The hour had nearly slipped into dawn. A pallid light bled slowly across the distant sky.
A cold mist drifted through the streets, gathering in the fragile moment between night and day, clinging to every surface as though the world itself had been sealed beneath a thin, breathless frost.
Pedestrians had already begun to appear. They strolled with feigned ease, yet their eyes betrayed them—again and again, their gazes were drawn toward the Stuart estate. The gunshots of the previous night, the clamor of mounted police, had torn most from their sleep. Curiosity now lingered like an infection, spreading through hushed whispers.
A handful of soldiers, disguised as mounted officers, remained stationed nearby, quietly but firmly turning away prying eyes.
The atmosphere resembled the winter of Old Dunling itself—cold, sharp, and merciless against the skin.
In the corner of a dimly lit room, Lloyd sat in silence. Fatigue weighed upon his eyes, and the echo of pain still reverberated within his mind. A cigarette hung loosely from his lips as he exhaled slow streams of smoke, as though the ritual might dull the ache.
Outside, the cleaners were at work.
In moments like these, they were the finest of custodians—after a brief survey, they set upon the remains with practiced indifference, scrubbing away blood and gathering shattered flesh. The air grew thick with the metallic stench, turning the house into something indistinguishable from a slaughterhouse.
Yavi stood guard at the door, negotiating with them. Though Selu held no affection for this estate, it remained Stuart property. It would be handled properly.
Selu sat upon the bed, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. The softness beneath her did nothing to comfort her. She looked drained—spirit dulled, as though something within her had dimmed.
"They're still cleaning?" she asked quietly.
From beyond the door came the relentless sound of water sloshing against the floor—heavy, methodical.
"Probably," Lloyd replied without much thought.
He glanced at the waking city beyond the window, then back at her.
"You're sure you don't want to sleep?"
Since arriving with the Cleansing Agency, Selu had not slept at all. She was someone of strict rhythms; sleeplessness did not suit her—it clung to her like an illness.
She shook her head.
Sleep would not come.
This was not her first encounter with such horrors—the dream that tore at her mind, the hound that stalked her like a shadow.
"Lloyd… was that… some kind of mental attack?" she asked after a moment.
"More precisely," he said, voice low, "an attack upon the will itself. It bypasses distance, ignores the body… though I may be wrong. No one truly understands those things."
Those things.
The demons.
"But… can power like that really exist?"
She could not accept it. Could not face it.
And yet her reaction was the most natural of all.
When a creature that once lived only in stories tears free from the page and steps into your world—when every law you've trusted shatters without warning—what remains is only helpless terror, and the sound of your own mind breaking.
Lloyd said nothing.
This was why organizations like the Demon Hunters and the Cleansing Agency existed.
Not everyone could bear the unknown.
Someone had to stand at the edge—to become a wall against despair, to hold fear and reason apart by sheer will alone. To divide the monstrous from the ordinary.
Humanity could not go on living in fear.
"Selu," he said softly, "you need rest."
"I can't… Every time I close my eyes…"
Her voice trembled.
She was strong—stronger than most. Few things should have shaken her.
But this was different.
The dream had found the one fracture in her soul.
Each time she closed her eyes, she was dragged back into that freezing alley, forced to await a different fate.
Her nightmare.
"I'm afraid to sleep."
Her gaze met his—tired, fragile.
"Aren't you afraid?" she asked.
This man before her—the demon hunter—seemed untouched. No fear. No unease. As if this horror had long since become his ordinary.
"Afraid of what?"
"The dreams. No one can promise I won't return there."
"And…"
She hesitated, her fear deepening.
In that dream, there was no Lloyd.
No salvation.
She was still a beggar, abandoned to the cold winds of Gaul Nalo.
She remembered how her memories dissolved—how she became that girl, not the Duchess of Stuart. Everything she had ever been faded into nothing, until even the difference itself vanished.
"Can you tell the difference?" she asked.
"Lloyd… can you tell what's real? What if this—right now—is just another dream?"
"I don't know."
His voice was distant, shadowed with something unreadable.
Perhaps there was no truth to see. Perhaps the world itself was nothing but layers of illusion.
If not for the phantom in the Interstice… if not for Medanzo… he might never have awakened.
Or perhaps it had never been a dream at all.
Perhaps something had invaded his Interstice—reshaped it into a false world, and struck at his will from within.
An invisible enemy.
No origin. No pattern. No understanding.
Only the unknown.
"Selu… do you trust me?"
The question came suddenly.
He stood half-hidden in shadow, his gaze deep and unreadable.
She paused—caught off guard—yet nodded firmly.
There were few in her life. Fewer still she could name.
Yavi. Lloyd.
That was all.
