I've been counting…
Every single minute that has passed since Talia died.
My guess is that it's around 11:31.
And during that time…
No one came.
No one came to look for Talia, or Iris especially.
Which is odd, honestly.
Very odd.
Why has no one looked for them?
They're dead, y'know?
Does no one care?
Is that it?
Am I the only one that cares?
Am I the only one carrying this burden?
No one cared to look, or even call.
Because I don't remember a phone ringing either.
No one has called me either.
I don't matter though, so that's besides the point.
Chrono stood up slowly, Talia's body cradled gently in his arms. The lower half of his pants, from the knees down, was soaked through with blood that had long since grown cold and sticky. His legs trembled beneath him. He had been sitting beside Talia's body for hours, unmoving, as if the weight of her stillness had anchored him to the floor. When he finally rose, a wave of dizziness crashed over him. The world tilted dangerously; if he didn't focus, he would collapse at any second.
He scanned his surroundings with hollow, dejected eyes, searching for something he knew wasn't there. His gaze drifted to Iris's lifeless form. The blood that had once flowed freely from her wounds had dried into dark, crusty trails, leaving a bitter, metallic taste in the back of Chrono's throat. The silence around her felt heavier than death itself.
He looked back down at Talia, his jaw tightening until it ached.
This really is my burden to bear…
No one else's.
But… How is this…
"How is this fair at all…?" Chrono asked aloud. His voice was shaky and low, as if he wasn't trying to wake Talia up.
"No, it's completely fair. It's… this is all my fault. Of course it is. Why… why would I expect someone to come? Who do I think I am?"
"Who am I to judge no one coming anyway? No one caring? Where the hell did I get all this ego? I think I'm the victim here. I'm no victim. I'm just a cold-blooded murderer."
"I could've avoided all of this. All of this could've been prevented. Talia, Iris… they could've been alive right now if I'd just thought about the situation a little harder…"
"May too. I just don't think… I don't think hard enough. I'm an idiot. A big idiot."
Chrono forced a smile—a fragile, shaky thing that barely reached his eyes. His hands trembled beneath Talia's body. "I kept telling myself that giving May the book was the most logical thing to do. No, it wasn't. I keep saying that so I wouldn't feel as guilty, so I could keep moving forward. I was just lying to myself."
"Honestly, it was just stupid. Utterly ridiculous! Why… Why did I ever think that was the right thing to do?"
Tears began to drip from Chrono's eyes, falling onto Talia's lifeless face like soft, silent rain. "Yeah… hand a mysterious book created by a deity to an innocent girl, simply because she allowed you to look through some books. That's just so logical…"
"Ignorance isn't an excuse either… Based on the information… no, using common sense would've told me that wasn't a good idea. But I just couldn't see that. Why couldn't I see that?"
"No… I did. I did see the danger. I hesitated and yet… I handed it to her anyway. I handed the book to her even when I thought about the situation."
"Even though I considered it dangerous…"
"I still…"
Chrono lowered his forehead to Talia's, pressing their skin together as if he could somehow breathe life back into her. Tears flowed freely down his face now, carving hot trails across his cheeks and onto hers. The weight of everything—the guilt, the regret, the unbearable finality—pressed down on his chest until every breath felt like shards of glass in his lungs. His shoulders shook with silent sobs he tried desperately to contain. "I'm sorry," he whispered, voice cracking. "I really am. May, Talia, Iris. I really am…"
"Sorry isn't enough."
An unknown voice rang out, sharp and clear, causing Chrono to snap his head up, eyes wide as he frantically searched for its source.
But…
There was no one.
There was nothing.
What the hell was that…?
Chrono's tears halted in shock as he spun in place, heart hammering, scanning every shadow and corner.
It's almost like… that voice was inside of my head.
No, that's impossible. I heard it just like I'd hear other voices.
But… it sounded like it was… everywhere.
Suddenly, a deafening hum erupted from all directions at once. It vibrated through the air, through the floor, through his very bones. Chrono gasped and clutched his head with one hand, the other still desperately holding Talia close. A sharp groan of pain escaped him as the sound drilled deeper, growing louder, closer, more menacing with every passing second.
The hum pulsed like a living threat, wrapping around him, squeezing. Danger screamed in every nerve. Without thinking, Chrono broke into a run, clutching Talia's body tightly to his chest. He had no idea where he was going or what he was running from, only that staying still meant certain doom.
But no matter how fast his legs carried him, the hum did not fade. If anything, it swelled—louder, more deafening, relentless—chasing him into the unknown.
