"Did you miss me?"
I jumped up, but the pitch-black darkness made me slam into the chair. I don't understand... why can't I hear his footsteps? No sound, no rustle of clothes. Only his voice fills the room from where I don't know.
His voice is like thunder on a summer night, deep, calm, but it carries an unmistakable note of arrogance. An inherent narcissism flows with every syllable.
Suddenly, candles lit up in the corners of the vast room. Small flames danced in various places, revealing his imposing figure, but his face remained in shadow. This is the second time I've stood before his majestic stature without being able to see his features. The first time, I was drunk and unaware of anything, and now his face is hidden in the depths of darkness.
My legs tremble like two branches in the wind. I try to compose myself, searching for his eyes in the darkness, tracing his face with my trembling gaze. Stacker said he wouldn't kill me; my death wasn't his goal. But his energy—that evil energy emanating from him like a poisonous mist—tells me the exact opposite. I feel like I'm going to faint again, just from his presence.
Someone might say it's an exaggeration; he's just a man.
But you don't know... you haven't felt that cursed energy emanating from him. He's like a lion locked in a room with you.
Do you expect to survive? The fear gripping me isn't ordinary fear; it's a paralyzing terror. I wish I could muster the courage to slap him, but he controls me even by my hands; I can't move them.
"I said I'd wait for you, but you came early... wonderful."
His voice echoes through the room like a deep valley. This time, when he smiles his mocking smile, I see his perfectly aligned white teeth gleam in the dim candlelight.
"Are you stupid? Someone tells you to bring the book and you obey?" A biting sarcasm drips from his words. Sarcasm mixed with unbearable harshness.
Why can't I answer? My lips part, I try to utter a single word, but my voice chokes me. I feel like a little girl learning to spell for the first time. Does he even control my speech?
"Foolish... and annoying... what makes you worth living?"
I don't understand what he's saying, but one certainty seeps into my heart: I'm going to die now.
"You... are... the one... threatening... my life..." Finally, the words come out haltingly, tremblingly, as if escaping my mouth.
"Threatening your life?" A stifled laugh. "You're not the center of the universe, little one."
What's wrong with him? Isn't he the one who's hunting me down, who wants to kill me, who wants to take me from Stacker?
"I'm surprised you're so afraid of me. It's true I kill, I violate young and old, but that doesn't mean all my attention is on you."
My grip on the hem of my shirt loosened slightly. His voice and seriousness made me regain my composure.
"That's what they told me."
"That's what they told you? And you're stupid enough to believe it?" He took a step closer. "You're the one who came to this palace. You chose hell for yourself. You're not my main enemy. Killing a little girl like you, or getting hold of you, is the last thing on my mind. You don't even know who your real enemies are. You live among wolves, and you're only afraid of their leader?"
He moved even closer. I took a step back, the chair slamming against the desk behind me. A strange smell of blood emanated from it—not his blood, but someone else's. My breath quickened as I raised my eyes, trying to meet his in the darkness.
"But their leader wants me..." I whispered.
"Wants you?" He sighed impatiently. "Stop playing dumb." His mocking smile was still on his lips.
"He wants you? Who said that? Detective Conan said I want you because I kill every girl and her mother who comes here? Stacker said I want you because he loves you and I want to take you from him? Do you think getting you is difficult?" A deep laugh. "I could take you whenever you want, even while you're sleeping. I could kill you whenever you want."
His voice still echoed through the dark room when a sudden flash of pain crept into my bones. A stinging electric current coursed through my body, gnawing at every cell, making me curl up and scream. I clutched my stomach with my arms, then my head, then any part of me that might offer some relief.
The pain was slowly taking hold, as if it wanted to tear my soul from my body piece by piece.
"Stop..." I pleaded, my voice hoarse.
He was the source of the pain. He stood before me, his eyes merciless, relishing my suffering like a spectator revels in a tragedy.
"Please... stop..."
And then, suddenly, he stopped. The pain vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving me exhausted on the floor. I fell to my knees, then to my elbows, then finally slumped to the cold tiles. All that filled the room was the sound of my ragged breaths and my ragged moans.
