten into him so suddenly, but you continued through the opened gate, finding a burned, demolished estate. Crumbling black mold all around, a man dressed in all black attire stood by some soldiers.
“Excuse me,” You approach the man, earning a confused look from him. The other soldiers walked away, but you stayed. “Sir, I was told my partner, Alex, was here. Alex Hill.”
The man stares at you for a moment, “Are you Y/N L/N?” There was no joy in his eyes, only a thinning frown across his face. “I’m sorry, but, when we arrived here, we found only bodies. We identified who we could, but Alex was one of them. I’m sorry, Y/N.” He looked around, “Are you here with anyone else?”
You nod, “Yeah, I’m—” But when you turned to look at the car, no one was in the front seat. Heisenberg had disappeared. “I’m . . . with my son.” You frown, realizing who Heisenberg was now. Just a figment of your imagination — you drove yourself here with Leo. You never met Heisenberg because he wasn’t real. Just your imagination acting up again. How could you even think such a man was real? Idiot.
The man composes his stance, “Whatever caused this isn’t gone completely,” he looked back at the demolished estate, “so I’m going to need to escort you and your son to somewhere safe for the time being.”
You furrow your eyebrows, “Why— Why would we need to do that? Is it— Is this really that bad? What the hell happened— What the hell happened to Alex?!” You raise your voice at the man, but he grabs your arms and tries to calm you down.
“Y/N, I’ll explain this all to you on the way there.” The man said, then he began to usher you back to the car, “Let’s get you and your son to safety now, alright?” You can’t help but oblige, knowing you had no other choice. Whatever happened to Alex was something that may happen again, and now you knew — Leo’s life meant more than your own now. Saving him was your first priority, and no matter what, you’re going to keep him safe. No. Matter. What.
Right?
Three years passed almost like it was nothing. Leo’s seven now. He’s homeschooled, you teach him and take care of him, raising him to become a wonderful young person so his future may be bright and full of success and joy. Leo's safety was still your top priority, which was why he was homeschooled instead of going to actual school. You never even really left your house at all. You both stayed home, played inside, watching movies and TV together with lots of popcorn. You both lived safely in that home in Europe. You were both happy.
The man you had met before, Chris Redfield, escorted you and Leo to a safe estate in Europe, covering up all that happened there in Louisiana in hopes to finally put it all behind everyone. The coverup story was that there was an oil spill, but that wasn’t completely true. Chris told you about it on the way to Europe that day you arrived in Louisiana with Leo — and that figment of your ruthless imagination.
Apparently a bioweapon, that took the form of a ten year old girl, was being escorted somewhere on a boat with its caretaker and agent, only to later kill the agent and crash the boat, killing dozens of people in the process. The bioweapon and the caretaker were found by a family living near the bayou, which happened to be close to where the boat crashed. The bioweapon took over the family and led them all to their deaths, creating them into strong monsters until a man looking for his wife defeated them all — including himself. Ethan Winters was his name. That was the only name you caught onto when listening to Chris explain it all to you. Apparently Alex was one of the only people left alive at that estate as they had taken more than 20 people over the last two years before it all came down that day. Alex was one of them. They didn’t make it.
Alex was now officially gone, but you didn’t prepare a funeral, or even a burial. You let them take their body for experiments and testing as you couldn’t care less anymore. It was time to move on from Alex and the dark past of yours. And Heisenberg, with his scruffy looks and daunting voice, you had to learn to forget them all. They were gone, it wasn’t worth remembering anymore.
In February, three years after it all happened, you were cooking dinner for you and Leo. You were cooking a local recipe called piroshki. Ground beef, cooked rice, olive oil, and more — it was a delicious meal that both you and Leo had enjoyed before. Leo sat at the dinner table, reading one of his books quietly as he waited for dinner to be served.
“Leo, do you want water or tea?”
“Water’s fine, Noni,” Leo replied to you. You smile and grab a glass from the cabinet. You pour water into the glass before grabbing his plate with the glass in your other hand, taking it to place it in front of him on the table. “Thank you,” he said before grabbing his fork and digging right in. He was a sweet boy with proper manners. You were so proud of him.
You grab your glass and plate and take it to the table, sitting in your own seat. “Chris plans on coming over for dinner tomorrow, what should I cook?”
“Noni, don’t do this.” Leo teases, “You don’t need anyone but me in your life. I don’t want you getting hurt again,” he tells you sincerely before he takes another bite. You take a sip from your water, thinning your lips as you gulp.
“I know, Leo,” you sigh, “I know.”
There’s a knock at the door suddenly. You huff and you raise from your seat.
“I’ll be back,” You tell him before you walk through the living room and into the front corridor, looking through the peephole in the front door with confusion. “Hello? May I help you?” You say to them through the door.
“Hi, Y/N. I’m here to speak to you about something. It’s regarding Redfield.” But it was an unfamiliar face, you didn't recognize them.
“Just have him email me. I’m busy here—”
“Oh, but that’d take too long,” they said, “please. Just open the door.” You didn’t like the way that voice curved and purred through those lips of theirs. You furrowed your eyebrows, stepping back away from the door.
“No,” You say, “I don’t think so.”
You hear a muffled cackle.
“Too late.”
“Huh—”
The door practically slams open with a powerful gust of wind, throwing you onto the stairs forcefully, hurting your back terribly in the process. You grunt, trying to stay awake but you hit your head so hard, there’s practically stars spinning around your head. But in just your last moments with your eyes open, you see a dark figure with six crow wings, three on each side, holding what seems to be Leo in their arms.
“L-Leo . .” You pant before your eyes shut, and you pass out from the pain on the stairs.
You awoke in the back of a dark van. You rubbed your eyes, sitting up with a grunt, stretching your weak, pained muscles. You look around, no one’s in there with you. You couldn’t even say a word before the van began to toss and turn from side to side, crashing, throwing you into the wall back and forth. Once you awoke again, blood dripped from your forehead, and you looked away, groaning as you felt so terribly weak. So many things had just happened in such a short time.
You’re laying there on the snow covered ground, shivering from the cold snow against your bare skin. You sit up, grabbing your phone — but it was broken, no use to you now. You curse under your breath before looking around, seeing that the van’s lights were still shining bright, and a couple dead soldiers laid around on the snow. You lean down, finding a journal.
Tasks:
Retrieve Y/N L/N
Take them to another safe estate for the time being
Do NOT inform them of what happened
You furrow your eyebrows in confusion, but you throw the journal down and walk through the snow, heading over past the crash site and through the spooky, dark woods covered in snow. You grabbed a flashlight that you had found on the ground and turned it on, using it as your only source of light as you walked through that dead forest. It was dark and chilly, you felt goosebumps crawling on your skin from underneath your jacket.
You huff, shivering as you walk through the dead trees, using your flashlight to show you your surroundings in order for you not to get smacked in the face by a dead tree limb. You huff and huff, grunting as your side feels a great piercing pain.
Through the forest, snow munching underneath your feet. You swore there was snow in your boots. You continue, you knew you couldn’t give up. You have to find somewhere safe for the night, you have to save Leo.
“Almost there,” you mutter to yourself, making it to the top of the hill. You finally make it, holding onto a tree so you can catch your breath. Using your flashlight, you check your wound, pulling up your shirt, gasping from the cold wind hitting your skin. It’s not bad, but it’s bruised so it’ll hurt for a while. Thankfully, there was no sign of internal bleeding. Just bruises. You sigh in relief, thanking god through your mind, but you couldn’t give him too much credit yet. You still have to find Leo and get him to safety, but for now, you just need to figure out if you’re going to make it through the night in one piece.
Whispers echo throughout the forest, the snow crunching beneath your feet with each step you take, walking down the steep hell of snow. You walk through the dead woods, but you cringe in disgust as you find yourself stepping over dead crows. Blood soaked through the white snow, loose feathers spread all around in the blood stained snow. You raise your flashlight, seeing that there were literal dead crows hanging from the limbs of dead trees — honestly, not that surprising. You duck down, trying not to let the hanging dead crows touch you — because if they did, you’d probably hurl.
A twig snaps just a few feet in front of you, a hairy leg appears in the light but disappears quickly. It wasn’t human, but it didn’t look like any normal animal. You felt your heart stop for a second once you saw that, but you continued on, trying to stay calm as you possibly could.
“Dammit,” your side continues to hurt, but you’re already approaching a bridge. You smile weakly, glad and relieved to see that you were making it somewhere where life lived just nearby. You walk across the bride quickly, it creaks with every step you take.
Soon, you find yourself approaching a wooden shack-like house, a cottage even. A rain chain hung by the front door, and a pile of firewood sat nearby. You felt a sense of relief as you entered the house, glad to finally have a roof over your head — but your fear would only grow as you walked through the house, finding that no one was home, not even one lantern was lit inside. It was almost stupid of you to not notice the blood puddle under the cracked open door you just pushed open.
But everything seemed to be in place, nothing was off about it — except, of course, the darkness that your flashlight shined through. You checked the wardrobes, but despite your anxiety spiking from something that may appear out of thin air behind those doors, you just find a normal wardrobe inside. It loosened you from your anxiety, but you still felt anxious as you searched throughout the dark, lonesome house.
You found a side room where a set of stairs led down to a basement area. You hesitate, seeing a mounted deer head laying on the floor. You walk down the stairs just past it, trying to avoid eye contact with its lifeless eyes. You find yourself in a narrow walkway leading to a slightly wider room with a desk and long cabinet. You scurry past it, finding yourself in a bigger room.
Garlic hung around the room, some furniture had been knocked over, but it wasn’t anything too surprising to you. On a rolling table, you find a framed photo facing down. You pick it up and turn it, seeing a woman looking as if she were a god — but then you saw it. The crow wings. It was her. It was the woman who took Leo away. You drop the photo as you gasp, and the glass shatters all over the ground, but you quickly step back.
You continue to step back until a couple of old, wooden boards fall behind you, causing you to gasp with fear. You turn around quickly, aiming your flashlight forward — but you only find that it was just a couple of grey wooden boards, though something on the wall caught your eye. A symbol written in what looked like chalk — a circle, almost like an X pointed out from the circle, an unborn fetus was in the middle. You thought this couldn’t possibly be real, that was . . . it was sickening.
Down at the end of the room, a red wooden wardrobe sat in just the middle. A muffled thump from inside of it, you could feel your stomach twist in silent terror. You approached it slowly, though you had no weapon at all — how were you going to defend yourself?
You pull it open, stepping back, almost tripping over your own feet, just to find that it was just a little rat. It climbed out of the wardrobe as it squeaked and hid away. You relax your tense muscles, feeling a sense of relief wash over you. You turn to head back upstairs, but a large noise is heard from above you, the wooden floors creaking loudly, the sounds of things breaking is surely heard by you as you stand there, trying not to panic. You rushed upstairs, curiosity getting the best of you in the most idiotic of ways, but once you made it back up the stairs, a shelf had tilted and fallen in front of the doorway.
You crouch down and slide underneath it, pushing away a couple boxes, which led you to notice the blood you had just slid on, staining your skin. You cringe, and look around. Everything was thrown around and the furniture had been tipped over and even some were broken in half.
“What the hell happened?” You mutter, seeing the large hole in the wall. You crawl over, standing up as you wipe yourself off before you head through the hole and into the outside of the house. It was daylight now, but the sky didn’t seem warm and blue — it was grey and the world around you was almost completely covered by the white snow. Though, the world was still dim, but you put away your flashlight for now — you didn’t want to waste the batteries on it.
You jump over the fence, heading through the rest of the woods, but once you made it out to the end of it, you find yourself looking at something you couldn’t even begin to believe was real.
Cold wind breezes through the air, a large castle sits in the distance to your right, and a windmill is in the distance to your left. Before you was a seemingly dead silent village covered in snow and blackness, drained of any color at all. Fog drifted over the village and through its streets, in front of the castle, covering most of what looked like a factory in front of the mountains that were almost completely covered by the fog. The mountains seemed to surround the village, hiding it from the rest of the world almost. It was almost like it was built here for that reason, to be hidden away.
You weren’t sure.
“Where the hell am I?” You ask yourself, acting as if you wanted your own self to answer a question you didn’t know the answer to. It looked oddly scary and eerie, you were almost too afraid to even want to search through it.
But you had to, it was the right thing to do. You promised and swore on everything that you’d do anything to save Leo, and you will. You most definitely will.
A church bell rings, echoing throughout the valley from somewhere in the village. You shudder, unsure what to do next, but you look over to your left, finding a trail leading down to the village.
You try to shrug off your nervousness, trying to be brave as you jump down, walking over a bit before you slide down a snowy slope. You grunt, standing up from the ground. You wipe yourself off, feeling chilly from the snow stuck to your clothes.
You find yourself near a house, some of the wooden plants had been bent and cracked, but mostly they were all covered in snow and ice. Garlic hung in front of the front door, just like how garlic hung around the room in the basement and such in that house before. You wondered if something more dangerous lurked in this seemingly dead-silent village.
A dead, bloody horse lays on the ground not too far from you, but you stray away from it, feeling sick. You weren’t very fond of dead bodies. Your past proved that. You look to see the sky above the house, only seeing the castle in the far, but near enough, distance. You feel a sense of worry sink into your stomach, though you compose yourself and walk into the house.
It was dark, only just a small thread of light from the window, its white curtains were closed. Most of the furniture looked roughed up, showing signs of obvious distress from anyone who lived there. Pillows were sliced open, some of the wooden tables and shelves were broken in half.
You gulp, “Maybe . . Maybe they’re out?” You tried to stay optimistic, though you weren’t so sure if you were going to be able to stay optimistic throughout this journey. The same symbol you saw before in white was drawn on the floor, halfly covered by a red patterned rug. The picture you also saw before hung on the wall just near the symbol. You honestly wouldn’t be surprised if those were related in any way.
You step back and turn, heading back to the front door. To your least expectation, the horse had been dragged over behind the fence, only half of it being shown to you. You stop in fear, watching as the horse’s dead body is dragged away, disappearing behind that fence.
You quickly walk over to the other door, opening it to find an indoor stable inside. There’s a light on, thankfully, but it’s only in the nearest corner to you, leaving the rest of the stable dim with only the smallest of light peeking into the room from the small crack in the door on the other side of the stable.
You walk to the door, pushing it the rest open so you could step out. A well is there, along with a shed-like shack over on the other side of the well. Everything looks abandoned, but the eerie vibe surrounding it all was unsettling to say the least. The atmosphere was just so . . . dense, and it made your heart crawl onto your sleeve, ready to jump and stop beating if anything popped out at you all the sudden. You head out of there, noticing a wired gate with a red “DO NOT ENTER” sign on it, but you turn and head down the street.
To your right, an almost completely demolished house sits, its roof had come in and walls had been broken down. Some of the furniture was still left, but one thing did catch your eye. A toy, a little green robot transformer that you forgot the name of — it was Leo’s favorite toy, but as you looked at it closely, you saw the scratch on its shoulder. It was Leo’s.
You leave the house and continue down the street, taking the toy with you for safekeeping. As you continue down the street to your right, a broken down tractor sits by the fence, but that wasn’t what caught your eye. Literal decapitated goat heads hung from the trees above. You cringe in disgust, feeling something at the back of your throat, wanting to hurl.
A three-way sign is posted by you. Graveyard, Workshop, Ceremony Site. The Workshop sign pointed back where you had just come from, and the other two pointed where you were heading — however, a crashed carriage blocked your path.
“Well,” you say with a huff, “at least that ceremony site can wait until later,” you continue through the streets, turning left now to find a more secluded street. Two houses, one gate closed and locked with a paper taped on it, saying that the gate had been locked and secured due to the absence of the house’s owner.
You leave it be and head over to the other house, noticing that it’s the only house so far to have a lit lantern hanging near its front door, somewhat reminding you of Halloween. That didn’t exactly soothe your anxiety, but it did remind you of some joyful memories with Leo.
You step into the house, slowly opening the door as you prepare for anything that may jump out at you. A regular old lantern is lit on the other side of the room next to a knife that was stabbed into the wooden end table.
Once you grab it, noise from outside is heard, startling you. You swore your hair stood up on the back of your neck.
You head into the kitchen, looking around, hoping to find anything. In a drawer, you found a first aid bottle. Thinking it may be of use, you take it and close the drawer. You look over on the stove, a pot still steaming a bit sits there. You lift the top, “Did they just run out of the house?” It was green stew, still hot and steamy, but smelling it just made you want to gag so you put the top back on the pot.
You were starting to feel as if something made everyone evacuate, or even worse, what if something killed everyone? No, that can’t be. It couldn’t be. But that horse being dragged away, the blood all around, and the emptiness throughout the village — something happened and you need to find out. There’s a creak in the floorboard, but it’s not from you. It came from over at the pantry.
You didn’t want to take your chances. You turn back and head towards the way you first came, but you find what made that noise before — the roof in front of the house had collapsed, blocking the door from being opened again. You curse under your breath before you head back into the kitchen and look at the pantry. You begin to approach, taking a deep breath before you grab onto the curtain and pull it back quickly.
A gunshot echoes, blowing a hole into the wall. You jump back, putting your hands up, “Hey, hey! I’m not bad! I’m not bad!” You exclaim defensively, seeing a man standing there with a shotgun aimed right at you.
Well, he’s definitely friendly, huh?
You furrow your eyebrows in response to Alex’s voice in your head.
“Who are you? Who sent you?” The man questioned you.
“Nobody, I promise!” You say, “There was a crash down the road— What’s going on?” You asked, but there’s no reply, “Sir—”
The man rushes over to you, covering your mouth with his hand to keep you quiet. He looks around, loud roaring noises coming from above and around the house. He starts to panic as he looks back at you, but then he runs over to the cabinet to grab more shotgun shells, then he looks out the window, trying to look for whatever the noise was. “Oh no.” He steps back. “They’re coming!”
“Who is? What the hell was that?” You question him, panicking, too.
“Do you have a gun?”
“What?”
“Do you have a gun?” The man repeats in a stern tone. You shake your head in response, so the man turns back to the pantry and grabs something before handing you a gun. “This is all I can spare,” you take it and check it out before looking back at the man who looks around.
“Sir, sir,” you walk over to him, “Tell me what’s out there. Please.” You beg him. The man shoots at the window behind you, knocking you back from the noise. You look back at him and he’s reloading his shotgun. “Hey! Are you even listening?” But the man doesn’t reply, he ignores you and continues to reload his gun, only to be suddenly grabbed from above, pulling him up as he screams.
Damn, well there he goes! Alex’s voice exclaims as you fall back onto the floor, terrified of what you had just witnessed. Before you could say anything, an arm breaks through the floorboard beneath you, grabbing onto your arm before it pulls you beneath the house as you scream for your life thinking that this is the end. This was the end. Right?
You wake up with the face of a dead body just inches away from you. You gasp, but keep quiet, throwing your hand across your mouth so you wouldn’t be tempted to scream. With your other hand, you grip your handgun, ready to shoot whenever needed. You get off the ground, crouching as you walk past the dead bodies that filled the place underneath the house. You grab one body’s head, raising it to get a better look at it, only to regret it. You look around slowly at all the bodies.
“What the hell is wrong with this goddamn place?” You whisper, but then you’re startled by another body being dropped in front of you. You look in the distance, seeing a monster-like creature feasting on another dead body. Your stomach was starting to twist and turn inside of you.
A set of teeth bites into your arm, tearing your flesh as you scream. You place your hand on the head of the creature quickly, “Get off!” You shout, pushing the head of the monster off of your arm, but it grabs you and throws you through the wall and onto the cold ground outside. “Shit!” You begin to stand up but you see the monster beginning to step out of the house.
You take out your gun and aim at its head, shooting it repeatedly as it growls, fresh blood dripping from its mouth. But just before it gets close enough to bite you, its head explodes with almost black blood and the body falls right into you. You grunt, your head hitting the ground under you harshly. You grab onto the body and push it off of you. You get up, turning over onto all fours as you hurl up any food from your stomach. You lean up, sitting on your knees as you wipe your mouth. You look over to the gate, seeing bolt chains that kept the gate locked and closed.
You get off the ground quickly, heading back into the house through the hole in the wall. You look for bolt cutters, or at least something that could break the chain, but luckily, you found bolt cutters in the first room you came into the house from. You grab it quickly and run back out, cutting the chain with the bolt cutters. You push the gate open, throwing the bolt cutters away as you leave.
Across a little bridge, a barn’s door is cracked open, a pair of legs laying out there for you to see. You approach slowly, but the body is quickly dragged inside, the door shutting behind it. You shudder with fear. Holding your gun up high, you open the door and head inside the barn.
A radio playing just static sits on a clothed table. You turn the dials, but just static plays. You huff and turn away looking around. Handgun ammo sits on a barrel, so you take it and reload your gun quickly. From the corner of your eye, you see stairs leading up to an upper section of the barn. You were intrigued, so you walked over there and headed upstairs. One step, however, broke underneath your foot, scaring you almost to death. You pant, your hand on your chest as you try to calm yourself before continuing on. To your luck, here’s handgun bullets on a shelf — oddly enough.
You reach for it, but suddenly one of those monsters appears outside the window, breaking the window with its arm, reaching for you, but you stumble back, out of its reach. You grab the bullets and stache them in your pocket before one of those monsters jumps in from an open hole in the roof. You aim at its head, but it swings around, causing you to miss a couple times, but as it goes to grab you, you aim the gun up under the monster’s chin, pulling the trigger, shooting its brains out.
You try to calm your breaths. As the growls and roars from all around begin to quiet down and disappear, you take in a deep breath before you head back downstairs. You push open the door, but just as it flies open, the radio begins to play a woman’s voice.
“To any survivors, come to Luiza’s house past the church.”
Then the radio shut off. You raise your eyebrow, looking back at it. “Survivors? Huh.” You turn back and head out of the barn, heading over to a house left of the barn. You walk up the steps, hearing roars of monsters echoing throughout the village, nearby to the house you had just entered. You quickly grabbed the shotgun off the table in the middle of the room, taking the shotgun shells and reloading it to its highest capacity before heading into the other room, grabbing more shotgun shells and handgun bullets. There was a ladder — weird. But you climbed down it and headed through the crowded underground area.
There’s an open area leading out to another house up the small hill. But the monsters were roaming freely around the house you were trying to leave from. You took a deep breath before you climbed out from under the house and ran to the other house. You run around it, darting right through the door as you try to ignore the monster falling just beside the door. A shelf is placed just next to the door so you grab a tight, strong hold on it, pulling it over in front of the door. A dead man sits there against a table, but you grab the first aid bottle on the table above him, then the shotgun shells by the ladder, and you head up to the roof of the house.
“When will this ever fucking end—?” You aim your shotgun at the head of one of the monsters who had just climbed onto the roof, exploding its head with one single shot. More began to climb, and you continued to shoot at their heads, isolating yourself up on that roof. Those monsters continued to roar, your hair stood up on the back of your neck. An unfamiliar roar echoes nearby, and you see a tall ass fucking guy with a hammer starting to approach the house. “You’ve got be fucking kidding me.” You mutter as you shoot down more of the monsters, then you aim at the tall monster’s face and shoot at it. As you run out of shotgun shells, you pull out your pistol and you continue to shoot the monsters down as much as you could.
However, one of the monsters wraps its arm around your neck, pulling you into an almost chokehold before it turns you around, growling as it throws you somewhere far. You land on the ground, becoming surrounded by those monsters. A couple of them sway near you, growling into your face, their awful breath made you want to gag. The tall monster appears from above, jumping all the way down to just before your legs. It leaned down, its face was too close to your own. Its beard was long and dark gray, its eyes purely dark as he wore a giant, black trench coat and large boots. He honestly looked fucking terrifying, and its breath didn’t exactly warm you both up to each other.
It leans back up and looks off into the distance. For a moment, the creature just stood there, but then it jumped away, leaving you behind. The monsters, even the ones that rode actual horses, followed the tall creature away into the far distance. The village was somewhat burning, but the fire wasn’t spreading as much as it normally would be because of the cold air. You sit up, coughing a bit as you take out some bandages. You pull your jacket sleeve off carefully, wincing at the pain from your arm where that creature had bit you.
You pour the first aid onto the wound before wrapping the bandage around your arm, still wincing at the pain. It eased up though, and it felt much better. You put your jacket back on correctly and stand up from the ground, dusting yourself off. You look over into the near distance, two red gates were opened. You figured you had nothing else to do now so you headed over there, going through the gates, finding a woman hunched over, holding a staff that had two hanging skulls on it.
As you approach her, she whispers in an old, eerie voice, “In life and death, we give glory.” By the way she spoke, she seemed to be old and frail, and indeed she was, revealing her wrinkled face and her almost dead eyes to you as you spoke.
“Ma’am, you shouldn’t be out here,” you warn, “it’s not safe.”
But she gives you this odd, crooked smile, more wrinkles covering her face.
“Oh, you. You’re here for the boy,” she spoke graspily, “you must hurry if you are going to find him,” she tells you, a creepy tone in her already frail voice. You raise your eyebrows.
“Boy? — Leo? He’s here?” You look around, but the woman suddenly takes your hand with her own fragile hand. You could feel her bones, her skin was loose and you were afraid that if you moved your hand at all, she might break as easily as glass would.
“Oh, the boy — Leo.” The old hag spoke with glee, “He’s in great danger, you must find him quickly, or it might be too late.” She warned you, “Since Mother Miranda brought him to the village, we have fallen into this unforgiving darkness.”
“Darkness? Like— like the monsters?” You ask, but then you look up, not realizing that the old hag had turned away and begun to walk away, but that ringing of a bell from the castle in the far, but near, distance, a sudden, but faint tremble in the ground beneath your feet. Your worries were starting to grow. You turn around, seeing as the old hag was walking towards the opened red gates.
“The castle bell heralds danger! They’re coming!” The old hag roared with laughter, but you reached out your hand, frozen in your stance.
“Wait! Where’s Leo? Miss!” You exclaim, calling out to her with great sorrow in your throat, but the old hag continues to walk over to the red gates, standing just outside of them. “Who’s Mother Miranda? What does she want with my son?” But the old hag does not answer your pleas.
