Herkley raised the hunting rifle, its barrel trained unwaveringly on the hidden door concealed behind the wardrobe. From beyond it came a muffled, guttural growl—a sound as though some monstrous thing had been imprisoned in the darkness for far too long. Again and again it hurled itself against its cage, each impact shaking the heavy wardrobe until the whole structure trembled, as if only one more blow would be enough to set the beast free.
He swallowed hard.
Every muscle in his body tightened.
Yet the chinchilla named Poirot seemed blissfully unaware of the looming catastrophe. It scampered wildly across the floor, darting in circles as though this were merely another game Herkley had invented.
Herkley had always been a cautious man. Ever since surviving the shipwreck and awakening to that strange, inexplicable power, his extraordinary intellect had warned him that he himself had become a danger. Thus, for years, he had remained hidden in the shadows. Everyone knew the legend of the elusive Rat King, yet almost no one had ever seen the puppeteer pulling the strings behind the curtain.
His strength had never belonged to flesh or muscle.
Even now, he hesitated. Perhaps he should escape through the secret passage while there was still time. Yet abandoning Lloyd in his current state left an unease he couldn't ignore.
Then—
The pounding ceased.
Silence descended so suddenly that it felt almost unnatural.
Into that forbidden stillness drifted an eerie melody.
A voice, rough and weathered, rose softly from behind the door, humming an ancient tune as though recalling it from the deepest reaches of memory. It was hesitant, unfamiliar—as if countless years had passed since it had last been sung. Each note carried the fragile weight of forgotten ages.
Herkley had no patience to appreciate the song.
His fingers tightened around the rifle.
The ancient melody continued, and then the door began to shake once more. Slowly, inexorably, it swung open, dragging the enormous wardrobe aside until a narrow seam of absolute darkness was revealed beneath it.
The years he had spent as a police officer kept his nerves steady even under suffocating pressure.
He stared into the black opening, every instinct poised.
If a monster emerged—
He would pull the trigger.
If Lloyd walked out instead—
He would kick him hard enough to knock some sense back into him and demand to know what insanity had possessed him.
Yet the figure who finally stepped through shattered every expectation.
It was a broken man.
He hummed that strange little song beneath his breath. Bloody scratches covered his bare upper body, while both hands were stained crimson, as though they had clawed their way through rivers of flesh. He glanced at Herkley only briefly before sinking weakly against the doorframe and sliding to the floor.
The bizarre silence lingered for a long time.
Only after the final note of the forgotten lullaby faded into nothingness did Lloyd finally speak.
"...Sorry. I frightened you."
Herkley slowly lowered the rifle.
He could feel it immediately.
Something inside Lloyd had changed.
"What happened?"
When Herkley had explored his own Memory Palace, even its darkest and cruelest recollections had stirred little more than sorrow. Never madness.
"My... my memories are wrong."
The realization struck Lloyd all at once.
Yet he said nothing of the deeper truth that had surfaced.
Fragments of the past were becoming clearer.
And among them had appeared memories that should never have belonged to him.
According to everything Lloyd had believed, he and 047 had become Medanzo Demon Hunters together and had never been separated.
Yet moments ago...
He had seen an old man.
A man named Lloyd Medici.
The same name.
...Wait.
Lloyd's pupils contracted violently.
Blood vessels spread across the whites of his eyes as his entire body began to tremble.
This time, it was different from before.
The madness was gone.
Instead, Herkley smelled something even more unsettling lingering in the air.
Fear.
Not his own.
Lloyd's.
A profound, suffocating terror unlike anything Herkley had ever witnessed.
His own heart grew cold.
What kind of truth could make Lloyd afraid?
"What the hell..."
"How could I..."
"...How could I have forgotten?"
Lloyd clutched his head with both hands.
No matter how desperately he searched, no answer surfaced.
His face twisted in agony, forcing Herkley's grip to tighten around the rifle once again.
"No..."
"...Who am I, Herkley?"
He suddenly looked up.
The question struck like lightning.
"Lloyd..."
"Lloyd Holmes."
Herkley answered cautiously.
"Right..."
"Lloyd Holmes..."
"...That name..."
"...That name was a wish."
He repeated the words over and over, mechanically, like a machine caught in an endless loop.
When he finally raised his head again—
The fear inside Herkley vanished.
Not because the danger had disappeared.
But because Lloyd's overwhelming sorrow drowned every other emotion.
