But Ricky was past being afraid of them. This place- the cathedral, the headquarters, and now the dungeon was far worse. It was the terrible weight of what awaited him that had his breath caught in his throat.
The demons stepped aside with a slow, deliberate motion, allowing him entry into the depths. He walked through the threshold, the sound of his boots muted against the cold stone beneath him, swallowed by the thick, oppressive air. The further he went, the darker and colder it became.
The stench of chemicals, blood, and something sour and wrong hung in the air. The low light flickering from weak torches cast twisted shadows against the stone. He could hear faint cries—muffled at first, but growing louder as they moved deeper. The sounds of chains clinking, of people whimpering in pain, echoed through the halls.
Ricky's stomach churned as he stepped into the first room. The floor was cold and slick with something that wasn't water. His eyes flicked over the scene in front of him. The room was filled with rows of tables, each one with a figure strapped to it- people, or what was left of them. Doctors in blood-stained white coats moved between the tables with grim efficiency. Amputation saws, sharp knives, and needles filled the air with the scent of iron and chemicals. The patients on the tables were of all ages, from children no older than ten to the elderly, their eyes wide with fear or worse, empty of it. The whole place was a darkened nightmare that seemed to go on forever, the sounds of whispered prayers and muffled screams filling the corners of Ricky's mind.
He couldn't help but look away as a doctor moved to a child on the far table, lifting a saw with a practiced hand. The child whimpered, but there was no escape. The doctor's eyes didn't flinch as they worked, cutting through flesh and bone. Ricky's stomach twisted, but he forced himself to stay silent. He had seen enough horror for one lifetime, but this was a new level of evil.
In the far corner of the room, another doctor was injecting a sickly green liquid into a frail old woman. She screamed, her body writhing in pain, but they just held her down. They were used to this. The whole place felt like a tomb of suffering.
In another corner, Ricky noticed a man with his jaw broken and blood dripping from the wound. He was silent now, his lips sealed tight. He must have screamed before, but they had broken him physically and mentally.
The doctors seemed unfazed by the agony around them. To them, this was just another day in their research, another step toward their unholy goals. They treated their victims like lab rats, cutting, testing, and torturing. Then Ricky's eyes fell on another child who looked around the age of 9, strapped to a table. The child barely had time to scream before a rough hand seized his hair, yanking his head backward. His eyes widened in terror, but the grip on his scalp held firm, locking him in place.
A split second later, a fist crashed into his jaw with brutal force, an upward strike, fast and calculated. A sickening crack split the air. His mouth snapped open unnaturally, a shuddering gasp escaping as his jawbone fractured under the sheer impact. Pain flooded his senses, white-hot and unbearable. His breath came in strangled gasps, his mouth hanging uselessly, no longer able to form words, only wet, broken gurgles. Blood pooled along his lips, a string of saliva dripping from his slackened jaw. He tried to move it, to scream, but the pain shot through his skull like a hammer to glass.
The doctor in the blood-stained coat didn't let go. Instead, he gripped the ruined jaw with one hand, fingers pressing deep into the broken bone. With a sharp, violent twist, he wrenched it sideways, dislocating it completely. The child's body convulsed, his muffled cries reduced to pathetic, choked whimpers. Then, he crumpled to the floor, trembling, jaw hanging at an unnatural angle, broken beyond repair. The room fell into silence except for his ragged, agonized breaths.
Ricky's breath quickened as he backed away from the scene, his mind spinning in a whirlwind of horror and disbelief. This was what happened to those who dared to uncover the past.
"This is your future," the interrogator's voice echoed in his mind. "This is what happens to those who cross Gehenis."
Ricky swallowed hard, his body shaking. The nightmare wasn't over. He wasn't sure how long he'd last down here, but one thing was certain: He had to find a way out before he became another nameless victim in the dark, forgotten corners of this hellish place.
Ricky's heart pounded in his chest, his breath quick and shallow, his body trembling in sheer terror as the white-cloaked men forced him onto one of the cold, metallic tables. The leather straps bit into his wrists and ankles as they bound him tightly, the rough material cutting into his skin. He tried to struggle, but it was no use; their strength was unnatural, and the fear that gripped him made it nearly impossible to fight back.
His eyes blurred with panic as he glanced around, seeing the cruel faces of the doctors in their bloodstained white coats, moving about the room with an eerie calm. The sickening smell of chemicals filled the air, thick and metallic, mingling with the dampness of the dungeon.
One of the doctors stepped forward, holding a syringe filled with a strange, translucent liquid. Ricky's stomach twisted, and he recoiled instinctively, but they held him down, forcing the needle into the vein of his arm. The liquid burned as it coursed through his bloodstream, a searing heat spreading through his body, numbing his senses. His vision began to blur, but through the haze, he saw the glint of a sharp instrument in the hands of another doctor.
