Although it was quite small and lacking, the room was clearly resembling the ones in a hospital. But how had she gotten here? Had the Quincys suddenly grown a conscience?
No—no, it wasn't like them.
And that's when she saw it.
Blood.
Not a smear. Not a spatter. But great, grotesque splatters that painted the walls like abstract madness.
The deafening, blood-curdling screams weren't faint but sounded agonizing.
Avis' eyes widened as she instinctively covered her mouth in disbelief. Her breath caught in throat like a huge lump she couldn't swallow. And then came the voice — weak, and sounded strangled.
"H-Help me… I don't wanna die—urgh!"
She turned just in time to witness the horror unfold.
The female nurse's complexion was extremely pale, twitching like she had been possessed. Her white uniform soaked in arterial red had lunged at the backstreet sawbone who discreetly operated the original soul's body.
Her jaw unhinged with inhuman force as she bit — tore — into the doctor's throat, ripping flesh as if it were wet paper. The gurgling scream that followed was the sound of a man choking on his own life.
Blood sprayed. A bloody dark red fountain against the pristine linoleum floor.
The nurse's eyes — once human — were now milky and clouded, like pearls swallowed by rot. She let out a wet hiss, still gnawing at the convulsing doctor, as if she couldn't get enough.
Avis stared.
Strangely, her eyes held no fear and a calm, eerie stillness settled over her bones like frost.
Her body — broken just hours before — now moved as if possessed. Without a thought, her hand gripped the IV tube and ripped it from her vein. She winced but the sting barely registered.
She reached beside the bed, fingers curling around the cold metal of the IV pole.
Something inside her surged. Not adrenaline — no, this was something older, deeper. Like a gladiator awakening from chains.
The nurse's head snapped up, gore dripping from her mouth, and staggered toward her.
Avis didn't flinch.
She swung fiercely as if she had been born for it.
The steel met the zombie's skull.
CRACK!
The force echoed in the chamber like divine punishment.
And the sound rang like a war cry as the metal hit flesh.
Again.
And again.
And again!
Until the creature crumpled, twitching, like a heap of blood and bone.
Just then, the mist in her eyes flickered and it was only then that everything dawned to her.
Avis' mouth gaped and she stood there, trembling.
Blood coated her hospital gown. Her arms. Her shaking bloody hands.
"Ah!"
Shocked and stricken, Avis dropped the pole as looked at it horridly as though she had touched something cursed and forbidden.
CLANG!
It clattered loudly on the floor, ringing like a temple bell in the aftermath of a massacre.
It was only luck — or divine malice — that the clinic was small. Only two staff remained, but now they were already gone. Whatever this disease was, whatever curse had unfolded — she had been reborn right in the middle of it all.
The horrendous scene was evident, covering the white walls.
The red contrasted sharply against her newly healed skin — skin that once was grey and scaly, now smooth and strange and glowing faintly in the sterile light.
"M-Monster…" her lips quivered as she almost choke.
The word fell from her lips like a curse she had carried her whole life.
But it no longer referred to her.
She looked down at her hands, still shaking, still warm with stolen life.
She didn't know how she moved. She didn't know why her body was whole. She didn't care.
For nineteen years, she had been branded. Shunned. Locked away. Called a freak, a beast, a demonic thing that should never have existed.
But now, finally…
She had seen a real monster and she had killed it with her bare hands.
A slow, eerie, unguarded smile stretched across her face, reaching her blood-spattered cheeks. And her tears started pouring out in relief.
"They were wrong! I'm not a monster. I-I'm really not!"
Her parents, their perfect faces and empty souls.
The servants with their whispering mouths.
And the world with its unspoken laws of beauty and cruelty.
She was never the monster after all. Because monsters don't beg for love.
Monsters devour.
She was in this state when her eyes glance over the glossy surface of a steel plate.
Her eyes still glowed purple as they flung open in surprised and doubt. She saw the same movements happen from her reflection.
But that peerless godsent face...
"Who... On earth?!"
It clearly wasn't n't her face at all!
"Argh!"
A bone-splitting pain suddenly hit her head and then terrifying images, memories that wasn't hers flooded her without a warning.
Along with a flash of blue lights.
[First kill completed]
[Initiate binding...]
[Doomsday save point created.]