He had never seen grief take such tangible form.
"I... how could I forget?"
"I can't remember anymore..."
"Herkley..."
"It was a wish."
"But I can't remember what I wished for."
Lloyd Medici.
The old man from his memories.
They shared the same name.
Lloyd was certain there had to be a connection between them.
Yet when he tried to remember why he had named himself Lloyd Holmes—
Nothing.
An endless void.
Beyond a handful of escort missions preserved in fragments, there remained no bond whatsoever between himself and that elderly man.
The wish Lloyd had clung to for so many years—
The morning star that had once pierced even the darkest heavens—
Only now did he realize it had always been intangible.
He no longer remembered the wish itself.
He couldn't remember when it had disappeared.
Or perhaps...
It had never existed at all.
Perhaps everything had been nothing more than a fantasy he had unknowingly constructed.
"No..."
"Something's wrong."
Lloyd refused to surrender.
He sifted frantically through every clue still within reach.
His memories collapsed.
Reassembled.
Collapsed again.
Broken fragments stitched together into grotesque, impossible shapes.
Only then did he discover that his entire life was riddled with holes.
Everything he believed had once existed dissolved into blank emptiness the moment he examined it closely.
The Night of the Holy Advent.
His wish.
Entire chapters of his life.
Nothing.
Every contradiction.
Every impossible inconsistency.
It was as though someone had meticulously carved away portions of his memories with a surgeon's scalpel, excising every suspicious, unknown fragment until what remained was a carefully manufactured Lloyd—
A fool living inside a fabricated past.
Then, without warning—
He laughed.
His voice came out hoarse.
The laughter was so violent it dissolved into uncontrollable coughing.
Herkley no longer knew what to feel.
He had the unmistakable sensation of being trapped in a room with a madman.
One moment Lloyd was drowning in despair.
The next, he burst into manic laughter.
Even if Lloyd hadn't completely lost his mind...
Herkley felt certain he would before long.
"I found it, Herkley!"
"I found the clue!"
Lloyd lunged forward.
His blood-soaked hands seized Herkley's collar with desperate strength.
His eyes overflowed with joy and grief at the same time.
"Yes..."
"It has to be this."
In that fleeting instant, countless thoughts had flashed through Lloyd's mind.
Like a whisper planted by fate itself, he suddenly remembered Horner—the man he had killed inside the Gap. Upon killing him, Lloyd had inherited fragments of Horner's memories.
And then...
Another figure surfaced.
Medanzo.
Or rather—
1.
The lonely ghost that wandered within his own Gap.
Even now Lloyd could no longer determine whether the 047 dwelling there was real...
Or merely another personality born from his fractured soul.
But a terrifying possibility had taken root.
And he intended to prove it.
"What clue?"
Herkley asked.
Lloyd looked straight at him.
"Tell me..."
"Can one person's memories contain another person's life?"
Herkley stiffened.
Lloyd continued thinking aloud.
According to the life he remembered, he had received the Secret Blood implantation alongside the other Demon Hunters.
By that time, Cardinal Medici had supposedly withdrawn from the world for years.
If so...
How could that old man have appeared during the implantation ceremony?
Unless...
The old man had secretly undergone another implantation himself.
And the implanted subject's memories had somehow been stitched into Lloyd's own.
If that were true...
Who had that subject been?
042?
047?
Or neither?
His memories had become hopelessly misaligned.
Lloyd could no longer distinguish which belonged to himself and which belonged to 047.
Yet for the first time...
He finally possessed a direction.
A trail worth following.
A strange smile spread across his bloodstained face once more.
This time Herkley barely reacted.
He was getting used to it.
"Herkley."
"The Memory Palace isn't completely abstract or chaotic."
"It's still built upon our understanding of reality."
Herkley frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"For example..."
"The palace itself is somewhere familiar."
"And when I open a memory..."
"I still have to twist a damn doorknob."
"And open the door."
Lloyd's voice rose with agitation.
"All of it follows the common sense we've learned in the real world."
"Even though it's nothing but a realm of consciousness, our subconscious still forces us to perform something as ordinary as opening a door."
His thoughts returned to the endlessly descending spiral staircase.
The stone steps that vanished into the abyss below.
"If you put it that way..."
"You're right."
Herkley had never considered it before.
At the very least, it proved one thing.
Lloyd hadn't completely gone insane.