"No... no, please..." Ricky gasped, his voice trembling with fear. "Please, don't—"
But the words were meaningless here. The doctor didn't listen. With a cold, detached expression, he picked up a gleaming amputation saw. The sound of it cutting through the air was deafening. Ricky's breath hitched as a wave of nausea crashed over him, but it was nothing compared to what came next. The doctor pressed the blade against Ricky's right arm, and with a sudden, brutal force, the saw began its work.
It wasn't like anything Ricky had ever felt before. The pain exploded through his body, a white-hot agony that consumed him whole. The teeth of the saw dug into his flesh, scraping bone with every agonizing movement. Blood poured from the stump of his arm, hot and sticky, staining the table beneath him. Ricky screamed—no, shrieked—but the sound was muffled by the drugs flooding his system. The pain intensified, suffocating him, drowning him in a sea of unrelenting torment.
The drug in his veins did nothing to ease the pain. If anything, it made it worse, sharpening every sensation until Ricky was sure his body was on the verge of shattering. He could feel the saw bite deeper, could feel the bone crack and splinter beneath the weight of the blade. Every inch of his arm felt like it was being torn apart.
His vision wavered, black spots dancing in the corners of his eyes, but the pain was still there, agonizing and overwhelming. He could feel his own blood soaking into the table, slick and warm, but the horror of it all seemed distant, like he was detached from his own body. And then, with one final pull of the saw, his arm was severed. Ricky's body jerked violently, his muscles spasming in pure, uncontrollable agony as the pain hit its peak. His scream was raw, primal, torn from somewhere deep inside him, the kind of scream that came from the very core of his soul.
He was no longer sure of what was real. His mind was a fractured mess of screams, of blood, of pain, and the heavy darkness creeping in from the edges of his vision. His right arm was gone, and in its place, only a mangled, bloody stump remained. In his haze of agony, the only thing Ricky could think of was the suffering that seemed endless, the agony that wouldn't stop. He could feel the life draining from him, the pain like a bottomless well, threatening to swallow him whole. At that moment, with his chest heaving and the world spinning, he barely managed to choke out the words:
"Kill me."
That sounds more like a nightmare than a story- a ridiculous story. If I hadn't witnessed all the brutal things in this city, I wouldn't have believed him. Such a thought flashed through Shin's mind. A sweat drop appeared on his forehead as he asked, "Grim wardens? I think I have seen them before. I saw them cut off a child's limb on the street in front of all the vampires when we tried to escape. It was a terrifying scene".
"Yeah, they truly are terrifying. They are the guardians who protect the vampires. At least, that's what we are told. But they also have another job. You see, all the children in Akuro grow up hearing one phrase- 'If you don't behave nicely, the wardens will take you away. ' It's a saying parents tell their children, but it turns out it's actually true. At night, if anyone were to get out of their house or do something out of order, they would first get one of their limbs cut off and then be taken to somewhere unknown." Ricky explained.
Miyu thought for a second, trying to put together pieces of different information. She suddenly frowned. "Get one of their limbs cut off and then taken to somewhere unknown?. Hmm…isn't there a similarity? When you were taken to the underground basement of the cathedral, accused of a crime, you got one of your limbs cut off, too. And there were many like you who went through the same process in that underground experiment room. And then you got transported here, in this prison cell. Could it be that all of the people who get their limbs cut off, either in the underground experiment lab of the cathedral or on the streets by the grim wardens, all eventually get transported here- in this cell for some unknown experiment?"
"That's certainly a possibility…" Ricky fell into thought.
The room became silent for a few seconds before Shin spoke up. "You said that the war only ended 7 years ago, right?" he turned to Ricky.
"Yes, what about it?"
"If the war only ended 7 years ago after raging on for 15 years, that wouldn't really make a lot of sense," Shin added
Ricky posed another question, puzzled, "And why is that?"
"Because when the man named Kaitou Kurozawa came to ask my mom to work in this bar, my mom mentioned that our grandmother used to work at the house of a noble, which I assume is a vampire, and that would have been a long time ago. Even if we take the 15 years the wars went on, it still would have been too early. The timelines don't match," said Shin.
"True! Why didn't I think of that?" Ricky was surprised by his own blindness. "Could it be that they are hiding the true date of the war or maybe the war never happened at all? No, that can't be right. The remains of the war still exist to this day, which makes me lean toward the first possib-" Just as Ricky was about to finish his sentence, he heard a sound.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The sound of footsteps! Someone is coming! Ricky tensed up.