Albert stirred on his creaky bed, the wooden frame groaning beneath his shifting weight. The room around him was dim, lit only by the flickering amber glow of a dying lantern. His black cloak was tossed carelessly over the chair. His brown-black hat rested near his boots. He had dozed off after returning from outside—too weary to notice the world swallowing itself beneath him.
Then silence.
Then white.
Endless, blinding white.
The ground faded. The world blinked out. No sound remained. Only the familiar, eternal drift into the White Domain.
Albert was gone.
Henry Ford stood in his place.
No cloak, no boots—just Henry as he truly was. Tall, gaunt, with hollow cheeks and eyes that held the weight of five lifetimes. His clothes were gray, ancient, and stitched with strange, unknown emblems. A half-burned rune pulsed gently on his left forearm, the price of the second ritual.
The void rippled.
From that nothingness emerged a creature. Not terrifying in form, but in the silence it brought. A rabbit. Pure white fur. Long, jagged ears. Eyes blacker than oblivion.
It stood upright like a man, taller than Henry, yet weightless in posture.
"…Death?" Henry asked, voice low, already knowing.
The rabbit nodded slowly. "A form of it. One of many. I find this shape comforting to the dying."
Henry didn't respond. He only stared.
The rabbit tilted its head. "Back so soon, Henry Ford. You never truly rest."
"I didn't choose to rest," Henry replied. "I came to Morhat to claim the first three Rituals. This… visit… is part of the cost."
"You've already taken two," the rabbit said. "Your veins carry the Seal of Grief. Your shadow bleeds with the Trial of Hunger. The third Ritual… will not come without sacrifice."
"I know," Henry said. He looked down at his open palms. "Route–4 isn't meant to be easy."
The rabbit stepped closer, its eyes now red. "Why do you chase it, Henry? You, of all creatures, should fear what lies beyond."
"I don't chase power. I follow what must be followed," he said.
"Purpose?"
"Guilt."
The rabbit chuckled. The sound was broken—like glass scraping flesh. "You're still trying to fix what the world broke long before you arrived."
Henry didn't answer.
"You go to Morhat for answers," the rabbit continued, circling him. "To collect your Rituals. To ascend. But the truth is, Route–4 is not a road… it is a dismemberment. You will lose the pieces of who you are."
"I've already lost Albert," Henry whispered.
"No," Death said. "Albert was the mask. You are what was buried beneath."
A long pause.
Then Death leaned in, whispering near his ear, "The third Ritual awaits beneath the Severed Chapel. But beware… the dead there do not stay dead. And some… remember you."
Henry's eyes narrowed. "Then let them remember."
A sudden flash.
The white cracked like porcelain. The domain shattered.
Henry—no, Albert—awoke. Drenched in sweat. The lantern now dead. The darkness of his room suffocating.
But in the silence, he heard the rabbit's voice resounded once more,
"You are closer than you think."
....
The wind carried the scent of rot and metal. Rusted beams pierced the sky like fingers from a buried god. Crumbled walls lay in shattered teeth across the blackened earth. Above, the sky was no longer blue—but a bruised swirl of violet and crimson, as if the heavens themselves had been wounded.
Beneath that broken sky walked two figures.
Ken, face stoic and expression unreadable, moved with the quiet caution of a man used to surviving among monsters. His long coat flared with every step. His hand rested near the broken hilt of a knife—one that no longer gleamed, but still remembered blood.
Beside him danced Emilia.
Not walked—danced. She skipped, twirled, and hummed a tuneless melody. Her dress, stitched together from station curtains and lab coats, swayed unnaturally. Beneath it, hidden close to her stomach, pulsed the Jelly PCS—a warm, gelatinous device wrapped in cloth and tucked against her ribs.
"Do you think the tentacles have eyes?" Emilia whispered, crouching near a shattered pipe as a long, wet tendril slithered down from a collapsed ceiling.
Ken didn't stop. "They don't need eyes. They feel heat. Smell chemicals. Heartbeats. Breath."
"That's… romantic," Emilia said, beaming. She skipped up beside him again. "Do you think they fall in love with what they hunt? Like—one big slimy confession?"
"Focus, Emilia."
"I am focused. Focused on survival. And survival includes pretending this place is a deranged theme park."
They walked past the remains of a control panel, where screens still flickered with static ghosts. A warning repeated endlessly in a distorted female voice: "Containment failed… evacuation compromised…"
Emilia tilted her head and whispered back to it, "Yes, ma'am. I did escape. Thank you for asking."
Ken glanced sideways. "How did you even get out?"
She shrugged. "Through the drainpipes. One of the dead guards still had an access card sewn into his underwear."
Ken blinked.
"What? I'm resourceful." She grinned and patted her stomach gently. "And I wasn't leaving without Jelly."