Chrono arrived at an area that would normally be bustling with life, even at this hour. Yet now, an unnatural silence hung over the streets like a suffocating blanket. No voices. No footsteps. No distant traffic. Nothing but the sound of his own breathing and Talia's limp body shifting in his arms.
What the hell...?
Then it hit him. A smell.
His stomach immediately twisted.
It was the metallic scent of blood—a smell he had become far too familiar with over the past several hours. But this was different. Stronger. Older. Mixed with something far worse.
Rot. Decay. The sickening stench of flesh left too long under the sun.
Chrono froze.
He blinked.
The empty street vanished.
In its place stood a nightmarish landscape of death.
Corpses littered every inch of the surrounding area, piled atop one another in grotesque heaps that stretched across the street like macabre hills. Some bodies were little more than shredded remains, their ribcages split open and exposed like broken cages. Long strands of intestines spilled from torn stomachs, draping across the pavement in glistening coils. Pools of thick, dark blood had congealed beneath them, staining the ground black.
Others had begun to rot.
Bloated skin bulged unnaturally from their bodies, stretched tight and discolored with sickly shades of green and purple. Faces had swollen beyond recognition. Empty eye sockets stared into nothingness while jaws hung loose, exposing rows of yellowing teeth.
Flies buzzed in dense swarms around the dead, crawling through open wounds and disappearing into ruptured flesh. Maggots writhed within exposed organs, squirming through cavities where human lives had once existed.
One corpse appeared to have been dragged across the ground, leaving behind a long trail of blood, flesh, and fragments of skin. Another was missing its lower half entirely, its exposed spine protruding from a mangled mass of tissue.
It was less a massacre and more a slaughterhouse.
A monument built from human suffering.
Chrono's vision blurred.
His stomach violently lurched.
A wave of nausea crashed through him so suddenly that he nearly dropped Talia.
"No..." His legs trembled.
"No, no, no..."
Clamping a hand over his mouth, Chrono turned sharply away from the horrific scene. The moment he did, he vomited onto the pavement. Hot bile burned his throat as his body convulsed again and again, desperately trying to expel the horror his eyes had forced upon it.
Even after emptying his stomach, the smell remained. The blood, the rot, the decaying flesh. It clung to the air and crawled into his lungs with every breath.
Tears blurred Chrono's vision. "Is... is this all my fault?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "No way... What is this? What the hell actually is this?!"
His words vanished into the oppressive silence.
Why is this happening?
None of this makes sense.
None of it.
His mind raced desperately for an explanation, only to slam into the same impossible wall over and over again.
Is this why nobody came looking for Talia and Iris?
Because they're dead?
Because everyone's dead?
The thought made his stomach twist.
But how?
Why?
Chrono's eyes widened in dawning, soul-crushing horror. A wave of nausea slammed into him as the thick, coppery reek of blood and ruptured bowels flooded his nostrils. He wiped off his mouth and took off, running as fast as possible.
Mom and dad…
Does that mean they're…
No… why would they be dead.
The streets became a blur around him.
Everywhere he looked there were bodies.
More bodies.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
The pavement had disappeared beneath layers of dried blood. Severed limbs lay scattered across sidewalks like discarded trash. Hands reached from piles of corpses, frozen in their final moments of desperation. Some bodies appeared fused together beneath mountains of decaying flesh, their skin peeling away in wet strips that exposed yellow fat and crimson muscle underneath.
Flies swarmed so densely that entire sections of the street seemed to move.
The air vibrated with their buzzing.
The smell was unbearable.
Blood.
Rot.
Decay.
Death.
It coated the inside of his throat.
The entire city looked less like a place people lived and more like a mass grave created by something that hated humanity itself.
He reached his house and practically threw himself through the front door. The door swung open with a loud bang. Chrono stumbled inside and quickly lowered Talia's small, cold body on the couch, her limp form leaving a faint smear of blood on the cushions, and crept toward the staircase.
The front door was unlocked…
That's already not a good sign.
But… It's also way too quiet.
No, that's natural, yeah.
It's late so they're probably sleeping.
Each creaking step up the stairs felt like walking deeper into a tomb. The metallic stench of blood grew thicker, heavier, until it coated his tongue and made his stomach twist again. By the time he reached his parents' bedroom door, the odor was unbearable. His hand hovered over the knob, shaking so badly he could barely control it. He already knew what waited on the other side. He knew he should never open that door.
"Open the door."
It was the same voice from the park, only now it sounded closer. Much closer, as if someone were whispering directly into his ear.
Chrono spun around swiftly to see a little girl standing there.