“The bell tolls for us all! They’re coming again!” She exclaims, closing the gates. You can still hear her roaring with laughter from beyond those gates.
“Fuck,” you shake your head, “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
Find Leo, maybe? I don’t know, it’s only a suggestion.
You roll your eyes as you hear Alex’s voice echoing in your thoughts after such a while full of just silence in your head. “Oh, nice to hear you again, Alex. I surely missed you and your bitchy attitude.” You remark to yourself, or, well, to Alex’s voice, but they just laugh.
You turn back and decide to head on through. On your right, there was a house. On the front porch, there were lit candles and framed photos hanging on the walls around the front door. You head through the front door, finding yourself into somewhat of a ritual room. That symbol from before was on the ground, lit candles spread around the room. You approach one table in the corner of the room, a piece of paper on it. You grab it and read the writing on it.
O great lycans,
The fabled monster wolves of old.
May they come to eat our flesh.
May they come to tear us apart.
Your lips part, your brows furrowed in confusion. “Something’s off about this place, other than the fucking monsters, or lycans, or whatever they fucking are.” You put the paper back down and look around the room. There’s a door leading into what seemed to be a kitchen so you enter. There’s nothing but a lock on a drawer in there, so if you could find a lockpick, that’d be great.
You exit the house and continue on. There’s a statue of a woman holding a shield with a goat on it and a sword in her right hand, high in the air. You notice a folded piece of paper taped to the pedestal. You take it off carefully, trying not to rip the paper. Unfolding it, it’s revealed to be a map.
According to the map, you were just next to the Maiden of War. You look back up at the statue, admiring it for a moment. It was a beautiful sculpture, but you knew this wasn’t the time for admiring. You turned away and looked around. Standing directly in front of the statue, you look at the map, making sure everything looks right. To your left, there was a house with a blueish gate and a well sat nearby it. Behind the statue was another house, one with a red chimney.
You look over behind you, seeing that it was the graveyard. At the top of the small hill was a door, probably leading up to the castle. As you glance at your left, you see a sign. One points to the graveyard, ‘Castle Dimitrescu,’ probably referring to the door at the top of the hill. You decided to head up there first, as everything else looked pretty locked and unable to enter. Once you approach it, you find that it's missing two crests in order to unlock and open the doors. You huff, “Now I have to find this shit,” and you turn away, heading over to the church.
You push open the door and find it empty, not that surprising. A crest sits upon a wired pedestal on display, so you grab it. The Maiden Crest, probably connected to the Maiden of War statue in front of those doors. Behind it on the wall, however, were five framed photos. One large framed photo in the middle, two on either side of it.
You figured the large portrait was of this mysterious Mother Miranda who you've only just heard of by that old hag. On the left side, a portrait of a fair pale lady with dark hair and a portrait of an odd looking man. The woman honestly looked more terrifying than the odd looking man as the man looked oddly kind than her. On the right side, a woman dressed in all black holding a doll in which was dressed in a white wedding dress, and then a portrait of a man in a dark hat whose eyes were covered by shadows, unable to recognize or see. But something about that man felt familiar to you, his jaw and his beard — you felt suddenly uneasy.
You remember, don’t you? Who he is? And what he meant to you?
“I don’t,” you shake your head, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” You clear your throat and turn away.
A paper sits on a chair just a couple feet away for you. You grab it and read the writing aloud to yourself as you knew no one was around. “Should disaster fall upon the village, seek out the crests. One is in the care of the church. The other is at Luiza’s house.” On the rest of the paper was a drawn out map of the town. The church is circled in red, a red X underneath it with an arrow pointing to it, the word ‘here’ just next to it, and another house was circled as well, the apparent ‘Luiza’s house’, but then you remembered from before — that was the house the survivors were supposed to go to.
You quickly head out the back door of the church, walking out to this field-like area leading to Luiza’s house. Scarecrows are propped up, spread throughout the field, but before you head into the field and through the tall hay-like grass, you stop as you notice some of the grass swaying back and forth. Those monsters, the one the people apparently referred to as ‘lycans,’ must be inside the field. You draw your handgun, figuring that you could just run quickly through the field and dodge the lycans so you wouldn’t have to use your ammo. You take in a deep breath, and you begin to run.
The grass hits your face lightly, but you don’t let it bother you. You run and run, hearing the growling grow louder as you run past them. You make it to the front gates, panicked as it was locked, unable to open from the outside.
“Shit,” you curse, but then a creak of a door is heard from the right of you.
“Father, someone’s out there—”
“Shut the door!”
Hushed voices from inside that shack, you quickly hurry over there and open the door.
“Close the door!” A girl begs, “Please!” You look at it for just a moment before turning back around and shutting the door behind you. You look at her, confused, but you watch as she steps back, revealing what looked to be her father, sitting there as he hitches his breath, bleeding from his leg.
“Stay back,” he warns huskily, raising a machete at you. You put your hands up in defense, realizing that you’re going to have to gain a lot of trust from these people quickly if they’re going to help you find Leo. You’re an outsider, Y/N. You have to remain a pacifist.
“Please, don’t hurt us,” the girl begged.
“It’s okay,” you reassure them both, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just glad to see normal people at last.” You pant, trying to give them a smile. You lower your hands, “Have you seen any other survivors?”
The girl shook her head, “No, they’re— they’re all in Luiza’s house.” She answered you. “And she’s not answering, and the gate is locked,” you could hear the worry and sorrow in her voice.
“Quiet, girl!” Her father ordered her, “They’re an outsider,” he whispered to her, warning her. Then, there’s those same roars as before, those lycans are still around, waiting for their next prey.
“We’re just sitting ducks in here,” you look over at the open window on the other side of the room, then you look back at the girl, “Can your father walk?”
“No, barely,” she replied, “one of those monsters cut him. He’s lost a lot of blood — we have to get into Luiza’s house!” She exclaimed at you.
You hush her, “We have to be quiet,”
She stood back, “There must be a way inside,” she whispered to you, bringing tears to her eyes, “please, help us.” She begged before she slowly stepped back, turning to her father sitting on the floor against the wall. You nod and look at the window.
You head over to the window, climbing through it. There was a well outside there, but what really caught your eye was the cloth covered wood next to an opening in the wall bordering Luiza’s house. You climb onto it quickly, heading over the opening in the wall. You jump down, looking around. You quickly check into the outhouse, nothing’s there, so you head over to the front gates and unlock it for the two outside in the shack. You look around, “Come on, it’s clear!” You call out to them, and the door opens. The girl helps her father walk as fast as they could to the gates.
“Hurry, hurry!” You hear the girl say to her father. You push the gate open farther, though it was hard to do it as it was extremely heavy.
The man looks at you as they approach the gates, “Took your damn time,” he remarks before walking over to the steps.
“You’re welcome,” you remark back, and the girl helps you close the gates.
You both head over to the steps where the girl’s father as she tells you, “He’s not used to relying on other people, I’m sorry. We’ll be safe here, right?”
“Safer here than out there, that’s for sure,” you answer her worryful question. Before she turns away, you ask her, “Do you know anything? About what’s happening here?”
She shakes her head in response, “Mother Miranda has always protected us, but now, it seems we’re all suffering for things we didn’t even do. We were just a quiet village,” she cried, “I don’t know what we did to deserve all this pain and turmoil,” and she stood by her father, comforting him.
You approach the front doors, knocking. “Hello? Anybody there?”
The girl approaches, “Maybe a familiar face . . .” She knocks as well, “Luiza! Open up! It’s me, Elena!” The door then opens, the end of a shotgun aiming right at her head.
“Stop shouting. You’ll draw the monsters!” The man orders the girl, who’s apparent name was Elena.
“Iulian, calm down—”
“Who’s this?” Iulian quickly turns to you, his shotgun aiming right at your chest.
“A friend,” Elena told him, but Iulian just looked at her.
“Stay back,” he stepped closer to you, glaring at you. Based on how Iulian looked and sounded, he was maybe a teenager or young adult, though it made more sense that he was a teenager based on his paranoia. Then again, everyone seemed to be paranoid around here. Not surprising.
Elena’s father walks over, hunching over as he feels a great pain. Elena stares at Iulian, “For god’s sake, Iulian, let us in!” She pleas.
Elena had dark brown hair and a gentle looking face, someone who may be more outgoing than most, a kind woman. Her father, who’s name you weren’t sure of yet, had white hair, a slightly wrinkled face, and a bad attitude. He seemed more rude and ungrateful than anything, not that it mattered much to you, but then again, he was hurt pretty badly.
“No, no,” said Iulian quickly, “They’ll smell the blood — you’ll endanger us all!”
“But my father will die out here! Please, Iulian!” Elena begs Iulian, though you stand there, not sure if you should speak at all.
“That’s not my problem,” Iulian leaned towards the girl, growling at her.
“What’s going on here?” Another woman, most likely Luiza, approaches from inside of the house, confused as her arms swing on either side of her. She wore a black dress, her hair updo in a bun, similar to Elena’s ponytail. She looked older, maybe the mother of Iulian, though you weren’t sure about any relation in this village at all. You didn’t know anything but their names and that they lived there in the village, and you didn’t think you should invade any of their privacy and business.
“These people,” Iulian looks at her, “want to let a dying man into our home.”
Luiza furrows her eyebrows, “Come now, these people are our friends.” She told Iulian firmly, “Go on,” she turns to Elena and her father, “go inside. Come now, this way.” She helps them into the house carefully, Elena’s father winces and grunts. Luiza returns, staring at you, “You’re not from this village . .” She furrowed her eyebrows once again.
“No, I’m,” You gulp, “I’m Y/N.” You introduce yourself.
“Iulian,” Luiza turns to the other man, “go make yourself useful and check the guards.” When Iulian continued to stand there with the shotgun aimed at you, Luiza raised her voice, “I said go!”
As the man named Iulian begins to walk away, he stares at you with hawk eyes, almost threatening you silently with the shotgun in his hands.
Luiza then begins to approach you. “Well, if Elena trusts you,” she lets out a short sigh, “then so do I. Come inside, Y/N.” She steps back and turns, walking back into the house as you follow. You shut the door behind you, and Luiza looks at you. “Wait here, I’ll check on the others for now.” And she goes through another door, shutting it behind you. You look around for now, looking through a photo book of the village, seeing that people were happy. Where did that go? You sigh, shrugging, and you look over to the chair, finding a piece of paper, a note to Luiza.
Luiza,
They broke in again, got more of the livestock. I don’t think we’ll make it through winter at this rate.
Ernest is still missing, too. We can’t find him anywhere.
Has Mother Miranda abandoned us all?
You put the paper back on the chair, and you turn to stand against the wall. You folded your arms, waiting for Luiza to return. For now, you knew that you were safe from the lycans and any other monster outside of the walls of this safe haven.
Do you think this safe haven will last?
You huffed, “Do you?”
Not sure. This place seems too good to be true. I don’t know. Ask me that again later.
You roll your eyes and lower your head. You let out a long sigh before closing your eyes, trying to rest for a minute as you waited. As the sun rises in the far distance from the horizon, you’re safe for now in Luiza’s house with the other survivors, but maybe, this was just the beginning of something awful. You knew the other villagers won’t enjoy the fact you’re an outsider, they might try to blame all of this on you, even though you knew you had nothing to do with it. But standing there, waiting for Luiza to return, you just wanted to savor the peace, the lack of paranoia and fear — as this may be your last moments of peace for a while.
"This way.” Luiza opened the door for you. You stood off the wall, following her through a hallway, leading into a sitting room. Luiza draws the curtains open, entering the sitting room. “Come inside, the others are waiting.” You follow her inside, drawing the curtains away so you can step into the room, and the man sitting in a chair just by the entrance to the sitting room you just came in from, holding a bottle of whiskey in his hand as he turned to look at you.
“What the fuck is this?” The man remarked. “Outsiders — you’re going to get us all killed, Luiza!” The man shouted at her.
“Quiet, Anton,” said Luiza, “He helped Leonardo and Elena,” so her father’s name is Leonardo? Like— Like the ninja turtle? You mentally told Alex to shut up, trying not to speak aloud to confuse the others.
“We were doing fine by ourselves,” said Leonardo stubbornly, leaning over as he held onto his pained side. Luiza walked over to you then, pulling out a seat for you. A lit lantern sits on the table, lighting up the dark room. You take a seat as you nod at her, and she returns over to someone laying on the couch, trying to check on them.
“Is this all that’s left? From your village?” You ask them.
“All that’s left?” Anton stands up from his seat, “All that’s left?!” He raises his voice at you. “There is no one left!” He steps over to you, his eyebrows furrowed as his forehead wrinkles with anger and frustration by your words. He pointed to someone sitting on another chair in the corner who held onto a crutch, “A worthless invalid! A stupid, wailing bitch . . !” He points to a woman crying near Luiza who checked on the man laying on the couch. “And you!” He points to Luiza who had just stood back to comfort the woman, “You drag a bloody man and an outside in here — like it’s nothing! And expect us to be all safe?” Anton turns, “There is no safe! Every— Every sorry bastard out there has been ripped in half! But tomorrow . . .” He takes another gulp of his whiskey, “Tomorrow, we’ll all be dead.” He turns and points to the woman’s husband, who was the man laying on the couch, “Just like her damn husband!” But the woman continues to cry, so he becomes furious, “Put a sock in it, Roxana—!”
“That’s enough!” Luiza raises her voice at Anton. “This house has protected my family for generations. And drunk or not, you are all welcome — and safe — in here.” She told Anton sternly. She tries to grab Anton’s hand, but he jerks it away, earning a surprised look on Luiza’s face.
“Whatever.” Anton then walked back to his seat, brooding like some poor bastard.
“Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on here?” You ask.
Luiza looks at you, “We don’t know. One day, we were a quiet, devout village—” She shook her head, “and the next, the monsters came and attacked us. And they . . . they kept coming, and—”
“Wait, Luiza,” said Elena, “Where is your husband? Did they . .”
“No, n-no,” Luiza replied to her, “He is out there — somewhere. H-He went to get help. Yes, yes, that’s — that’s it.” She looked around the room, “He went to fetch help.”
“Let us pray,” said Roxana suddenly, “For him. For all of us.”
Luiza nodded her head, “Good idea. Come. Gather.” She took Roxana’s head and they all began to circle around the table. You stand up, taking the hands of Elena and Luiza while Anton continues to sit behind Elena, moping to himself. Leonardo sat in his chair still, but he held hands with Elena and the boy with the crutch and the bandages around his head.
They began to pray together in unison.
“Great ones, hear our voice, together as one in reverence. We call on thee within the endless dark to deliver us into fate’s hands. As the midnight moon rises on black wings, so we make our sacrifice and await the light at the end. In life and in death, we give glory, Mother Miranda.”
They all part their hands, and Luiza looks at everyone. “Now, the tea should be ready. Come help me, Elena, please.” Roxana helps the man to his seat as Leonardo sits there, holding onto his side as his right hand is placed over the machete’s handle on the table.
You’ve heard that prayer before. The old hag, remember? You gulp.
“That prayer,” you began to say, “I’ve heard it before from this— this old woman near the graveyard.” but Leonardo just chuckles.
“You mean the hag?” Told ya . “Dumb bitch is crazy as a bag of rats.”
“There is wisdom in her devotion, though,” Luiza pitched into your conversation, looking back and forth between you and Leonardo, “and I hope it protected her as it shall protect us.”
Leonardo starts to laugh, standing up from his seat. His laughter sounded full of pain as he grunted, wincing in pain as he held his machete. But then he roars, slamming into the table in front of him. The lantern is knocked off of the table, breaking on the carpet floor. A fire begins where it broke, and Anton shouts, “What the fuck are you doing!?”
“Leonardo, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” Luiza asks as she quickly approaches Leonardo while Anton begins to stomp on the fire, trying to put it out. But before Luiza could touch him, Leonardo stands up and growls with this monstrous voice. He raised his machete and hit her shoulder, cutting her. She falls back onto the floor, bleeding out as he jumps onto the ceiling. He looks right at you, his teeth suddenly rotten and his eyes full of pure death as he growls at you.
“Father!” Elena shouts from behind you, so you turn to her and usher her back.
“Elena, no! Stay back!” You tell her, taking her into another room.
“No, Y/N! Let me go!” She cried out as you stood with her in the hallway. “Father!”
You turn back and see Roxana cry out, trying to run, but Leonardo grabs onto her and pulls her to the floor, biting right into her neck. You shake your head, “He’ll kill us both,” you draw your gun, “we have to get out of here now!” Leonardo grabbed onto Roxana and moved her forcefully out of the way as he stood at the open doorway, fire spreading around the room behind him. You aim your gun, shooting at him repeatedly until he makes it to you and falls onto you. You land on your pack, trying to push him away. You grunt, pushing him away from your face as he tries to snap at you, but he keeps trying.
“Let him go!”
Leonardo looks up, still growling demonically. But he’s shot right in the face with a shotgun by no other than Elena. You watch as she steps forward, aiming the shotgun at Leonardo as he stands back up, the fire continuing to spread into the hallway just behind him.
“I said no!” And she shoots him again, knocking him back again. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, Father,” she whispers. You quickly stand up, “That wasn’t your father anymore. You did the right thing, Elena. Now, we have to go, Elena. Come on.” She stares at you for a moment before she nods her head and you usher her out of the room, finding yourself in the garage. From the door, you hear the growling, and Elena gasps. “No, Elena, there’s nothing you can do— We can’t—”
“Father!” She cries out to him, but you hold her back. “Father!”
“This entire place is collapsing, we have to go!” You tell her and she turns away, leaning onto the red truck in the garage, crying. You close the door, and you turn back to her. “You couldn’t save him, he was— he was already gone, Elena.” But she shakes her head and turns away. “We’re getting out of here together, Elena. I’m going to find the key.” You walk away into another sitting room that’s already halfway covered in fire.
You run into the kitchen, searching the drawers and cabinets. You find a piece of paper on the counter, skimming the words — ‘key’ and ‘drawer’ are what caught your eye, and in the last drawer you checked, there was the key. You see that it had a brown leather holder on it so you unbutton it and find a screwdriver. You run out of the kitchen, running back into the garage.
“The fire’s moving fast,” you mutter as you get into the truck. You insert the key just as Elena gets into the passenger seat. You press the gas pedal, “Hold on,” you say as you drive right into the wall, knocking it down by running into it twice before you drive right into the wall in the other sitting room by the kitchen. You both look up at the stairs above. “Elena, are you alright?”
“Yes, Y/N, I— How are we going to get out of here?”
“Up there,” you say, pointing up at the stairs. You both get out of the car, climbing onto the hood of it. You help Elena up first before you climb up there, Elena pulling your arm to aid you. You both head up the stairs and through the hall, the fire continuing to spread in the downstairs area. “Try not to breathe in the smoke, Elena. We’re almost out of here,” you tell her. She follows closely behind, nodding although you weren’t able to see it.
“Thank you, Y/N, you’re— you’re very kind.” Elena coughs.
You take in a deep breath as you climb up more stairs, leading up to an attic. Your foot causes a hole to appear in the wooden stairs, startling you, but you catch your balance and turn back to her. You reach your hand out to her, “Elena, come on, it’ll hold,” but as you both make it to the top, Elena turns to you with fear.
“We can’t go into that village, it’s full of darkness and monsters! We can’t fight them, there’s too many!” She warns you, “We have nowhere to go, Y/N!”
“Hey, don’t talk like that,” You tell Elena as you place your hands on her upper arms, “We’ll find a safe house to put you in until I can find my son. My hunch is that he’s in that old castle—”
“No!” Elena cuts you off, “That castle is full of nothing but blood and death! And I don’t want to be alone while you’re—”Just as she turned to look back down, her eyes widened, “Father?” A low growling from below, Leonardo appears at the bottom, covered in bits of fire.
You grab onto her, “Elena, no. That’s not him — not anymore!”
The monster reaches his hand up to her, “Elena . .” He growls demonically.
Elena looks at you, “He said my name!” She begins to walk down there, “Father!” But as you go to grab her, the stairs begin to break, dividing you and Elena. She goes to reach up for your hand, but it’s too far. She’s not going to make it. You walk over to the other side, your hand still reaching for her. She sits by her father, and she looks up at you, shaking her head. “Y/N, go . . Save your son!”
“Elena, please!” You call out to her, “Don’t do this, we have to keep trying!” But she looks at her father, watching as he falls into the fire below them. She yells with fear, but you keep reaching for her, “Reach for me!” You demand, but she looks up to you with this suddenly comfortable look on her face, and the wood underneath her feet collapses, causing her to scream as she falls into the fire.
You step back, shaking your head. You walk around to the other side of the room, heading over to the window. You climb onto a couple boxes, jumping out of the window onto a terrace. You grunt, heading over to an opening in the terrace’s fence, jumping down. You stand there for a moment, falling to your knees as you shake your head.
“Why is everyone dying on me?!” You shout, punching the ground. You felt tears form at the corner of your eyes, but you wiped them away. You can’t give up now. You get up from the ground, looking back at the house as fire corrupts it entirely, smoke floating into the already dark sky. Over by the gates, a small holder is lit up with candles inside, but it’s bolted. You take out the screwdriver and unscrew the bolt, opening it. The demon crest sits upon a black wired pedestal, so you take it and head back over to the gates, unlocking it and pulling it open. But gunshots echo from behind it. You step out, seeing what was going on.
“Stop! Mother Miranda!” Iulian cried out as the woman, Mother Miranda, picked him up from the ground, choking him with her bare hand so easily.
“Hey!” You shout, seeing the crow wings — it was her. She was the woman who took Leo. But as you begin to approach, you stop as she drops the now dead Iulian onto the ground. She just laughs and disappears into the field as you stand there in frozen, silent terror, scared to even approach her now. You wait a minute to process it all, surprised that Alex hadn’t said anything for a while, but just as you begin to walk again, Alex spoke again.
So that was . . . interesting.
“So now you’re talking again? How come you keep doing that?” You ask, heading back to the church. Whatever do you mean? “I mean, you keep going quiet for a while. Something wrong, Alex?” No. Nothing’s wrong. Just enjoying the show, where’s my popcorn? “Well, good for you. You won’t be enjoying it much if I die, you know.” But Alex just snickers.
As you grow closer to the church, that old hag appears again.
“Death. Yes.” She whispers huskily with that creepy, frail voice of hers. “Death has visited them all!” And she begins to cackle, roaring with psychotic laughter. Now you kind of understood what Leonardo was saying back at Luiza’s house, you know, before he turned into that monster. You ignore her and head off to the doors leading to the castle. You insert both crests correctly, and the doors open. You take in a deep breath, drawing your gun before you enter.
You look around, seeing the drawbridge already down across a stream. You continue on, entering a carve-like walkway lit up by torches. You find yourself in a room that has grey, stone pillars around the room. Lights hung from the ceilings, barrels and boxes spread throughout the room. You kept your gun up just in case anything pops up at you. You approach a gate, and as you stand before the lever to open it, a voice echoes from the other side of the room.
“Well, well,” you quickly turn, seeing a man holding a large hammer on his back, smoking a cigar, “Didn’t think anyone else was left.”
The man wore a brown trench coat, and a silver cigar holder around his neck. White shirt and brown pants, black tinted sunglasses and dark boots — but metal began to float and levitate off the ground, an electric magnetic field pushing throughout the room.
“You must be pretty tough, huh?” He drops his cigar and steps on it, smooshing it with his boot to put it out. But that voice, oh, you recognized it well.
Y/N. It’s him.
Alex was right. It was him. He was real. Were you finally reunited with him at last? Three long years since you first met, since those sparks flew between you both, since you started to fall for the man . . . that you tried to forget? But how could you have ever thought he wasn’t real? Seeing him standing there, you remembered that entire trip to Louisiana. He took care of you and Leo, used his own money, tucked you and Leo both in on the bed in the motel, helped you both into the car, and took care of you both so dearly.
He cared about you so much, and you remembered all the sweet moments you shared with him. You were meant to be with him, you were meant to love him. But, he left, and you just decided he wasn’t real and forgot all about him, but he was there all along, and Leo — he never said a word that he knew about it, but maybe it was because he didn’t remember. He was just four when that happened, but then again, you were much older, so how did you just now remember him?
Why did you forget him completely?
“Karl?”
The man looks up almost immediately, his grey lips part as a small gasp leaves his lips. The metal all falls onto the ground, creating a great racket, but he runs to you, bringing you into his arms, embracing you tightly. “Oh, Y/N,” he whispers, “I’m so glad to see you again.”
You pull back, looking at him, then you grow angry. “Why did you leave me?” You shoved him by his chest, “I was all alone! I had no one! And you— You left me when I had just found out that Alex was actually dead, just to come back here to your— to your Romanian village full of pure fucking death!” You scream at him, crying. You grab onto his shirt, “Why did you leave me when I needed you the most?”
“Y/N . .” He was at a loss for words, “You’re . . . going to hate me for this.” Metal raises again and stabs you right into the stomach, so you grab only it, grunting out in pain, and he steps back away from you, watching as you fall to your knees, more metal surrounded you, locking you up in a cocoon of pure metal, “I’m sorry,” said Heisenberg with an apologetic tone, and one final piece of metal covers your eyes, and the last thing you hear before you pass out is him again, “but Mother Miranda . . . she . . she’s going to love you.”
“They’re of no real use to anyone else. And my daughters do so love . . . entertaining foreigners.”
As you begin to wake up, your eyes fluttering open, you see a creepy ass doll in a white wedding dress standing in front of you. Then, another guy with a terrible hunchback approaches, looking very blown up, though he didn’t look too harmful. He honestly seemed very cute from the way he slurred some of his words that were almost unintelligible to you as you had just woken up.
“Furthermore, I can assure you if you entrust the moral to House Dimitrescu, my daughters and I shall deliver to you the finest cups of their slaughtered blood.”
“Out of the way, ugly!” The doll shrieks, “I want to see— oh!” She turns around, “They’re awa-ake!” She shrills with glee. The other man looks over, slowly moving.
