With a final, earsplitting wrench, the clawed hole in the door widened. Metal screeched as a tremendous force tore it open from outside, bending the steel as though it were wax paper. Something with four heavy, rough legs thudded into the room, padding yet making a thunderous sound.

Juno's breath caught in her throat.

The stench hit her: hot, rancid and coppery. It was like the smell of dirty blood-soaked fur. She clamped a hand over her mouth, her heart pounding so hard it shook her ribs.

A paw—no, a clawed foot the size of her head—stepped into view, matted with black fur and caked with something dark and wet. It was matted with black fur and caked with something dark and wet. Another followed. The creature moved slowly, sniffing, and low growls vibrated in its throat. It lowered its enormous head inside, its nostrils flaring.

Its face was straight out of a nightmare. It was wolf-like, but more elongated and too angular, with bones jutting out like armour beneath taut skin and muscle. Jagged teeth protruded from its curling lips, and behind its matted mane, its orange eyes glowed.

It sniffed again, then stopped.

Juno froze, feeling the cold floor biting into her bare skin and sweat running down her face in trembling rivulets. She was still holding her knife, but it might as well have been made of paper. This wasn’t something she could fight. She knew it.

The beast lowered its head and sniffed towards the tray cart, then past it, then towards her.

Its breath came out in short, sharp huffs, as though it were tasting the air.

The perfume, she realized, stomach lurching. Sereph said he took it. It's smelling my scent.

The giant wolf snarled low and ragged and took another step towards the bed. The whole frame groaned under the shifting weight, the metal legs trembling as the beast circled once, and paused.

It lowered its head again, almost touching the floor.

Juno held her breath.

Its glowing eyes flicked towards the space beneath the bed.

A wet sniff and then a low growl.

Suddenly, a scream exploded from somewhere far down the corridor.

The beast's ears twitched.

It turned.

With a throaty snarl, the creature spun on its powerful legs and lunged towards the door. Tiles shattered beneath its weight. The hallway outside echoed with the sound of metal and claws, and then it was gone.

Juno remained frozen to the spot. She didn’t dare move. She didn't even dare breathe. The cold floor beneath her felt like the only thing keeping her sane.

She didn’t know what that thing was. She only knew that it had been close—too close. And it had wanted her.

Juno collapsed against the cold metal leg of the bed, trembling so violently that it was a miracle she remained upright. Her breath was sharp and uneven, each inhale slicing her lungs like glass. It was only when her vision blurred that she realised she was crying, not from terror, but from some unbearable pressure behind her eyes, as if the weight of the world had finally cracked her open.

She was still alive.

But it didn’t feel like it.

She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve and pressed her forehead against the cool bed frame, finding some grounding relief. The alarms outside still pulsed red, casting bloody flickers across the walls, but the growling had stopped. The hallway was quiet. The beast had moved on.

She needed to move and focus.

She slowly crawled out from under the bed, her legs tingling as the blood returned to them. The knife slipped in her hand.

She took a careful look around the room.

Cold light flickered overhead; the old bulbs were stuttering in time with the pulsing alarm outside. The metal table she had been strapped to gleamed dully beneath the red flashes. Everything in the room was made of steel and was either rusty or filthy. The sharp scent of antiseptic lingered in the air, unable to mask the underlying rot.

Shelves lined the back wall and were cluttered with tools that she didn't want to name: Hooks, vials and old restraints. This was no medical bay. It was a butcher's room—clinical in layout, but not in purpose.

There was a second tray beneath the table, half-hidden in shadow. She crouched down to check it, scanning for anything that might help: a scalpel, perhaps, or another blade. Nothing useful. Just rusted clamps and blood-stained gauze. Her fingers found the syringe that Sereph had intended for her. It was still full of the vile concoction that he had planned to inject her with, and she slipped it into her pocket. She closed the tray softly.

Her gaze flicked to the edge of a clipboard resting near the sink. The pages were curled and stained, the ink blurred by moisture and something darker—perhaps blood or something worse. Most of the writing had faded into illegibility, but a few scrawled lines remained stubbornly legible.

Subject: —

Observation 3.4: Scent exposure directly correlates with increased feral aggression—olfactory stimuli trigger near-incomprehensible rage.

Hypothesis: Temporary withdrawal is linked to sudden pheromone variance—the subject's predatory focus resets when she cannot locate the original scent source.

Warning: Unpredictable. She may abandon the hunt prematurely if her senses are disrupted.

The revelation hit Juno like a blade. She pressed a hand to her mouth; her heart was hammering so fiercely that she thought it might shatter her ribs.

A cold wave of fear settled over her. She’d been closer to danger than she’d ever imagined.

She backed away, her heart beating faster.

No more delays.

Juno turned towards the door—steel, reinforced and torn nearly in half. The jagged hole stared at her like an open wound. Blood smeared the tiles just beyond it. Drag marks led down the hall—something heavy and unresisting had been dragged through.