"Is that enough to convince you that I could have killed you the day you set foot in this palace, but I didn't care?"
I remained on the floor, coughing and panting. My saliva dripped onto the tiles, and my hair flew across my sweat-drenched face. I no longer cared about my appearance, about anything but breathing.
"Stand up." He ordered me in a stern voice.
I didn't move. My body felt heavy, unable to obey even my own commands.
"Stand up." He repeated.
This time, with what little strength I had left, I grabbed the chair next to me and pulled myself up with difficulty. My legs trembled like branches in a storm.
He took a step closer. Then another. He stood directly in front of me. Suddenly, his large, rough hand reached for my neck and seized it. He pulled me against him until I was almost touching his chest, lifting my head as I struggled to breathe.
"Do you know why I came to the tavern that night?" He whispered in my face, his cold breath brushing my forehead.
"I came to watch you. Because you're the only one I haven't drugged at night. Usually, everyone in this palace is like a puppet when I appear. I control them as I please. But you... you were awake. In your right mind. And you even dared to go out, scorning my laws, breaking them as if they didn't concern you."
He pressed harder against my throat. My lungs felt like they were burning. I tried to scratch his hand with my soft nails, but his skin was as hard as iron, unmoved. In the darkness, I couldn't even see what he was wearing; all I could feel was his rough hand and a pain spreading down my neck.
"Stucker said I killed the dog because it attacked you." A deep, stifled laugh escaped him.
"That's true. I killed it. But not because it attacked you. I killed it because it didn't kill you. It missed its mark."
He released his grip from my neck, and I collapsed to the ground again, convulsing with a broken cough. Tears choked my eyes, rebelling against my eyelids, but I was determined to hold them back. I refused to die with a trace of weakness in my eyes. I refused to let my last breath be accompanied by a tear.
"Do you want the book on the green potion?" he said, his voice a distant growl, seeping from the depths of his chest. "To learn what that potion contained that transformed Caster? It's my book. My own handwriting. I made it especially for this afflicted boy."
His voice was punctuated by a hidden groan, as if he were speaking through clenched teeth, heavy with deep pain.
"The form you saw wasn't his true self. He borrows another body, escaping to it whenever his original one runs dry. Detective Adam... that man... deduced it cleverly. And he's right: Caster is becoming one of my imprisoned victims. I supply him with their blood, and he lives their lives, moving between bodies like a ghost inhabiting the living."
He gasped, as if in pain.
"Now you see how complicated our world is? You're in a labyrinth that will surely swallow you up. That's why I'm going to help you. I'm an expert in death. You'll thank me later."
My limbs stiffened. What irony? He threatens me, then promises to help me? What contradiction festers within this being?
By the flickering candlelight, I glimpsed my small lamp lying near my feet. I decided to die knowing who my tormentor was. To satisfy my final curiosity before my body breathed its last breath.
I crawled toward the lamp and picked it up with trembling fingers. I shone my dim light on him, still on my knees.
What I saw made time freeze in my veins.
His left hand... was gone. In its place was a gaping void, a pool of blood covering the floor. His torso was torn apart, flesh and bone exposed. A deep scar ran from his left temple to the corner of his mouth, marring his otherwise stern features.
He stood silently, gazing at my horror with icy coldness.
"Do you want to die now... or later?"
I looked at his severed hand, at the gushing blood, at the pain he concealed behind his icy gaze. And despite everything... despite all the terror he instilled in me...
"You're hurting?" I whispered.
A flicker of surprise crossed his eyes for a fleeting moment.
"Your hand is bleeding," I said, my voice trembling, looking down at him. I rose with difficulty and took a heavy step toward him.
"Your hand is severed..." My trembling fingers reached out and touched the stump of his severed arm, and a silent, involuntary groan escaped me.
"What? Jealous? Should I cut one off for you too?" His biting sarcasm cut through the scene.