He was still thinking.
Still reasoning.
"Good..."
"I've found you."
Lloyd whispered to himself before sitting back down.
A bizarre smile spread across his bloodstreaked face.
Then he searched through what remained of his clothing.
His shirt had long since been torn into worthless rags, so he stripped away the scraps entirely before fishing out a small iron case.
His cigarette case.
The previous one had been skewered and crushed during his battle against Lawrence.
Ironically, that tiny metal box had saved his life.
Otherwise...
Lawrence's sword would have pierced his chest instead.
Lloyd pressed a firm kiss against the cold metal before snapping it open.
Several cigarettes rested neatly inside.
"Want one?"
He placed one between his lips and casually tossed another toward Herkley.
"...Windshade tobacco."
Herkley had intended to ask how Lloyd could possibly feel like smoking at a time like this.
Then he caught the unmistakable scent.
Faint.
Yet impossible for his sharpened senses to miss.
"You're going back into the Memory Palace?"
he asked, concern creeping into his voice.
"Of course."
"Strike while the iron's hot."
There were no visible enemies here.
No—
The enemy was himself.
The memories buried in the deepest darkness.
"You'll lose your mind again."
"Maybe."
Lloyd lit the cigarette.
He inhaled deeply, his eyes slowly becoming unfocused.
"Herkley..."
"Don't use Windshade tobacco anymore."
"This stuff..."
"It lets you commune with the darkness."
Herkley froze.
"Knowledge from the Order?"
"Exactly."
"It causes hallucinations."
"But they're not hallucinations in the ordinary sense."
"They're more like distorted reality."
"The kind of reality humanity was never meant to perceive."
"Because we can't comprehend those things, we simply call them illusions."
He exhaled a slow stream of smoke.
"Imagine smoking it and seeing a colossal creature stretching from earth to heaven."
"You'd dismiss it as a hallucination."
"But perhaps..."
"It truly exists."
"The tobacco simply lets your consciousness connect with the darkness."
"It allows you to glimpse..."
He paused.
"Spirit Sight."
"That's what they call it."
"The deeper your connection to the darkness becomes..."
"The more impossible things you'll begin to see."
He drew another long breath.
Clouds of smoke drifted around him.
"For all we know..."
"Our meeting may have been orchestrated by that same darkness."
Herkley remained silent, unable to understand.
Lloyd continued.
"Everything touched by darkness..."
"Everything connected to it..."
"Carries a strange enchantment."
"It's like an enormous whirlpool."
"The more you learn..."
"The deeper you're pulled."
"Until eventually..."
"Everyone reaches the center."
"And drowns."
The cigarette had burned halfway down.
Lloyd's eyelids grew unbearably heavy.
Sleep seemed only a heartbeat away.
Watching him, Herkley finally asked the question that had haunted him all along.
"Is it worth it?"
He truly couldn't understand.
Lloyd was unlike any human being he had ever met.
He sought neither wealth...
Nor power...
He pursued only destruction.
The destruction of everything.
Was that really worth sacrificing everything for?
Lloyd offered no answer.
He simply closed his eyes.
His consciousness drifted into the fragile space between waking and dreaming.
When he opened them again—
The magnificent palace stood before him once more.
"Right..."
"It's built upon the common sense buried in my subconscious."
"Just as I can only walk on the ground..."
"...instead of flying."
He murmured to himself before returning to the endless spiral staircase.
Standing upon the edge of the very first stone step, Lloyd leaned slightly forward.
Below him stretched an immeasurable procession of weathered stairs descending endlessly into the abyss.
It resembled the mouth of eternity itself.
No light reached its depths.
No one could tell whether it even possessed a bottom.
After staring into it for a long while—
Lloyd smiled.
A genuine smile.
The first warmth to touch his frozen face in what felt like an eternity.
If there truly existed memories he could never bear to face...
He would have buried them deeper than anyone could ever find.
Far beneath the reach of light.
At first, Lloyd had doubted his own theory.
Now...
He no longer cared.
"That's... quite a staircase."
His voice was astonishingly light.
He peered into the endless darkness below and chuckled softly to himself.
"I wonder..."
"Can a consciousness die from falling?"
The question vanished into the abyss unanswered.
Lloyd spread his arms wide.
Without the slightest hesitation—
He surrendered his balance.
And let himself fall.
Down.
Into the endless darkness below.