The air was thick with the reek of blood and rot, as though some beast had only just fed here in savage haste. In the dried pools, scraps of flesh still clung stubbornly to the darkened floor. Kicking aside the scattered clutter revealed faint gouges in the boards—marks left not long ago by something sharp dragged across the surface.
"Do you have any thoughts, Mr. Holmers?"
Press clutched his mask tight over his face, trying not to breathe in the fear-soaked air.
Ever since they'd found the writing on the wall, the great detective had looked unwell. His face was pale, as if he had just crawled out of a nightmare.
An officer brought him a chair. He sat there in the middle of the bloodstain, facing the woman butchered upon the bed—and the words of hatred scrawled across the wall.
"Quiet…"
Lloyd steepled his fingers and crossed one leg over the other. He lowered the brim of his deerstalker, hiding his expression from Press.
"Why not try using windshade?" Watson's voice curled beside his ear, soft and coaxing. "You always find clues in the dead's lingering sight."
"But that would only deepen my tie to the dark," Lloyd muttered coldly. "Which means a better chance for you to slip out, doesn't it? So forget it. Demon, witch—whatever you are—this is your prison. You are not leaving."
He lowered his hands, eyes sharp with hostility.
"Until I find a way to kill you for good, I won't give you a single opportunity."
A silvery laugh chimed through the room. Watson leaned forward and wrapped her arms lightly around Lloyd's neck, her voice a whisper.
"And yet you keep accepting my gifts. You survived. You severed your link to the Sanctum of Stasis. Wasn't that all thanks to the one you hate most—me?"
Lloyd shot her a frigid glare. But she had already drifted away, circling Press with curious interest. Only Lloyd could see her; no matter how she waved or even reached to touch Press, he gave no sign of noticing.
Press merely felt a faint draft brush past him, leaving a chill he couldn't explain. In the end, he blamed it on winter in Old Dunling.
"Get lost," Lloyd snapped, rising to his feet. "I don't need you. Not now."
As he cursed, Watson gave a small, mocking bow and stepped backward, fading into the air until only her voice remained.
"You know how to call me."
Silence returned.
Lloyd stood slowly, his face grave.
"Well?" Press asked. "What do you think?"
Lloyd spoke at last. "What kind of hatred could a foreign factory worker possibly earn?"
With Watson gone from his sight, he could finally focus on the case before him.
She was the greater danger, without question—but the Gospel Church had failed to deal with her for centuries. Lloyd doubted he would fare any better. Better to deal with what stood in front of him.
He wasn't only curious about how the woman had died so horribly. He wanted to know why here—why this room. This was where Watson had slipped free of the Gap and appeared before him. This blood-soaked chamber felt orchestrated, as though some unseen hand had nudged events into place.
"Wait—where are you going?" Press asked as Lloyd suddenly strode toward the door.
"To investigate."
The wooden doorframe was warped from a violent impact. The killer had forced entry with brute strength before beginning the slaughter.
In his six years in Old Dunling, Lloyd had not been merely a pill-popping eccentric or a man who solved problems with a Winchester rifle. When necessary, he could still rely on deduction.
"I loved the acting class I took at university," he said. "On the first day, the bald professor told us that acting isn't just about posture or expression. You must perform a person's thoughts. The moment an actor steps onstage, he is no longer himself. For that brief span, he becomes someone else—inside and out."
Stepping over blood and debris, Lloyd shut his eyes.
To Press's confusion, it was as if Lloyd died where he stood.
Time seemed to turn backward. Blood flowed in reverse. Scattered objects slid back into place. Splintered wood reassembled itself. At last, the door stood whole once more.
The clock hands spun counterclockwise. A knock sounded.
A weary woman stepped from the bedroom and approached the door—her position overlapping with where Lloyd stood now.
Lloyd opened his eyes again.
He began reconstructing the crime in his mind.
To understand a person—to grasp the logic of her actions—was to play her perfectly, to step back into vanished time and relive the moment of death.
"She heard the knock," Lloyd said suddenly. "Then she went to the door."
He stepped over the broken threshold and pointed to a deep dent in a large splinter of wood.
"She meant to see who it was. But he couldn't hold back his rage. Before she could do anything, he smashed the door open with a single blow."
Lloyd's gaze shifted to a corner near the entrance. A blood-stained tooth lay there.
"The blow knocked her unconscious. Before she could rise, he seized her throat. She couldn't make a sound. That's why no one noticed the murder."
Such brutality—yet no one heard screams at dawn. Which meant the victim had already lost the ability to speak… perhaps even to cry out at all.
Press stared blankly at first. As Lloyd continued, he realized the detective was reconstructing the scene—placing himself in the victim's role.
But being the victim was not enough.
Lloyd stepped to the other side of the doorway, staring at the wreckage on the floor.
"So what do you do now?" he murmured.
The object of revenge was in his grasp. Judging by the violence, the killer's reason must have been nearly gone.
"Yes… she's too loud. You grip her throat and smash her head again and again until she can't resist anymore… But this isn't a good place. Too close to the door. Someone might see."
He studied the wide smear of blood across the floor. Within it were faint drag marks, as if someone had struggled there.
The beast of a killer had dragged the woman—pulled her all the way into the bedroom.
That was where the execution truly began.
"Let me think," Lloyd whispered, standing once more before the corpse. "How do you make someone suffer enough to satisfy a twisted hunger for revenge?"
Press watched with unease.
