"…Huh? What the hell is happening?!" the young soldier shouted.
He rushed toward them, but halfway there, his own body betrayed him. Violent tremors seized his limbs. His vision flooded with red as blood filled his eyes, and an overwhelming urge to vomit tore through his gut, as if his organs were trying to escape his body.
Writhing in agony, he crawled toward the others. They were still shaking uncontrollably. He grabbed one of the guards and turned him to side, desperately trying to help—but it only made things worse.
The guard convulsed violently and vomited a torrent of blood onto the floor. The moment it touched the stone, it erupted into a massive cloud of black smoke, engulfing the entire level.
The smoke began to creep upward and downward, swallowing other floors. Guards who inhaled it soon suffered the same fate, vomiting blood that only fed the growing cloud. The chain continued relentlessly—floor after floor. Guards, prisoners—no one escaped the slow, excruciating inevitability of death.
At the very bottom of Monolith, red alarms finally blared.
Charles Welsh sprang into action with the remaining personnel. Donning gas masks, they advanced into the upper floors, evacuating anyone they could from the smoke-filled corridors. Fueled by fury, Charles pushed ahead toward the top.
I'll kill him. I'll kill that fucker.
Rage burned in his eyes as he loaded the revolver in his hand.
But even he began to feel it—the burning in his lungs, the creeping numbness in his limbs. The gas masks were useless. The smoke seeped through them as if dissolving their very shells.
Realizing that he had dragged others into danger, his vision blurred. Still, a single thought drove him forward.
If I kill him, this ends.
That belief alone carried him upward.
With each ascending floor, the smoke thickened, growing darker and denser. Near the top, Welsh could barely see anything at all. Upon reaching the final level, his vision shrank to a tiny circle around him.
He raised his gun and aimed into the swirling blackness.
Now he relied only on his ears.
Every faint sound, every subtle shift in the air—he strained to sense them all. Something was moving nearby.
A dull thud echoed from his right.
Without hesitation, Charles fired three consecutive shots into the darkness.
For a moment, the environment fell silent. Welsh could not tell whether the man was dead or merely waiting. Despite having fired his shots, there was no guarantee. Slowly, cautiously, Welsh began moving forward, each step heavy with uncertainty.
Then it happened.
A hand emerged from behind him—too swift, too silent, like a ghost slipping through the dark. Welsh had no time to react.
One arm clamped tightly around his head while another drove a blade forward. The knife pierced straight into Welsh's throat. Blood burst forth in a violent stream, and in that instant, his mind failed to comprehend what had happened.
In a desperate reflex, Welsh aimed his gun backward and fired three to four wild shots. The man evaded them effortlessly, shoving Welsh to the ground. Welsh's voice would not come—only choking gasps escaped his torn throat.
He landed hard on something that was not stone.
A body.
Welsh did not dare look closely. He did not want to know whose it was.
The man calmly searched the corpse and retrieved another knife. Holding the blade, he turned back toward Welsh, advancing with deliberate steps. Welsh understood then—his death was approaching.
There was only a single bullet left in his revolver.
Two choices remained: end his own life quickly and escape the pain… or attempt one final act of defiance.
He chose the second.
With trembling hands and fading vision, Welsh raised the gun and fired his last shot—his final attempt to kill the demon.
The bullet struck, but not the heart.
It tore through the man's left shoulder.
Welsh knew then that it was over.
The man approached slowly, his movements crippled yet unwavering. As he drew closer, Welsh finally saw his face clearly—no muzzle, no shackles. A pale, emotionless visage, eerily fair, resembling nothing human. Like a ghost wearing flesh.
The man knelt beside him.
"One…
Two…
Three…
Four…
Five…
Six…
Seven…
Eight…
Nine…"
Each count marked another blade sinking into Welsh's chest.
"…Ten…
Eleven…
Twelve…
Thirteen…"
Nearly seventeen stabs later, Charles Welsh lay dead—lifeless and broken. He had fought until the very end and, when given the choice, had chosen to challenge the demon rather than spare himself a quicker death.
And yet—
The demon showed no reaction.
No rage. No satisfaction. No pleasure.
His face remained pale, lifeless, and utterly emotionless.
Without a word, he stood, turned, and began walking toward the lower floors of Monolith.
Slowly and steadily, he descended three floors and began moving toward the cells on that level. By then, almost everyone within Monolith was either dead or on the verge of death.
The man stopped before one particular cell. Using the blood coating his fingers, he touched the door, corroding and damaging it—just as he had done earlier to his shackles and his own cell door.
The door creaked open.
Inside lay several lifeless bodies, but one man was still alive. He stood facing the outside of the prison, calmly watching the snowfall drifting across the mountains, as though nothing around him mattered.
"Did you do this?" the man asked politely, without turning around.
"Are you an eldritch?" he added.
"I will be the one asking questions here," the demon replied, his tone just as calm.
"As for your questions—yes to the first, and no to the second."
"Now it's my turn," the demon continued. "First: are you the Weaver of Ghost Town?"
"Ah… the Weaver of Ghost Town," the man said, turning his head with equal surprise and amusement.
He was strikingly young, perhaps in his early twenties, with blond hair, fair skin, and sharp blue eyes. His face was almost unnaturally perfect.
"I haven't been called that for forty years."