“You mean— Y-You mean . . ?” The hunchbacked man tried to speak, but the doll was moving too much and it honestly was scaring him. The doll was giggling so loudly with her high pitched voice, it honestly was starting to give you a headache.
“Both of you shut the fuck up!” It was Heisenberg’s voice that shouted huskily at the two monstrosities in front of you. You were honestly kinda out of it so you glanced around.
“Where . . Where am I?” You whisper.
“You mean you’ll screw around with them in private, and what’s the fun in that?” Heisenberg said to the tall lady sitting in the giant chair to your left. She sat across from him, as he sat on your right, but honestly, you weren’t really wanting to look at him at all now. You felt betrayed by him, you trusted him and he just — he hurt you. “Give them to me,” said Heisenberg, “and I’ll put on a show that everybody can enjoy.” You honestly didn’t want to find out what he meant by that.
“Oh, so gauche,” the tall woman said, holding a long cigarette holder in between her fingers, “What do we care for bread and circuses? That thing’s suffering is assured, regardless.”
Heienberg scoffed, “Yeah, yeah, and if the thing’s body is cut to shreds in the castle — blah, blah, blah.” The hunchback man chortles lowly, looking back and forth between Heisenberg and the one and only bitch, Mother Miranda.
She looks around the room, “I’ve heard all your arguments. Some of you were less persuasive than others, but . . . I’ve made my decision.” She points her finger, “Heisenberg. The mortal’s fate is in your hands.”
The tall lady stands up immediately from her seat, “Mother Miranda, I must protest!” She exclaims, “Heisenberg is but a child, and his devotion to you is questionable.” She gives the other narrow eyes, but Heisenberg also stands up from his seat. The tall lady steps over and looks down at you as you keep your hands firm in the handcuffs. “Give the mortal to me, and I will ensure they are ready.”
“Shut your damn hole!” Heisenberg yells, a magnetic field forcefully lifts his hammer into his hands, “And don’t be a sore loser! Go find your food somewhere else,” he told her firmly.
“Quiet now, child! Adults are talking,” the lady remarks at him with a smirk.
“I’m the child?” Heisenberg scoffed, “You’re the one who’s arguing with Mother Miranda’s decision!” He began to raise his voice at her.
The lady placed her hand on her hip, “Oh, you wouldn’t know responsibility if it was welded to that hammer!” She shouts at him, but Heisenberg guffaws.
“Oh, keep growing! One day, your head might actually fit your ego!”
“Fight, fight, fight, fight!” The doll cheers on, but you look down at your cuffed hands, shaking your head in agony.
“Silence!” Mother Miranda shouted, spreading her eight crow wings. “My decision is final, there will be no argument. Remember from whence you came!” She states, just as lycans begin to appear from the walls behind her.
Heisenberg slightly bowed, “Thank you.” The tall lady walks away and Heisenberg huffs, laughing as he steps in front of you, turning around with his arms spread. “Lycans and gentlemen,” he turns to face you, “we thank you for waiting! And now, let the games begin!” He yells out to them before he kneels down before you. “Let’s see what you’re really made of, Y/N L/N.” He leans back a bit, “Get ready,” but then his smirk disappears for a moment, creasing his eyebrows. He looked the same as he used to be, he hasn’t changed one bit. “Run, and I’ll keep you safe.” He whispers before he raises his hammer and slams it onto the floor just in front of you. You scoot back sloppily, getting off the ground. You look around, seeing lycans beginning to surround you.
“Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!” Heisenberg starts to countdown, and you look up, seeing as more lycans were filling up the room. You turn around, lycans growling and roaring at you, “Six! Five! Four!” You approach a hole, and as you hesitate, you turn back to look at them — you have to jump. You take in a deep breath and jump into the hole, and you run through the caved walkway. “Three! Two! One! Showtime!”
You ran through the walkway, seeing as lycans were poking out through wooden blanks that boarded up holes in the walls, and even one lycan held out a torch, but you ducked and didn’t stop running for dear life. You remembered what he said. ‘Run, and I’ll keep you safe.’ You were so confused, why would he say that after he put you in that position? He showed you to the others, talking as if he was going to torture you and kill you — you had no idea how to feel about it all.
“That’s it! Run for your life!” Heisenberg said, sounding like he was on an intercom. You approached a two way stop, but down the right one, a lycan broke through some wooden boards so you ran down the left way, kicking down a couple wooden boards, jumping down into the bigger room. You begin to run across the bridge, but you stop as you hear a rumbling beneath you. “Very nice, Y/N!” He congratulates you.
And from the big hole of light from above, that tall ass monster from before jumped in front of you. You step back in fear, shaking your head before the monster hits you with its hammer, knocking you on the ground harshly. The monster slams the hammer just beside you, and the ground under you begins to break, causing you to slide down a tunnel.
You landed into another room, a metal gate with lycans holding torches on the other side of it. “You’re still alive?” Heisenberg chuckles, “Impressive . .”
You turned onto your back and looked up at the ceiling, seeing large spikes. You gasp, “Oh shit.” You quickly stood up, looking for a way out. You looked over to the wall left of you, seeing it was lined with wooden boards, but you ran towards the middle, kicking the board down. You crouched, crawling through the hole before you stood back up and continued to run. You pass another metal door with lycans holding torches and weapons, but you couldn’t care less.
You were just trying to survive.
Y/N, I’m not liking this.
“You think?” You exclaim, turning to the right, falling into another room. A door is on the other side of the room, it’s finally the end of this torture.
“Oh, wow, I’m surprised you’ve survived this long!” Heisenberg chuckles, still sounding like he’s talking on a damn intercom — but you wouldn’t be surprised if that was one of his powers, too.
As you run towards the door, a spinning spike machine appears so you quickly run back.
“Oh, you didn’t think I’d let you get away, did you?” Heisenberg asked, “Gotta keep Donna and Moreau entertained! So now, it’s time for the beautiful, blood-soaked grand finale!” He roars with laughter as one of the spikes begins to tear your handcuffs apart, “Nothing like fresh American ground beef!” Then, the voice stopped, and so did the machine.
You take your handcuffs off and grunt. You let out a long sigh as you crawled out from underneath the machine, walking over to the door. “They must have Leo,” You whispered, “I have to get him back.” You walk through the hallway, crawling through a little hole, and finally making it to a door in which you unlock. You push it open, and you’re back to the room where you and Heisenberg reunited earlier.
You remembered then of what went down between you two, but you still couldn’t quite understand it all. Why did Heisenberg do that to you? You . . you trusted him, but then he told you to run and he’ll keep you safe. None of it was making sense, it was just making your head hurt.
You walk over to the lever and pull it down. The gated door opens a bit slowly, but you go on and head right through once it was entirely open. As you walk through, you head up a few steps where you find an opened doorway to a trail leading up to what seemed to be the castle. Scarecrows were posted throughout, looking a little too much like actual human bodies. Crows squawk loudly as they fly away into the air. As you approached closer towards the entrance, a carriage opened suddenly, a voice ringing from inside.
“I’ve been waiting on you, oh, dear Y/N L/N.” The overly large man said.
You slowly approached, “How do you . . . How do you know my name?”
“Anyone who is anyone has heard of the likes of you. The living partner of one of the victims of the Louisiana incident. A survivor searching for their son. Though, I must say, that castle arouses suspicion.”
You stare at him, “Yeah? Well, so do you.” You remark.
“I am but a humble merchant,” said the man, “Forgive my manners, call me the Duke. Now to business,” he extended his arms out, “Weapons, ammunition, healing salves — anything you desire, I can provide to you, dear Y/N.”
You raise your eyebrow, a bit intrigued. You look around through what he has, buying some more shotgun shells and handgun bullets, making sure you’re completely stocked and prepared for anything that may happen in that castle in which was claimed to be nothing but blood and death.
“I hope you find your son,” said the Duke, “be careful in there, Y/N. Those ladies are up to no good in there,” and so you nod and head towards the entrance.
Ladies? There’s more than one? I thought it would only be that giant lady with big boobs.
“Why, why would you say that?” You judged Alex greatly. You place your hands on the metal doors, pushing them open with all the strength you could spare. You grunt, walking into the castle. You find yourself in an entrance corridor, so you walk up the few steps and look around. Before you, a portrait of these girls hangs there on the wall, an engraving reading: ‘Bela, Daniela, & Cassandra Dimistrescu.’ They were very pretty, and as their name matched with the castle’s name. You figured that these were the other ladies that the Duke had referred to before.
You hum, looking around. There’s a side room with an elevator, but it didn’t work. Though, you did snatch the money off the table. You head through the other door, trying to find something. You continue down the hall, finding yourself in the Hall of the Four. You approach a door, finding an engravement piece on it. You read it aloud.
“Mask the angels’ blinded gaze and only then will you be saved.”
Before you could even process it, bugs — no, flies — began to swarm around you. You hated bugs, you pretty much had a phobia for them most of the time. You were fine with flies, but there were so many around you, you were starting to grow afraid.
“Looking for Leo?”
Giggles echo throughout the room as you turn around, seeing three ladies form from these flies, continuing to laugh as they surround you. The one on your left pushes you onto the ground, stabbing a sickle into your leg before leaning all close into your face, a smile curved on her blood stained lips as her eyes crinkled. She had blonde hair and dark out-lined eyes, a true beauty, except for the blood stained face around her mouth and across her cheeks. A symbol on her forehead, a necklace of knife ornaments around her neck, a truly terrifying beauty.
“Mmmm,” she hummed, “mortal’s blood is surely one of a kind.”
She grabs onto the sickle’s handle, and she starts to pull you, dragging you on the cold floor as her and the other ladies laugh. You grunt, trying to get the flies to leave you alone by swaying your arms, but they continue to swarm you. Through a hallway and into a bedchamber room, finally coming to a stop, the three ladies step away, turning to stand somewhat in front of you. You watch the one who had dragged you.
She smiles and turns to face another, “Mother, I bring you fresh prey.”
“You are so kind to me, daughters.”
You turn to look, a large chair for that giant lady as she sits, setting down her crimson glass on the table before her. “Now, let’s take a look at them.” She stands up, turning to face them.
The one they call Lady Dimitrescu — a tall beautiful woman with pale skin and black hair, a large black hat and a long white dress with three black roses on her shoulder, symbolizing her three daughters, Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra.
“Well, well,” Lady Dimitrescu smiled, “Y/N L/N. You escaped my little brother’s idiot games, did you?” She begins to step towards you as you sit on the floor. She turned a bit, placing her hands on her hips, “Let’s see how special you really are, shall we?” She raised her hands and two of the daughters said ‘Yes, Mother’ in unison.
They pick you up, and the one on your left grabs your hand, using a knife to slice open your palm a bit. You scream and yell, but you grow silent with fast breaths as Lady Dimitrescu takes your hand, leaning down to you as she presses her lips to your hand, tasting the blood leaking from your cut. She squishes her lips together, furrowing her brows for a moment before throwing your hand down, leaning back up.
Lady Dimitrescu hummed, “Starting to go a bit stale,” she laid her hand out and the daughter that had sliced your palm open gave her a white handkerchief. She wipes and dries her lips with it.
“Then let’s devour their flesh quickly, Mother!” One daughter said.
“But I’m the one who captured them,” another daughter said.
“Now, now, daughters,” Lady Dimitrescu threw the handkerchief away, “First I must inform Mother Miranda, but might I say,” she stepped over to you, “you are one dashing mortal, Y/N. I’m sure you only came here to search for your . . boy-thing, correct?”
“You mean . . . You mean Leo?” You were a little weak, so it took a lot out of you to speak.
“Oh, yes,” Lady Dimitrescu rubbed her black gloved hands together, “You made a mistake coming here, Y/N. And daughters,” she grinned for a moment, “later . . .” She stepped closer to you, looking straight down at you from such a tall height, “there will be enough for everyone.” She raises her hand again, “Put them up.”
You look over, seeing as the daughters approach you again. “Hey . . hey, wait . .” But they stab something sharp into both of your hands, pulling you up close to the ceiling. Lady Dimitrescu walks closer to you, looking up at you with her hands on her hips. “Hey! Let me— Let me down!”
“Oh, careful what you wish for, Y/N L/N.” Her and her daughters giggle as they smile, almost creepily. Lady Dimitrescu turns to walk away with her daughters following her.
“W-Wait!” You gasp out, “Wh-Wh-What are you doing?” You whimper breathlessly as you watch the giant lady and her daughters exit the room. One even picked up the blood stained handkerchief and took it with her after she swung it around to tease you.
Out of that entire conversation, you mostly noticed that she had said your name almost flirtatiously, and her smile only added onto the seduction. You worried that she might have said it that way to throw you off, but you knew you had no feelings for her, or her daughters. Strangely enough, Heisenberg still had your heart, and you weren’t quite sure why.
You look up at your hand, figuring that you could just pull your hands out, knowing you’ll tear your hands up, but it was worth it if you were going to make it out of there. So you pull your hands, groaning and yelling out in pain as the sharp metal tears your hands, causing you to stop to the floor. You look around for anything that may help, and thankfully, there’s a first aid bottle sitting on a dresser nearby. You stumble over there, bleeding out, and you grab it, taking the top of it off before you pour it all over your bleeding hands. The bleeding and pain come to a stop thankfully.
Glancing around the room, a large king sized bed sits in the corner by the large chair and desk that the tall vampire lady sat in before. The fireplace was still lit, cracking its fire embers as you passed by it. You look around some more, not finding much of anything other than the crimson glass.
You sigh softly. You pull up your sleeve, checking the wound on your left arm. It was almost completely healed, which you sought as something strange though remarkable nonetheless. You pull your sleeve down and decide to head off through the double doors.
In the next room, a white sofa sits in front of a tall coffee table, and on the other side of the table across from the sofa is a matching white chair. Its fabric resembled white marble, and the table was just a shinier version of it as well. A long, black laced cape is spread on the sofa along with a pair of black gloves, reminding you of the tall lady’s daughters. Though, you weren’t sure who they exactly belonged to, not that it really mattered. An unlit fireplace sits on the other side of the room in front of you, a golden clock sits upon its shelf, along with a small stack of books and a rich dinnerware. Candles sit in golden candleholders on the walls on each side of the fireplace, a six armed chandelier hangs directly in the middle of the room above the white marble table.
You head over to the fireplace, noticing how its gates were closed in front of what looked to be a hole in the wall. You pull the gates open by its handles, crawling through the hole in the fireplace and into a hidden hallway. You crawl through a smaller hole, making your way into what seemed to be a secret pathway where a barrel and a shelf sat alone with a lantern lighting up the small room. Through the room, you made it to a statue of a maiden holding a young child in their arms. You notice a glare on the maiden’s lifted index finger, a marron eye ring.
You take it off, and the statue begins to shift and move to the left, a way out into another hallway. You slide through quickly, running back down the hall to the door, unlocking it to reveal it was the room just outside the bedchamber. You clear your throat before you head back, going through the double doors and into the Hall of the Four once again. Statues now had risen from the floor, missing faces. But, then you hear a light chortle from another room, an open door to a room. You head into the room, being greeted by no one other than the Duke.
He chortles loudly as he sees you enter. “We meet again.” He sits upon a higher place than where you stood, drapes pulled back as garlic hangs around him like decorations. Lit candles all around the room, a labyrinth puzzle in the corner, but you paid no attention to it yet.
“Duke?” You approach, “Why— Why are you here?”
“Where there’s coin to be made,” and he nodded at you, “have you found your son?”
You lower your head slightly, “No, not yet.”
The Duke hummed for a moment, “If he is truly here, the Lady of the castle would have kept young Leo in her private chambers, would she not?” He quesiered.
“Lady . . Wait, Lady Dimitrescu?” You ask, and he smiled.
“The very same. Why don’t you take a look? Maybe,” the Duke pursed his lips, “you’ll get lucky.” Then he raised his cigar, “And speaking of looking . . care to make a purchase?” You nod.
You sell him the crimson glass, along with a couple crystal fragments you’ve found along the way. You buy some bullets, along with a way to make some if needed before you head off again to find your son, Leo, in the dark castle of Dimitrescu.
You enter the main hall, its ceiling was high as a large, golden chandelier hung in the middle of the room, and a large, wide carpeted staircase led to the upstairs. A lit fireplace sits opposing the stairs, a sofa sits there on a patterned carpet. A couple sofas sit against the walls underneath the stairs, but a couple of chairs sit near its end, closer to another pair of double doors, most likely leading into the dining room. You head over to those chairs, seeing a table that held a couple teacups and a teapot. You grabbed the left teacup by its handle, seeing as its stained with blood. You cringe, and you set it back down. You look back at the chairs and the sofas sitting in front of the fireplace. Two greenish chairs sit on the other side of a coffee table from the sofa, a large bouquet of flowers sits upon the table, showing off its beautiful colors. Before you decided to head upstairs, you decided to unlock the doors leading into the hallway you first walked through before getting captured.
You reach the top of the stairs in no time, finding a door leading into the wine room. You step in to take a look around, finding an open notebook on the table. You pick it up to skim the words. Something about the winemaking techniques of Castle Dimitrescu can be traced as far back as the 15th century. Not that you cared, but a name in the next paragraph caught your attention. Alcina Dimitrescu. That must be Lady Dimitrescu’s full name, and it was beautiful, just like her, but her love for blood and death of mortals kind of washed away any admiration you may have had for her.
You continue to look around, seeing that a bottle is missing. The Sanguis Virginis, meaning “maiden’s blood,” was apparently Lady Dimitrescu’s best vintage. It is apparently kept in a special ornate bottle decorated with intricate silver flowers. You turn back and leave the wine room, deciding to head towards the left hallway in the upper level of the main hall. A maiden statue is welded into the room, missing an eye. You take out the maroon eye ring, removing the maroon eye before you put it into the eye of the maiden statue.
The door unlocks so you push it open, but you stop once you hear lots of buzzing, and as a huge amount of flies swarm you, you try to sway them away with your hands, causing you to step back into the hallway. The flies disappear, but you lay out your hand, watching and grunting as two flies pierce through the skin of your palms. From behind the pillars, you see more flies flying over, so you quickly turn and run into the room.
“I haven’t cut open a mortal in a while!” A voice says, it was the one who captured you before, the one with the blonde hair. As you run through the halls, you hear her say, “Let me string you up, slice your jugular, and just watch . .”
“Not gonna happen today!” You call out to her, running into the dressing room. You look for a way out as she appears into the room with you, but before she can grab you, you kick down wooden boards covering up a hole in the wall by the dresser. Just before her nails could dive into your skin, you run through the hole and into a small room where a square hole was placed with a ladder next to a lit lantern. You jump into the hole, falling through, breaking the wooden boards along the way before you ultimately land harshly on the ground. You grunt and dust yourself off before standing up, looking around the room.
It was a small room with a couple shelves and a table that held a lit lantern. A notebook with three diary entries, from what seemed to be by a male worker in the castle, writes about all the other staff were women, and how one maid made a mistake and one of the daughters, Daniela, slashed her face with a knife. Then, apparently the male worker made a mistake by cracking open one of the windows, which apparently led the male worker to worry if he’ll be put in the cellar and never seen again.
Pretty scary, dontcha think?
“Duh,” you remark.
You head through a hall and find yourself crawling through a hole. Just before you make it to the end, you see the end of a dress behind a table. You peek for a better glance, seeing that Lady Dimitrescu stood there, admiring a bottle of wine. She turns and opens a door behind her, ducking her head and torso low to leave the room, locking the door behind her.
You crawl out of the hole, looking around. There wasn’t really anything you needed to take so you headed down a staircase that led to the Hall of War. A circular room with a torched chandelier hanging low in the middle of the room. Two pillars stand on either side, firewood on top of each. The walls were seemingly statues of literal war, shields and swords, it was honestly an amazing sight. You’re confused on where to go from here, so you look in between the pillars in case there was a secret lever or button that opened up a doorway, but you only find “trust in light” written in something that looked a lot like blood.
You draw your gun, aiming it at the torched chandelier, pulling the trigger. It swings back, lighting the pillar, and it swings to the other side quickly — you dodged it — and it lights up the other pillar. The middle of the wall begins to part, creating a doorway. It’s dark as you enter, so you take out the flashlight and turn it on. It appears to you then that you’ve entered a jail-like place. You look into the cells, seeing as dried, black blood is spread and splattered everywhere. You felt honestly disgusted, but that wasn’t new. Rope and shackles hang from the ceilings in a couple of the cells.
You think they were into BDSM?
“You know, I’m getting really tired of you.” You comment quietly, continuing on through the dark place. Alex just snickers and becomes quiet again, so you continue on. You enter a larger room, but a body falls from the ceiling, startling you. You place your hand on your chest, letting out an exhale in relief before you composed yourself and headed into another one of the cells, checking through it.
You head on through, trying to make it out of there as quickly as you could, finding more things to take and salvage. Finally, you see light, but there’s faintly growling — you’re no longer alone here. You run and run, hearing as the growling grows louder and louder, dodging each attack and swing of their weapons towards you. Your boots munch onto the snow beneath you. Running up some stairs, you find yourself in the Chamber of Solace. You head through the cells, almost like a maze, but then flies appear again and it's the same daughter as before.
“I can’t believe Cassandra caused all this mess,” she complains, taking a swing at you to grab you, but you’re too quick — you run up even more stairs, finding yourself close to the kitchen on the first floor. You go to kick some more wooden boards, but you’re stopped by the daughter once again, turning you around as she purrs, “Where are you going, little one?” She grabs your shoulder tightly before pushing you right through the boards, causing you to fall and land on your back on the floor.
She leans over you quickly, lowering her jaw to bite into you just as you pull out your gun and shoot at her, but she just laughs. “Your bullets cannot harm—” She gasps as she turns, hearing the sound of glass breaking — and the window behind her shatters, causing a great gust of chilling wind to draft into the room, knocking her back, making her weaker than before. She looks at her frosting body, screaming with anger and fury. “You— You stupid thing! How could you—”
You pull up your gun, shooting at her, cutting her off. You couldn’t feel bad about doing all this now, they’ve hurt you, they’re trying to hurt Leo — so with a saddened look on your face, you whisper, “I’m sorry for this,” and you shoot at her repeatedly, causing her to yell and bleed,
“I will never forgive you, you bastard!” She shouts, but you continue to shoot at her, almost with no remorse, until she is finally defeated, raising her sickle to hit you one last time as her body freezes. But she screams as her body comes to a complete frozen point, silence from her now chilling lips, and then she crumbles, leaving behind a crystal torso. You know now how to defeat the other daughters, freezing them with the cold air will make them weak enough to kill them, so you were prepared — that is if they decide to appear.
You head through a doorway and into the kitchen, finding the Sanguis Virginis soaking in a pan of what you hoped was just red wine. The kitchen was full of meat, some were placed on the long table and others were hanging from the ceiling. They were raw and definitely uncooked, but it almost made you hungry. You left the kitchen, walking into a hallway. A bookcase sits in the middle of the hallway in this outed area. A silver suitcase sits on it, so you open it, honestly curious. It was a recoil compensator for your handgun, so you quickly equip it and head through the double doors at the end of the hallway. Then, you find yourself in the dining room. You go to open the doors leading out to the courtyard, but it won’t budge — it was locked.
Deciding to head back to the Duke, you head through another pair of double doors where you find yourself right back in the main hall. You begin to head towards the Duke, but you decide to wait and go put the Sanguis Virginis back where it belonged in the wine room. You clench your fists as you head upstairs, walking right into the wine room to place the Sanguis Virginis into its rightful place on the silver flower bottle stand, thinking that this could be the least you could do in return for, you know, killing one of Lady Dimitrescu’s daughters. Once you placed it down, however, the bottle stand went down, and a doorway unhinged from where it was stationed. You walk into this side room, finding a little box. You open it, and find the courtyard key.
You went back downstairs quickly, heading towards the dining room — until you were met with another daughter forming from those dawn bugs that you were really starting to hate. She was right in front of the doors, but she smirked as she started to fly towards you.
“Shall I give you the tour?” She asks.
“No!” You shout, running past her and into the dining room. You take out the courtyard key, inserting it into the courtyard doors before practically pushing it open. It’s cold so you shivered from the cold wind hitting your skin. You walk down the steps quickly, trying to find somewhere to go next. There’s a door with a golden statuette on it, though you knew it would be locked. You head through this fenceless gazebo-thing and walk up more steps, looking to your right to see a new door. You walk over to it quickly, pushing it open, but as it opens more and more, you raise your chin, seeing Lady Dimitrescu holding a large lit candle holder as she walks up the stairs.
You follow her upstairs quietly, making sure you’re as quiet as a mouse so she won’t turn around and murder you. She enters a room, but as you draw nearer, you hear her shout with the sound of something breaking.
“What have you done to my daughter!?”
You scurry past that room, running into another room to hide. You look around, seeing four statues surrounding a pool of what looked to be red wine — you’d be disgusted if it was actual blood, although you wouldn’t be surprised based on what you’ve already seen so far in this deadly castle.
You walk over to an engravement on the wall. “Women are blind to male advances, but the poor shall take their chances to give their lord their bounty sown, so that soon the wine may flow.”
Now what the fuck does that mean?
“Would you cool it with your comments?” You ask Alex, becoming a bit annoyed.
No. I will not. I like getting on your nerves.
You roll your eyes, “Sometimes, I really think you’re the real Alex talking in my head.” You walk over to one of the statues — the women dressed fancily — and begin to turn it, facing the statue of the maiden holding a wine bottle.
Who said I wasn’t?
“Your dead body proves it,” you grunt as you turn the lord’s statue — it was heavy because the lord was apparently riding a horse, his own mighty steed — and you head over to the poor men statue and face it at the lord’s statue. The wine begins to drain, so you cheer. “Great! Now we can get a move on outta this fucking place!”
Watch your profanity, Y/N.
