The scream was a forgotten echo, replaced by the chilling silence of their accelerated footsteps. Linia, moved alongside Clarice, navigating the tense, shadow-choked halls in search of the unseen assailant.
Clarice, in a bizarre moment of misplaced humanity, broke the heavy silence with a question that felt infinitely small against the backdrop murder.
"So, how long have you two been in a relationship?" she asked, her tone curious, completely misreading the intense bond forged by shared secrets and cosmic peril.
Linia, who had been moving with the coiled, efficient steps of a veteran, stopped instantly, her footfalls grating against the stone. "We are not in a relationship," she stated, the refusal sharp. "We are... just colleagues."
Clarice chuckled, a low, skeptical sound that echoed oddly in the vast space. "I... see."
Linia let the awkwardness pass, her mind already racing. "Any idea on the attacker?" she pressed, shifting the conversation back to the life-or-death crisis.
As she walked, her divine memory began to draw terrifying parallels to the husk of poor Ben. She had never seen anything like it. It was leaving behind a ruined, empty shell—but this had a surgical precision, a horrifying purpose. Whatever it was, it was an organized horror, not a chaotic outburst. The last thing she needed was a mini genocide.
"We always neutralize the Nightmare Creatures when they attack," Clarice replied, her voice tightening with confusion. "They are brute force. This... this is different. It somehow entered the castle without breaking anything, and now it's killing people without leaving a trace."
The realization was a punch to the gut: the cathedral, their fortress, had been breached by something cold, clean, and utterly predatory.
They reached the grand castle entrance. The massive, iron-reinforced doors were undeniably closed. Clarice ran a hand over the cold metal. "These doors are supposed to be closed at nights, but not sealed. Something is going really wrong."
They immediately tried to force the heavy doors outwards. Clarice strained, her muscles bulging, and Linia brought her own considerable, albeit currently constrained, physical strength to bear. It was futile. The doors might as well have been fused with the wall.
"We need more people to open it," Linia ground out, frustrated.
Resigned, they decided they had to inform Norman of this new, terrifying fact: they were trapped. They turned to head back toward the kitchen area.
They had only taken a few steps when a shadow detached itself from the high archway above them.
With a sickening, wet thud, something heavy and utterly limp fell in front of them.
It was the second corpse. It was another skinless Husk of Emma, deflated and terrible, hitting the cold stone with the sound of spoiled meat.
Clarice and Linia's eyes widened in mutual, profound horror. Clarice instantly turned, the blood draining from her face as the connection clicked. "Kane and Emma paired up to explore."
Linia's heart skipped a beat—Ignoring the husk and the locked door, Linia whirled and began sprinting. 'Don't... die,' the thought echoed, a desperate, silent plea from her to Kane, the boy who carried a fragment of her lost world. She raced toward the meeting point to check on him.
Kane arrived at the service area, his body taut and his mind a swirling vortex of calculated terror. He found Norman near the kitchen, still directing smaller groups, his authority barely holding the frayed nerves of the survivors together.
Norman saw Kane approach, alone. "Kane! Any good news?"
Kane stopped, his voice a grim monotone. "Afraid not."
He recounted the impossible event, the swift, clean disappearance of Emma, the absolute silence that enveloped the moment, the terrifying realization that he had turned his back on the killer. He informed Norman about Emma's missing status.
Norman listened, his face hardening with every detail. "This is bad. The stealth is unprecedented."
Before Norman could formulate a next step, the doors to the main hall burst open, and Clarice and Linia came running towards them, their faces pale, their eyes wide with fresh shock.
They quickly explained the impossible truth they had encountered: the entrance was sealed shut from the outside, and then, the horrifying punctuation mark—the sight of Emma's husk falling from the darkness.
Kane's eyes widened in chilling comprehension. He thought frantically: 'How did Emma's corpse land there? The killer had to steal her, strip her, and transport the husk through the building, somehow bypassing me, and then presenting the body to Linia and Clarice. First of all, how did it get Emma in the first place, and why did it never attack me?'
He felt the familiar, cold tickle on his spine intensify. He was either utterly irrelevant to the creature, or he was the target it wanted to break slowly.
Norman, realizing the full scope of their predicament—trapped and facing a ghost killer—made the only logical move to prevent a panicked, self-destructive flight.
"Everybody, assemble near the cathedral entrance and don't leave!" Norman's order was sharp, brooking no dissent.
The remaining people shuffled toward the great, sealed doors. Their faces went grim as they realized the full, claustrophobic reality of their situation. They were confined with a surgical murderer.
As Kane glanced at the new corpse—the husk of Emma—a figure suddenly broke from the crowd, screaming a wordless torrent of grief and rage.
The man charged to throw a punch at Kane's head, fueled by primal, unreasoning agony. Kane, reacting purely on instinct, his reflexes honed by the terrifying demands of his Legacy, caught the incoming fist with a sharp, sickening snap of impact.
The assailant, his eyes red and wild, shouted, spittle flying. "You... What did you bring here?"
Kane recoiled, shouting back, the adrenaline forcing his own confusion into raw aggression. "What nonsense are you spouting?!"
Norman immediately rushed in, breaking the struggle with force. "Joshua! What are you doing?" he roared, gripping the angry man's shoulder. "I know Emma was your girlfriend, but that doesn't make him the culprit!"
The man, Joshua, fought against Norman's grip, his voice cracking with paranoid desperation as he pointed a shaking, accusatory finger at Kane and Linia.
"We have never experienced anything like this! Never! But ever since these two came, unfortunate things started to happen! The Snake attack, and now this... this husks!" Joshua shrieked, his grief twisting into a toxic, terrifying need to blame. They were the contagion, the curse.
Kane looked at the man, the hatred in his eyes an awful thing. "What are you suggesting I do?" he asked, his voice low and dangerous.
Joshua's final words rang out in the confined, echoic space, the voice of the collective fear. "Arrest them! And interrogate them!"
The crowd murmured, their paranoia solidified. The killer was invisible, but the targets were standing right there—the newcomers, the strange ones, the harbingers of the ultimate horror. The investigation had begun, and Kane and Linia had instantly become the prime suspects in their own tragedy.