Karl's eyes fell upon the dark, bloody sockets where Leonard's green eyes should have been—torn out, leaving only shredded flesh and dried black blood around the hollow holes.
He swallowed hard. Tried to stand. His knees shook.
Run. That was his first thought.
But his hand touched his neck. There, where Maia's cold fingers had been hours ago. He remembered his own scream, her whisper: "I want to feel something."
He forced himself to stop. To look at Leonard. Not at the memory of Maia's hands.
He looked at the wounds again. Some were still moist, black. Others dry, flaking.
Suddenly, an image flashed in his mind: his mother cooking. She always complained: "Fresh meat, its blood doesn't dry fast. Ruins the marinade."
This didn't happen today. Maybe two days had passed. Maybe more. Leonard wasn't killed outright. They tortured him. Asked him something.
He paced the room with heavy steps. Flipped through some papers, looked under the bed. He only wanted to run, but his body kept searching. He had to understand.
He moved through the room like he wasn't there. Papers crunched under his feet. A broken chair. A cup on the floor with something black growing inside. He didn't stop. Didn't think. Just searched.
Behind a picture frame—Leonard and a woman, both young, both smiling. Karl knew her. He'd seen her once, years ago, bringing food to Leonard's door. The village women whispered about her. "His wife," they said. "She left him. Couldn't handle his strangeness."
Karl stared at her face for a moment. She looked happy here. Before she left. Before Leonard became "the strange old man."
His fingers found something behind the frame. Paper. Old. Folded.
He opened it. Almost empty. Except for a single sheet of paper.
A drawing. A rock. Black, ominous, emitting strange lines.
The same rock. The same one Maia had held hours ago.
The paper slipped from his hand.
His heart shuddered.
He descended to the second floor.
---
Karl wandered near the entrance. A sharp pain shot through him as he stepped on something. He bent down to see what it was. There, on the wooden floor—scratched and marked with countless footprints—lay a mysterious insignia. A badge. It bore the symbol of a red rose with thorns.
He recognized it. The memory surfaced instantly: the place where he had seen it before. The stranger's image flashed in his mind. It was the same.
It was too late. The man's voice echoed in his ears. He remembered when he had said those words to him.
---
He felt it. Danger. It had something to do with him.
His heart choked in his chest.
He turned his head, trying to shake the feeling—but a large pile of papers caught his attention. Some were burned at the edges. Others torn.
He walked toward them.
The first page was filled with drawings—strange rocks, herbs he didn't recognize. At the bottom, words in Leonard's handwriting:
"Cellular expansion rate: 0.03mm/hour after first 72 hours of initial exposure."
He raised an eyebrow. The words meant nothing to him. They were like a foreign language—not because they were coded, but because they belonged to a world he never knew existed.
Another page. A complex table of numbers and dates:
"Sample A—Day 1: no noticeable change. Day 3: pulse slows to 40/min. Day 7: complete infection of surrounding tissues."
"Sample B—Day 1: significant contraction of muscle tissue. Day 4: skin discoloration. Day 6: ..."
The last word was heavily crossed out. Unreadable.
Another page. A diagram of the human body. Red marks spreading like fire. Notes in the margins:
"Chain reaction in neural tissue."
"Gradual loss of sensory functions."
"Final stage: complete void in the cerebral cortex."
Beneath it, an arrow pointed to a drawing of a brain. Words he couldn't understand: "prefrontal cortex," "synaptic gaps," "neurotransmitters."
He flipped through more. Graphs rising and falling. A page covered in equations—numbers and symbols arranged in ways he'd never seen before. Greek letters. Strange signs.
Then, a page with clearer handwriting. Like Leonard was trying to summarize:
"Observed: pain receptors in the skin respond normally to thermal and mechanical stimuli. Therefore the problem is not the receptors themselves."
"The connection between peripheral sensory nerves and the spinal cord must be severed. But how? The stone doesn't touch the spine. There must be another factor. A carrier. Something transmitted through..."
The text stopped suddenly. An ink blot. Then, below it, hurried handwriting:
"I found it. It transmits through blood. Like a virus. But it's not a virus. It's... I don't know what it is. But it cuts the signal. Kills the connection. Keeps the body alive and the mind dead."
"This is not a normal plague. This is reprogramming humans."
Karl stared at the words. Most of them made no sense. "Neurotransmitters." "Synaptic gaps." "Cerebral cortex." They were sounds without meaning.
But some words he understood. "Blood." "Virus." "Pain." "Mind dead."
And the fear. He understood the fear.
He looked at Leonard's missing eyes. At the void where his green eyes used to be.
"Final stage: complete void."
The words came back to him. Complete void. That's what he saw. That's what Leonard had become.
He looked at the remaining papers. There were more. Many more.
He didn't understand most of what he read. The terms were too complex. The drawings strange. But he knew one thing:
Leonard knew. And he was afraid.
His heart stirred as he heard a sound coming from outside.
He moved toward the window to see, but darkness covered everything, and his hands began to sweat unconsciously.
"I have to hurry," he thought, then headed outside.
He tried to carry the papers, thinking they might be important later, but a leather-bound journal slipped from his grasp, its cover slightly worn from frequent use.
The leather cover bore a symbol
A circular mirror of black marble, its surface veined with delicate patterns—twining branches and faded roses—as if the stone itself had once bloomed, then frozen in time.
Across the mirror's face runs a single crack. Not random, but curved—coiled into the shape of a lemniscate, an infinity. It slices through the floral engravings like a precise, elegant wound.
And deep within the mirror, where the crack intersects itself, there is an eye.
An eye that does not blink. It sees everything.
Karl looked into it.
Then he felt that the symbol meant something.
He opened it slowly, his heart pounding:
"This is my diary."
His eyes widened, a feeling of astonishment and fear enveloped him, then he left with heavy steps.
He felt restless; it was a night longer than he could bear.
But if the diary was a chance to save his sister and bring her back as she once was, then it would be alright.
Moments later, he found himself outside the house, stopping to think: What would he do next?
Leave the village? Perhaps call for help... perhaps save them.
He winced, remembering the contents of the papers—he hadn't fully understood them, but the words he did grasp offered little reason for optimism.
As he moved toward the northern exit of the village, the familiar scent of the forest's dampness crept in.
The smell he'd always known now planted a feeling of heaviness in his heart.
He bit his lip and hurried on.
After a while, the sound of a horse-drawn wagon reached his ears.
He smiled and rushed toward the sound.
Emerging from the cluster of trees that had provided him cover, the first light appeared after the moon had hidden behind the clouds.
When he focused a little, his heart nearly stopped.
He hid quickly, thorns and dry branches embedding themselves in his skin, making him want to move—but he forced himself to stay still.
There it was, illuminated by the light they carried on board.
On the wagon, he saw the emblem of the thorned rose.
The image, the insignia he'd found on that strange man—it all flooded back into his mind.
He crouched lower, as if trying to sink into the earth, ignoring the pain he felt.
He held his breath and fell silent.
The wagon continued drawing nearer under his watchful gaze.
It had a window that allowed him to see inside.
When it was close enough for him to make out the people within, he saw two stern-looking men who appeared to be talking.
They wore gear similar to the strange man's: leather armor and metal shoulder pieces.
He thought if he moved just a little closer, he might see the badges hanging just like that man's.