“Look who’s talking,” you mutter. You head over to the front of the room, stepping down into the wineless pool, watching as a pair of doors on the floor open for you. You wander down there, finding a ladder leading down to somewhere. You shrug and figure that this is the only way out of these, so you climb down the ladder, though from the way it creaked, you worried it might break as you climbed down it. Luckily, you made it down to the bottom, but you groan as you witness what was down there. This entire area before you was flooded with wine. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” You rub your forehead as your other hand places itself on your hip, shaking your head. “I really don’t want to go through there.”
But you’re gonna have to!
“Oh, shut it, Alex.”
You step slowly into the wine, almost like you were getting into the pool on a summer’s day, hoping the water wasn’t cold — but the wine was warm, it honestly made you shudder. You were a bit worried of what may lurk in that wine, but you drew your gun, prepared for anything that may occur.
As you stroll through the wine with your gun drawn, you hear the wine’s ripples move. You take in a deep breath, believing in yourself, and you practically just run as fast as you can in that wine. You try to dodge every one of those monsters, grabbing what you need on the way without using a single bullet. However, once you finally made it to the end, a monster appeared in a narrow stairway. You aim at the monster’s knee, shooting it down before you pull out your shotgun and shoot right at its head with absolutely no mercy.
They deserved it though. They did try to kill you first.
You enter a room where an odd-looking elevator was. You stepped onto it hesitantly before you pulled the lever and it started to go up. Once it stops, you find yourself on a terrace next to a table and a chair. You decided to take a short break, looking over the world around you from that terrace, seeing the snow touching everywhere around. The windmill was still going in the distance, a few houses were near it, but they were barely visible because of the thick fog. It was beautiful though.
You turn away, heading over to this unstable bridge made of just wooden planks. You carefully cross it, wanting to make it to the other side where you’ll be just outside Lady Dimitrescu’s chambers. You hear a phone ringing from that room, but you continue to slowly make your way across the bridge, being as careful as you can. However, you misstep and a board falls, startling you to the point that you fall forward. Thankfully, you caught yourself on the ledge, climbing over it. You don’t stand up, you only hide even more under the window, seeing as Lady Dimitrescu approaches her desk as the phone continues to ring. She hangs a key on a candle holder’s arm, taking one intake of her cigarette before she quickly turns and sits down at her mirrored desk, picking up the phone.
“Mother Miranda.” She says after a moment. “I regret to inform you that Y/N L/N has escaped that fool Heisenberg.”
Heisenberg . . . right, from before.
“Run, and I’ll keep you safe.” Why wouldn’t that leave your mind?
You watch as she grows a tad frustrated. “Because they are in my castle,” she states firmly, “and has already proven too much for my daughters to handle!” Lady Dimistrecu exclaims, but then she lowers her voice, “When I find them—” She stops mid-sentence, and she closes her eyes for just a moment, drawing in a long breath. “No, Mother Miranda . . . Yes, of course I understand the importance of the ceremony — I won’t let you down.” She states before she hangs up the phone. After a second of just pure silence, she yells as she grabs a hold onto the desk, picking it up and throwing it across the room as she raises from her seat. “To hell with the ceremony!” Lady Dimitrescu clenches her fists, her nails sinking into her black gloves. “That thing will pay for what they’ve done!” And with that, she storms out of the room. You stand back up, heading into the room through the door. You quickly grab the key off the holder and head over to the locked door, hoping that Leo was inside.
You were wrong, however.
The door opens as she appears, leaning down as she enters. “There you are, dear. All this for a child who isn’t even here!”
But you’re growing angry as well, “What the hell—”
“You ungrateful—” She hooks under your collar, picking you up off the floor, “—selfish wretch! You come into my house—” She slams you onto the floor, causing you to yell out in pain, “—You lay your filthy hands on my daughters—” she slams you onto the floor again, “And now you even try to steal my property? How dare you!?” She screams, slamming you again, but the floor begins to give in, causing you to fall through. You yell as you fall, landing hard on the ground. “Rest while you can, because I will hunt you, and I will break you!”
You stand up from the ground, grunting. “Do your worst, you tall bitch.” You threaten with furrowed brows, squeezing your hands into tight fists. Y/N, I wouldn’t threaten her— “Shut it, Alex.” You cut them off firmly. You patted down your shirt, dusting yourself off before you drew your gun.
You ended up crawling through a hole, finding yourself in the dungeon. You approach a close gate and a lever, pulling the lever up so the gate would open. After it opened, you continued through the dungeon, trying to find a way out.
You finally reach another gate, possibly leading you to the end of this dungeon, so you pull the lever up, but just before you push it all the way up, the sound of slicing echoes, and your hand slides right off your wrist.
“Aah, shit!”
You turn, seeing that tall lady standing there with long ass claws for nails. “Like I’d let you get away.” Lady Dimitrescu admired her nails for a moment, but she stopped you when you tried to run around her, “You’ll be sliced to ribbons—” and then she threw you, “before you ever see that child!” As your wrist spews blood, you get up as quickly as you can. It was now a cat and mouse game in that dungeon, and you’ve gotta make it past her to get your hand. As you begin to run, you hear the screeching of her nails dragging themselves on the walls. “You will learn what it means to insult house Dimitrescu!”
But you wait for her there, you watch her slive the metal bars far in front of you, trying to get her over there so you can run back and get your hand. Once she gets where you want her to be, you dart towards the gate, taking your severed hand and pushing the lever completely up. As the gate slowly opens, you watch as she begins to make her way towards you. You curse under your break and practically jump through the open area in between the two gates departing. You roll onto the ground, quickly getting up and running.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Away from you!” You reply back as you run down steps, all the way down to a door. You take their key out and unlock the door, pushing it open. You find a statue, but you grab the face plate, the Mask of Sorrow, before the floor begins to raise.
“Running will get you nowhere!” You hear her shout at you from behind that door. You take out your first aid bottle, completely ignoring her as you place your severed hand on your wrist, pouring the first aid bottle onto your wound. It heals almost immediately. You didn’t care for the logic, you were just glad that it worked.
You arrive in the gazebo-thing in the courtyard, but you turn to that locked door from before, opening it with the key, entering the annex in the castle where the Opera Hall was. As the door to the actual opera hall was locked, you decided to head up the stairs to find a way into it. Walking through a small hallway, you find two orange doors on each end, but only one had a golden symbol on it with black bars over it, meaning it was locked. You head through the other one, finding the upper level of the opera hall there. On a tall, decorated shelf, you find a notebook laid open.
One day since treatment.
The three girls have stopped moving. They seem almost dead. An insect flew out of the eldest’s mouth. It appears to be a common fly.
Two days since treatment.
All three bodies are covered in flies. It appears the flies are consuming their flesh. When I opened a window, some of the flies dropped dead to the floor. It would seem the cold petrifies them. I quickly closed the window to avoid weakening the insects further.
Four days since treatment.
All three bodies have almost been completely consumed by the insects. All that is left is a dark, writhing human-shaped mass of creatures. It is just after nood and the insects have started to change color.Those around the face turned pale and those around the lips turned a deep crimson.
Six days since treatment.
The mass of insects have transformed into human bodies again. All three girls awoke, looking at me like newborns. I sense a bond between us. Like mother and daughters. I have already decided their names: Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra.
It was definite that Lady Dimitrescu had written this, but it seemed that on the second page when she opens the window, the cold only weakens them. You worry you might not be able to kill her at all, but you set the notebook down, processing it all. “So, that explains why that first daughter became weakened by the cold — they’re made of flies that become petrified by the cold air.”
There must be a way to weaken the giant lady, right?
You thin your lips as you gulp, “Hopefully.”
In a room left of the upper level, you find the Flower Swords ball in an open box by a broken labyrinth puzzle. You put it in your back pocket before you continue on to the right side of the upper level, being almost gnawed on by one of those damn monsters. You shot it down, and continued down a staircase, leading you right into the opera hall. Red drapes hung over a stage like area, chairs and sofas around for audiences to sit to listen to the pure bliss of music inside of that most wondrous opera hall. You remember loving music as you grew up, and oh, how you missed the feeling of being a kid. You find a red, grand piano there in the middle of the room, and with a smile, you approach it.
“I haven’t seen one of those since I was a little kid,” You say, though it mostly reminded you of your parents, and how you left them so long ago with just a small note left behind to tell them that you were leaving, that you weren’t theirs anymore. You read along the music sheet propped up on the golden stand on the grand piano, and you begin to play the notes. With such ease, your shoulders had relaxed, the notes of the piano calmed your tense nerves, reminding you of a simpler time all those years ago. And just as you play the last note, the piano continues to play on its own, opening a little drawer, revealing an Iron Insignia key. Its symbol was what you’ve seen before — on the door upstairs, along with two doors in the village.
You stand up from your seat, and as you head over to the other door, unlocking it, returning to where you first came through. You head upstairs, but then you hear a slashing noise, looking up to see her at the top of the stairs.
“So we finally meet.” You hear her purr, but you run back into the opera hall, running over to behind the grand piano just as she entered the opera hall herself. “You must be tired from all the running, maybe you should come rest in my arms as I slice your throat.” She threatens.
You stare at her, “Are you joking—?”
I don’t know, Y/N, maybe you should take that deal.
“Would you shut it, Alex?!” You shout, but then Lady Dimitrescu stares at you as she stands on the other side of the grand piano, across from you, taken back by your sudden outburst. Then, you watch as her surprised expression curves into a smirk, crinkling her dark outlined eyes of death on her pale porcelain skin.
“You hear them inside your head, don’t you? Hmm?” She raised one of her eyebrows, “You still feel at fault for everything that happened, but dear,” she shook her head, “not everything is about you anymore.” Lady Dimitrescu then grabs onto the grand piano, turning it over roughly. You jump from the noise before you head over to the stairs, running up them and going right through the orange door. You insert the Iron Insignia key into the lock, and the gate begins to rise, but her footsteps are growing louder from behind that other door. Just as she opened the door, the gate was gone and you ran into the room, slamming it behind you, but unfortunately, you weren’t alone.
“So you finally came to see me! Everyone falls for me in time,” some narcissistic tendencies, but you didn’t really care — you just wanted to survive.
You draw your gun at the dome window above, but it doesn’t budge. You look around for maybe a switch that could open the window, and luckily, you did. You pull the switch, and the cold air drifts into the room quickly, causing her to be knocked back and weakened. You aim your gun at her, shooting at her as she bleeds, but then the window shuts and she charges at you, grabbing onto you before she bit into your shoulder, but you kick her off.
She hums, “Mm, your blood is something to really die for.” But you pull the lever down again, shooting at her as you draw closer to her. And with one last shot, her body begins to freeze. “I don't . . I don’t wanna . . . die . .” She whimpers, and her body freezes over, crumbling into pieces.
You grab the crystal torso she left behind, “I’m sick of bugs.” And you leave.
Through a pair of double doors, you find yourself leaving the library and entering the Hall of Joy. You grab the Mask of Joy off the statue and head through a metal door, leading you into the Atler. On a painting, a note is taped to it — ‘Let the five bells of this chamber ring out.’ You looked around, and shot a bell that sat still. It began to ring, a small fire lit up on top of it. You look over to where this hole in the wall was, revealing gears — and a swinging bell. You raise your gun and aim, squinting your eyes to stay focused. Once you shoot it, it lights with fire, and so does a small, tiny bell on top of a wardrobe by the door you came in from. You head up these stairs, aiming your gun out the window, breaking the glass to shoot a bell outside, making it ring and glow with fire. The last bell was inside the chandelier, so you shot at it to get it to swing, easily shooting the bell inside, and it rings, and a small fire lights up. You head down the steps, waiting for something to happen, but then the large, life-size painting of Lady Dimitrescu moves like a door, revealing a small opening.
That door led out to this passageway where a ladder led you straight to the attic. You look around, finding some money laying around, along with a note that you read aloud.
“I heard there was something called ‘the Dagger of Death’s Flowers’ somewhere in this castle. It’s apparently an antique from the Middle Ages that’s coated in a concoction of poisons from across the continent. It’s said to have been crafted to kill demons and monsters. It sounds fascinating but . . no one knows where it is.” You furrow your eyebrows, “We can use that dagger to kill Lady D, right?”
Yes, I’m pretty sure.
You hum for a moment, heading off into the other room, finding a literal rifle propped up in a chair by a doorway. “Oh my god, you’ve gotta be shitting me.” You grab it, checking it out. “This is a sniper rifle, Alex! I can definitely kill some bitches with this,”
You’re really starting to sound like a psychopath.
“I’m allowed to,” you remark at them, “I’m a parent searching for their missing kid in a village full of absolute death. I’m allowed to sound a bit crazy,” and you reload the rifle. You head through this hallway, finding yourself on the rooftops of the castle. You walk along the terrace, finding an elevator. It was the elevator from the entrance. You walk over to the other side, walking along the terrace, hearing a loud screech from monsters flying above you. They looked like the monsters before, but they had long tongues and bat-like wings. You hated them.
You figured you shouldn’t waste your bullets on them so you quickly ran, running across the rooftops, finding yourself at a staircase leading to a zip-line connected to the Tower of Rage. You grab a hold of the hook, sliding on the zip-line. You arrive at the Tower of Rage, falling off the zip-line as the hook breaks off. You throw it away and grab the Mask of Rage. “Three down, one more to go.” You remembered there was another door near the dressing room to unlock with Dimitrescu’s key, and according to the map, that was the Hall of Pleasure.
You knock down a ladder leading off to the elevator below. You decide to just slide down the ladder instead so it’s faster. You land on the ground and walk around to the elevator. You press the button and the elevator appears. The gates disperse and you step in, pressing the down button. The elevator closes its gates and heads down to the front entrance to the castle. You continue through the door, walking through the hallway, but you stop once you hear Lady Dimitrescu in the main hall — where you actually needed to go.
“Cassandra!” You crack open the door to the main hall, seeing as Lady Dimitrescu stands in the middle of the staircase. “What is that thing up to?” You were a little offended that they all referred to you as “thing,” but it was better than misgendering you at least. It seemed now that Cassandra was the last daughter of the three, meaning Daniela and Bela were already dead.
“I’m not sure, Mother—”
“You’re my daughter!” She roars at Cassandra, “Now act like it!”
“Of course, Mother,” and as Cassandra begins to fly away, you step away from the door and head to the Duke’s room to wait out until it was safe enough to make it upstairs to the dressing hall. You open the door, and the Duke almost immediately greets you.
“It’s a pleasure to see you safe. How were things?” The Duke asks you with a smile.
You drop your shoulders in disappointment, “No sign of Leo yet.”
“I’m . .” The Duke frowns, “. . so sorry it turned out that way.” Then he gives you a reassuring expression, “Well, I’m sure you’ll find your way to him once you’re out of this castle.” You nod, and you turn off to approach the labyrinth puzzle. You insert the Flower Swords ball, tilting it in any way you could to get the ball into the hole. Once you did, the gate opened, and you were given a crimson skull. You take it and give it to the Duke, selling it for a bunch of money. You decide to also buy a bigger suitcase in order to carry more items. You smiled, cocking your handgun before you headed off to the dressing hall upstairs, sneaking as quickly as you could to not be caught by the tall lady and her third and final daughter.
You head into the room after you unlocked it, finding the last mask — the Mask of Pleasure. Then, a gate appeared in front of the door. “Goddamnit,” you curse, realizing you’re going to need something to be put there in order for you to leave. You turn and look underneath the fireplace, finding a hole. You crawl underneath, finding yourself in the Armory. You grab a lockpick and a couple pipe bombs before a gate locks you into the room.
“I was worried my sisters had gotten to you first,” Cassandra smiled, but you move a shelf, seeing the hole in the wall. “What are you doing, little one?” She asks, raising her sickle, but you throw the pipe bomb before jumping away, and it explodes, creating a huge hole in the wall. She yells, getting knocked back. “You— You bastard!” She shouts at you.
You pull out your shotgun, shooting at her until you are out of ammo. You take out your gun, pulling the trigger just once, shooting the last bullet at her, defeating the last Dimitrescu daughter. She screams and flails. “You will not get away!” Cassandra cries, “You’re my prey . . mine . .” And she freezes over, crumbling into another crystal torso. You sigh, shaking your head and grabbing the crystal torso off the ground. You look up, seeing a mounted animal skull. You reach up and grab it, twisting a screw out of the mount, taking the animal skull off of it.
You head back into the Hall of Pleasure, placing the animal skull in the mask’s place on the statue, and the gate opens. You cheer to yourself before you head out, but you stop once you see Lady Dimitrescu walking down the hall. You sneak slowly and silently, letting her walk down the stairs without noting you. She makes it over to the fireplace before you dart down the steps. Her nails turn into long claws, slashing.
“The entire bloodline of House Dimitrescu is done in? By the likes of you?!” She shouts, following you. You quickly insert the masks of Rage and Joy before you run into the Duke’s room just seconds before she slashed her claws. She waits a moment before she walks off. You turn to Duke, selling the crystal torsos to him for more money, buying more ammo. After, you crack open the door, seeing if she was around, and once the coast was clear, you run out, inserting the other two masks and the door opens.
You run through the doors, walking along the snowy bridge to the Tower of Worship. It looks almost like a church inside. It was abandoned, untouched for what looked like to be at least a few years, but you walk through the aisle, seeing some of the benches knocked over. Walking down that aisle reminded you of your wedding day with Alex. Or, well, the wedding day that was supposed to happen with them. They disappeared a couple months before the date of the wedding, which led a lot of people to spread rumors around that Alex left because of cold-feet, that you were unfit to be wed.
You approach a black coffin with a silver Flower Swords crest on it. You push the top off of it, grunting as you do, and it slides off the coffin completely, revealing a clothed skeleton inside. There, under the skeleton’s hands, was the dagger — the Dagger of Death’s Flowers. You lift the skeleton’s hands, snatching the dagger out from its place, but as you raise it to look at it, a hand from above you reaches over your head, picking you up off the ground.
“You’ve ruined everything !” She screams, stabbing your stomach with her claws, but in return, you stab her with the dagger, causing her to yell out in pain, gasping for air as she rolls her head. She then grabs you by the throat and throws you out the window, causing you to drop the dagger over the edge, falling towards the ground from so high up. As you turn back to look at her, you witness her yelling and grunting loudly, holding her side where you had stabbed her as she begins to change, mutating into something with wings, disappearing into the darkness in the tower, only being able to see a tail from the light. She pushes through the wall, crumbling it as she looks to you, revealing her mutated self as a dragon with a gigantic mouth with loads of teeth. “Flesh, bones, I will devour all of you!” She declares in a demonic voice, terrifying you.
I definitely regret finding her hot.
“You think?” You begin to scurry away as she takes off in flight, turning to fly by you, grabbing you with her large claw. She takes you, practically throwing you against a wall. You land at the bottom of a staircase, and then she lands at the top, roaring at you. Her weird mutated self was on top of this dragon monster thing, it was honestly fucking terrifying. You huff, pulling your gun, shooting at her actual body and not the dragon, “Bring it on, you fucking psycho bitch!” You shout out to her.
She begins to walk closer to you, knocking you over — “You’re finished!” She claims, flying off into the air, watching as you climb up the steps, grabbing extra ammo and a first aid bottle before running into a terrace like area around a room. “I will destroy you!” She lands on the terrace in front of you, trying to knock you down. You pull out your shotgun and aim at her body, knocking her back, causing her to bleed. “How could you ever have thought of saving your own child when you murdered mine?!” She bellows, roaring at you.
“Because you were trying to kill me,” you shout back, “I was only returning the favor!” You aim your shotgun, shooting at her again before you run off, feeling the rumbling beneath your feet as she walks towards you, following you into the wall surrounded room. With each step of hers, she loomed closer to you, just outside the threshold of the room.
“You’re lucky, Y/N!” She tells you, “Besides Miranda, you’re the only one to ever see me in this form.” She pulls through the wall, crumbling it, knocking you down. “Too bad you’ll pay for it . . with your life!” She screams with that dark voice, sending shivers down your spine as you got up. You raise your rifle now, aiming it just right at her chest, shooting her as quickly as you could before running out of the room through the other threshold. “I’ll crush you, you scum!” She pushes through the other wall, crumbling it, but you’re too far from it, none of the debris hits you. You aim your rifle as she takes flight, “Just give up!” She tells you from afar, “Your son belongs to us now!” But you aim your rifle right at her head, causing her to fly towards the ground before she rises up. “Leo is our only hope! We won’t hand him over to the likes of you!” She wails, but you shoot her three times, causing her to wail more, “Not enough blood, not enough blood,” she lands onto the terrace in front of you, knocking you down before she roars at you, crumbling the wall beside you. As she backs up, you move into the room, seeing the staircase. She roars at you again, deafening you almost. “I need your flesh!” She screams. As flies swarm her, you run up the staircase, making it to the top.
She leaves, taking flight again as she circles around the terrace you stand on, laughing maniacally. You stay calm, knowing that this fight is nearing its end with each second passing.
“Come on now, Y/N! Don’t be shy!” She screams, “Show me your terror!” And she crashes into the terrace’s walls, “Time to die!” She roars, but you raise your rifle, shooting at her body as quickly as you could, taking more and more steps back to stay out of her reach, until she finally wails out in agony, her screams echoing throughout the valley. She bleeds out uncontrollably from everywhere it seemed, “Damn you . . you scum.” And as she tries to stand up, the floor beneath you both caves in, causing you both to fall to the very bottom of the tower. “It’s too late, Y/N, you’ll never see your Leo again — give up and succumb to your despair!” Just as you both land at the bottom, she crystallizes, “Curse you!” she bellows just before she crumbles, leaving behind a crystallized Dimitrescu.
You huff, panting as you limp your way over to a holder where a small, dirty coin sits. You take it and a doorway appears, letting you walk out of there, leading you to a snowy woodsy type area with a little house and a door that had torches around it. Now that Dimitrescu was dead and gone, you fell to your knees, taking a long exhale, a break after all of that, processing it all.
You did it, Y/N. You defeated her! Shouldn’t you . . shouldn’t you be happy?
“She may be dead, Alex, but there’s still the rest of this cursed family of darkness.” You raise your head with thinned lips, knowing one of them — a little too well. “Including Heisenberg.”
It didn’t take you long to loot the house by the exit of the castle. Though, you did find a note saying something about a house with a red chimney. You figured you’d head there to check it out once you’ve made it back to the village. You head through that door with the torches around it. You enter what seems to be the ruins, torches were nailed onto the rock walls, lighting the passageway. However, as you approach a small area of water, three fish swim around. You take out your gun, aiming at the fish, shooting each of them so you can take them and cook them to eat later. You walk through the water to the other side of the passageway, hearing an echoing voice from down the hall of stone. You follow the echoing, trying to find the voice, soon approaching a wooden door. You open it, revealing that old hag again as she recites another prayer it seemed.
“As the midnight moon rises on black wings, we await the light at the end . . In life and in death, we give glory to Mother Miranda.” It was that same damn prayer. Dammit.
“Hey,” you greet the old hag, stepping over next to her, “Remember me? I’m the parent with the child that your great and all mighty Mother Miranda took.” You mocked, and the old hag turned to you with her deadless eyes. “Could you please just tell me what is going on around here? I almost died in that damn castle and I’d like to know what the fuck is going on!” You exclaim.
But she turns her head from side to side in confusion, “How can someone be “almost” dead? That’s a question for the wise.” She turns to look at her shrine.
You roll your eyes.
“Can’t you just tell me where my son is? Where did Mother Miranda take him?” But that old hag laughs at your words, turning back to look at you.
“You’re too late,” she tells you, “Or maybe . .” she cocks her head with a smile, “almost too late?” She smiles, but then becomes vicious. “The boy will be sacrificed. Life for life.” The old hag turns and walks away while you continue to stand there, watching her.
“What kind of medieval shit is this?” You question her, “He’s a child! He’s seven years old! He barely even knows how to ride a fucking bike, and now — he’s going to be sacrificed? This is some fucking bullshit!” You shout.
She raises her staff to point at a tapestry hanging on the wall. “The crests of the four bloodlines may open the path you seek,”
You furrow your eyebrows, sighing in annoyance, “Could you stop speaking in riddles?” You ask the old hag, “I just want to find my son.”
The old hag walks back to you, approaching you as she walks with her staff, the skulls hanging it on it class together with each step of hers. “It’s only a riddle,” she says, “if you don’t know the answer.” And then she begins to chuckle, then she cackles with maniacal laughter before she leaves through the door you came through, locking it. You shake your head before you approach, getting a better look at the tapestry on the wall. Flower Swords, Sun & Moon, Mermaid, and Horse were the crests of the four bloodlines. Dimitrescu for Flower Swords, Sun & Moon for Beneviento, Mermaid for Moreau, and Horse for Heisenberg. You honestly snickered at Heisenberg’s.
What are you snickering about?
“God! You scared the shit out of me!” You exclaim, holding your hand against your chest as you pant for a moment. Alex just laughs at your expense in response. You look back at the tapestry, feeling a remembrance of some sort when you saw the pattern around a giant chalice. “That looks familiar — wait, Alex, wasn’t that the company’s logo? For your old job? You quit just before we got Leo, remember?” But there was no response. “Alex? Alex, where did you go?”
I think there’s a key in that box on the table.
Distracted, you forget about your past conversation and walk over to the table, taking out a winged key from the red box. You head over to the large gates that had the say winged symbol as the key did on them. You insert the key and unlock it, continuing out of the ruins and into the outside again, arriving at the ceremony site. Four giant statues, sculpted against the mountains surrounding the ceremony site, of four men sitting in thrones. There’s a fence by the edge of the apparent cliff, a river at the bottom of the cliff, streaming rather quickly in such cold weather. A factory sits in the distance, you had a feeling that that was where Heisenberg lived.
Through torn apart walls, a passageway leading out of the ceremony site. You can’t go anywhere else there at the ceremony site, so you follow the trail instead. There were hanging bodies inside of potato sacks. The fog had turned an ugly color, creating a more eerie vibe to the already creepy village you were walking through. Approaching on a bridge, you pull out your sniper rifle as you spot two of those lycans sitting on top of the walls, along with one by a wooden drawbridge, almost like it's guarding it as it holds a torch in its hand.