Her short black hair was matted with clotted blood and bits of scalp. The plain white sleeveless dress clung to her small frame, soaked through with dark fluids that dripped steadily onto the floor in thick, syrupy plops. Her tanned skin had split open in dozens of places, revealing glistening yellow fat and raw muscle underneath. Deep bruises bloomed across her body like rotten fruit. Her left knee was shattered, the white bone jutting out at a sickening angle, surrounded by a writhing carpet of fat, white maggots that burrowed greedily into the decaying meat, squirming and popping as they fed.
Worse were her eyes. One hung from the socket by a thin, bloody optic nerve, swaying like a grotesque pendulum with every tiny movement, the pupil still somehow fixed on him. The other eye was a sunken, collapsed mess leaking thick, pus-like fluid down her cheek. Her lips had been torn away, exposing small teeth smeared with dried gore.
Chrono recoiled with a guttural howl of pure revulsion, his legs giving out as he slammed backward against his parents' bedroom door. He slid down to the floor, hyperventilating so violently his chest felt like it would burst. His vision swam with black spots. The stench rolling off the girl—putrid flesh, infected wounds, and the foul sweetness of maggot-infested rot—made him retch again, dry-heaving as strings of bile burned his throat.
He wiped his mouth with a trembling hand, his voice cracking with horror and disgust. "What the… who… who are you? What are you!?"
The girl smiled—or did something resembling a smile. She placed her hands behind her back playfully and skipped toward him. Each step sent more blood dripping onto the floor.
"Who I am or what I am doesn't matter. I'm already dead." Her voice was robotic, lifeless, but carried the playfulness of a child behind it. Like a robot trying to imitate one.
"Was it your voice I heard… in the park?"
"That's right."
"What… what do you want? What do you want from me? What's even going on?" Chrono asked desperately, forcing the words out.
"What I want?" The girl repeated. "I want you to open the door." Her voice dropped dangerously low. It sent a shiver down Chrono's spine.
Chrono flinched, his eyes widening with shock and fear. He stood up slowly, his legs shaking as if the ground itself were trembling beneath him. "There's no way I'm opening that door."
"Why not?" she asked with childish curiosity.
"My parents… they're dead. I can't. I can't take it anymore. I don't… I don't want to see another body, especially my parents'." Chrono admitted, his voice breaking into a half-sob as he clutched his chest, the weight of endless loss pressing down on him like a collapsing sky.
"Really?"
"Yes… no matter what. I can't open the door. I don't know if I could bear it." Chrono clutched his chest tighter, pleading, his heart fracturing with every word.
There was a pause—a sickening, heavy pause. Silence swallowed everything except Chrono's ragged breathing and the wet, writhing sounds of maggots feasting on her ruined flesh.
Then she spoke again. "How do you know it's your parents in that room?" She asked with her usual curiosity, but there was a hint of something darker, colder, behind those words.
"Huh?"
"You won't know unless you open that door. It could be anyone in that room. And there could be no one in there at all. You can't say for sure."
Chrono grit his teeth and slammed his hand against the door in anger. "Don't give me that crap! I won't know for sure if I don't open the door? Who else could possibly be in this room, tell me? It doesn't matter… it doesn't matter if my parents are in there or not. What I do know is something terrible is inside that room. And I don't want to see…" Chrono said, his voice thick with a mixture of anger and overwhelming sorrow, his chest heaving.
"But… I want to see what's behind the door." She said, sounding a bit disappointed.
"By all means… you can look yourself. But I won't. I can't… I just can't." Chrono fell to the floor again, pressing his face against his knees as he clutched his hair, as if it were the only thing still anchoring him to any semblance of sanity.
"You can't?"
"Yeah… that's right."
There was another sickening pause before she spoke again. Her voice dropped dangerously low. "Do you think you have a choice?"
Chrono looked up, confused. "Huh…?"
"You… you are the cause of all of this. Do you think you can just avoid all of this?"
"I caused all of this…?" Chrono repeated.
"No… no, you're wrong… I didn't… I didn't do any of this! It's impossible. How could I have done all this!?"
"Stop trying to run away from your sin. Are you unable to understand the concept of accountability? Your actions are the reason every single human being no longer lives."
"You have no choice in the matter. You're guilty and this is your punishment. You are the reason your parents and everyone else are dead and you dare not open the door because you can't bear it? You're a liar and deceiver. No better than the devil himself."
"Stop! Just stop! Shut up! There's no way… there's no way this is all my fault. Stop lying to me!"
