He lifted his gloved hand in front of my face, revealing a silver half-moon pendant.
Delicate veins were carved across the crescent, spreading outward like thin branches, ending in five tiny diamonds. The detailing looked almost… sacred. And the design felt incomplete—like it was only half of a bigger piece.
"Nice design. Why show me?" I asked, suspicious but curious.
"Look at it carefully," he said. His voice was stern, but there was a strange edge of desperation underneath. "Don't you find this familiar?"
"No. I don't wear necklaces."
I added extra explanation on purpose. Something in my gut told me this necklace was the root cause of everything.
"I've been terrible with them since childhood, so I just never wore anything around my neck."
"You're lying."
His frustration simmered beneath the calmness, which only made him scarier.
"Why would I lie? You can ask anyone I know—I don't wear necklaces. I've hated them since I was a kid."
Why the hell am I arguing about jewelry with a masked psycho?
He stayed quiet for a few seconds and stepped back, his posture shifting.
"Have you ever played in a cemetery?"
"What? No. Why would anyone play in a cemetery?"
Either he was trying to solve some mystery… or he was just screwing with me.
But before he could speak again, the loud siren blared through the hallway.
In a flash, he grabbed my arm—hard—and started dragging me out of my room toward the stairway leading to the forbidden third floor. His strides were too long, too fast, and I stumbled trying to keep up, nearly face-planting on the stairs.
"Where are you taking me?" I shouted.
He didn't answer.
He just shoved me into a steel-walled operations hall where dozens of screens covered an entire side of the room. People were running everywhere, panicked, trying to track what triggered the alarm.
And then I saw it on the biggest screen.
Bulldozers.
Huge ones—dozens of them—breaking through the boundary wall, crushing the garden, ripping apart the outdoor structures, moving straight toward the building at full speed.
The staff inside the room were losing it. Someone fainted. Someone else was shouting orders. The bulldozers were getting closer and closer.
The masked man's grip on my arm tightened painfully.
"Let me go!"
I tried pulling away, but he didn't budge an inch.
Before I could yell again, he clamped his gloved hand over my mouth.
My scream died into a useless muffled sound.
"Mmmmffhhhh!"