You aim at the heads of the lycans, shooting them just as easy as 1, 2, 3, their heads exploding. You waltzed right into a more secluded area surrounded by walls but no roof. A couple rooms, but you decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. There’s another pair of the winged gates you saw before in the ruins with that old hag and her shrine of the ‘great Mother Miranda.’ You approach it, still holding your rifle, pushing the gates open. You approach the altar, a giant chalice surrounded by unlit torches. Three other gates surrounded the chalice at each of the four directions, including the one you had just walked in from. As you loom closer to the chalice, a carriage’s doors open.
“There you are,” The Duke greets you with a big smile, appearing in his carriage, “I had a feeling you would pop up here.”
You stepped away from the chalice, “It was . . it was all worthless, Leo wasn’t even there.”
“Is that so?” The Duke hummed, “I am sure you’ve picked up something of value.”
“I’m not sure it’s of value, but,” you take out the small, dirty coin, “I found this coin, and it led me out of the castle, is it— is it something important?”
“Why, you have your own son right in your hands,” the Duke tells you with a chortle, causing you to take a step back, taken back by this uttering surprise. You wipe off the snow and dust on the coin, revealing an engraving of Leo’s head, then on the back of the coin, the words “Leo L/N — Head” was engraved into the silver.
This cannot be real.
“You— You can’t be serious, Duke,” you stutter out, trying to understand, “this— this cannot be Leo!” You fall to your knees, “This just can’t be! This is— This is impossible!” You bellow, but the Duke shakes his head.
“Your son’s essence is still intact, their powers are truly . . unique.” The Duke said, and as you lift your head, he tries to give you a hopeful expression, “He can be saved. Seek out the man who lives in the house with the red chimney, then we can . . continue our conversation.”
You rise off the ground, holding the coin in your hand. “Can’t you just tell me?”
The Duke just stares at you, “You can either trust my words or don’t. But what other choice do you have, Y/N?” He questioned. “Go now. Seek the man and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
You try to process it all, but your head is pounding and it’s making it hard to concentrate — how could this have happened? How?! But as you shiver, you slowly nod your head, and you head over to the red gate, shooting the lock before you push open the door, finding yourself returning to the Maiden of War.
The two houses with the blueish gates are still sitting there, but now the lighter colored gate, the one just next to the well — or left to the statue — was left open. The other house, with the dark blue-green gate, was the house you needed to figure out how to get into — which you will, by climbing. First, you decided to check the other house in case there was anything that may help you along the way. You head over there, walking through the opened gates and up the steps.
Just as you reach the top, there’s a sound of breaking glass heard from inside the house. You put that head coin into your pocket before you draw your gun, entering the house. It looked almost normal inside. Pots and pans hang above a dresser on the wall which had been painted blue. Beside it was a red pot on a metal cabinet which was just beside the stove. The dining table had a green table cloth on it. It was almost like everything was practically untouched.
You step into the other room, finding an odd looking sewing machine. A framed photo sits on a table of a man sitting at that same sewing machine. A silver blue cushioned sofa near it, a dresser against the wall across from the sofa. There’s another doorway. You head through it, but as you head over to the locked back door, a large sound from outside is heard again. You unlock the back door, pushing it open. The backyard only had a shed and an outhouse, along with a barn-like area. There was that blue door, leading out to the front yard so you walked over and unlocked it, making it easier for you to return to the Maiden of War if necessary.
Through the barn-shack-thing, you pull a shelf out of the way, glancing over through a fence that divides the barn in two different sections. The other section was full of hay and buckets used for cow’s milk. Everything seemed so untouched here. Maybe those lycans didn’t make it through that house and its yard, but those noises from before — something was nearby.
You were correct once that shelf was moved out of the way, stepping out of the barn through a hole in the barn’s wall, and there’s a lycan, sleeping as it's crouched down low in front of an outhouse. You slow your steps, aiming your shotgun up at its head. And just as it awakes, you pull the trigger, its head explodes with its dark, black blood. You take in a deep breath, heading over to the outhouse. You pull the door open, gasping as you find a dead body sitting inside. You close the door quickly, “Sorry!” And you head off towards the other house. You had arrived back at the house you’ve stopped by before, the one that was mostly torn down — aka the house you found Leo’s toy in.
A dead body laid cold on the ground by a tractor that had seemed to have crashed into the fence, blocking your way. There was a yellow jack underneath it, but the handle was missing. You huff in annoyance, and look around. Down the street to your right, the gates that had the sign “DO NOT ENTER” on it sat there silently, locked with a lock. You decide that there can’t be anything too bad in there so you shoot the lock, pushing one of the gates open.
You stepped towards a small room to the left of you, entering it. On a metal desk, a polaroid photo of a man with mechanical parts built into him sat. You turned it around, finding ‘look out the window’ written in pen on the back of the photo. You step over to the window, seeing an underline 04 in yellow written on the window. You position yourself, seeing a code. 07 was printed on a brick wall nearby left of the 04, then on the right of the 04, was a blue 08 on some frosted cloth.
“070408—” But just as you finish reading it out to yourself, a lycan appears behind the window, growling as it startles you. You grunt, pulling out your shotgun. “For god’s sake, would you guys just leave me the fuck alone?” You mutter as you step out of the room, shooting the lycan straight in the face, causing its head to explode and its’ now headless body falls to the snowy ground.
There was a six digit lock inside that room, attached to a cabinet. You enter the code, and the lock unlocks, so you take it off and open the cabinet, revealing the jack handle — and a M1911. You grab it, “Nice!” You check it out. it was a fully automatic handgun, while your LEMI handgun was only semi-automatic. You head out through the gates, finding that there were four lycans sitting on roofs in the near distance to you.
You pull out your sniper rifle, aiming it right at the farthest lycan to your right, shooting them down before aiming at the next one over which had woken up and stood up, roaring its mighty roar before you shot it, shutting it up. You put away your rifle when the other two coming run, taking out your shotgun and aiming for their knees. You knock them both down, taking out your handgun to finish them off by shooting them in their heads.
Minutes pass by and you already had used the jack handle on the jack, raising the tractor high enough for you to crawl underneath it with no problem. Continuing on down the street, you aimed your handgun at a sleeping lycan on the top of a tractor. You shoot it down, then shoot another down that comes running from around the corner. You had no problem shooting them now, you had grown so used to it, despite you having no military training.
You’re back where you were at the beginning, walking down the street to the house you found that man into, where that lycan tried to bite your arm off. Unbeknowst to you, lycans appears all around you as a huge one with armor began to appear from behind a fence — down by that house you were in before was an Iron Insignia door, so you needed to get to it — but how the fuck are you going to make it past all of these lycans?
Then — you had an idea.
Rope hung on a wall of a shack in the middle of the street, a grappling hook at the end of it. You throw the hook upwards at the tree above you, climbing up the rope as the lycans continue to surround you. You take out a pipe bomb once you’re high enough, throwing it down at the packs of lycans, killing most of them and knocking off the armor on that huge one — which was the last one alive. You carefully take out your handgun, aiming at the lycan’s head, but when you pulled the trigger, no bullets came out — you needed to reload, but you were also hanging onto rope.
You jump down, running back to stay out of the huge lycan’s reach before you pull out your shotgun and aim for its head, and thankfully, that was all it took for it to finally die and fall. You pant, trying to catch your breath as you walked down that blood covered street, unlocking the Iron Insignia door with its key, finding a ladder and a little shack where a well wheel was placed. You grabbed it and headed up the ladder, following rooftops to the roof of a shack in the backyard of the house with the red chimney, so you jumped down, looking for a way inside. The front door was locked and the chickens ran around freely, though you had no intention in killing them.
There was another ladder leading up to the roof of the house so you climbed them, walking over to a hole in the roof where a yellow wire led inside. You jumped in, finding yourself in the kitchen of the house. You unlock the front door, then you hear a low growl from the other room. You drew your gun quickly, slowly walking into the next room. Only one lantern lit up the entirety of two rooms, and a lycan was hunched over, feasting on a dead boy. You sigh as you pull out your shotgun, aiming at its back as its head was unclear to see.
It turns to you, standing up, but you shoot its head, exploding it quickly. You look at the table, finding a red and whtie box. You open it, and find a piece of paper displaying a winged key with its different features. “The Winged Key is just a single piece. Three more parts are needed to make it whole.” Underneath was a combinable part to your winged key. You combine them, creating the Four Winged Key.
You head through the front door, out through the front gates that you unlocked, and quickly make it back to the altar to see the Duke again.
“How was it?” the Duke asked. “Did you learn anything?”
“I found . .” You show him the Four Winged Key, “I made this so . . tell me how to fix my son like you said you would.” You demanded sternly, becoming frustrated by all of this madness.
“Settle down now,” said the Duke, “First you must use that key and collect all of your little Leo coins — each one was given to a lord here in this village. You have the head, and the other lords have the rest.” He explained to you.
You gulp. “Lords?”
The Duke chuckled.
“Mother Miranda is the cold, calculating ruler of this village. Four lords serve under her.” The Duke began to say, “The first you’ve already met, the Lady Dimitrescu. The second lives deep in a valley of mist, the doll maker Donna Beneviento — none of her playmates have ever come back from that dank, old estate. The third is Moreau, a being of twisted flesh that lives in the reservoir past the windmills — it’s said that he is not the only monster that lives in those waters.” Then the Duke paused for a moment. “The fourth and most dangerous is Heisenberg — he works in the factory on the village outskirts — and the project? Let’s just say parts of the human imagination are better left alone.” The Duke watched closely as your face appeared to be surprised, though there was hurt in your eyes — he knew something you hadn’t even begun to realize. “If you truly wish to save your son, you must first gather the four coins and insert them into the chalice. On the map I’ve just given you, I’ve marked all the lords’ locations on your map. As many treasures may lie in this village, so is darkness in every corner.”
You furrow your brows, folding your arms, “Why are you . . Why are you doing all this?”
“Why, it’s all part of our first class customer service.” The Duke replied with a great big grin, “Please do come again soon, Y/N.” You leave and head over to the gates leading off to the doll maker’s estate, the Four Winged symbol on each of the two locked gates. You insert the key quickly and unlock it, pushing it open.
Through a wooded area in between hills and mountains, you walk through mist. A large tree with a path surrounding it, gravestones all around as dolls hang from trees. Something about all this was starting to make you incredibly uneasy. You followed the path, leaving the Potter’s field, according to the map. Across an unsteady bridge made of wood and not-so-sturdy wooden planks, you were starting to grow anxious. You approach a gate, and it opens, but there’s a figure standing in the distance. A familiar figure who seems to be holding a baby.
“Y/N,” it was Alex, holding Leo, an infant, in their arms, “I need to tell you something. Come with me.” Their voice echoed as they spoke, but then they turned and vanished, leaving you alone and confused. Alex was dressed in the same way they were when they disappeared, holding Leo in their arms just like it was back then before everything happened six years ago.
“What’s going on?” You mutter, following the black fenced trail as mist covers your far surroundings. You had lowered your gun out of confusion — why was Alex here? How were they here? And what did they need to tell you?
You continued down the trail, gates leading up somewhere were locked, and a bushed passageway was blocked off my overgrown roots. You had no choice but to walk through the trail. A light flashes and Alex appears again.
“I know I should’ve told you, Y/N.” Alex whispered, “But I was scared I was going to lose you and Leo. I couldn’t . . I couldn’t let that happen.” Those last few words were firmly expressed, but why was this happening? How was this happening? You were trying so hard not to freak out. As Alex then began to approach you, they whispered, “Y/N . . please.”
You’re starting to tremble. “What is all this?” You shudder.
Alex appears again — “Everyone leaves me. Even you. Even Leo. I don’t . . I don’t want to be alone anymore.” They’re shaking in their voice, keeping in sobs — you could tell. You could always hear the pain in Alex’s voice no matter what, and this was no difference — but you were afraid that this was all real and that you may be going completely bonkers, as if you haven’t already.
“Alex . . .” You call out to the voice inside your head, hoping for an answer. It’s quiet as you continue down the path, you’re starting to grow even more scared of this place.
I’m here, Y/N.
You let out a sigh in relief, “Thank god,” you whisper. You follow the trail down a few steps and into a round area. A large gravestone sits on the top of a small, very low hill, surrounded by plenty of other gravestones, and dolls — lots of dolls were around, just staring at you. It’s glowing a faint yellow. You approached and read the nameplate, but half of it was missing. ‘—a Beneviento 1987 - 1996’ was all you could read off of it. You lift your head to read the gravestone aloud. “Freed from the binds of flesh, she now walks the valley of death.” You felt weirded out.
You step away and head towards behind the gravestone, two red doors there with a golden mailslot on one of them. A golden engraving plate was nailed into the neighboring wall. ‘Give up your memories.’ You take out a photo of you, Alex, and baby Leo and slide it into the slot. The door creaks open and you step into a cave like hallway. You walk through it, finding yourself approaching a two way elevator. You press the button and step into the elevator, pressing another button for it for the elevator to go up. During this eerie elevator ride, the lights flicker and a note written in white chalk is on the elevator next to the buttons.
‘Come with me, Y/N.’
This shit was really getting on your nerves.
The elevator ride comes to an end and you step out through the other side, walking out of the cave-like hallway and into the outside world. Walking along the trail, not too close to the cliff, you begin to approach an old estate in this valley of mist. Your gun is drawn as you step through the opened gates. You had found the House of Beneviento. As you stand before the front door, you take in a deep breath before you push open the doors, your fear only growing from here.
Red wooden walls, a staircase made of the same redwood led upstairs. In the middle, just by the first steps of the staircase, a redwood rocking chair with a table sits on a green carpet. The chair’s small cushion shared the same pattern as a small table cloth that sat by a basket of yarn and sewing utensils. A thread of yellow yarn spread across the floor to one sewing item that you had no idea what the name of it was sitting just before your foot. A record player sits by a dresser against the wall behind the chair and the table, a green chair just beside a door leading out to another room. Pillars hold up the upper level, carvings in the wood to make it look more beautiful.
You look to your left, a cracked open door to what looks to be a storage closet. To your right, a hallway leading to a locked door. On a wall above the stairs, a portrait of a woman holding a doll hangs gracefully for all to see. A dark haired woman with pale skin, her doll was porcelain and wearing a white lace wedding dress. The doll’s face looked to be shaped like the sun and moon, but the darkness in that woman’s eyes sent a cold shiver down your spine. You didn’t feel welcome. Through the door under the stairs, you enter a dining room and somewhat of a sitting room.
Dolls were weirdly placed through, you could feel their glass eyes staring at you. A desk with a lit three armed candle holder on it sits before a white fireplace, facing it. You head through a nearby door, walking through a dimmer hallway only lit with small lamps. You find yourself at an elevator, but you furrow your brows before pressing the button.
I don’t like the looks of this, Y/N. Why would there just be an elevator in a house like this?
You shrug in response, “No idea, Alex. Let’s just . . Let’s just get this over with,” and you step in once the gates are completely open. You press the down button, and the gates close open. The elevator lowered to the basement level which weirdly only took just a couple of seconds. You step out and look around. Walking into through a white door, you find what seems to be a study and theatre room. A desk was completely covered in tall stacks of books while the other had a thing holding up films. You take a look at them, you see that one is missing in the middle, but they’re too dark to see. You step away and leave the room, heading down the hallway through a large threshold doorway.
The hallway isn’t dim, but it still makes goosebumps cover your skin. You find yourself heading down a narrow hall leading to a pair of double doors. You push them open, finding that doll sitting on a chair facing the doors, the coin sitting in its lap. The room behind them had arms and legs, though they were plastic, hanging from the ceiling — the doll maker’s room obviously. But as you reach to take the coin, the lights flicker and everything becomes dark.
“What— What just happened—” You ask, trying not to panic but then you hear a creepy voice, high pitched and almost flat-out annoying to hear as it snickers.
“I’ve been waiting for so long,” the voice says, “I’d make a much better child than Leo, wouldn’t you say? Please, won’t you stay with me — forever ?” The voice grew raspy in those last few words, causing you to shiver with fear and anxiety just before the lights turned back on — and all of your stuff had been taken.
“Goddammit!” You shout, looking around. On the doors behind you was a lock, needing a six digit code in order for you to unlock it. You curse again under your breath again and look around. There’s a locked door in the left side corner of the room, and in the middle of the room, there was a doll laying across a table. “Is this . . .” You saw the familiarity in that doll. “Is this Alex?” A photo sits by its head — a photo of Alex’s dead body. Bloody bandages were wrapped around the doll’s stomach, but they were too tough to tear with just your bare hands. You needed a knife, or scissors, in order to cut the bandages. You decide to examine the doll closer, moving its right eye to see a symbol of facing north with its wings spread. You opened the doll’s mouth, finding something stuck far into its throat, something you wouldn’t be able to get without something skinny and thin to pull it out.
You take the left arm, pulling off the blood stained engagement ring you had proposed to Alex with. Hopefully, you'll be able to clean it off. You grab onto the doll’s left leg, pulling it off the body, revealing a blue wind up toy that belonged to Leo’s toy. You take it and examine the rest of the doll’s body, trying to find anything else that may help you.
Why is that doll . . me?
“I don’t know,” you replied, “I really don’t know.”
You pull off the doll’s right arm from its elbow, revealing another symbol. Then, in the doll’s shoulder, you pull out a silver key which will unlock the locked door. The light flickers, and then the radio begins to play static. Just as you unlock the door, a voice is heard from the radio.
“Look at that! His first steps! He’s already doing so well, I can’t believe it!” It was Alex again, talking about Leo’s first steps when he was just eight months old. He was a remarkable child, but you worry that you might not be able to save him. In the other room, you find a table in the middle of a room. You walk over to the sink almost immediately, turning the faucet on so you could clean off the engagement ring. Once you finished, you examined it. A six digit code was engraved on the inside, the day you two planned two get married — the same day you adopted Leo — April 16th, 2013.
The thing was that Alex didn’t adopt Leo as their own yet, you two had to get married first for that to happen, so you legally adopted Leo first, then proposed to Alex, and planned to marry them on the same day, the one year anniversary of adopting Leo, but about a month before that day was when Alex went missing. You head back out to those doors, but before you insert the code, you look off to your left, finding another hallway. You head through the hallway, finding a door with two symbols and an empty hole missing a piece that could fit into the depression.
You change the symbols that are already there into the ones you saw on the doll’s body, then you head off back to the lock. You insert the code, 041613, and the door unlocks. You push it open, heading through the now dim hallway as the lights flicker back in that room. Just as you head through the hallway, a door cracks open suddenly just before you pass it. You head inside, curious, despite knowing that curiosity would kill the cat, but nothing mattered more than escaping. You find yourself in a storage room, walking through a walkway by shelves, finding a table underneath a hanging lantern. At the corner of the table, there sits Leo’s green transformer toy. You turn it around, taking out the blue winding key and inserting it into the back of it. You twist the key, and the transformer begins to walk and talk like it always had.
You were starting to not like how quiet Alex was inside your head. It felt unsettling, like they knew something you didn’t — in which case, it seemed to be true.
Then, from the back of it, the latch that covered the batteries fell off, revealing a pair of tweezers there. You had straight back to the room where the doll was, but that sideways painting by the door unhinged itself, falling to the floor. It scared you half to death. “Oh my fuck— Jesus.” You pant, “God, I hate this house.” You head over to the doll of Alex, opening the mouth wide so you could use the tweezers and take out the film inside of it. You ignore the flickering of the lights, but when you exit the room again, you see that same mysterious figure at the end of the hallway, Alex holding Leo. Then you hear it on the radio.
“Oh god, no . . . no, I can’t tell Y/N about this . . . it’ll ruin them . . I’ll lose them both.”
You were really starting to hate this.
It took you a bit to understand the puzzle with the films in the study and cinema room. It was confusing — until you found the note left for you to figure the puzzle out. Once you finished the puzzle, a movie began to be projected on the wide screen, someone filming as they walked down stairs, showing an old rocking chair, one that you and Leo used to sit in at your house, then it shows a well. The projector screen falls, and a bookcase moves, revealing a secret passageway. You walk into it, already feeling creeped out from all the dolls staring at you in that small passageway. One doll held scissors in its hand so you took it, crouching down and cutting the bloody bandages, stepping into a new hallway. You walk past a telephone, but it starts to ring. You’re stupid enough to pick it up and answer it apparently.
“Y/N, listen to me.” It was Alex. “I didn’t want to keep it from you, I didn’t — I didn’t want to lose you or Leo, I couldn’t live with myself if I lost you both, but please, Y/N — I did want to tell you, but I was scared. I was too scared to risk losing you both.” Then the phone hung up.
This was starting to really creep you out and confuse you.
You headed through a white door, unlocking it to find yourself back in the doll maker’s room again. You cut the bloody bandages with the scissors, taking a circular piece out of the doll’s stomach, revealing the relief that belonged in the depression of that door. You take it and insert it into that door, opening it as you hear a faint cry. You quickly head down those steps, into a dark room, using only your flashlight now. You approached the well, but you didn’t climb down the ladder —you just jumped into the well. You land into a shallow pool of water, a floating doll holding a key in its grip. You take it, and it’s the breaker box key — your way out of here.
Once you make it up the ladder and out of the well, you hear a cry from up the stairs — it’s the cry of a young child, not a baby. You head up the stairs quickly, through the door in which you came, finding that the lights were out. The only light came from a red light above the double doors. You shiver with fear as you walk down that wall, following a trail of blood. You had just made it halfway down that other hall after you turned that corner when you saw what was a disturbing creature made of pure meat and terror. It was a child, looking almost like a fetus, but had grown large and slow a bit as it slumped through the hallways, chasing after you as it giggled. You run back into the doll maker’s room, through the door into that room where that sink was. You hide yourself in a locker-like closet, hiding behind the door with your flashlight off.
You can hear the giggles in the distance, the door slams open and that creature enters the room, babbling and giggling as it turns over the table, making a large racket. It approaches the closet, looking around for you as it grows sad, then it leaves out the door again. You step out of the closet quickly, running through that white door and making your way into the study and cinema room. You leave out that door and insert the break box key, opening it to reveal a Relief of a Child. You grab it and head back into the study and cinema room, heading through the hole and through the hallway where that door was, not even realizing as that doll sits there on the floor nearby.
You place the Relief of a Child into the depression, opening the door to reveal a small flight of stairs. You head down them, walking through a kitchen area then through a small part of a hallway before entering a bedroom. You find a fuse box, smiling to yourself as you know now that you can just grab it and head back to the breaker box, but as you take it, the lights go out. You turned your flashlight on, terrified as you made your way back up through the main area before since a shelf had fallen in front of the hole that led into the study and cinema room.
That red light above those double doors gave you the creeps. You head through that hallway, not hearing or seeing that creature anywhere. You enter the room where the elevator was, placing the fuse into the breaker box as you wait for the elevator to arrive. Then, just as it appeared from above, you heard the faint cry of that creature again. You start to tremble, waiting impatiently for the elevator to arrive, and once it does, it takes almost too long for the gates to open.
You practically jump into the elevator, pushing the button, and just as the lights flicker, you see that creature appear from behind the closed gates, wailing that you were leaving it — but you were too fucking glad to be leaving that creature behind. You lean your back against the wall, catching your breath as the elevator reaches the first floor of the house. As the gates open, you hear a faint giggle — but it wasn’t from the creature, no. It was from that damn doll.
Your vision was seeing double for a minute, almost looking like you were wearing 3D glasses or something, but you blacked out for a moment, walking through the hallway as you found yourself back in that dining room, seeing that the creepy doll with that annoying ass voice sits on the floor.
There were more dolls around the room, staring at you as you just entered the room. The doll floats up as a figure dressed in all black stands behind it, holding the doll up as she whispers. “Don’t leave me. I can't let you.” the figure disappears and the doll begins to laugh.
“You’re still alive huh?” The doll cocks its head at you as its friends fly towards you, stabbing you with knives and weird metallic spider legs. “You better fine me quick — before my friends murder you!” Then the doll roars with maniacal laughter as you throw the dolls out of your way, grunting as you fall back onto the floor. The doll flies to float above you, smiling. “Tick tock! Your life's on the line!” Then the doll disappears into the other room. You stood up quickly, chasing after it, though you had no idea where it had gone. “Try and find me, Y/N!”
You run up the stairs, finding yourself in the guest room where that doll was placed on the floor, but when you tried to grab it, it bit at you, so it floats, flapping its arms around as it giggles.
“Everything would’ve been just fine if Leo was never born!” It says.
“No!” You yell, pushing the doll away, but then you take out the scissors and grab the doll, stabbing it right in its head, causing it to scream out with its little deafening voice. You fall back, letting the doll fly away as it bleeds. You get up as quickly as you could, running down the steps and into the dining room, looking around for that doll so its “friends” wouldn’t murder you. You thankfully found it behind a shelf, grabbing it and stabbing it in the head once again, causing it scream out and bleed. It knocks you back down onto the ground before it flies away.
“Do you do this to Leo too?” The dol;l remarks as it flies out of the room. You’re starting to grow really pissed off by this shit. You get off and storm out of the room, the scissors in your hands, ready to kill this bitch ass doll once and for all. The lighting had turned orange and amber, resembling a sunrise or sunset, but you follow the trail of blood leading to the door that was locked before, but you enter the room where the elevator was, grabbing the doll, “You are never going to get out of here!” but you scoff and stab it. Its face begins to split, revealing this ugly pink creature inside as thin tentacles fly around as it bleeds. You were honestly disgusted, but you slammed the doll onto the ground as it flailed. “Stupid— You stupid idiot! What are you doing to all my cute friends!?” She yells just before you stabbed it again, making the doll scream one last time.
Your vision turns white for a moment, but once it goes back to normal, you find the figure dressed in black laying beside the doll on the floor by the front door, standing over them. You look at your bloody hands as the figure crumbles, giving you another piece of the Four Winged Key, “Is it . . is it all over?” You grab the doll, turning to the front door. Then, a pedestal rises from the floorboard, revealing the legs coin. You grab it quickly and head out the door into the cold winter air, combining the key with its next piece, making the Four Winged Unborn Key. You grip it in your hand as you observe it, trying not to cry. “I’m going to make things right, Alex. I promise I will.”