"I'm… no better than the devil? I'm a liar and deceiver? Don't give me that crap! I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't do any of this. It couldn't be me. It can't be me. I didn't kill them… I didn't, I didn't kill them…"
"Do you honestly believe what you're saying?" She asked, stepping closer.
Chrono wanted to say something, but no words came out. He had blamed himself for the deaths of May, Talia, and Iris, but the idea of carrying the weight of countless other bodies crushed something deep inside him. His feelings were a storm of conflict and despair; he didn't know how to respond.
"I… I did all of that? My actions caused all of… this? That… there's just no way. Why? Why… why am I being treated like this? Do you seriously believe I caused all of this!? That I killed everyone! It's not me, I'm telling you… why do you think it's me!?"
"Because everyone is dead. And out of everyone, you're the only one alive. You're hardly injured. There's no one that could survive this. Everyone is dead, and yet you're roaming around freely."
"And that's why… that's why you think I killed everyone? Because I just so happened to be alive? Is that what you think!?"
"No." She said bluntly, catching Chrono off guard.
"I know because I've seen everything, from the start. I saw you. I've seen all your actions, decisions, and what ultimately led up to this point. Everything you've done is the reason this catastrophe happened. There's no one that could have possibly done this but you."
"But… I…"
"So open the door. It is the only way your sins can be forgiven."
Chrono got up again slowly, turning to the door. His hand hovered over the doorknob, visibly trembling. The guilt that had been building inside him now felt like a black ocean threatening to drown him completely.
"I… I didn't do this… why do you keep accusing me?" Chrono asked, squeezing the doorknob until his knuckles turned white.
"I saw you." The girl replied simply.
"Who the hell even are you? You saw me? How did you see? What did you see…?" Chrono turned back around to face her, his hands balling into fists at his sides.
"Answer me! Who the hell are you!? Why the hell should I believe you? That I did all this?" Chrono placed his hand on his chest. "I know for certain… that I didn't kill all those people. So answer me… what did you see…?"
The girl smiled eerily, letting out a spine-chilling laugh. In the blink of an eye, all her injuries vanished, as if they had never been there, causing Chrono's eyes to widen in shock.
"Do you honestly believe I'd just tell you that? How arrogant you are. Just open the door, Zeph Chrono, and everything will be fine…"
Chrono grit his teeth and slammed his hand against the door again. "Of course it wouldn't be that easy… I didn't expect an answer. But what you just did gave me the confirmation I needed." Chrono banged his hand against the door once more. "No matter what… I'll never open this door."
Her smile faltered, and she was visibly annoyed before her expression returned to its usual robotic demeanor. "Fine then. You leave me no choice."
And then suddenly…
Everything went dark.
When Chrono finally clawed his way back to consciousness, the first thing that assaulted him was the thick, foul, metallic stench of blood—so heavy and clotted it felt like it was coating his lungs with every ragged breath. His hand flew up instinctively to cover his mouth and nose, but it was too late. The taste was already on his tongue.
His eyes widened in pure, animal terror as he realized where he was. He was inside the room. The one place he had sworn, with every fiber of his being, that he would never enter.
What lay before him was a slaughterhouse vision straight from hell.
The entire bedroom had been baptized in his parents' blood. It wasn't just splattered—it was painted. Arterial sprays arced violently across the walls in long, drying crimson fans. The floor was a slick, congealing lake of it, sticky and tacky under his shoes, mixed with darker clumps of fecal matter and yellowish fat. The bed, once a place of safety, was now a butcher's block soaked through to the mattress, which squelched wetly as he shifted in horror. Every piece of furniture dripped. The ceiling even had droplets slowly falling like obscene rain.
On the bed lay what remained of his mother.
She had been savagely dismembered. Her arms and legs were torn off and scattered across the room like discarded meat scraps—one arm draped over the nightstand, fingers still twitching with residual nerve spasms; a severed leg propped grotesquely against the headboard, the foot bent at an unnatural angle. Her torso was a hollowed-out ruin. Her stomach had been carved open with brutal, jagged cuts, and her intestines spilled out in glistening, purple-gray loops that draped over the edge of the bed and pooled onto the floor in steaming heaps. They still glistened wetly, some sections ruptured and leaking foul brown sludge. Her eye sockets were empty black pits—gouged out violently, with strings of optic nerve and clotted gore dangling from the ragged holes. Her mouth hung open in a silent, eternal scream, tongue half-bitten through.
Chrono's stomach convulsed. He slowly, unwillingly, turned his head toward the corner of the room.