The great detective had placed himself not only in the woman's role—but in the mind of the killer.
His face had grown fierce, almost distorted, as he contemplated the execution that had already taken place.
After a long while, clarity returned to Lloyd's eyes all at once. He spoke quietly.
"This isn't right."
"What isn't?" Press tried to follow his train of thought. In that brief instant of Lloyd's silence, he had taken on the air of an urban legend—unnerving, almost sinister.
At times, Press even suspected that the Yard had hired Lloyd as an external detective not for his résumé, but for that eerie gift of his. The same talent could make him the finest detective alive… or the most terrifying criminal. The difference lay in a single thought.
Like now. Lloyd felt less like an investigator and more like a kindred spirit to the murderer—a fellow soul who lived on the edge of ruin. Only the desperate truly understood the desperate. Only they could predict what choice another would make when cornered.
"How did he leave?"
Lloyd turned to Press, eyes sharp with questions.
"This was revenge. Brutal revenge. That lunatic smeared her blood across the entire room. I'd even say there still wasn't enough for him. So he must've been covered in it himself, right? Then where are the traces? Every drop of blood feels sealed inside this room. The killer walked out without leaving a single mark.
"Unless he's some bodiless monster, he would've carried blood with him. He would've left something behind."
As he spoke, Lloyd's gaze swept the room at speed.
Think, Lloyd. If you were that deranged killer, how would you leave?
Back the way you came? The smell of blood would cling to you, and the stairwell would surely show signs. But if not that way… then what?
"Fire escape?" Press finally offered something useful.
Lloyd snapped toward the window, threw it open, and vaulted out in one motion.
The fire escapes ran along the sides of the apartment blocks. Buildings on Cork Street were old and low, and many didn't even have them—Lloyd had simply forgotten. Icy wind flooded his coat as he climbed. Then he heard it.
A faint sound.
Above him.
The killer didn't leave?
The thought sent Lloyd surging upward at a dead sprint. The detective moved with astonishing speed, reaching the rooftop in a handful of breaths. His hand slipped beneath his coat and came up with a Winchester.
"Don't move!"
He roared the command—only to find himself facing two or three bewildered maintenance workers. They sat beside a steam conduit, wrenching hard at a leaking joint.
…
As the birthplace of steam technology, Old Dunling was threaded everywhere with pipes leading back to the Furnace Pillars. Even the city's fringes were webbed in them. Steam lines ran through daily life itself, and because there were so many, every district had its own crew of workers to keep them from falling apart.
You could see maintenance men anywhere. Wherever steam flowed, they were there. In a strange way, the profession resembled Lloyd's own—both granted passage into every corner of life.
"So you handed this case to a lunatic like him? Press, have you lost your mind?!"
Inside the blood-soaked room, the heavyset, middle-aged Inspector Donas unleashed a furious tirade. He was one of the Yard's most vocal opponents of Lloyd's employment and had never hidden his disdain. He'd rushed over the moment he got word—only to find the one detective he hated most already present.
Press lowered his head and said nothing. Donas was his superior, and he had no courage to shout back at the hot-tempered man. He let the rant wash over him.
"And you—get out. I'm taking over this case!"
After finishing with Press, Donas rounded on Lloyd.
Lloyd nodded absently without looking at him, pacing in place, muttering under his breath.
"That doesn't make sense…"
The rooftop held only the maintenance crew. They'd been fixing steam pipes since morning. According to them, no one else had come up, and they hadn't heard a fire escape being lowered. Everything was normal.
Too normal.
"Are you even listening to me?! I said I'm taking over!"
The irritated inspector kept shouting. Lloyd was on the verge of snapping back—when he noticed a familiar figure standing before the wall of blood-written words.
"Lloyd, you've fallen into the same trap," Watson said with a gentle smile. "As a demon hunter, you should trust your senses more."
Before Lloyd could question him further, Watson dissolved into the air once more, vanishing and leaving the bloody writing fully exposed.
"LLOYD!"
Donas roared when he realized he was being ignored—only to find the cold mouth of a shotgun pressed to his head.
"Quiet."
The voice was glacial, deadly serious. In that moment, it truly felt like Lloyd wouldn't mind pulling the trigger.
Donas finally shut up.
Lloyd stepped forward until he stood directly before the blood-written message.
Beneath the thick scent of gore lingered something familiar. The dried strokes were uneven, not cut by any metal blade.
The instincts of a demon hunter urged him onward. It reminded him of his days in the Order. Though he had served in the Medanzo branch tasked with guarding the Pope, Lloyd had still gone out regularly to hunt monsters. Back then, he followed blood trails.
He wiped a bit of the dried blood onto his finger. Hesitated.
Then tasted it.
Heavy bloodlust. Violence. And beneath it, fear.
Behind him, Donas was still fuming about the shotgun. "Someone get him out of here!" he shouted.
But Lloyd turned back with a strange expression on his face.
"Looks like this case really is mine."
Ignoring the inspector's glare, Lloyd radiated a shiver-inducing madness. He raised the Winchester again, posture tense as if he might kill.
The Secret Blood within him stirred—its instinctive reaction to the presence of demons. Because mixed into those savage letters… was the blood of a monster.
Lloyd let out a long breath.
He had found it at last—the crucial clue. A demon had appeared before him once more.
Across the room, Watson now sat in a chair, smiling quietly at him. His lips moved without sound.
The shape of them seemed to say:
Pleasure working together.