The ground beneath them shuddered. A cluster of tentacles hissed and withdrew into a fissure. For a moment, only silence.
"You're not afraid, are you?" Ken asked finally.
Emilia looked up. "I'm always afraid. But I get bored of showing it."
Ken nodded.
They continued on.
After a while, Emilia broke the silence again. "You always look like you're in a funeral."
Ken raised an eyebrow. "Maybe I am."
She scoffed. "That's deep. Very Route –2 of you."
"I don't have memories," Ken said plainly. "Before waking in the Facility, there's just… nothing. No faces. No names. Not even a scent or voice."
"…So you're like a haunted mirror?" Emilia asked.
He ignored that.
"And you?"
"I never met my parents," she said, quieter now. "I was born somewhere, maybe in a train, maybe a cell. I don't know. But they dumped me in a station's lower ward. Raised by old robots and sleeping nurses. Sometimes I think I dreamed all that."
Ken stopped walking. Turned to her.
"We're both ghosts then."
She smiled sadly. "Ghosts in a meat world. Yeah."
From the ruins ahead came a long, shrill screech.
Tentacles writhed above them. One dropped inches from Emilia's head and twitched.
Without fear, she stuck her tongue out at it.
Ken drew his broken knife.
"Keep walking," he said.
And so they did—two fractured souls, sharing nothing but the silence and a path through ruin.
....
The wind carried a faint stench of burning wood and old rain. Prada Town lay below like a wounded animal—still breathing, but slowly. Cracked chimneys leaked smoke from broken houses. The main square was empty, save for a few workers dragging ash-filled carts. A fog of silence clung to the streets, heavier than the clouds overhead.
On a hill just beyond the chapel ruins stood two men—Major Salis Phantos and Officer Andrew Fritz. They watched the town in thoughtful stillness, standing beneath the scorched remains of an old bell tower. Its bronze tongue was missing, and the bell never rang again after the last invasion.
Salis leaned against a rusted beam, arms crossed, his uniform faded and fraying at the cuffs. A half-lit cigarette hung loosely from his mouth, the smoke curling like a question that no one could answer.
Andrew stood beside him, younger, cleaner, more rigid in posture, his long coat swaying in the breeze.
"She's rotting," Salis muttered, taking the cigarette out. "You see it, don't you? Prada used to be loud. Full of drunks and merchants yelling at each other over bread prices. Now look at it. You can hear a bottle drop from the harbor."
Andrew nodded, eyes fixed on the town. "What caused it all? The creatures? The silence? Or the people giving up?"
Salis snorted. "What causes rot in a house? Termites or the people ignoring them? Both. That's what it is."
They stood in silence for a moment. Distantly, thunder rumbled—not a storm, just the sky growling like an old dog remembering hunger.
"You've been here long, haven't you?" Andrew asked, not turning.
"Too long," Salis replied. "I was assigned here after the first collapse. Back when the towers still stood. Back when we thought rebuilding would save people."
"And it didn't?"
"Rebuilding is easy. Believing again… that's the war."
Andrew looked down at his boots. "Then why stay?"
Salis exhaled. "Because sometimes I see a kid smile when the power comes on for five seconds. Or a dying woman laughs because her husband still remembers her favorite song. It's not much. But it's real."
Andrew smiled faintly. "I didn't think you were the poetic type, sir."
"I'm not. I'm just tired." Salis flicked his cigarette into the dirt. "You ever feel that? Not the tired in your bones. The kind in your soul. Like no matter how many hours you sleep, something keeps gnawing at your insides."
"…Yeah."
Salis gave him a sideways glance. "How old are you now?"
"Twenty-nine."
"Still early. Wait till thirty. That's when it really hits. You look around and wonder if you've become the man you feared when you were sixteen."
Andrew laughed softly. "I used to think failure meant losing a mission. Or letting someone die."
"It's not?" Salis asked.
Andrew shook his head. "Failure is realizing you forgot what you were fighting for in the first place."
Salis went quiet. The silence between them was not awkward—it was old, like a shared scar.
"I tried to be a hero once," the Major said finally. "Saved a village. Got promoted. People clapped. Weeks later, I found out half that village starved anyway because our supply lines never came through. All my pride for nothing."
"What did you do?"
"I stopped trying to be a hero. Started trying to be… present. One person at a time. One mess at a time."
Andrew looked toward the center of Prada Town, where a single lamplight flickered.
"Is that enough?"
Salis shrugged. "No idea. But it's better than hiding behind medals."
The wind picked up again. From the ruins behind them, a loose shingle fell and cracked against the stones.
"We should head back soon," Andrew said.
"Yeah," Salis replied. "Before Prada eats itself again."
As they turned, Salis added, "Hey… whatever you do, Andrew—don't chase perfection. Chase meaning. That lasts longer."
And with that, they walked into the grayness together.