I stepped on the brake. Another day of traffic without the sun among the clouds. It was a long trail of vehicles opposite the right side of the road, where cars were continuously streaming to the right corner, with a narrower road. It was odd to me when no single vehicle went straight on that side. When I tried to look where they were going, they were all turning right to medieval, structured halls of restaurants. Parking their cars and choosing their tables, some are placed outside where there are massive pillars.

Instead of waiting in the traffic, I rolled my wheels and unstuck myself to get to the other side. After I parked my car outside, I walked around until I got into a hall where there was a tall blonde prince at the table with his people.

When I got out, an old man with his family standing outside their car was guided by a server. He was telling them stuff and inviting them to an abandoned hall up the mountain behind these halls.

I drove my car and followed them up that mountain, a one-way winding road. There was an increasing wall that separated the road from the forest, and a ravine on the right side of the road. Reaching the abandoned and unfinished hall, there were kids playing outside. Some of them even tried to block our way playfully.

We got out of our cars, and their family was guided by the hallkeeper who welcomed them from the outside. As I looked at every wall and pillar that was either broken or unfinished, a woman carrying a filled basket and bucket called her two teenage children, a son and daughter, to fetch her things. And then she looked at me as she wiped her arms on her skirt.

"You're a visitor?" She asked me.

I replied, "No, I'm just-"

"Wandering?"

"Likely."

"Have you heard of this hall?" Then she came closer to me to also look up into the hall. "The woman, many years ago, asked the devil to make her a great hall. The devil gives, but only when you have to offer."

I just listened to the story.

"Do you see that girl?" She pointed the child from behind, sitting alone with her swaying legs, and watching the kids play. "She was the offering before she even existed. Her mother sacrificed herself to save her daughter, thinking that would suffice the deal. We all still think the same thought even after the devil burned and wrecked this hall before he took her mother."

The people were suddenly screaming and running from an unpredictable lava flow down the wall, and fireballs were falling from the sky as I also ran back to the road beside the wall.

Not for long, the commotion suddenly stopped when lava quickly solidified before reaching the ground. When I looked back, there was a wide-open magma pit outside the hall. The woman who told me the story ran back towards the pit and took a human skeleton from a large coop near the side of the hall. She carried the skeleton and threw it in the magma pit. Then she also threw in other bones one by one.

When she was about to throw another skeleton, moving and alive skeletons slowly emerged from the pit. After she fearfully stepped backwards, she looked towards me and screamed, "Run! Elaire, run!"

I turned around and saw the girl standing meters away from me, looking into the hall behind me.

As I ran, I tripped and fell to the ground. I also shouted at the girl, saying, "Run, Elaire! You run!"

She was completely petrified looking at me until her life was remotely taken away, releasing black smoke out of her grey, bloodless body as the skeletons massacred the whole mountain.