Before the last syllable fell from his lips, the rapier lashed out like a serpent—swift, merciless, its blade tearing through the air with a shrill and violent howl.
It was hard to imagine such a frail body unleashing such power. And this time, his target was Eve. He wanted his lucky coin back.
Hallucinations gnawed at Lloyd's senses, slowing his reactions. He could no longer keep up with Sabo's speed—while the girl simply stared at the assassin's approach, raising the revolver in her hand.
Its name was Death Knell. And though the world twisted and rippled in Eve's eyes, that didn't mean she would surrender.
She pulled the trigger.
But the death knell did not sound.
For a heartbeat Eve froze—then everything clicked. She truly wanted to curse Lloyd aloud. That man was absolute scum. From the very beginning, there had only been five bullets in this revolver. Just like back at the Phoenix Estate with that damned ladder… he had manipulated their "common sense."
That was why he had been so confident. Because that bastard knew from the start the chamber was empty. What gambler? It was all a con.
The rapier's edge was suddenly upon her. The blade brushed her cheek as it swept past, slicing the air with a cold whistle. Fortune favored no one tonight—it seemed even Sabo's strike faltered, robbed of precision by blood loss and hallucination. A moment later, a sharp blade-thrust ripped through his torso from behind, like an executioner's spear driving downward, pinning him into the ground.
"Eve! Don't just stand there!"
Lloyd apparently had no intention of explaining his lousy trickery—he simply roared.
Eve didn't understand his urgency—until she heard it. Footsteps. Chaotic, hurried… the stone floor groaning under a hundred frenzied heels. And beneath that, a murmur—a whispering chorus like Heaven itself weeping into her skull.
She looked down from the high stage. The collapsed bodies below were rising. Twisting upright in ways no human joints should allow. Eyes blank and white, pale as death. They wandered the ballroom like hollow vessels.
"Another hallucination…?"
Eve's courage—so fragile yet forcing itself to grow—nearly shattered again. Under the drug's influence, reality and nightmare were impossible to separate.
"I don't know. What I do know is—we need to move."
A cigarette hung from Lloyd's lips as he sucked in a sharp breath. The stimulant herbs surged into his mind, clearing his vision.
"What about him—Lloyd!"
Eve wanted to ask what they should do with Sabo; they still lacked the answers he promised. But when her gaze fell back on the body—on what should have been a corpse—it moved.
No mortal vitality remained. What lifted itself from the floor belonged in horror tales. He gripped the embedded blade—forcing his ruined body upright, blood drained dry so his exposed ribs shone ghastly and white. No screams. Only a choking, broken laugh.
"Death… is not the end."
The words Sabo once spoke flickered through Lloyd's mind. He whispered:
"The coin."
Eve had seen it too. She gasped.
Sabo's monstrous form stood again, his crushed hand clutching the lucky coin. The iron mask split open like a grotesque maw—and he shoved both coin and flesh past the jagged teeth. Bone and blood crunched under the bite.
"Hallucination…?"
Eve clutched sword and gun as if they were her last anchors to sanity.
"It doesn't matter."
Lloyd's voice had gone cold.
The standoff was grotesque—but then a deeper roar shook the world. The chandelier rattled violently, crystals clashing like storm-bells as dust rained from above.
As though giants were pounding the earth.
But the next impact revealed the truth—shellfire. Explosions ripping through the surface above.
What in God's name was happening up there?
The lights flickered wildly—and in one shuddering blink, Sabo's twisted figure vanished.
Perhaps she had witnessed too much horror tonight, because instead of panic—Eve found herself eerily calm.
"He's gone."
"I know."
Lloyd's reply was disturbingly steady. Something unreadable surfaced in his expression as he stared at the spot where Sabo disappeared.
But there was no time to ponder. Countless footsteps thundered once more. The ballroom floor—once a gladiator's arena—opened, and armed guards surged up from hidden lifts, faces twisted by the same maddening toxin.
Chaos erupted. Bullets shredded the high stage.
Lloyd spun—fired his shotgun at the stained-glass window behind them. It shattered into a rain of glittering shards. A small room lay hidden beyond—just where Lloyd suspected Sabo had spied on them earlier.
He dragged Eve inside. The room pulsed with an eerie oppressive presence.
"Hold this position. High ground gives us a chance."
He tossed his Winchester to Eve and strode deeper inside.
"What are you doing?"
Her arms sank under the weapon's weight—astonishing, how easily Lloyd had handled it.
"Clues. Sabo didn't tell us enough."
Something about the brass mask he wore felt more complex than mere disguise. Ever since Sabo vanished, Lloyd had been… different.
"And then? How do we escape?"
Eve's voice cracked—everything tonight had pushed her psyche to the edge.
"That depends on you."
"Me?"
She couldn't follow his logic.
Lloyd glanced back toward the ballroom—hallucinogens heavy in the air but without true contamination. His thoughts were sharpening by the second.
"I have no idea how many guards are out there. Fighting our way out isn't the best option."
