The corridor lay shrouded in dim, flickering lights, its damp stone walls sweating with moisture.
Hunter stumbled forward, her feet forced into motion by the grip of two burly, masked men who dragged her toward a fate she could barely fathom.
Her tangled black hair fell in curtains across her face. What had once been a fine dress now clung to her in ragged strips, her skin smeared with the grime of captivity. Bruises bloomed in purple and sickly blue, painting her body like a dying canvas. Her strength was gone, yet they still dragged her along, pitiless of her condition.
She was slipping, and she could feel it. Even as her knees screamed to collapse, a darker thought curled inside her.
'Why bother fighting? My body's already broken. They might kill me anyway.'
At the same time, another thought snapped back. 'No… not yet.'
The men turned a corner, and on the right, a red-painted door loomed. It was guarded by another masked brute who balanced a machete on his shoulder.
His gaze flicked to the barely conscious girl, half-lidded with disdain, then to the men holding her.
"She dead?"
One of the captors snorted.
"Dead? Nah. This one's tougher than she looks."
The guard's grip shifted on his machete.
"Boss wants her for… ?"
"Orders are orders."
The captor holding Hunter by the right jerked his chin. "He said bring her. Now move."
The guard didn't ask further questions. He simply shoved the door open, then closed it with a dull thud once they passed through.
The two men dragged Hunter to the center of the room and dropped her hard onto the floorboards. Pain punched through her ribs as she hit the ground, the air knocked out of her windpipes.
In front of her sat a man who was fully draped in crimson– likely a priest. He did not look up. His hood shadowed his face as he leafed through the papers in his hand, as though her suffering were no more than a passing detail in his ritual.
Hunter tried to rise, but her elbows buckled, making her collapse back onto the floor. She let out a broken sound, which sounded like half a sob, half a gasp of pain.
Only then did the priest snap the file shut and uttered in a calm, almost amused tone:
"Seventeen-year-old Hunter. Fresh out of the guild academy. An alchemist in training." He tilted the folder, considering its content. "A promising road ahead— until you stuck your nose where it didn't belong."
He slid one folder aside, plucking out the one that truly mattered. Everyone in the room could sense the smile that was curving beneath the hood.
"Ah… so you were telling the truth." He tapped the pages once. "You really did have the evidence on you. I must admit, I'm impressed. To gather this much against us at your age… remarkable."
He then paused, his voice softer now.
"And fatally naive."
He ripped the papers in two.
Hunter no longer cared about what he did with the evidence. Her voice came thin, almost trembling as she forced herself to speak:
"You…you promised" she whispered. "I gave you the evidence. You said you'd let me go. I just… I just want to go home. Please…"
"That's true."
The priest leaned his cheek into his hand, studying her with unsettling calm. "I promised I'd let you go if you handed over all the evidence. Promises start to lose their purpose where lies begin."
Hunter's heart missed a beat.
Despite her effort to stay still, a faint shiver ran through her shoulders.
"That's… all I have."
The priest chuckled low. "How stupid do you think I am?"
He snapped his fingers, and the two men who brought her in melted into the darker part of the room. For a moment, the only sound was the scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor, and when it rolled into the light, Hunter's stomach dropped. An iron cart was crowded with glinting, brutal instruments.
"Hunter."
The priest's voice, soft but merciless, brought tears to her eyes. She didn't need to ask what all those instruments were for. She knew exactly what they were going to do to her.
"Where is the final piece of evidence? And before you lie to me, I need to remind you of something else."
From within his sleeve, the priest drew out a small brass object. He showed it to Hunter, whose breath hitched at the sight of the forgotten object, her pupils dilating.
It was a pocket watch.
No.
My pocket watch?
But how? She hadn't seen it in three years.
The memory struck her sharper than any instrument on the cart, and it made sense how they discovered her identity. For three days she had asked herself how she'd ended up in this hell, how they'd known she was the one who saw too much– and now, the answer to those questions stared her in the face.
She remembered scouring every corner of her room, retracing every step in her attempts to find her pocket watch. But she never thought she dropped it on that night– the night she wandered into their secret… and saw him.
The priest.
But he was not a healer everyone in Lemuris deemed him to be. He was not a savior either, nor was he the saint who led (brainwashed) the people of Lemuris to bow before the feet of the serpent's god temple. It was not a surprising fact, since the histories that had been written praised no one but the entities who brought the controlled disappearance of the Hallowing Plague. It got to a point, she almost believed it too.
But that night opened her eyes.
In the alley, she saw the priest standing over a man whom he had torn open, blood dripping from his hands… if she could even call those things hands.
She hadn't screamed, hadn't reacted in ways that exposed her presence. Despite her bones being frozen from the shock, she managed to flee from there. She never told anyone about it when she made it out of that alley. Not because she didn't want to, but because no one would believe her if she tried. She had been afraid that someone would tell the priest.
So she kept that nightmare to herself. But she couldn't let it go.
Questions flooded her senses, and with them came an unending curiosity that she could paint as an obsession. During that time, she received an admission into the guild academy, which gave her the cover she needed to slip away from the capital and make her search.
And she found it.
Three days ago, she had returned to Lemuris after successfully completing her training, along with getting her certificate. But hidden within her guild papers was the truth she bled to uncover. She hadn't gone home, instead, she shifted directions and headed to report it to the High Council of Lemuris, because only then would she truly be at peace.
But it had rained on that day.
She remembered waiting at the cathedral's steps for the rain to reduce a bit when they found her. But all it took them was her pocket watch to discover her.
Hunter could feel his invisible gaze burning into her back.
"What did you think was going to happen, running to the councils?"
He chuckled again. "You know too much for your own good– and nothing at all. The last piece of evidence, where are you hiding it, hm?"
A cold sweat ran down her back, and Hunter knew, with a dreadful clarity, that it was over for her.
"Lay her down."
At the priest's command, the two men seized Hunter again, forcing her onto her back and pinning her there.
"LET ME GO, YOU FILTHY PSYCHOS!"
"We will," the priest replied smoothly. "Once we've made sure you're not hiding anything else."
Hunter's eyes stung with tears. It was strange, that in a place like this, at the edge of death, all she could think about was the faces of her brother and sister at home.
Were they safe? Were they eating? Sleeping? Did they cry when they realized she hadn't come home? Were they searching?
For the first time, she prayed they weren't. She hoped that they would forget about her before this nightmare found them too.
While one of the masked men had her pinned against the floor, the other fumbled through the instruments on the metal cart. The sharp click of steel made her stomach twist, but a sudden knock on the door cut through the room, interrupting them.
"Boss," a muffled voice called from the outside. "There's someone here to see you. Said his name's Amon?"
Hearing the name made Hunter's breath hitch, her eyes flying wide open.
'Brother?'
He's here?
But what is he doing here?