How could he be mocking me at this moment? How could he find time to argue with me while he was bleeding to death?
I shone my flashlight across the rest of the room. Books were piled in the corners, machetes hung on the walls, the medicine box the maid had brought in was open near one corner. Then I saw her there... his severed hand lying on the floor. A mass of mangled flesh and broken bones floating in a pool of blood.
I raised my hand to cover my mouth, which hung open in shock. I stood there, looking at the hand, then at him, then at it again. Confusion paralyzed me. What being stood before me? What curse did this room hold?
"Your hand...is severed?" The words came out not from me, but from a child just discovering the world's cruelty.
His eyes narrowed with endless mockery. "Stop repeating yourself like a parrot. I know my hand is severed. Have pity on yourself, who will be completely severed in a moment."
I looked at him. For the first time since entering this room, the fear gradually faded, replaced by something else. Curiosity? No. Pity? Perhaps. A profound questioning of the nature of this creature standing before me.
"I don't really know who you are," I said slowly, studying his disfigured features. "But you're in pain now."
His features twitched for a moment. Then he burst out laughing, a laugh that made the scar on his face contract and expand like a snake. "In pain? I cut off my hand every day, then reattach it. I didn't feel any pain when I cut it off."
The room spun around me. Did he cut off his own hand? With his other hand? What kind of creature cuts off a part of its own body every day as if it were trimming its nails?
The bleeding wouldn't stop. Blood gushed from the severed torso, cascading onto the floor like a small, endless waterfall. The sight was heartbreaking, soul-crushing.
I moved before him, without thinking. I grasped his severed arm with both hands, pressing hard in a desperate, foolish attempt to stem the flow. His skin was as hard as stone, but blood trickled between my fingers.
"You'll die if this continues," I said nervously, clutching his arm, trying in vain to give him back what he had lost.
He moved so close his lips almost touched my ear. He whispered, his voice like a drawn sword, "Does one die twice?"
My hands froze. The blood between my fingers went numb. I looked up at him; our eyes met in the darkness. His eyes were endless, as deep as an abyss.
Stucker said he was dead. He was a demon, not a human.
"But that doesn't mean you're not in pain," she whispered.
"Do you pity me?"
The question came from him, laced with sharp surprise, as if the word itself were foreign to his ears.
I tried to ease the tension, to reclaim some of his humanity—or my own. I smiled slightly and said, in a tone bordering on jest,
"Anyone who suffers deserves pity—"
I didn't finish the sentence.
With his good arm, he shoved me violently. My back slammed against the wall with such force that the air in my chest was expelled all at once, and I tasted the iron in my mouth before I realized blood had trickled down my lips. A sharp whistle filled my ears, a clear physical sign that consciousness was slowly fading.
I tried to open my eyes. His figure was approaching, his steps steady, unhurried, like someone concluding a settled matter.
He said in a low voice, but filled with undisguised contempt,
"How could someone as powerless as you pity me?" No one has yet been born who dares to pity Joseph, you human being.
Before I could register his approach, his hand was encircling my neck. His grip wasn't mere physical pressure, but a declaration of dominance. He lifted me off the ground with humiliating ease, until I lost all feeling for the weight of my body. My limbs dangled helplessly, and the air became a distant privilege.
Beneath my feet, my blood mingled with his on the floor. An absurd scene: I, who had tried to stop his bleeding, found myself adding to it.
His face drew closer to mine, his eyes gleaming with that glint that precedes a decisive moment.
"Who is pathetic now?"
The same word.
As if it were the final verdict.
I tried to breathe. Only a tiny amount entered my lungs, just enough to keep the pain present. My head began to feel heavy, and the ringing in my ears transformed into an elongated emptiness. His voice grew distant, as if emanating from the end of a long tunnel.
Is this my end? To be reduced to a moment of weakness, and for my last thought to be that I misread the monster?
The image before me began to fade, its edges dissolving into a slow darkness. This is the second time I've faced him. The first time, I survived because the danger was a possibility. Now it's a certainty.
I think...
This is....
The end..