He watched the scene unfold through the cracked screen of his phone, the grainy feed flickering like a dying heartbeat.
Yurika stood there in the suffocating gloom of the abandoned warehouse, her silhouette a fragile slash against the encroaching shadows that writhed like living tar along the walls.
The "ghost"—that pathetic remnant of Shaun, twisted and half-remembered—hovered before her, its form a beaten body of flesh:
eyes bloodshot red and dark heavy bags, it had the body of an attractive young boy who looked like an old rag in those bloodied clothes.
Just by looking at him, you could feel screams that weren't sound but a vibration that clawed at the soul.
Most people would have shattered by now, their minds fracturing into wet screams and fetal curls.
But Yurika? No, she didn't run. She planted her feet, chin lifted, and spat defiance into the thing's face like it was just another bully in a back-alley brawl.
His lips curled into a jagged smirk, teeth bared too wide, fingers twitching over the phone as if debating whether to crush it—or her—right then.
The thrill slithered up his spine, electric and insatiable, a high that made his blood hum with the promise of carnage.
"Intriguing," he rasped to the empty air, voice a low, fractured purr that echoed his fracturing sanity.
He snapped the screen off with a flick of his thumb, the device skittering into his pocket like a trapped insect.
His boots scraped against the rain-slick pavement as he prowled forward, the night swallowing his footsteps in a symphony of dripping decay.
Can't carve her open yet, his mind gibbered, a carnival of razor-edged thoughts spinning wild. She's too fucking fun—dancing on the edge, begging for the fall without even knowing it.
But if she squeals to the wrong ears or If she whispers one filthy little secret, The idea ignited something feral in his chest, a laugh bubbling up like bile.
Then ill simply kill her, just like the others.
His pace was a predator's saunter, unhurried, each step a calculated caress against the city's underbelly. He could already taste it—the copper tang of her fear, the symphony of her breaking.
A chuckle clawed its way out, ragged and unhinged, swallowed by the fog that reeked of rot and regret.
"Its too damn entertaining to gut just yet," he muttered to the shadows, the words twisting into a hiss.
"But if she snitches... fuck, it'll be a slaughter." His smirk warped into something obscene, eyes gleaming with the fevered gleam of a man who'd long ago traded his soul for sharper knives.
Dangerous? No. Deranged. A promise etched in blood.
"We wouldn't want that mess, would we, darling?" He halted abruptly, nostrils flaring as if scenting prey on the wind.
His head snapped toward the void between crumbling buildings, where the darkness pulsed like an open wound.
The smirk evaporated, replaced by a mask of cold, surgical focus. "Ah... you."
He went statue-still, the air around him thickening with the metallic tang of impending violence. He knew that voice—oily, laced with the same rot that festered in his own veins.
Knew the presence, too: a silhouette slinking from the murk, tall and hooded, eyes glinting like shattered glass under the stutter of a dying streetlamp.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he growled, the words dripping venom, his body coiling like a spring-loaded trap. Tense. Hungry.
His fingers flexed, itching for the familiar weight of something sharp.
The hooded man emerged fully into the sickly yellow haze—all sharp angles and shadowed menace, his coat billowing like funeral shrouds.
Those blade-eyes locked on, unblinking, promising graves.
"Im just Waiting," the figure murmured, the word a blade dragged slow across stone, heavy with the weight of unspoken atrocities.
"For you to make a mistake."
He didn't twitch. Didn't breathe. But his stance morphed—subtle, seismic—a serpent uncoiling, venom beading at the fangs. Recognition sparked, dark and mutual, two monsters sniffing the air for weakness.
"Still looking for entertainment ? Pathetic," he drawled, the words a curse wrapped in silk, laced with the promise of evisceration.
The hooded man advanced, deliberate, one hand vanishing into his coat—not casual, but primed for the kill. Fingers ghosting over hidden steel, or worse.
"Im not here for your games," he said, voice a grave-whisper, flat with the finality of fresh-dug earth.
"Im here for the conflict you always make."
His grin sliced back, feral and fractured, teeth flashing white in the gloom.
"What if i stop causing problem?"
"Then," the hooded man shot back, no pause, no mercy, "you rot with the others. Carved. Forgotten."
Silence crashed down like a guillotine.
The wind howled through the alley, carrying whispers of distant screams—real ones, from the night before, or the ones yet to come.
And then
He laughed.
It started low, a guttural rumble from the pit of his gut, building to a jagged cackle that split the night like breaking bones. Unhinged. Unafraid. The sound of a man who'd stared into the abyss and fucked it raw.
"Come at me, then," he snarled, eyes wild with ecstatic fire. "Let's paint the walls red. Yours first."
Power wasn't strength, not to him. It was the rush of the rip—the wet tear of flesh yielding, the symphony of agony as the world unraveled at your feet.
It was knowing you'd light the match and dance in the inferno.
The air between them curdled, thick as congealing blood, electric with the prelude to slaughter.
Two abominations circling, breaths syncing in a macabre waltz, neither yielding an inch to the other's madness.
But then
A soft beep, innocuous as a heartbeat stuttering.
His gaze flicked to his phone, the glow cutting through the dark like a scalpel.
Yurika's name pulsed on the screen, bold and accusatory.
[Yurika: "Where is he? ."]
He devoured the words once, savouring the bite.
Twice, letting them sink claws into his thrill-starved brain. And slowly, oh so slowly, the grin clawed back—manic, mesmerized, a crescent of madness.
"She's burrowing," he breathed, voice a reverent rasp, almost awed by her audacity.
"Little rabbit with teeth, gnawing at the roots of hell itself."
The hooded man's eyes tracked the glow, narrowing to slits as the message seared into view.
His face twisted—fury etching lines like fresh scars.
"She's a cancervfor sure then," the figure spat, the word a guttural snarl that echoed off the bricks.
"Aren't you letting her a little too close."
He locked eyes with the hooded man, a laugh dying on his tongue—not from fear, but from the sheer delight of the insult. He could've ripped the other's throat out right there, just for the sport.
"Too close?" The phrase was a whip-crack, laced with venomous glee.
"Please.She's the star of the show. Twisting in the noose I tied myself."
The hooded man lunged a step closer, boots grinding gravel like grinding bones, his aura a storm of barely leashed apocalypse.
"You're drowning in your own greed," he hissed. "She sees too much. What if she screams it to the world? What if she reports and drags us all into the light?"
His eyes turned to chips of obsidian, hard and unyielding. He pocketed the phone with deliberate slowness, the motion a taunt.
His voice dropped to a silken menace, threaded with the giggle of the damned.
"Tch, your one to talk."
A pause, pregnant with promised violence.
" I'll just kill her, easy right?."
But she'll choke on curiosity first. Swallow it whole. And when it burns her from the inside? Mine to watch."
The hooded man's lip curled in disgust, a sneer that bared teeth yellowed by old blood.
"Sure of that, are you? Or just jerking off to your delusions?"
His face didn't crack, but the air around him did—rippling with the psychic static of his unraveling control.
"Delusions?" He leaned in, close enough to taste the other's breath, the challenge a live wire sparking between them.
His voice was a lover's whisper, dipped in acid. "No . Certainty. The kind that ends with you in pieces if you push."
He tilted his head, eyes alight with unholy mirth, the question dripping like honeyed poison.
"Afraid yet? Or do I need to show you?"