And you head back to the altar to see Duke again.
Once you returned to Duke, he was excited to see what you had brought back to him. On the way back, you had found the Sun & Moon Ball for the labyrinth puzzle and gotten a skull made of onyx. It was sharp at some points so you made sure to not let it cut your skin. You also had found a key to Luthier’s house by the puzzle. The Duke was very happy to see you return.
You hand him Angie, and he chortles. “Ah, Miss Angie! Just adorable,” he smiles, “Porcelain dolls are very popular, you know.” He tells you. You force a smile back, and he gives you the money he owes to you. Once he notices your saddened expression, the Duke tilts his head. “What’s wrong, Y/N? Is something the matter?”
“No, it’s just . .” You try to find the words to express how you felt, but you couldn’t figure it out. “Donna and that doll Angie’s part really threw me off.” That was the easiest way to put it without actually saying what affected you that badly. The Duke nodded and understood your troubles.
“Moreau shouldn’t give you any more trouble than the others. He’s an odd fellow, but he’s almost harmless. Most of the time.” The Duke chuckles, “Good luck, Y/N. Be careful out there.”
You nod your head and step away, but you instead head right back into the village for Luthier’s house. Though, you only found an empty home with a lock on the wardrobe. Violins and violas hung from the ceiling, it seemed that Luthier was an instrument builder. As you searched for the code, you noticed a drawing on the wall of a man and a little girl with the words ‘Happy Birthday’ written in blue crayon. You read the date, 27.09.17 — that was the code. You head back to the wardrobe, inserting the code before opening it. Inside, a Steel Hræsvelgr — a steel bird statuette. You grab it, then open a silver suitcase, finding a high-capacity mag for your rifle.
You return to the altar, walking over to the gates that matched the key, unlocking it. You push the gates open, realizing where you are now. You were back where you first came through during that lycan attack. You laugh.
“Well, won’t you look at that? We’re back where I almost died!”
You’ve almost died a lot of times, Y/N.
“I wasn’t asking for your technicality, Alex.” You reply, but as you continue to speak, you were idiotic to not pay attention to where you were going, “Besides — we’re almost done!”
Just before you could say anything else, a large werewolf beast appears and attacks you, biting into your stomach as you scream out, trying to push it off of you. “Get off— Sit, dog! Sit!” You shout, but there was no use. It jumps back as it growls, so you run into the nearest one — one that you had been in before — aiming your gun at the doorway as it tries to reach and grab you, but as you shoot it multiple times, it only bleeds enough to make him growl and step back. The monster then runs off, shaking its head quickly. You pant, catching your breath while looking out through the doorway to see that the beast had run off down the street. You glance around inside that house, then you smile once your eyes meet the ladder. You climbed up the ladder quickly, not wasting a moment more in time, reaching the top where the roof was.
You pulled out your rifle, kneeling down to aim your rifle at the beast that had just started to slowly walk through the streets. You shoot it directly in its head, then you draw your handgun and shoot repeatedly at the beast until it practically jumps onto the roof. Luckily, you were able to jump back out of its reach. You reload as it grows closer, aiming your gun again at its head, shooting it until it finally stands up, falling onto its back, crumbling into a crystal beast.
“He should’ve listened when I said sit.” You mutter, then you head back down the ladder. You saw a dead body propped against a dresser, so you read the note in his lap.
The wounds are severe. I won’t last much longer. I can hear it shuffling about outside. It barely flinched when I shot it. I feel like it’s toying with me. That . . . isn’t a wolf.
Still, I won’t lie down like a dog! If I can get to the old watermill, I can stop it. I can protect you. It’s so close . . . Damn, I’m so cold. My legs won’t work. I’m so sorry Luiza. Please forgive me.
You felt bad for the guy. He seemed to be Luiza’s husband that Anton had mentioned in his angry, drunken speech. As you searched around the houses, you saved the watermill weapon treasure room for last. You unlocked the door with the Iron Insignia key and entered the room, finding a grenade launcher. You cheer in excitement, “Hell fucking yeah!”
Way to go. Now you’re going to explode things.
“Why do you sound so sad about it? — This is awesome, Alex!” You were confused on why Alex sounded so down about it, you were sure Alex would’ve been ecstatic about it, but guess not.
At the far side of the East Old Town part of the village, you found a slimy, bubbly wall blocking your way to the watermill. It’s covered in slime, but it looked breakable. You aim your LEMI at it, shooting at it until it deflated and dissolved completely. You walk on ahead, heading to the watermill. The doors to the gate were locked, and the ladder up the gate was surrounded by that same slimy substance as before. You shoot at it until it deflates, jumping to reach the ladder’s bar as it was mostly broken. You reach the top of it, seeing two pigs walk around below. You didn’t want to shoot them so you just jumped down and ran right into the watermill.
A table is against the wall, a lit lantern sits on it, lighting the room. A sign is nailed to the wall, the words ‘reservoir elevator’ written on it, pointing to the stairs. You head down there, but Alex urges you not to.
I don’t like this, Y/N. What if this guy covers you in slime and makes you into one of those monsters?
“I won’t let that happen, Alex,” You tell them reassuringly, “I’m strong, and I’m not going to let that freak turn me into a freak like him. Don’t worry, alright?” You walk up to an elevator, stepping into it before you pull the lever down. The elevator begins to go down, and as you wait, Alex continues your conversation with them.
Are you sure? I just don’t want you getting hurt.
“Why are you so worried all of a sudden? Is it—” You set a frown across your face. “Is this about what happened back at Beneviento’s house? — Alex, believe me, I don’t think any of that was real. Trust me. I’m not worried about it, and neither should you be—”
But it was true! Every part of that was true! I . .
You furrow your brows as your jaw becomes agape.
“Alex . . . what are you . . . what are you saying?”
The elevator reaches its end, and you step out. Alex had grown quiet. You had a feeling they won’t say another thing for a while. You sigh and shake your head, walking into another room. The floor was made of soggy mulch, mud and gross puddles. There was wood built into some walls around, but it didn’t matter much to you. There was one known exit, there was light, the outside world, but a black metal gate blocked your way. Through a barely lit hallway, following railroad tracks. You head up some stairs, creaking underneath your feet, but as you hear a faint, deep cry, you put away your gun.
You knew that this Moreau was a freak, but he also seemed to be slow minded. You didn’t want him to grow upset or attack you if you said the wrong thing, or even accidentally showed him your gun. You wanted to try to slip by him — literally — and gain his trust so you could take the coin and spare him. You knew he was almost completely harmless, so you wanted to spare him. You’ve already killed two of the other lords, so sparing him might convince him to help you save Leo.
You reach the top of the stairs, sliding in between a wall of slime and the outer corner of a room. In an open area in the wall, almost like a glassless window, you see the arms coin laying out on a pedestal. But just before you grab it, you see Moreau standing there in the room, watching some TV. Hesitantly, you grab the arms coin, then you jump through the window steadily, almost silently. Just as you did so, you watched as Moreau threw up onto the ground. The pedestal lowers into the floor as he wails, “Oh, Mother Miranda . . . if it’s for you, I’d do anything!” and then Moreau looks over to you. You guessed you were wrong to think he’d help you. “Wait, wait, wait! D-Did you take Mother Miranda’s special child!?” He cried.
“Mother Miranda’s—” You were honestly baffled. “Leo isn’t hers. He’s my child.” But before you turned away to leave, you looked back at him. “What do you mean by that?”
Moreau stepped over closer to you. “Mother wants her baby back,” he bellows.
Like the song?
You rolled your eyes at Alex’s words. “Look, I just want to save my kid,” you tell Moreau, “I’m sorry, Moreau, I am, but I have to save Leo—”
“Wait, wait!” Moreau begged, “If— If you take it, then the others will laugh at me . .” He lowered his head, then he raised it again, “B-But if— if I do better than them . . .”
“Moreau, I can’t—” You step back towards the window, sitting on it so you could swing your legs over it and leave, but Moreau stepped closer, continuing to beg you.
“Wait, just a little longer, ple—” But then as you stepped out, he turned around and began to laugh, earning a confused expression from you. You raise one of your eyebrows, sliding the coin into your pocket, and you watch as Moreau turns back to you. “You’re stupid. You care too much.”
Offended, you scoff at him. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Moreau raises his hands, “It’s all over, I plugged the way in.” He chortles slowly as that slime substance spreads out behind you. “This is my territory!” The substance fills his room, “And I won’t let you leave!” He bellows. You draw your gun, cursing under your breath. You slide through the slime substance, running across the wooden boards and down the stairs. You can hear him cry out to you, “W-Wait don’t go! I won’t let you have it! Even if you beg!”
As you return back to the room you first came into from the elevator, the room is filled with that slime substance so you run towards the exit — until you see another passageway open. You look over there, seeing stairs that let out somewhere. You decided to follow it to see where it went. You continue on, entering what seemed to be a small riverside inside of a cave like area. A shack was built inside, and a lycan guarded it as it feasted on some meat. You take out your shotgun and shoot it down, walking into the shack and finding the boat key. You smile, “This has to be of some help.” But as you hear the roars of other lycans approaching. you knew you had to run for it.
Dodging every attack, you make it out of there with a minor tear in your jacket. You head back out to the exit, feeling the cold air against your skin. You let out a sigh, glad to be away from that awful, slimy substance, but you knew this wasn’t the end of it. As you continue on down a trail, you see that this part of the village had been flooded with water. It seemed mostly abandoned, so this wasn’t recent. You find a shack out by a boat, walking into the shack. There was nothing but a note talking about the boat key in the shack in the mine — which you had already grabbed beforehand — and then it said something about a guy named Hans and how his death was no accident, eaten by a giant fish, boat and all. You worry that Moreau was the big fish.
You walk out and head over to the boat. You step into it carefully, inserting the boat key into the engine, starting it up. You get settled into the boat, driving it through the water. Through a tunnel and out by the sluice gate, but as you head over towards the other tunnel, a giant fish thing raises above the surface, startling you. It swims off towards the flooded village so you ride the boat into the tunnel, finding somewhat of a secret base inside of it. You disembark the boat at the port, getting out of the boat and heading towards the entrance. You push aside the curtains, entering.
“What the hell . . ?” You glance around, your arms hanging by your sides. “Is this some research post? What’s it doing here?” Then, you’re suddenly grabbed from behind, an arm around your throat. You struggle, trying to pull them off of you, but as you fail, you wrap your leg around theirs, picking them up and slamming them onto the ground. You stomp on their stomach, pulling out your gun, aiming it at the . . . solder? “Stay down!” You shout at them.
“Y/N.”
You lift your head, looking over to where the voice came from. You see a man dressed in black attire standing against the wall. You furrow your eyebrows as you squint your eyes, trying to see who it was as the shadows covered his face.
“I gotta say, with you not having any military experience, I’m surprised you made it this far.” It was Chris Redfield, the man you met back three years ago at the Dulvey residence in Louisiana, the same man who escorted you to safety in Europe where three years later, your son was taken by a powerful being and now you’re stuck in a Romanian village trying to save him. “It’d be a shame if something happened to you now.”
“Why not?” You scoff, “My partner is dead, the guy I thought I fell for is one of the lords here, and my son was divided into literal coins! So take your gun and help me save Leon, quit being such a lazy ass here in this— this research post and do your fucking job!”
Chris stepped away from the wall, walking over to you, but then another soldier appeared from around the corner. “Captain, I’m getting some serious motion readings out here.” The soldier informs Chris, “We should move on soon.”
Chris turned around, “What kind of readings? What’s moving?”
You step off of the soldier, letting him stand up. You apologize quietly before you turn to Chris again, listening into his conversation.
“Unknown,” the soldier replied, “but my guess is we’ve been here too long — and Miranda knows it.” Then you stepped closer, confused.
“Miranda— Did you say Miranda?” You raise your voice, “How are you involved?”
“Leave it alone, Y/N. You are out of your depth.” Chris tells you sternly, then he looks back at the soldier, “What’s your sample analysis?”
“It’s definitely related to the mold,” the soldier answers.
But then, in the distance, all four of you look through the open area in the research post, the water swishes around as it grows closer, a low, echoing roar from the giant fish as it opens its mouth, rising out of the water. Chris stepped over to you quickly, pointing his finger at you. “Stay out of our business, Y/N.” He orders you firmly, but you’re still confused.
“What business? What are you—”
Chris then pushes you out of the way, “Watch out!” He shouts before the giant fish monster pushes its way through the research post, completely missing you in the process. The research post falls apart, and you fall into the water, swishing around in the water until you grab a hold onto some wood, climbing your way out of the cold, chilling water.
You’re close to another watermill now, but as you look over, you see Moreau without his cloak crawling out of the water and onto the wooden bay you were placed on now. You scoot back, trying to stand up, “Stay back, Moreau!” You see what was truly hiding underneath that cloak, what gave him that huge hunchback — mutated lumps of orange and brown, slimy and wet, completely and utterly disgusting.
Moreau steps closer, but you stray away from him. “The exit’s underwater,” Moreau says, “you’re done!” He says. “You’re too late . . Miranda is already preparing the ceremony!” You furrow your brows, disgusted as he hurls.
“I bet Miranda sent you to slow me down,” you scoff as you shake your head, “that bitch is going to pay for what she’s done.” You stand up, but then Moreau turns to you with fear in his odd-looking eyes.
“Don’t be so cruel,” he utters to you, “Mother Miranda . . . it’s not . . it’s not fair.” He wailed, showing his face to you, his wrinkly, gross face as tentacles flail around from those large lumps on his back. “I should be with her! Not you!”
“What are you— What are you talking about?”
Does he think you’re with Mother Miranda?
You honestly couldn’t doubt that.
He starts to hurl on you instead of answering so you step away from him quickly, gagging as you try to wipe off the green vomit from Moreau off of you. “Moreau, what the fu—” You can’t be mean to him anymore, he’ll just grow angry and kill you, “—do you need some help? Are you sick?” You correct yourself, trying to seem kind towards him, though you did pity him.
“I can’t hold it in anymore . . !” Moreau wails with that deep, echoing voice of his, though it was a bit hard to understand him half the time, but he turns and heads over to the water, “Oh, Mother, why?” He cries. Moreau falls back into the water, and as you turn to run, you see the water moving with him. You run up the wooden steps, running across a wooden pier until you jump over to the nearest land, grunting once you landed, hitting a rock hard against your stomach. You climb over, walking away from the flooded area where he was.
You were just by the gatehouse, so you headed there first. You enter through the door, finding a map nailed on the wall. You read the words printed out on the large poster.
Reservoir Gatehouse Operations Instructions
In an instance of heavy rain, there may be damage to the local aquatic life. It is advised that you drain all excess water using the following steps.
- Move the windmills with a crank to start the electricity to the gatehouse.
- Pull the lever in the gatehouse to open the sluice gate.
Honestly, it didn’t seem too hard — especially since there was a literal crank propped up against the wall on the floor, so you grab it and take a step back, turning to your right, seeing the sluice gate in the near, though far distance. That’s where you can drain the water.
You know, I’m starting to think things are just being handed to you.
“Could you please just let me enjoy the fact I don’t have to do too much work?” You say to Alex before you head out through another door. Heading over to the windmill, you walk up the ladder inside of it. You walk out to the terrace surrounding the upper level of the windmill, attaching the crank to something before pushing it and turning it to get the windmill to work. As it begins to work and the windmill’s propellers begin to go, you head back downstairs to the lower level inside of the windmill.
You head out through the front, walking on wooden planks and floating stuff to get across. It was eerie, and you surely didn’t like the quiet. As you head over to cross a floating bridge, you stop as that giant fish thing appears again — the mutated Moreau — swimming underneath the bridge. You quickly make your way across it as Moreau swims off, and you shiver with fear. “I’m really not looking to be fish food right now.” You head over to the other side just as Moreau leaps out of the water, flying over you, landing into the water nearby. You honestly were impressed.
You shoot down a couple boards, creating a bridge to somewhere steadier than what you were walking across on. You hesitate before you walk across, seeing as Moreau was swimming closeby. You sprint across, making it over to a sturdy area where you can rest for a moment. You hear through a damaged doorway, up some stairs, and you push a cart off into the water, it floats across. You turn and look around, seeing the other passageways and bridges, and said, “Fuck that.” You jump down and watch as Moreau jumps over you from the water, but you just crouch until he’s back in the water. You jump over onto the cart, walking over through a broken down building.
You shoot down some of that slime substance before you climb up a ladder, pulling a lever down. You had to pace yourself, you had to get out of there fast — you knew Mother Miranda was getting closer to finish preparing for the ceremony, so you had to get out of there to save Leo.
A large boat covered in moss appears from out of the water, and you laugh to yourself as you jump onto it. “Caught myself a big one,” you head over, seeing Moreau swimming closer. “I need to get out of here!” You yell as you shoot down more of the slime substance, jumping over onto another building and through a doorway. You have made it into the second windmill, so you shoot the lock on the ladder and climb up it quickly, making your way up there. As you head out, you see Moreau leap out of the water in the distance. You pull out your crank to stop your windmill in order to climb up one of the propellers. You were stupid to think that exploring would help you in this situation.
You climb onto a second level of the windmill, grabbing a hold of a zipline before you make your way back to the first windmill, lifting your legs as you see Moreau try to leap and reach you from that high up, but he fails and falls back into the water. You jumped down, heading over to the gatehouse almost immediately. You push the lever up, and the sluice gate raises, draining the flooded area where Moreau was. You hear a low chortle from behind you, so you turn and enter another room, seeing the Duke there.
“Duke!” You greet him with a smile, “It’s so good to see you!”
“Good to see you, too, Y/N. Sell me what you need and get going. Moreau will coward away if you don’t hurry,” he warns you so you nod, selling anything you may need to sell, buying more bullets and even some explosive rounds for your grenade launcher before you headed out of the gatehouse, seeing Moreau crawling out from the bay, wailing.
“My precious water! No!” He cries out, crawling around the windmill and away over a hill. You follow him out to the now drained reservoir. You look around through a house before jumping down into a wet area. You look around, gathering bullets on the way, but you’re startled by Moreau as he bursts through a wall, roaring. “I’ll make you proud, Mother! Watch me!”
“No, the fuck you won’t!” You shout at him, shooting at him once with an explosive round in your grenade launcher, causing him to roar, and his fish mouth opens, revealing his own self. You shoot repeatedly at him with your LEMI, taking out your shotgun while he’s still vulnerable, shooting at him until he grows angry and closes his mouth. “Take, take this!” He opens his mouth to hurl up green acid at you, but you quickly run around the corner, dodging the acid. “Pay for making fun of me!” He roars, climbing onto one of the houses now. You huff, running underneath a roof to protect yourself for whatever he was about to do.
His stomach grows large and round, and he burps, spitting out acid rain. Thank god you were safe underneath that roof. Once it was over, you pull out your grenade launcher and aim it at his stomach, causing him to fall back, tumbling off the house. You pull out your handgun, shooting at the red explosive barrel near him before taking out your rifle to aim and shoot at his real self as it revealed itself again from his now open mouth.
He roars as he grows bigger and redder, “Damn you!” Moreau bellows as he expands every more, exploding into a great big mess, “Help me, Momma!” You cover your face for protection, then you smile once you grab the leftovers — a crystallized Moreau.
“In death as he was in life,” you scowl, “disgusting.”
You head through the exit, finding yourself in a tunnel. You head into a room before those locked gates leading out into that room before where the reservoir elevator was. You step into the side room, finding a jar labeled ‘cadou’ and the next piece of the key. You combine it, creating the Six Winged Unborn Key. And just as you put the key away in your pocket, the TV turns on and you hear a voice — a familiar voice that you were upset to hear, though it felt so good to hear it again.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to make it this far, Y/N.”
Heisenberg.
“What do you want?” You ask, growing angry. “What else could you possibly want with me?”
“Settle down, Y/N. We . . We need to talk,” Heisenberg says through the TV, but you’re only starting to grow angrier and angrier. He wasn’t what he said he was, and he put you in this position before, he gave you straight to the others and Mother Miranda — but then again, he protected you.
“Run, and I’ll keep you safe.”
“What do we need to talk about?” You reply, “I don’t want to speak with you. At all.”
Y/N . . . I think we should hear him out.
You couldn’t believe what you were hearing, so you scoffed and didn’t reply to them.
“Because I want to help you, Y/N.” Heisenberg pauses for a moment. “Come to my factory. It’s in the village’s outskirts, and you’ll need all four coins. I’ve given the Duke my coin so you can head my way as soon as possible.”
You narrow your eyes, “Why should I?”
Heisenberg sighs. “Please. Just . . Just come see me.” And the TV shuts off. You weren’t sure about this, but as much as you didn’t want to, a part of you wanted to see him again. You did love him after all, and you couldn’t stray away from your loved ones, even if they’ve hurt you in the past. That was one of the things about you that you hated the most. You loved him, despite what he’s done to you. Same went for Alex, but Alex . . . Alex was gone. Alex has been gone for three years now. Why did you love Heisenberg so much? What made you grow so goddamn attached to him so quickly? Was it his smile? His accent? His clothes? His face? His attitude? His way of handling Leo? Or was it just that he reminded you so much of Alex? And as you grew to miss Alex so much, you wanted anyone that could be just like Alex, even if they looked completely different from each other.
Something in Heisenberg reminded you of Alex so much to the point you fell in love with him. You hated yourself for growing so attached to him. He hurt you. He gave you straight to Miranda. But then he let you get away, protecting you only if you ran, and now — now he wanted to see you. You were sure he felt the same way about you, but how could a guy like him grow attached to you? You needed to know. You need to understand the love you two have for each other, even if it may not end the way you may hope it will.
You headed back through the East Old Town, a bit slowly as you didn’t want to rush it. Alex was quiet again, but you wouldn’t doubt they weren’t trying to figure out everything in their head. You tried to calm your own thoughts as they paced through your head, trying to figure out every possible way this could go with Heisenberg. You weren’t scared, but you weren’t confident about it either. You just weren’t so sure about it all — but your silent thinking came to an end once that tall creature from before appeared with its hammer, roaring out as it jumped, trying to stomp on you.
You stumble back, trying to keep your balance. “Where the fuck did you come from!?” You shout at the tall giant monster, dodging each of his attacks as he swings his hammer. You draw your grenade launcher, shooting an explosive round at it before running into one of the houses. You reload your grenade launcher, approaching a window to look out for the monster.
You were confused on where it had gone, it couldn’t have just disappeared — it was too tall, too giant and bold for it to just disappear out of thin air like that. There’s pure silence, it fills your paralyzed terror in your stance, slowly moving your head to look around — but nothing. The monster just seemed to have disappeared.
Y/N . . . I think . . . I think it’s dead.
“Dead?” You were baffled, “I don’t think so. That monster is at least four times my size, that thing can’t be dead by just one explosive round?” You lower the grenade launcher, hesitating as you step out of the house, the wood creaking underneath your feet — but it was quiet. Too quiet.
You slowly make your way around the corner, finding a giant crystallized hammer on the ground, surrounded by dust and ash. It was dead. It was actually dead. But then you noticed the glistening metal pieces on the ground around the hammer, a small paper note attached to it. You take it, reading what was written on the page.
You’re safe now. Don’t worry.
A small smile curves across your lips, holding the note close to your chest. Why did he make you feel like this? You were almost addicted to him? How could he have done this? How could you have let this happen? But at the same time, loving him felt like a good thing. You weren’t sure.
Let’s go, Y/N. He’s waiting.
You roll your eyes, “That sounds weird.” You comment. But Alex just scoffs and doesn’t reply. You hated when they did that, when they’d stay quiet for a while then speak out of nowhere, but you couldn’t really make them speak or anything. They were just a voice inside your head, you can’t exactly force them to do anything. But you knew you shouldn't let their silence bother you. It should be a good thing. Maybe they’re trying to leave your head for good. But as you hope that may be the case, you worry what it’d be like when you don’t have a voice to talk to.
You head back to the altar, returning to the Duke. He’s glad to see you alive.
“Ah, Y/N, I was starting to get worried,” The Duke says with a grin as you hand him the crystallized Moreau, “Ah, this is of the Lord Moreau? You might call this the beauty of the grotesque, very splendid indeed.” But then, he remembered, “Oh right! I almost forgot — I was asked to give you this,” the Duke reaches into his many pockets and takes out a coin — the torso coin — and hands it to you. “Lord Heisenberg requested I give you this. Put the coins into the chalice and take it to the ceremony site. You’ll be able to go to the factory then.” He explains to you.
As you hold all four of the coins in your hands, you worry.
“This will help me save Leo?”
“Supposedly,” said the Duke in response, “but hurry. I don’t believe Lord Heisenberg is one for patience. After all, he is the most dangerous of the four lords here in this village.”
“Don’t worry, Duke,” you tell him, “I won’t let him hurt me again.”
It took you a bit to get to the chalice out to the ceremony site since it was incredibly heavy. You worry if those coins had turned into Leo inside of the chalice, but then again, if that was true, you knew you’d try to tear it apart. But you needed the chalice to see Heisenberg, despite your worries about how it may end.
You place it in the middle of the ceremony site onto that familiar symbol that you swore was similar to the symbol for Alex’s old job, but just as you do so, you felt a rush through your veins, your eyes flashing white as you saw a vision, one that answered so many questions.
When the whiteness went away, so did the color. You watched in black and white as you saw what seemed to be a memory of . . Alex’s . . ? They were at their job, meaning this was before they quit their job. You didn’t quite remember the name of it. Inside of a dull colored room, Alex stands by a glass crib, their breathing was slow and their blinks were inconsistent.
“No, this isn’t right.” Alex said as they pressed their hand on their forehead, looking down at a baby. “I can’t . . I can’t do this . .”