Though she was heir to the Stuart name—future duchess, backed by thirty-two families—she barely knew them.
But Lloyd—
Whatever he was. Detective. Hunter.
He had brought her here.
And so, he was the only one she could trust.
"I see," he murmured.
He rose.
Something vast and intricate began to take shape within his mind.
Lloyd was not a man who waited for death.
Beneath his calm lay a furnace of fury.
He welcomed it.
Only anger could drive him forward.
Lawrence. Demons. It did not matter.
If it lived—it could be killed.
Life and death were bound together like a curse.
No one escaped.
He tightened his grip on the Winchester, then raised the knight's sword.
The blade gleamed.
For a moment, the man upon it seemed asleep—
Then his eyes opened.
Flames roared within them.
"Medanzo."
A violent wind struck the windows without warning—as though unseen spirits battered against the world itself.
Everything trembled.
Time fractured.
Matter collapsed into itself, shattering into countless fragments that drifted like ash, like snow.
And when the storm passed—
Medanzo was there.
Smiling.
He sat upon one end of a bench, leaving the other for Lloyd.
The estate was gone.
Lloyd now stood within the Interstice.
A vast frozen world beneath a fallen moon, dreamlike and endless.
"Come," Medanzo said, "let us speak."
Lloyd took his place beside him, studying the face that resembled his own.
"What was that?"
Medanzo regarded him calmly.
"As expected," he said. "You've forgotten much, Lloyd."
"What do you mean?"
A faint stir of something buried.
Lost memories.
In that hallucination—no, that intrusion—he had seen things that were not his own.
Fragments.
Echoes.
When he killed the demon within the Perpetual Pump, he had entered its Interstice.
He had slain it there—and so it died in reality.
And its memories had flooded into him.
…Could this attack reach memory itself?
Medanzo continued.
"The Interstice is the realm of the mind. But it is not closed."
Not closed.
Lloyd thought of the lobotomy.
"Each Interstice is an island in a dark sea," Medanzo said. "We tremble alone, unaware of one another… until someone learns where you are."
He gestured to the frozen world beneath them.
"Then the tide comes."
"They've found you."
"And how?" Lloyd asked.
They both knew the answer.
Neither spoke it.
"A beacon," Medanzo said at last. "Like the Silent Temple connects all hunters. Traversing the Interstice requires a signal."
"Infection…"
Lloyd's body tensed.
"Exactly. Infection creates the beacon."
Understanding struck like lightning.
"That's why," Medanzo said quietly, "you were targeted."
That demon.
The one in the Pump.
It had marked him.
And through that mark—the same corruption spread.
"To her."
His voice was steady.
"You should not have grown close to that girl. She's already been marked by Lawrence."
Like a disease, it spread.
Lawrence used Horner to reach Lloyd—then through Lloyd, Selu.
She was defenseless.
Even the smallest trace was enough.
Like a Grail.
Like a meme that devours all.
"You have me," Medanzo said. "And Watson. Your Interstice can resist."
"But she has nothing."
Silence.
"Yes," Lloyd thought.
This was a war of the mind.
And he could do nothing.
"The enemy has no form," Medanzo continued. "It moves through thought."
"Iron cannot kill a will."
Despair settled in.
The next attack—
Would be her end.
Then—
A voice.
Soft.
Close.
"But a will… can be killed by another will."
Lloyd turned sharply.
Watson stood behind the bench, smiling.
Certain.
Unshaken.
"Shall we cooperate?"
He rose at once, stepping back, wary.
"So it comes to this?" he said coldly. "A bargain with the devil?"
"Cooperation," she corrected.
"Is there a difference?" he snapped.
"To unleash something like you—"
She shook her head, almost disappointed.
"You still don't understand, Lloyd."
"I am no longer something that can be judged by human thought."
"You call me a devil… yet how many times have I saved you?"
She stepped closer.
"Have I ever deceived you?"
Each question drove him closer to the edge.
"Our purposes align," she said softly. "Nothing more."
"Like humans and ants."
A faint, chilling smile.
"I am the human. You are the ant."
"You cannot even perceive my entirety."
He understood.
An ant cannot grasp a human—only fragments. Pieces too vast to comprehend.
Just as no one could ever hold the whole of Old Dunling in a single glance.
"So think of it this way," she whispered.
"You kill insects because you dislike them."
"Ants kill insects to survive."
"The purpose differs. The outcome does not."
Her breath was cold against his ear.
"Tell me, Lloyd… when something unknown helps you kill Lawrence—was it truly helping you?"
"You will never understand me… not as a human."
Unseen.
Undefined.
Unknowable.
"That," she said, her voice fading into the cold,
"is the true meaning of the indescribable, Mr. Lloyd Holmes."