Juno inched forward and peered through the mangled doorway, the jagged hole carved by monstrous claws. She barely had to lean—there was no longer a door, only ruin and blood.

Her breath caught.

It was worse than she'd imagined.

The hallway was painted in red. Not just from the emergency lights that still flickered, casting the corridor in rhythmic pulses of crimson gloom, but from the carnage. The floor was slick with blood, pooled so thickly that it reflected the ceiling. Bodies lay everywhere, twisted into unnatural shapes and torn limb from limb. Some of the demons were soldiers, still clad in their armour, their flesh shredded beneath it. Others were barely recognisable, their remains splayed like puppets with their strings cut.

The smell hit her next, and she almost choked. Metal. Burnt flesh. It was fetid. The stench of open wounds. Things that were never meant to be exposed to air.

She stared. Frozen. This was slaughter. It wasn’t a fight. It wasn't even a massacre.

Something inside her shifted: an ache at the base of her spine, a nausea that crawled up her throat and burned behind her eyes.

She'd seen this before. Not exactly. But close enough.

The dream: The Creator. The nightmare that had haunted her sleep and plagued her waking thoughts.

It wasn't just a threat or cruel manipulation. It had been a prophecy. A glimpse into a reality that she hadn't understood. One that was now unfolding around her.

In that dream, these halls had also been littered with bodies—but not strangers.

Her friends. And herself.

Gin slumped against a wall, blood pouring from the gaping wound across his chest. His clothes were soaked, and his expression was serene.

Yves's body was twisted in agony. His chest cavity was hollowed out, his ribs were cracked wide open like wings and his heart was missing — it had been devoured.

Ain was lying face down, his tail limp, with blood pooling beneath his tiny, still form. His voice silenced.

Her own corpse lay nearby, a knife fallen beside her. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, and a claw mark raked down her torso, her ribs shattered.

Back then, it had felt surreal. One of the Creator's twisted mind games. But now? Now it felt like a memory. A terrible inevitability. A timeline waiting to happen.

Her stomach turned. Her knees weakened. She recoiled from the doorway as though she had been scalded, collapsing against the cold metal bedstead.

She couldn't breathe. She couldn’t think.

That future was real. It had always been real. The Creator hadn’t lied. He had shown her the truth, wrapped in horror and cruelty, but truth nonetheless. This was the path that awaited her if she failed.

For a moment, a single helpless moment, she wished he was there.

Not out of trust. Definitely not affection.

But because a part of her—the small, cracked part that still clung to something deeper—ached for direction. For clarity. For someone to tell her what to do.

Someone like him.

The thought sickened her.

She clenched her teeth, trying to crush the feeling down. It didn't belong to her. It didn’t feel like her. But it pulsed anyway, like an echo in her chest—an instinctive ancient yearning..

No. No. Not him.

He was a monster. A manipulator. He had laughed while showing her those corpses. Had mocked her pain.

She hated him.

But somehow, she could still feel the tether. Invisible, like a thread drawn tight across her soul, binding something unnamed inside her to that shadowed presence.

Why? Why?

She shook her head violently, trying to process the massacre. Her thoughts spun—and landed on Sereph.

He was nowhere in sight. She searched the wreckage for his coat, a strand of his long golden hair, a glimpse of those curved horns—anything.

Nothing.

The memory of him returned unbidden: looming over her with that cruel smile, dismissing her fear with casual arrogance. Trust me, I'm the only monster you need to worry about in this place. He'd been so confident, so sure of his own supremacy.

He'd been wrong.

Still, as she stared at the blood-soaked floor, something twisted in her stomach. Not relief—not the satisfaction she'd expected to feel at his possible demise.

He was human once.

That whisper echoed inside her, soft as a breath, cruel as a knife.

Sereph had once been human. He had flesh and a heart, and he was perhaps capable of kindness, before whatever broke him. She remembered the distant, nostalgic quality of his voice as he told her about Gin, his friend who had chosen lies over truth and affection over loyalty.

Had that betrayal really broken him so completely? Or had it simply provided the excuse he needed to become monstrous?

Look what his betrayal created, he said, as if his cruelty were someone else's fault. As if he hadn't chosen to become a monster.

But, standing in the aftermath of real horror and surrounded by genuine victims, Juno felt something shift inside her. Whatever pain had twisted Sereph into what he was now, it didn't matter. Not anymore. Because, ultimately, he'd chosen to strap people down and hurt them. He'd chosen to become the very thing that had probably destroyed him in the first place.

Before he twisted himself into something sharp and sadistic. Before he stopped seeing people and started seeing specimens.

And now?

She didn't know what he was. Not anymore.

Was he dead? Had the beast torn him to pieces and left them scattered in a dark corner of this facility? Had his arrogance finally met its match?