A door slams open behind them, and a voice raises. “Alex! There you are! We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” You recognized that voice. It was Alex’s good friend, Kate Lewis, a coworker of your partner’s for what seemed like years until Alex quit their job. From what you knew of Kate and the few times you’ve talked with her, she was kind and very sweet. You were friends with her wife, Lexi.
“Kate, get out of here.” Alex faced away from her, still looking down at the baby, though you were confused as you weren’t able to see the baby’s face from the blur across its face, but you had a feeling that the baby was no other than Leo before you adopted him.
Kate walks over to Alex, standing on the other side of the glass crib where the baby laid. “I know what you’re thinking, Alex, but it won’t work. You know it won’t work. There’s no going back, and there’s no saving it either—”
“I’m going to try,” said Alex, looking up at Kate, “I’m going to save him.”
Kate was bewildered. “You can’t, Alex! It’s too risky! Even if you do, you’re risking your life, this baby’s life, hell— even Y/N’s! You’re not going to do this, Alex! I’m not going to let you ruin your life for this baby! It’s not worth all the trouble—”
“I’m going to lose this job anyways once they find out so it’s better to just do this now!” Alex shouts, cutting Kate off. She takes a step back, confused.
“What are you talking about . . ?” Kate then scoffed as she gently shook her head, “Oh my god. You have to be kidding me.”
“Kate, hear me out,” Alex grabbed onto Kate’s wrist, earning furrowed brows from the woman, “I do work here legally for The Connections. Like you! But I . . . I also work for Blue Umbrella.” Alex admits to Kate, only making her guffaw. “Believe me, Kate. I just want all this shit to end. We shouldn’t be making children into bio-weapons, and this place— it’s involved with money laundering, murder, and trafficking of weapons and drugs! I can’t let this spread.”
“Why does it mean this much to you?” Kate asked. “I don’t get it. It’s just a bio-weapon—”
“Would you stop calling him an it?!” Alex screams at her, taking her back. “I just . .” Alex lowers their head for a moment, sniffling as tears fall from their eyes, “I just want him to be safe.”
Kate stares back at Alex, tears almost forming in her eyes.
“I’ll tell them that the baby didn’t make it.” Kate began to say. “That you quit because you grew close to the baby and you couldn’t handle the loss.” Alex raises their head to look back at Kate, and she gives him a small, warm smile. “Go, Alex. Make sure Leo’s safe.” Alex nods their head and picks the baby up from the glass crib, rocking him for a moment before they turn to leave the room. They looked back at Kate when she called out to Alex. “Take care of yourself, Alex.”
Your vision turns white again, and you then appear inside of your previous home that you had shared with Alex back in Pennsylvania. It’s still black and white, but you didn’t care. After Alex quit their job at “Umbrella,” they got another job a couple days later working for another organization that was similar to Umbrella. It was . . . it was Blue Umbrella.
Alex never quit their job at Blue Umbrella, so they didn’t “get another job” — they just quit one job and continued working at the other. You were actually told by Alex that their first name was Cameron, that their middle name was Alex and they wanted to go by that instead, so when you two first met, they introduced themselves as Alex Hill, not Cameron Hill. However, Alex changed their name legally to Alex, getting rid of Cameron. After “quitting their job,” you and Alex moved to Pennsylvania from New York.
All of this was starting to make sense now.
Alex worked for both The Connections and for Blue Umbrella. They worked alongside Blue Umbrella in order to stop The Connections, taking Leo away and having you adopt him as a way to keep him away from The Connections. Blue Umbrella would monitor you and Alex’s whereabouts, keeping you both safe along with Leo, and his pills — they were the maintenance chemicals needed to keep his powers and the mold contained and controlled. For The Connections, they were told by Kate that the baby — Leo — had died during one of their experiments, and because of the death, Alex quit their job as they had grown close to the baby as if they were the baby’s own parent. The Connections understood Alex’s departure and continued creating the bio-weapons, until . . . you started to think.
How did Miranda know about Leo’s existence?
The vision being portrayed through someone else’s eyes seemed to be based just before Alex’s disappearance, meaning this memory was Alex’s. It was about mid-day so Leo was asleep, taking a nap, while you were at work. A phone was ringing while Alex seemed to be cooking something for lunch. He opened the microwave and took out the plate of chicken nuggets — Alex always liked having chicken nuggets for lunch, despite how childish it may have been — and then headed over to the home phone on the wall. They grabbed the phone off its hook and answered the call.
“Hill and L/N residence, this is Alex speaking.”
“Alex! It’s so good to hear your voice!”
“Mia?” Alex let out a gentle laugh, “I’m surprised you called. I haven’t heard from you since before I left The Connections. Why . .” Alex’s laugh dies down quickly, “Why are you calling me?”
Mia Winters was one of the other caretakers at The Connections. You felt that knowledge into your brain, as if you were really Alex at that moment.
“I need your help.” Mia says on the other side of the phone. “Could you come to Florida and help me with something? — I know you don’t work with The Connections anymore, but I need your help.” Mia begs Alex.
Alex shakes his head, “I can’t, Mia . . . I can’t go back. There’s . . . too many bad memories there,” they knew they had to lie — Mia was told that Leo was dead, not that he was alive and well in the care of you and Alex. “I can’t do it, Mia. I’m sorry.”
“Come on, Alex. We’re friends, and it’s— it’s just a one time thing. Please, Alex.” Mia continues to beg, and Alex lets out a sigh, shaking their head.
“Fine. I’ll . . I’ll head down to Florida tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Mia glees, “Thank you so much, Alex. I’ll email you the address.” And the phone hangs up. Alex hangs the phone onto its hook on the wall, sighing once again. Alex facepalmed, rubbing their hand down their face. “Dammit,” Alex cursed under their breath.
As your eyes go back to normal, you find yourself still standing by the chalice, but the stone circle beneath you has lowered like an elevator. An exit is present there, some white light shines from the end of the cave-like hallway. You were stuck in a daze. Was all of that real? You look around, and you’re back to normal — what the fuck just happened?
The sound of an intercom turning on suddenly almost deafens you, making your ears ring for a moment. Then, you hear a voice — just like before when that same voice spoke to you in such a way that made your stomach turn, sick to your stomach, as if you were just used for the entertainment of others. But then again, what he said to you before it all began still stuck with you. “Run, and I’ll keep you safe.” You couldn’t tell if it was just a choice he made in the heat of the moment to help you escape, or if it was the plan all along. Something about it made you feel weirdly thankful for his actions, but nonetheless, he still hurt you — so when you go see him, you’ll make sure to tell him off.
“Y/N, it’s good to see you.” Heisenberg greets you over the intercom — though you saw no intercoms nearby so you figured that this might be one of his powers at play, “Come, come,” he says, “Leo will be fine. I’ll have one of my creations protect it. Don’t worry, he’ll be okay.” And the intercom shuts off. You take in a deep breath, stepping away from the chalice and through the passageway surrounded by rock. You exit the passageway, approaching a bridge. White mist covered the mountains that loomed over in the distance, the sky a dark but pale blue. You head across the bridge, your gun drawn just in case a couple creatures decide to poke their heads and try to hurt you.
Alex’s voice had gone silent. It was starting to worry you. You tried not to let it bother you too much, but you weren’t used to the silence. They’ve talked to you for six years now, stuck in your head ever since the beginning of Alex’s disappearance. Maybe those visions helped your brain realize what truly happened, realize all the things Alex kept from you — and maybe there was no use for Alex’s voice anymore. You weren’t so sure, but you wanted to be. You wanted to know everything.
The tall, wide gates open before you enter the large field in front of Heisenberg’s factory. You look around as you follow the trail. The field was covered in brown grass, it was tall and uncut. Abandoned cars and tanks were left around the field, some flipped upside down. You soon approach the doors to the factory, an alarm rings before the doors slide open just enough for you. You enter through the doors, and they shut behind you, startling you. It was an organized mess inside the room you now stood in, but you head over through a metal door despite how much you wanted to nag about the mess. You head down a few stairs, walking down a hall to your left. You push open another metal door, finding yourself in another room that is cluttered and a pure organized mess.
Shelves, boxes, and other stuff make two borders, a walkway in between them. You walk through it, finding a brown curtain hanging before a desk against the wall, two lights were lit behind it. You approached it, drawing the curtain away, revealing what looked to be something resembling a crime board with all the photos and the strings and the thumbtacks and the X’s across three photos, one of Moreau, one of Donna, and one of Lady Dimitrescu. A map is nailed to the wall just beside Donna and Moreau’s photos, the words ‘BSAA Come!!’ written in red, and on the photos, a word or two is written at the bottom of them. Donna’s was ‘doll,’ Moreau’s was ‘fish man,’ and Lady Dimitrescu’s was ‘witch.’ In the middle was a large colorful photo of Mother Miranda, the word ‘Mother’ written out in red underneath it. By Lady Dimitrescu’s photo, there was a photo of you and Leo — your address written beside it, a photo of Alex, a photo of Chris, and a photo of Leo.
“Why are . . . Why are these photos here?” You ask, creasing your eyebrows with confusion as you observe the photo covered wall. You weren’t sure what to think of it, or of Heisenberg. You weren’t sure what all this was about, but at the same time, you were stupid enough to not think that your visions earlier didn’t connect to all this.
“Truth hurts, doesn’t it?”
You quickly turn, your gun drawn, aiming right at the man standing suddenly before you, smoking a bit of his cigar. You furrow your brows, narrowing your eyes at him as you tried to not let yourself grow angry, but it wasn’t working too well and you worried you might go off on him.
“I know learning of Alex’s secrets may have hurt you,” Heisenberg said, flailing his arms and hands around, using them to motion around, gesturing to you, but you lowered your gun. “Believe me. I was shocked to know of it myself.” Why was he so reluctant? “I am sorry about your loss of Alex. I’m sure they were great.” He cleared his throat, “Y/N, as you may know, Mother Miranda is planning on using Leo to resurrect her deceased daughter Eva who died like a century ago.”
“I could care less,” you tell him, “All I want is for my son to be okay. I could care less about your family drama and your personal issues. I just want to save Leo!”
“And I want to help you!” Heisenberg told you, urging you to understand him. “I care about both you and Leo, and I couldn’t want anything more than—” A loud, revving engine is heard from underneath the room through a grate. He grunts and walks over to it, opening the hatch. “Shut your fucking hole!” He shouts, and the engine becomes quiet, then he clears his throat, straightening his posture. “Sorry about that. Like I was saying — you and Leo,” he turns to you, “mean everything to me, Y/N. I want nothing more than for you both’s safety.”
“Why do you care so much about us?” You ask him, leaning towards him, “Huh? You gave me straight to Miranda — I could’ve done all this on my own without you getting in my way, making me the main target for your siblings!” You raise your voice at him, but then he reels and grabs a rusty, metal chair, picking it up and putting it there in front of him.
“Take a seat.” Heisenberg then turns to walk away, but you continue standing, just turning as you watch Heisenberg steadily with those eyes of yours that he knew he loved dearly. “Listen, Y/N. You’re being played.”
You scoff, “You think this is a game? Really, Karl?”
Heisenberg glanced at you when he heard you call him by his first name, but he grabs a knife, throws it at the photo wall directly in the middle of Lady Dimitrescu’s face before he storms over to you. “I said sit!” Heisenberg demands, sitting you in the chair, using his deep voice to try and obtain dominance, but as much as you found it quite attractive, you were still pretty pissed off. He steps away, for a split moment you see his thinned lips curved downwards like a frown, but he composes himself and points at the photo wall. “Lady super-sized bitch . .” With his hand, the knife comes off the photo wall, “Ugly-ass psycho doll . .” The knife goes to stab Donna’s photo, “and the moronic freak.” The knife goes to Moreau’s photo. “Don’t you see, Y/N? This is all a test — to see if you’re strong enough! To see if you’re good enough to join Miranda’s family,”
You noticed how he would pronounce the end of Miranda as ‘der’ which you found kind of cute, and you also noticed how he enunciates words a lot, but you strayed to ignore it.
“I don’t want to be apart of that bitch’s family—”
“Neither did I, but here we are, Y/N!” He exclaims with his hands thrown into the air. “And I’m next in line right? Kill me, move up the chain, destroy Miranda and save your precious son.” He seemed weirdly nice, but then again, he was nice before when you first met him, when you first grew attached to him — which you still hated yourself for. “But I,” Heisenberg clenches his fist, “I want to help you save your son and kill Miranda so we can live without that bitch in our way!”
Was he trying to tell you how he felt? By trying to save you and Leo? By helping you? He kind of sucked at it, but you couldn’t blame him for trying to express it. He lived alone in this factory, probably, and he seemed to keep to himself. You . . . you kinda felt bad for him.
“Why are you doing this?” You furrow your brows again. “Why are you trying to help me after you gave me straight to her and the others?” You hiss, scowling at him as you rose from your seat. “I want you to explain yourself, you owe me an explanation on why you practically fed me to the wolves!” You demanded. Heisenberg took off his glasses, revealing those yellow eyes of his that you had grown to love. You worry that this may be just a lover’s quarrel, but was it really?
“Listen, buttercup . .” Buttercup? “. . How do I . . . God . . . I . . . uh . . . I like you,” then he straightened his posture, “Well no, I don’t just like you per se — I actually love you, but we don’t have to talk about that.” He was starting to talk fast, “All you really need to know for sure is that I care about you and I want you safe from that bitch Miranda.” Heisenberg told you with a smirk of a smile.
You really tried not to laugh at the way he said Miranda.
But he said he loved you. No. He loves you. Your love for him was great, and the love he had for you could possibly be greater. He had grown attached to you, feeling the same as you did, but you wondered if his love had grown as he watched over you these last couple years. He loves you, and you love him back — So why aren’t you doing anything about it? Alex? Don’t you realize why I’m stuck in your fucking head, Y/N?! It’s because you haven’t moved on! You won’t give love another chance, making you unable to move on from me, but you love him! You love Karl! So move on. MOVE ON!
“No. No, I can’t!”
Stuck in your head, surrounded by darkness. The world around you felt like it was spinning, making you feel dizzy as you stumbled. You stand your ground, underneath one circle of light as the darkness around you grows larger and larger. Your breaths grow fast, you’re starting to freak out.
Move on, Y/N. You can move on.
“No, Alex, I can’t— I can’t move on! I can’t just leave you behind and forget about you!” You shout back, hearing that voice echo around you, “You’re the love of my life, Alex. I can’t . . .”
Yes. You can.
“I’m not . .” You shake your head, “I’m not ready!”
In the darkness, you see flashing images beginning to appear around you as you spin, memories of you and Alex, some of you alone enjoying time together and others with Leo. All the happy memories, all the bad ones, too — every single memory you had of Alex was there, showing themselves to you as you whirled around, dizzy, but you still listened and paid attention. It all brought tears to your eyes, remembering the precious memories with Alex you held so closely to your heart, the memories you didn’t want to leave behind. Then, a figure of pure light, flashing memories all over them, appeared from the larger memories around you. Their face curved with a smile. You knew that smile, you recognized it immediately once you saw it, standing still there now.
“I’m not asking you to leave me behind or forget about me, Y/N.” An estranged, angelic voice echoes almost like a God would from the Heavens, “I’m asking you to move on.”
You shake your head again, tears streaming down your face. “I can’t, Alex.” You cried out, falling to your knees, “I can’t . . . I can’t just move on and love another! I can’t just love again and act like you never existed!” You sob, “You’re the love of my life, Alex! You’re my soulmate!”
Alex’s figure approached you slowly, kneeling before you and pressed their hand against your cheek, raising your head to look you in the eyes. Their face turned to normal, looking as if nothing ever happened. They smiled at you again, warming your heart again.
“No,” Alex said, “I’m not.”
You blink, finding yourself back where you were before. It was as if no time had passed at all. His eyes were still glued on you, standing just a foot in front of you as he looked at you with those yellow eyes of his. You noticed something about them. Heisenberg looked scuffy, a guy full of anger and hate, someone of strength and maybe even darkness, but in his yellow eyes, you always saw a deepened sadness in them. His true emotions poured from his eyes, revealing to you and to anyone of how he felt at that moment. You wondered if that was why he wore such dark sunglasses.
“Karl,” you began to say, relaxing your shoulders, “I know you want to help me. I do, but I should do this alone. I don’t want you getting hurt, and I can’t . . .” You lower your head for a moment as you step closer towards him, and you raise your head again, “I can’t afford to lose another person I love in this lifetime.” You really just disregarded everything Alex just said to you before.
Heisenberg stared at you, creasing his dark, thick eyebrows before meeting your eyes again, taking your hand all the sudden. It takes you back a bit, but you calm yourself, knowing he won’t hurt you again. You knew he wouldn’t. You had a feeling you could trust him now.
“Y/N, I would die if it meant that you and Leo were safe.” He confessed to you. “I’m going to help you, whether you like it or not. I’m not letting you get hurt because I also can’t risk losing another person I love.” And he turns away, leading you into another room.
In the control room on B1, you stand there as you look through the large windows, seeing the cargo bay on the other side of the windows. He stands by his desk behind you, rubbing his cigar in his ashtray. It was quiet between the two of you. You weren’t sure what to say to him. You were honestly waiting for an explanation from him, but he was stubborn — like you — so you shouldn’t waste your time waiting for something that may not happen if you don’t just straight up ask him.
You let out a sigh. “I didn’t come here to kill you. I never . . wanted to kill you.” You admit to him aloud, your back facing him as you stand there, continuing to look through the windows. You could feel his glance at you. “I just wanted to see you again.” You said that last part quietly, but he still heard you, walking over you to you with a smirk curving on his scarred lips.
“You know, Y/N,” Heisenberg placed his hand on the arch in your lower back, “We could rule this village together. Protect Leo and our people, giving them true happiness like us, living peacefully here. We could really start a life together here,” Heisenberg’s hand raised up your back, trailing your spine with his palm, “We could really be true to ourselves and be . . . happy.”
He was speaking sincerely, you knew he was. He was speaking from his heart, though you wouldn’t be surprised if it was mechanical. You had learned to love him in spite of his flaws and differences from you. His skin, from what he showed after taking off his jacket, was covered in tattoos. One of which your eye caught onto was of your name and Leo’s name inside of an infinity symbol. You had noticed it just a few minutes ago when he was first leading you to the control room, but you didn’t ask about it. You had an idea of what it meant and why he got it.
He’s very protective, so to speak, especially of the ones he cared most about. He could care less about Miranda as she had tainted his life and ruined him entirely.
Something you hadn’t noticed about Heisenberg before was that his left leg was a prosthetic. You didn’t want to ask him how he lost it, but it reminded you of humanity, how humans like you could live with prosthetics, and even powerful beings like him had them, too. It almost made him seem humane, other than the fact he looked practically human. His powers were extraordinary, and you wanted a life with him. You really did.
“Karl . . .” You replied to him quietly, “Aren’t we getting a little too comfortable? I mean,” you turn to face him, “I don’t want us planning a whole future together before it’s certain that we can have one, you know? I just . . . I don’t want to get my hopes up.”
Heisenberg raised his hands, “Buttercup,” his lips purred, sending shivers throughout your body as he placed his hands gently on your face, “You are what pushed me to fight for freedom in the first place, and whether I get it or not, I will kill Miranda — for you and for Leo.” He promised to you, and he raised his chin, giving you a gentle kiss on your forehead. He pulls back, and with a smile, you stare at his scarred face — though you found his scars beautiful — and he steps away. “Come with me, let me show you something.”
“Again?” You raise one of your eyebrows in interest, “What else could you show me in this factory? — Which, by the way, is creepy as hell. Why is it so dark here?” You question him.
Heisenberg laughed at your words, “You ask a lot of questions . . I like that,” he hums, then he raises his hands up, “Come, I want to show you the wonders of this dark factory.” He takes your hand again, leading out into another room. He was happy to show you around, he wanted you to grow used to it, convince you to stay here in his home rather than leave after all this is over, when Miranda is dead and you three could live happily without any darkness haunting over you all.
He took you into his quarters, showing some things that he’s built that weren’t those soldats. A lot of them were really just decorative, like a vase of flowers made of just metal and scraps. It was rather beautiful, he even nudged your arm and said you could paint it. He was a genius, an inventor of metal and scraps, using his magnetic field powers to control and move metal, creating all sorts of things with his powers, even creating electricity with ease. He was extraordinary, and he fell for a mortal like you. You honestly couldn’t believe it, but he loved you nonetheless, and you loved him.
“Is that . . . is that a cat made of metal?”
Heisenberg steps over to you, nodding. “Yes! I built it a while back, felt lonely up here in the quarters when studying and making blueprints so having a metal cat really helped me with the loneliness — his name is Henry.” then he tapped its head with his finger, sending an electric wave through it, and the metal cat began to move around like a normal cat would. You smiled in awe, petting it, and Heisenberg sighed as he watched you glow with glee. You turned to him then, and your smile faded away, and so did his. “What? What is it, Y/N?”
“What’s . . .” You began to say, “What’s your plan?”
Heisenberg huffed a smoke out of his cigar, “Well,” he lowered the cigar, “We have to kill Miranda and fix this village.”
“Why did this all happen in the first place?” You asked him, “If you wanted to be free from her so badly, why did you let her get this far?”
“Because I had to build my metal army!” Heisenberg replied to your questions, “I needed time to build them to take her down, kill her and protect you and Leo — I wouldn’t be able to do it all on my own, Y/N. And afterwards, I’ll need the army to fix up the village and get rid of the mold.”
“Mold?” You become confused, “Like— Like from Louisiana?”
But then Heisenberg guffawed.
“You’re kidding, right?” Heisenberg asked, “The mold didn’t come from Louisiana, it originated here with Miranda — and this mold won’t stop spreading until we destroy every piece of it, including Miranda and what has come of this village.” He tightened his fist, “We have to purify this village, purify the world if we have to! And The Connections and Umbrella — we have to destroy them as well or they’ll make more of those goddamn bio-weapons just like Eveline and Le—”
You take a step back. “No. Go ahead and say his name.” You dig your nails into your palms. “Leo’s a bioweapon, right? Alex took him away from The Connections and made me adopt him so Leo wouldn’t be used as a weapon, right?” You scoff, “Goddammit!” You shout, kicking a table. “Why didn’t you tell me this shit earlier?! And why— why couldn’t I have realized it before?” You shake your head, blaming yourself for not even considering the possibility, “I could’ve stopped this. Fuck.”
“Don’t you dare blame this on yourself,” Heisenberg demanded, “Blame Miranda. She’s the one who gave the mold samples to The Connections — they’re pretty much the second version of Umbrella! It’s where they got that damn symbol from — Miranda! She’s the cause of all this, just to bring back her daughter who’s been dead for a century.” Then Heisenberg turned to you, “The Connections create bioweapons, like that damn little girl-granny-whatever-the-fuck-she-is, and Leo — Leo was just a newborn when he was injected with the mold samples, and Miranda worked alongside the Connections as a researcher, and when she went to take Leo, he had supposedly died and his main caretaker, Alex, had quit their job. Alex took Leo to you and protected him. I-It all makes sense, Y/N! And when Alex went off to Florida to help that friend of theirs to escort that girl across the sea, that damn girl crashed the boat and they were taken in by the Bakers who the girl infected with the mold, and she infected Alex and their friend, leading to the many deaths there.” Heisenberg approached you quickly, “But Y/N, listen to me, this is not in any way your fault. Do you hear me? This is not your fault. You are an amazing parent to Leo, and you’ve raised him so much — but now I want you to trust me, and be with me.”
Your eyes are dancing as he stands close to you.
“When we end this with Miranda, I’ll . . .” He thins his lips and takes in a deep breath, “I’ll leave this village.” Just before, he was saying you three could stay in the village, but now, it seems he’s changed his mind sincerely, “We’ll blow it to bits, we’ll live far away from here on some farm with cows and other livestock, build a swing for Leo and use my inventions for money to get by, along with grow crops to sell on the market — we can live together as a family. Because I love you, Y/N.” He placed his hands on either side of your face again, “I want to help you and raise your boy with you. I know I’m supposed to be this— this genius, this mechanical monster, but I don’t want that. I don’t want any of that. All I could ever want is so close I could almost reach it, but I can’t — until I kill Miranda and break free from her control, to give her what she deserves once and for all.”
As his speech came to a close, you stared at him, unsure of what to reply, but then you grin, placing your open hands upon his chest before you closed your hands, gripping his white shirt, pulling him even closer to connect your lips with his. He’s surprised, but he eases into it. His lips tasted like smoke and somewhat metallic, but you liked it nonetheless. Your eyes shut as so were his, kissing him gently but passionately in that room. In the shadows, his face was so close to yours that you could smell the cigar smoke that had stuck to his beard, but you surely knew you’d grow to love that smell, almost just as much as you loved him.
Something about him made you want to never leave him again. He pulled you in with his odd characteristics and made you fall for him three years ago during that trip, then disappeared out of thin air before you could even say goodbye. But you never truly forgot about him, no, you just tried not to remember him and get your heart broken all over again — but then, you reunited with him three years later, and though it wasn’t exactly the best reunion you could’ve asked for, none of that mattered now.
The world began to spin around you, but neither of you moved an inch. Sparks went off from your connected lips, butterflies tickling your insides as you continued to kiss him, your hands gradually moving upwards, his dark facial hair against the skin on your hands. He inclined his face more toward yours, his mouth still on yours, which was like a freshly split-open fig. For a long time he hadn’t kissed anyone, and you were filled with deep astonishment as you realized how wise he was, how he ruled you, put you off, lured you back . . . each one different from the other, still awaiting him to pull you back in.
Breathing deeply, he remained standing and at this moment he was like a child astonished by the abundance of knowledge and things worth learning opening up before his eyes. Before you could withdraw your mind from its far places, his arms were tight around you. You felt again the rush of helplessness, the sinking yielding, the surging tide of warmth that left you limp. He bent back your head across his arm and kissed you more, softly at first, and then with a swift gradation of intensity that made you cling to him and his clothes as the only solid thing in a dizzy swaying world.