His father sat slumped against the wall, legs splayed out in a pool of his own blood. His neck had been sliced open so deeply that the white vertebrae of his spine gleamed wetly through the gaping wound. His head lolled at a sickening angle, barely attached by flaps of skin and muscle. His eyes—wide, bloodshot, and bulging—stared straight at Chrono in frozen accusation. His stomach had been ripped open from sternum to groin, the abdominal cavity completely eviscerated. Thick ropes of intestine had uncoiled onto his lap and the floor, some of them burst open, releasing the rancid stench of half-digested food and feces. Flies were already beginning to swarm, crawling greedily over the exposed organs and laying eggs in the warm, wet meat.
"No… no… what the HELL is this!?" What the hell actually is this!? Chrono choked out, his voice a broken whimper that quickly rose into a guttural howl. "Why!? How am I even in here—how the hell did I get inside this room!?"
He grabbed fistfuls of his own hair, yanking hard enough to rip some strands free, his nails digging bloody crescents into his scalp. A blood-curdling scream tore out of him—raw, primal, and endless—as waves of revulsion and grief slammed through his body. He doubled over and vomited violently, hot bile and stomach acid splattering across the blood-soaked floor and mixing with his parents' remains. His chest heaved, eyes streaming tears that burned like fire, while the stench of death and his own puke filled his nose and throat until he thought he would drown in it.
There was no escape. The nightmare had swallowed him whole.
"Why…? Why is this happening to me, damn it!?" Chrono screamed, pounding his fist against the bloody floor. He rose slowly, turning toward the door on unsteady legs. "Why can't… why can't something just kill me already? I can't even get the release of death!"
He shuffled over to the door, hunched and trembling, barely holding himself together. Every breath felt like it scraped against broken glass in his lungs. He placed his hand on the doorknob and twisted.
The door didn't budge.
His eyes widened in disbelief.
The door can only be locked from the inside, and the lock isn't even turned.
Chrono pushed harder, shoulder slamming against the wood, but it refused to move.
"Something is blocking the door…" he muttered, voice thick with barely contained frustration and despair. He whipped his head toward the window and sprinted toward it, desperation fueling his exhausted limbs.
He shoved the window open and leaped out, breaking into a frantic sprint. His chest heaved violently, tears streaming down his face in hot, endless trails. The world blurred around him—houses, streets, memories—all fading into irrelevance.
If nothing is going to kill me, then I'll just take it into my own hands…
The beach is close. I'll just drown myself…
The decision settled over him like a final, heavy shroud. He ran harder, panting with every agonizing step. Each stride burned through his muscles, his legs threatening to give out, yet the beach never seemed to get any closer. The distance stretched endlessly, mocking him, as if the world itself conspired to prolong his suffering.
Then, without warning, the deafening hum returned—deeper, more resonant, vibrating through his bones and into his soul. Grey fog crept in from all directions at once, thick and unnatural, swallowing the edges of his vision. His eyes widened in fresh horror.
What the hell!?
The fog advanced like a living entity, cold and suffocating, curling around his ankles and rising higher with every heartbeat. The hum swelled louder, oppressive, pressing in from every side until it filled his skull. The air grew heavy, damp, and stale, carrying the faint, sickly-sweet scent of decay. Shapes twisted within the mist—indistinct forms that almost looked like bodies, reaching out before dissolving back into nothingness. The world beyond the fog vanished completely. He could no longer see the path ahead, nor the ground beneath his feet. Everything dissolved into an endless, featureless grey void.
The hum grew deafening, a relentless drone that drowned out even his own ragged breathing. And beneath it, faint at first but growing clearer, came a soft, eerie chuckle—the playful, childish laugh of the girl, echoing all around him as if the fog itself were alive with her presence.
Chrono pushed forward desperately, but the fog only thickened, clinging to him like wet grave clothes. It pressed against his skin, seeped into his lungs, and blurred the line between reality and nightmare. Time lost meaning. Every step felt heavier, slower, as though the mist were draining what little life remained in him. The chuckle surrounded him now, circling, closing in—intimate and mocking, a final judgment wrapped in innocence.
He looked ahead in horror. There she stood, the same little girl, smiling serenely with her hands placed behind her back. Even as he ran with everything he had left, the distance between them never closed. She remained just out of reach, her form untouched by the swirling chaos, a fixed point in the encroaching oblivion. Her smile held no warmth—only quiet, inevitable certainty.
The hum reached a crescendo, vibrating through every fiber of his being, and the fog swallowed the last traces of light. A profound, crushing finality settled over him, as if the universe itself had drawn its last breath and left him alone in the dark.
And suddenly, everything went black.
She was the last thing he saw.