He flung open crates, rifling through drawers.
"Our best chance… is to make someone else come save us."
"So, a few hours before the operation began, I gave a messenger boy a silver coin and asked him to deliver a letter."
Lloyd lifted his gaze, noticing the confusion in Eve's expression, and continued:
"I know this place. The Lower District isn't that big—each gang's territory is fixed. So I wrote down this location, along with your name, and sent it to the Suarlan Bureau.
Just imagine—an anonymous message claiming that the Phoenix family's princess has appeared in the Lower District… and that she's a detective of the Suarlan Bureau. If I were the commissioner, I would bring every mounted officer to storm the Lower District. Otherwise, he would have to face the Phoenix family's wrath."
Everything was already under his control. The moment Lloyd learned Eve's true identity, the preparations had begun. As long as she remained by his side, Suarlan would not let him be abandoned.
He kept checking his watch because he had been waiting for this exact moment—when Suarlan launched their assault, that would be his signal to withdraw.
"And the truth is easy for them to confirm," he added. "All they need is a single call to the Phoenix manor to ask whether you're home."
Precision. Seamlessness.
A guard's skull burst open beneath Eve's shot, the body tumbling down the stairs. Hearing Lloyd's explanation, the girl froze for a heartbeat before fury took hold.
"You used me!"
"This is a win-win situation."
"Lloyd! You are scum!"
"And right now, I'm the only scum who can get you out alive."
His cane-sword slashed fiercely into the wall—a slender, elegant blade that was impossibly hard, a metal neither of them could name.
A hidden door cracked open under his strike. Beyond the iron plate, a narrow darkness awaited, barely enough space for a person to slip through.
"It's all ruined!"
Eve vaulted inside with her shotgun, trembling with fury. She had not shed a tear while facing that hellish scene outside—yet now her eyes glittered with grief.
"They'll use this to keep me from ever becoming a detective! And it's all because of you!"
"Calm down, detective! You think I didn't consider your position?"
The way she held that gun… he suddenly regretted handing it to her.
"As long as they don't catch you, none of this will stand! It's an anonymous letter—there's no credibility. If they don't find you here, then nothing can be proven!"
"You said yourself — a phone call can confirm everything!"
"Yes! Confirm that you're not in the Phoenix manor. You could be anywhere tonight — as long as it's not here!"
Even if suspicion lingered, the Suarlan Bureau could do nothing but swallow their frustration. Eve's identity made that inevitable.
Without warning, Lloyd grabbed her dress and tore it open—not with lust, but efficiency. Beneath the delicate layers was a fitted battle outfit, weapons strapped tight. Like magic, the pampered princess vanished, replaced by a steel-hearted valkyrie.
"If you want to kill me or skin me alive—do it after we escape. You don't want tomorrow's Queen's Daily to announce: Phoenix Princess Found Dead in the Lower District, do you?"
He snatched the shotgun from her grip and fired—another guard plummeted from the platform above. Yet the bodies writhed still, nerves hijacked by hallucinogens, their minds lost in a nightmare only they could see.
Then it surged through him — a flash like lightning along his spine.
A primal warning.
Every nerve screamed.
He saw them.
Countless ravens swirling through the cramped hall, their shrieks merging into a cryptic chant—an ancient curse whispered through a thousand beaks.
Light vanished.
Night devoured the space — sudden and absolute.
Just like his soul-sight.
Where light retreats…
and darkness claims everything.
With no hesitation, he shoved Eve through the hidden door and followed, the shotgun's muzzle spitting a burst of fire — the only light left.
For a heartbeat, that flash revealed a nightmare's edge:
A mass of flesh, obscene and impossible — hundreds of bodies shredded and pressed together, hoisted by twisted, blood-slicked arms clawing over the platform's rim. A tumor made of the damned.
The gunshot faded.
Darkness slammed shut as Lloyd sealed the door.
A thunderous impact followed — bones snapping, metal shrieking.
A maddening scratching pierced the air — like a thousand fingernails scraping the iron barrier.
"W-What was that…?"
Eve's voice was small, stunned.
Lloyd remained composed — no, familiar.
He had known this would come.
"Was that… a hallucination?" she whispered, desperate.
His reply was cold steel:
"Hallucinations work directly on the mind. We would never see the same illusion."
The same illusion…
Eve understood. And her voice broke.
"You mean… that was real?"
Nightmares from forgotten ages walked the waking world.
Lloyd did not answer. Instead, he echoed what Sabo once told him:
"That which is untouchable… unknowable… unseeable."
He fired again, flame ripping across the narrow passage.
Bullets punched glowing holes through the iron door — and blood seeped from each one.
Through the cracks, thin tendrils of flesh wriggled inward, swaying like hair in some invisible current.
"Those who encounter it… either die…"
His whisper rose into a roar:
"…or go mad!"
He seized Eve's arm and pulled her deeper into the passage.
Behind them, the iron gate exploded outward.
And the tide of blood — thick with stench and screaming terror — poured into the dark.