His insistent mouth was parting your shaking lips, sending wild tremors along your nerves, evoking from your sensations you had never known you were capable of feeling. For a man like him, you were surprised he was this good of a kisser. And before a swimming giddiness spun you round and round, you knew that kissing him was to die for. Kissing him . . . your mind wonders — it's like opening up your soul, tasting feelings and seeing every colour of the rainbow in their own sensual way, almost like catching a smile in a bottle, its softness, its sweetness . . . Like breathing in the person like a cool inhalation of oxygen to warm the soul . . . Like nothing in the world exists but you and him . . . This feeling like you're levitating off the ground floating in the air . . . What your feeling cannot be put into words, nor has there been any part of speech or figure of speech invented to describe it . . . It's like an aphrodisiac, mixed with a Pandora's box effect, fireworks glowing inside you from the touch of his lips on yours.
Once you pulled away, your eyes fluttered open slowly. His eyes open, too, but his gaze stays glued on you, watching you as a smile curved on his lips. “You know,” his hand still placed in the arch of your back, “I love you more than anything.” Heisenberg whispered to you, but then you pulled away from his grasp, turning your back to him. “Buttercup, what is it?”
You fix your stance, smoothing down your shirt slowly.
“You know I . . . You know I love you, too, but I’ve . . . I’ve been trying not to say it. I’ve been,” you raise your hand to your throat, “trying so hard to just mash it down and ignore it and not say it,” you’re starting to ramble, “and Alex . . . they were amazing. I really loved them, but . . . they’ve been gone for three years, and I . . . I still loved you in spite of all my grief and loss — I am so in love with you to the point it made me want to forget you because all I wanted was you. You’re— You’re in me.” You turn around to him, lowering your hand to your chest, clutching your shirt, “It’s— it’s like you’re a disease, like I’m infected by you. And I just can’t stop thinking about that day we met, the day I grew so attached to you, and I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t breathe because I love you.” You smile with shiny eyes, “I love you all the time, every minute of every single day.”
As Heisenberg parts his lips to speak, you continue.
“Knowing you had made me question everything,” you admit to him, “Even when I’m close to dying, on the verge of death, thinking about you made me feel the most alive I have ever felt. You’ve been awful to me, you fed me to the wolves — and even though all I’ve done before this is to blame you for all this mishap— but after all that, I am still in love with you, through and through.” As your own speech peaks its end, Heisenberg steps over to you and brings you into a tight hug. You hug him back just as tight, tears streaming down his face as his hand placed itself on the back of your head.
“Ești dragostea vieții mele, mi-ai intrat în suflet,” Heisenberg whispers to you gently, leaning back to plant a gentle kiss on your forehead again. It was Romanian, but you weren’t sure what it meant. He said it so romantically, it must’ve meant something regarding love, something heartfelt. As he turned away from you, he lifted his hammer that was propped up against a desk. “We have to start getting ready for the fight soon. She has started preparing for the ceremony already, so we must hurry if we are going to kill her and save Leo.” And he left the room.
You awaited in his quarters while he had gone off to make sure his soldats were ready for battle. You knew he’d return soon, but you were growing bored as you tried to distract yourself from your worries for Leo. The metal cat named Henry tried to cheer you up, but you couldn’t stop worrying about Leo in that chalice, knowing that while you and Heisenberg were together, Miranda had taken the chalice and started preparing for the ceremony. As much as you enjoyed Henry’s company, you still worried about Leo more and more as time continued on.
He left one of the soldats with you though, to protect you in case of any danger that may occur while he was out of the room. It was his most advanced soldat, one that wasn’t completely braindead like the others were. The other soldats were completely braindead, powered by mechanical parts built into them, their generator powered their veins and their bodies, but they had no actual brain function at all. Except for the one who was with you. You nicknamed him Charlie. You didn’t know exactly why you’d name it that, but Charlie sounded fitting for it. As for Sturm, Heisenberg’s helicopter-man-thing, it was stationed somewhere outside of the quarters for extra protection. Sturm, as it’s written in one of its files, has the legs and partial torso of a man, but everything above the partial torso was a helicopter propellor generator. It was very strong and very useful to Heisenberg, but you didn’t like its name. Sturm just didn’t sound right.
You learned that apparently Heisenberg had a partner a long time ago, and lost them like you did. Miranda saw them as unfit for their family and murdered them, claiming that they were lost and infected too badly by the cadou, unable to recover — so she murdered them instead. It makes sense now that Heisenberg was overprotective of the ones he cared for the most. Additionally, he was also close with his siblings rather than actually hating them like it seemed to be during that argument with Lady Dimitrescu just moments before he told you to run. He cared for Moreau and Donna, even Angie at some times, and at most, he looked up to Lady Dimitrescu (figuratively and literally) as she took care of them growing up as they were experimented on after being taken from their families.
You felt bad for Heisenberg for all he’s gone through in his long years of life, but you shouldn’t ask him about it. You knew he’d dismiss you and wouldn’t open up about it.
Despite your overgrowing boredom, you did find something interesting. A Romanian dictionary, translating words and phrases in Romanian to English. And luckily, you found what Heisenberg had said to you earlier.
“Ești dragostea vieții mele” meant ‘you are the love of my life,’ and “mi-ai intrat în suflet” meant that someone had entered into your heart, that you have fallen for someone and that someone has become a part of you. You loved those sayings now — they were meant for the both of you. As much as you loved him, you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if Leo didn’t make it through this.
You didn’t want to worry Heisenberg or make him more determined to make ends meet, you were scared he wouldn’t be able to control his anger and his fury, all his strength that had only been building up more inside of him since he left that room. You were worried about how things will end. It was only a matter of time until that was all revealed to you.
Heisenberg entered the room, “Come on, let’s get going.” He said to you, and as you approached him, he sighed, “We have a monster to kill.”
Outside of the factory now, you and Heisenberg marched with his army behind you both, Sturm and Charlie stood on either side of you and Heisenberg as you all marched your way towards the village. There, the village was almost completely corrupted by the growing mold, and a majority of it was on fire. As the beasts and lycans appeared around every corner, Heisenberg lifted his hand to gesture for them all to stop. Then, in just moments, pieces of metal raised from the ground, decapitating the lycans and killing the beasts. You look over to Heisenberg and he just smiles at you.
As you all continue to march, you pull out your handgun, drawing it as you look above into the mountains in the close distance, seeing no one other than Chris Redfield and his soldiers. Chris nodded his head, but then you looked and saw Heisenberg nodding back to him. Then, Heisenberg looked at you and just smiled again. “Once we kill Miranda and get Leo, he’ll be blowing this village to bits. Just like we wanted,” and as you nod, he takes your hand into his and you both approach the mold-surrounded large mutamycete — the Megamycete.
A large helicopter flies over you all, stopping so some of its soldiers can come out, but then the mold shuts its door and knocks the helicopter away, causing it to crash into the valley. Heisenberg curses under his breath, “There goes the BSAA.” Heisenberg cleared his throat, using his powers to contact Chris, “Redfield, the BSAA is down — I know I shouldn’t have called them, but I honestly had no idea you’d be involved with this either.”
“I understand. I’ll be here on top of one of the houses to make the target, hold out until it’s over — you got that?”
Heisenberg laughed, “Of course, I got it. I’m Karl fucking Heisenberg.” He gestured for his soldats to move onward as lycans jumped out of the mold. You aim your gun, shooting down as many lycans as you could. Heisenberg used his powers to cut their heads off, then he looked at you, “You alright?” but you nod and he nods, too, turning back to kill them.
As Heisenberg marches forward, you turn and see Chris kneeling on top of the houses nearby, aiming his target locator. Then, a large laser beam is shot at the mold, causing parts of it to weaken. You turn back and raise your handgun, shooting lycans down, trying to help as many soldats as you could. Then, Sturm appeared, revving its engine before running straight towards a large lycan, cutting it to pieces. You smiled, but more lycans roared and jumped out from the mold.
“Karl!” You call out to him, “We have to fall back a bit — we’re going to be outnumbered soon!” You warn him.
“We have plenty of soldats, Y/N!” Heisenberg called back out to you, “We’re doing fine, but I’ll order some of them to fall back.” He turns and gestures for them to fall back a bit as you continue to shoot down the lycans. However, one makes it to you and grabs onto you, causing you to fall onto your back on the ground.
You’re struggling, trying to push the lycan off of you, but thankfully, Charlie chopped its head off with its chainsaw for a hand, then it reached its other hand down to help you up. You smile, “Thank you Charlie,” and Charlie looks at you for a moment before it runs off to kill more lycans. You draw your shotgun, knowing that this will help you much more than just your handgun.
Again, another laser beam shoots at the mold, causing more of it to grow weak, and some parts are starting to collapse. Just one more time and it’ll all come down. You were starting to feel relieved as this all continued, but as more lycans appeared, more of those large ones, you worried as more and more of the soldats were getting destroyed.
You turn back to the other soldats, ushering them to come forward and fight, so they oblige and kill more lycans, but you run over to Heisenberg, warning him of what may occur soon enough.
“Karl, Karl,” you grab onto his jacket, “The soldats are getting taken out — we won’t last much longer if this keeps on — we need more help.”
“I have more soldats on their way, don’t worry,” Heisenberg places his hand against your face as the fire continues to grow around in the village, destroying what was left of it, “We’re saving Leo.”
Chris aims his target locator one last time, shouting, “It’s done! I’ll head inside and check it all out, you both hurry off to the ceremony site.” He gets down from the roof, running over to the collapsing mold before he jumps inside the hole and makes his way through the caves. You turn to Heisenberg and he ushers you and the rest of the soldats to the ceremony site. Soon enough as you all marched towards the ceremony site, more laser beams shot into the hole, destroying an apparent another tall creature. Soon, Chris spoke again. “It’s here. I found the Megamycete. I’m placing the detonator now. Hurry, you two — I’m not sure how much time we have left until Miranda grows angry.” He warns before going quiet again.
Heisenberg takes in a deep breath, “Good job, Redfield. We’re almost to the ceremony site to kill Miranda. We’ll let you know once it’s finished.”
The bridge leading out to the ceremony site was surrounded by mold. Just outside of it was no one other than the Duke. You were delighted to see him, approaching his carriage to greet him.
“Duke!” You exclaim with a smile.
“Oh, it is my greatest pleasure to see you alive,” the Duke clapped his hands together, “Y/N, Lord Heisenberg, please take what you’d like from here. You must finish this darkness once and for all.” But you quiver as Heisenberg starts to look around quickly for things to take.
“But Duke, what about you?” You asked him, “Won’t you leave?”
“Certainly,” the Duke replied, “I’ll leave as soon as you finish taking everything you need for this final battle of yours. I care for you, dear Y/N, so take what you need and go, finish all this.”
You nod and as you both take what you need, you still pay him what is owed. He smiled, but stayed quiet. As you two began to step back, the Duke leaned forward a bit, shuffling in his carriage.
“Please,” the Duke said to you, “be well, Y/N.”
You nod again, “Thank you, Duke.” And the two of you and the army head straight to the ceremony site, surrounded by mold. Just as you stand at the entrance, you realize the soldats won’t be able to fit through in time of the battle. You turn to Heisenberg, “We can’t take them all in there, we can only fit a few in there for now.”
“Right,” Heisenberg turned to you, but noticed as you had begun to cry, “What? What is it? Tell me, buttercup,” he brought you closer, his hands on your arms as he tried to understand.
“If I don’t make it and you do,” you sniffled, “raise Leo, okay? Raise our boy,” You cry to your lover, tightening your grip on his jacket, “Promise me you’ll raise him if I don’t make it.”
Heisenberg chuckled, “I won’t promise you that, because I know you’ll make it.” He gave you a kiss before you both entered the ceremony site from through the molded roots. There, in the distance in that large room, you see the back of Miranda.
“Ah, my little Eva!” She curls her fingers as she stands before a long table, a large thing of mold laying across it. As she moves her hands around, she smiles more, “My beautiful daughter.” She raises the mold into the air above her, “Eva, is that you? — Oh how I’ve missed you!” She exclaims, the mold dripping off the clothed body of a child. Then, her face dropped. “. . What?” The child was not Eva, nor a girl at all — it was Leo. “What?!” She yelled, placing the child back down on the table, and as she raised her head, dark liquid poured from her left eye, “My power is leaving me!”
Stupidly, you call out — “Leo!” You run forward, Heisenberg just behind you as Miranda turns around, growing angry as she faces you both. Charlie and Sturm both stood behind you, along with just a couple other soldats. “Give me my son — Now!” You demand her.
“After I kill you and Heisenberg, you will both understand—”
Then, from above, a bullet hits through Miranda’s arm. “Go!” Chris shouts, “Grab Leo!” You run over to the table, picking up Leo before handing him to Heisenberg. He nods and takes him outside quickly, “I’ll take care of Leo — finish this!” Chris then disappears, and you raise your gun at Miranda, ready for anything she may do. Then, molded roots twist around your feet as they had just finished capturing Sturm and Charlie, now you’re stuck before Miranda. Her head is low, shaking it.
“I’ve spent a lifetime creating this moment,” She hissed lowly, “and you dare to try and take it away from me?” Miranda raises her head, revealing her wrinkling face, the dark, black liquid pouring from her eyes, becoming almost more disgusting than ethereal and glorious. “I will take what is due.” She pushes you off of her, grunting as she does so. “My desires will be fulfilled! Leo is mine!” She declares, raising higher as the mold underneath her grows in size rapidly. Then, she appears to have changed into a skinnier, more deadly looking than before. “You’ve fulfilled your purpose, Y/N and Heisenberg. Now, you both shall pay the price.” She whirls around, revealing her long, sharp fingers, but you shoot at her as you wait for Heisenberg’s return, “You disposed of most of my false children, Y/N, and awakened the glorious Megamycete. Now, please, do not worry for your young Leo. I assure you I’ll provide him with true happiness.” She grows large spider-like legs, raising her off the ground as she tries to stomp on you, but you shoot at her with your shotgun, dodging her molded spider legs. “So you can die now, peacefully and permanently.”
“I’m not letting you get away and take my child with you!” You shoot her quickly, “He’s my son, not yours! You’re not going to take my son and raise him as your own just because you lost yours a century ago!” You were rude about it, but then again, Miranda kidnapped your son.
“But you understand the love of a parent to their child, don’t you?” Miranda scowled, “How could you deny me?” Miranda then lifted off the ground with her large wings, “The Megamycete saved me from the pits of despair! It granted me with this splendid power — so die already!” Three golden orbs form above her, so you shoot them with your shotgun, scoffing as she lowers herself.
“All it’s done is drive you crazy!” You shoot at it, causing her to bleed. She flies down, trying to hit you, but you jump out of the way, landing on the mold covered ground. “Stop this, Miranda!”
But she ignores you, “Oh, great Megamycete, hear my prayer!” Then — everything went dark, only the sole light of candles being seen in the pitch blackness, but you move around, making sure she doesn’t appear and grab you. “Now, I think it’s time you left things in my hands. Go, and die!” She goes to grab you, but you shoot at her twice, knocking her back, and the room goes back to the way it was before. “I will take my daughter! And I will make sure you’re dead when I do!”
Then, a great golden orb forms in the middle of the room, large roots grow so you hide behind them, “Give up, Miranda! Leo’s my kid! Not yours!”
Miranda laughs, “If I combine Leo with the Megamycete, my daughter will be made manifest at last! I’ve waited a century — a century for this day! All for this moment where I can bring back my daughter and hold her close once again!” But then, she hits you as she flies again, “Why must you interfere? You lost your partner, and now you’re losing your son — so just give up! Your time is up!”
You grunt, feeling rage fill your eyes, “He’s my goddamn son, you witch!” You pull out your handgun, shooting at her repeatedly until she roars, growing the roots beneath you, capturing you as the mold roots grow and twist around you.
“This is how you end, Y/N L/N!” Miranda screams, but you can’t reach to grab your knife to cut your way out of the roots. You start to panic, your eyes dancing as you stare up at her, seeing as she roars with utter glory, knowing she had won at least. “To ensure that I never see your face again, I will feed you to the Megamycete . . . Goodbye, Y/N. Thank you . . . for your son.”
Suddenly, appearing from behind you, floating above on a piece of metal before another piece of metal slashes into Miranda, causing her to scream out in agony, but she grows angrier, pulling the piece of metal out of her stomach as she looks up.
“You’re not going to do this to the person I care most about ever again,” It was Heisenberg, furrowing his brows as rage filled his eyes behind those dark sunglasses, “I won’t let you.”
Through the roots, Sturm and Charlie cut through them finally, running over to Miranda, and as Sturm begins to cut the roots surrounding her, Charlie uses its chainsaw to cut through the roots that had twisted around you tightly. Charlie gets you free, but then roots surround it, crushing it. It shoves you out of the way. “Charlie!” You shout, but as it becomes crushed, you see nothing but life in those dark eyes of theirs, and then it powers down, Charlie sacrificed themselves for you.
Heisenberg hits her one last time, causing her to growl and roar, anger piercing through her black veins, and Heisenberg turns to you with a proud smile, knowing she was dead for good, so you smile back. It was the end of this. It was finally the end of this. But you spoke too soon, didn’t you?
A mold root with a sharp end pierces through Heisenberg, the sharp end of it was covered in his blood. He chokes, falling to the ground once Miranda pulls the root out of him again, laughing maniacally before she perishes, screaming as she grows weaker and weaker, her final moments now. Her face covered in blood, wailing, “My daughter . . . My Eva!” She raises her hands, her skin turning into mold before she ultimately crumbles to her death. The roof above crumbles as well, and just as you step away from Charlie, you see as Sturm had fallen to its death as well.
“Oh dear God . . Karl!” You quickly run over to Karl, picking him up gently off the ground as the sun shines down on you both. You caress his face, trying to hold your other hand down on his wound, trying to stop the blood, “Karl, no . . Karl, I’m so . . I’m so sorry.”
Heisenberg coughs a bit, blood drips from his scarred lips, “What’re you s-sorry about, buttercup? You d-didn’t do a t-thing.” He said to you, but that only made your tears form even more.
You shake your head, “We were supposed to make it out of here together, Karl . . I don’t want to leave you, I can’t leave you—” You choke on your sobs, “I can’t leave you behind!” You tell him. But Heisenberg raises his hand up to your face, his skin starting to turn into mold slowly as he passes. He presses his palm against your cheek, his thumb rubbing your cheekbone as he begins to crumble in your arms, and just before he completely turns to ashes, he whispers one last thing to you.
“Raise our boy, Y/N.”
You cry out as ashes cover you, drifting away in the wind. You hold some of the ashes that you could grab tightly in your hands, holding it close to your chest as you cried out with sorrow. Everyone was gone. Charlie, Sturm, and Karl. You couldn’t breathe without crying out in agony.
Chris approaches you, “Y/N, Y/N, Leo’s back in the helicopter — we have to get going now. Come on,” but you shake your head, still crying. “What is it, Y/N? Where’s . . .” He looks around, but there’s use in looking for him. He’s gone.
“Karl’s dead.” You sniffle, wiping your eyes, “Help me up, I can’t . . . I can’t feel my legs.” You pant, and Chris’s eyes widen at your words, but he helps you up, carrying you in his arms out through the exit as the mold begins to become slow and weak, but the Megamycete continued to live as it rises high into the air like the sun, but it stays grounded near the ground. Chris carried you all the way out to the helicopter nearby, the village was all destroyed and demolished, taken by flames before the mold got rid of the rest. The factory, the castle, the old estate, the reservoir — they were all demolished and destroyed as if to make sure nothing could ever regrow here.
Chris sets you into a seat, buckling you before bringing Leo over to you. He was awake and alive, breathing. You cry tears of joy, “Oh, my baby, oh, Leo!” You bring him into a tight hug, never wanting to let go of him. Chris walks over to where the pilots were, an indistinct conversation between them as you sit somewhere else with Leo.
The hatch closes in the helicopter and it lifts off the ground. Chris reaches into his pocket, taking out the detonator, pushing the button once they’re high enough off the ground. A huge explosion echoes throughout the valley, destroying all that’s left of the village and the Megamycete — it was over. It was all over now. The village and what had come of it had been purified, gone from existence. Miranda and her false children were all dead, along with the Megamycete, and the one you loved the most.
Leo looked over at you, “Noni, where are we going now?” He sniffled, and you wiped some of the dirt off his face as you sniffled as well. He looked up at you with creased eyebrows.
“Some place safe,” you answer him, “some place we can finally live freely without any danger. You’ll go to school, and we’ll have cook outs every sunday, and we’ll live together on a farm with lots of livestock, chickens and cows and even some sheep,” you gave him an assuring smile, “how’s that?”
Leo smiled back at you, “That sounds awesome, Noni,” he replied, hugging you again. You sniffle again, placing your hands on the back of his head comfortingly. You tried to keep in your sobs, but you let them out quietly, trying not to alarm your son as he held onto you so tightly. The helicopter flew into the distance, leaving behind that Romanian village of shadows and darkness, and now, you and Leo could live safely without any more danger.
The sky was blue, cloudless as the wind was just faintly there brushing against the rustling green leaves that warm day. The sun was bright, but the world was only warm outside, just right enough to feel relaxed instead of humid and hot. You were sitting in the passenger seat of a black coated vehicle, awaiting your arrival to your local cemetery. Leo sat in the backseat as your own personal secret service agent sat in the driver’s seat, taking you both there for your weekly visit. It was Wednesday, the middle of the week, and you both had decided that today was the day just right for your visit to the cemetery.
The car came to a stop. “We’ve arrived,” the agent grabbed his water, “now we must get going soon. You know Chris is impatient,” but you rolled your eyes at him while you opened the door, scoffing as you stepped out of the car. Leo followed behind you, and you both headed over to a grave. The agent had stepped out of the car as well, standing on the other side of the car with folded arms.
Leo held a bouquet of metal roses, ones he made himself. He makes them weekly just for the visits. He knew how much these visits meant to you. As you kneeled before the grave, sitting on your knees as your hands placed gently on your thighs, you sighed, trying not to tear up in front of Leo as you reread the epitaph over and over again like you did on each visit here.
KARL HEISENBERG
??? — February 9, 2021
The wind that gave me my first
breath also received my last sigh.
“I’m sure he misses you, Noni,” Leo told you, “he’s surely watching over us from the Heavens.” He tried to cheer you up, and as you stood, he watched you with a saddened smile. “I wish I met him, I’m sure . . . I’m sure Dad was a great guy.”
You nod. “He was, and I’m so sorry you weren’t able to meet him.” You tell your son, rubbing his shoulder with your hand gently. “Go wait back in the car, I won’t be long, Leo.”
Leo chuckles, “You always say that then you take twenty minutes.” But you shush him, chuckling with him as you slightly push him away, urging him to go playfully. Leo laid the bouquet of metal flowers in front of the tombstone and headed back to the car with the agent. You turned back to the tombstone, standing before it as you felt tears forming in the corners of your eyes. You look up at the blue, cloudless sky, feeling the warmth of the sun rays against your skin.
You and Leo did move to a farm. You lived there with your son, taking care of plenty of livestock, growing crops to sell at the local market. You made a lot of money with it, so you and Leo lived happily on that farm. It was a large farm, but it wasn’t anything too big. It was just right for the two of you, and the house was beautiful and antique, built all the way back during the second World War. Leo went to the public high school nearby the farm as he was almost seventeen years old now, and he’s made plenty of friends. It’s been more than nine years since everything that happened in that Romanian village, but you hadn’t forgotten a single thing from it.
You could retell the story plenty of times with ease, never stuttering or stopping to remember anything because you had it all memorized, it was like it was engraved in your brain and your heart, just to retell the story and pass it on to Leo for him to pass it on to his children as well, remembering the man you loved so close, the man that you raised Leo to know as his father. The man named Karl Heisenberg. You never forgot to mention Alex either, but Leo never saw Alex as a parent to him. He knew of Alex’s bravery, saving him from The Connections, but never truly saw Alex as a guardian for him, rather a deceased godparent who still looks over after him as he grows up. But Leo only ever saw you and Karl as his parents, and nothing could ever change his mind about that.
“I raised him well, didn’t I?” You ask the tombstone, lowering your head from the sky above you. “He’s as stubborn and intelligent as you are, Karl. You should be proud of him. You should be.” You sniffle as you wipe away your tears. “I love you, Karl. I wish you were here with us every day.” You reach your hand over to rub the top of the tombstone gently, “Ești dragostea vieții mele, mi-ai intrat în suflet.” Then, you turned away. You walked back to the car, patting the agent’s shoulder just as you opened the car door to step in. “Come on, Leon, let’s get going before Chris gets mad.”
Leon S. Kennedy, the agent, laughs before stepping off the car, walking over to his side and getting into the car. He restarts the engine and gets the car going, and as you look into the mirror just outside your car window, you see Leo’s reflection as he sits in the backseat.
As that day continued on like normal, your worry grew as you wondered what may happen if Leo’s powers were to grow too uncontrollable. If that happens, he might end up like Eveline and Miranda, like . . . like Alex and Karl. You didn’t want that, so taking any measure — whether it be risky or not — nothing mattered more than Leo’s safety. It was a new dawn, a new decade, a new life for the both of you, to live on in honor of the ones you lost. Alex and Karl, you could feel them watching over you every single day, their presence surrounding you was strong. You could never forget them, but why would you ever try to forget them? You couldn’t, and you didn’t want to.
The time of sorrow and pain was gone. Leo’s safety mattered more than ever now with each day passing, him growing up more and more every single day — you worried for the future, but you also worried about the stress being put on Leo.
The car drove away from the cemetery, and as your thoughts become quiet again, you smile as you look at Leo through the mirror. You sigh, looking down at your hand now, admiring the tattoo that you had gotten on the back of your hand. The word ‘purify’ tainted your skin, but you had no regrets for it. That word meant too much to you now. The village was purified, your life was purified, your nightmares and hauntings were all gone because you were purified. Karl saved you, gave you another reason to continue living and raising your son. Everything was okay, it was all okay. Leo was safe, you were safe, everyone was safe. And finally, with one single breath, you feel a sense of relief wash over you, knowing that after fifteen long years, you are finally okay.
Fin.