The rain outside had gone silent, as if even the weather refused to acknowledge this place.

Inside the dim room, Monna knelt beside her duffel bag, unzipping it with calm precision.  

Metal clinks filled the air—tools, vials, strange instruments with glowing cores.  

Ed watched in uneasy fascination. “You carry all that around?”

She smirked faintly. “Rule one of the field: never rely on doors to stay where they belong.”

From the bag, she pulled out a matte-black hammer, its head etched with glowing blue sigils. The handle hummed faintly with contained kinetic energy.  

A tag on its side read: **ARC Tactical Device #47 — Shock Impactor.**

Monna rolled her shoulders. “Alright, rookie. Let’s see if this place bleeds.”

Before Ed could answer, she swung the hammer hard against the wall.  

The impact shook the entire room—dust fell from the ceiling, a hairline crack splintered across the plaster.  

For a heartbeat, Ed dared to hope.

Then, before his eyes, the crack began to close.  

The plaster knitted itself together like skin healing over a wound.

Monna stepped back, breathing heavily, and wiped sweat from her brow. “Huh. Just like I thought.”

She gave a bitter laugh. “The Inn’s walls aren’t walls. They’re part of its nervous system.”

Ed stared. “So what do we do? Just wait? Hope it lets us out?”

Monna turned toward him, that sharp grin returning. “You think I came unprepared for a living building?”

She rummaged deeper into her pack and produced a small, disc-shaped device—metallic, no bigger than a fist, covered in rotating rings of light.

“What is that?” Ed asked.

“Prototype from the A.R.C. labs,” she said, crouching by the wall. “Phase Disruptor. Works like a localized dimensional implosion. Designed to punch holes through reinforced containment chambers—or anything pretending to be solid reality.”

Ed blinked. “You’re saying it’s… stronger than explosives?”

Monna gave a short nod. “Stronger, cleaner, and possibly suicidal. But hey, you wanted a way out, didn’t you?”

She knelt beside the wall, adjusting the device’s dials until the rings aligned. The hum that filled the room was deep, almost like the heartbeat of the Inn itself answering back.

Ed felt the floor tremble beneath them.  

“Monna,” he said nervously, “maybe we should—”

“Relax, rookie,” she interrupted with a grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “First lesson in this job—if something wants to eat you, bite it first.”

She pressed the activator.  

The device began to glow, lines of blue-white energy crawling across the wall like veins of lightning.

The air rippled, thickened. The smell of ozone filled the room.  

The wall shuddered violently—cracks expanding this time, deep and real, as if something inside was fighting to hold it together.

Then the lights flickered.  

The sound came—low, guttural, echoing through the hallways.  

A voice. The same one that had whispered before, now louder.

*“Do not leave.”*

The floorboards warped. The lamp above them shattered.  

Monna yelled, “Get down!”

Ed dove behind the bed as the Phase Disruptor released a concussive blast—a wave of distortion that bent the air itself.  

For a moment, the wall dissolved into blinding white.

Then—silence.

Ed coughed through the haze. “Monna…?”

“I’m here,” she answered, voice strained.  

He turned to see her crouched near the smoking crater where the wall had been. Beyond it—nothing but mist and blackness, swirling like a slow-moving ocean.

Monna stood, brushing soot from her jacket. “Well… that’s either outside or a very convincing illusion.”

Ed approached cautiously, peering into the void. The mist shifted like liquid, reflecting faint silhouettes—corridors, doors, faces.

“It’s… moving,” he whispered.

“Of course it is,” Monna said, pocketing the spent device. “That wasn’t a wall—it was the Inn’s skin. We just tore a hole in its body.”

As if on cue, the floorboards trembled again—harder this time.  

The walls began to pulse with dim red light, like veins under skin.

Monna’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, rookie. Change of plan.”

“What plan?”

“Run.”

Before he could reply, the room groaned—the entire structure bending, alive and furious.

They bolted for the hallway, the air behind them twisting as the wound in the wall began to close.  

From deep within the Inn came a sound like a thousand whispering voices, overlapping in anguish and rage.

*“You are guests. Guests don’t leave.”*

Monna didn’t look back. “Then they picked the wrong guests.”

And as they ran through the shifting halls, the lights above them began to melt—dripping like candle wax, illuminating the path with an eerie, blood-colored glow.