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The fog still filled the streets.
It wasn’t as oppressive as before, and it looked like this cursed mist was fighting a losing battle against the rays of the sun. But like a cornered predator, it wanted to sink his poisonous fangs in you one last time.
And still Marcoh couldn’t drop his guard.
Maybe it was the result of three straight days of living in a nightmare where every shadow was very much real and was aiming for your throat. But no matter how tired his body was, how much his step sagged, his eyes still darted from one place to the other. Ready for any hidden foe.
Though the boxer wondered if he had enough strength to make a fist anymore.
His younger companion, on the other hand, appeared almost relaxed.
Marina walked a few steps ahead, hands clasped behind her neck as if she were out for a casual stroll. It was an exact copy of how she walked all these past days, a relaxed posture that pretended that she wasn’t scared shitless of this place.
Still, he respected it. Even false courage in a place like this demanded a frightening amount of real one.
But of course that was before, now there wasn’t a single sign of fear in her steps.
His tired eyes watched her for a bit. A pristine dress without a single tear, perfectly styled pigtails slightly bouncing up and down with her every step…he shook his head.
Still not the time.
"...are you okay?" The moment the words left his mouth he saw Marina flinch slightly.
Marcoh wasn’t one to start conversations. Hearing his voice cut through the empty streets must have startled her. Whether the reaction was genuine or rehearsed, he couldn’t tell.
"What do you mean?" She slowed her pace to match his. Their different strides betrayed their way of thinking—one wanting this over as fast as possible, the other carefully scanning every shadow just to be safe. He had already lost too many people.
“Seeing your hometown like this,” he continued. “Ruined. It’s… got to hurt, right?”
For a moment, they only stared at one another, both trying to analyze the other's real intention. And Marina was the first to push her eyes aside.
“Sad?” Marina turned her gaze toward the warped remains of the streets, a crooked smile tugging at her lips. “Honestly, this is an improvement.”
She laughed, though the sound was weighed down by something bitter.
“No people staring from their windows like you’re some walking disease. No backhanded comments when you mess up one of their thousand traditions no one even remembers.” Her voice sharpened. “If anything, whatever’s happening now is just showing this town’s true face.”
There was authentic bile in her words.
“They deserve this..” Marina said quietly. “We—” She stopped herself. “…You guys. Don’t.” Her expression hardened with conviction. “Don’t doubt for a second they’d feel any pity if this happened anywhere else.” She paused for a moment as if catching her breath. “There are no good people here, not now, not before.”
Marcoh stayed silent. Weighting her words.
“Marina and Levi came from here,” he said. “...they were good kids.” A sentimental tone slightly broke through his voice.
"Of course, the ex-soldier heroin addict and the perverted crossdresser. Truly, the finest this town had to offer."
He exhaled. Marcoh had only known Marina for a short time, but he didn’t have much doubt that those were indeed her true feelings.
Of course that only made what’s about to happen way worse for him.
After that neither he nor Marina felt like talking anymore. So he stared at the tower, dominating the landscape of the city just like before, but now it seemed smaller, more fragile, like it was just a crumbling building and not the center of a nightmare.
With eyes still searching for threats his brain unwillingly made him recall the events of a few hours ago.
Marcoh descended the tower one step at a time.
His body moved without him. Legs lifting, feet landing, joints screaming of exhaustion. but he wasn’t listening to his body. He wasn’t even listening to his own brain. He felt hollow, more shell than flesh, his thoughts refusing to analyze what he had just seen.
The plaza waited below.
Rotting bodies carpeted the stone, twisted into shapes that no longer resembled people. The air was thick, wet with decay. The rays of sun didn’t do much to alleviate the macabre scene, just elevated the rotten atmosphere.
Then…
Clap. Clap.
The sound cut through the silence.
At first he couldn’t see it. But the more he descended, the more the figure gained detail, the more the sound of clapping intensified.
Between the corpses stood a girl.
Clap. Clap.
She was alone. Clean. Upright. Applauding.
“Congratulations” she said. A smile decorating her face.
Her hands kept moving. The sound echoed off the dead bodies, amplified a hundred times by the silence of an empty city.
Marcoh knew her. Of course he did. They had fought together. And with their other companions they had traveled through this infernal place.
He killed her too.
But he wasn’t really looking at Marina.
Clap. Clap.
Something rested at her side.
A head.
Severed. Pale. Still.
Its eyes were open.
They were his.
Clap. Clap.
The head stared up at him with the dull, glassy focus of something that no longer needed to blink. His mouth hung slightly open, frozen in an expression Marcoh didn’t remember making.
The girl’s applause slowed. Then stopped.
“Can you take me with you?” she asked. Her voice was gentle. Then she picked up Marcoh’s severed head and held it to him with a smile. “This is a gift of good will.”
And then Marcoh collapsed.
He touched the fresh bandages under his dirty clothes. Clumsy put together by Marina while he was passed out. But better than anything. Honestly he doubted he had the strength to put them himself.
When he saw that Marina had stopped he realized that they had arrived.
The library stood in front of them.
“Thanks for agreeing to come here, the train ride would be a pain without something to read.”
Even though this place wasn’t spared from the ruin of the city, the shelves were still almost full. It seemed that monsters didn’t care about literature “Want me to grab you something?” she asked the moment they stepped inside. The stale air of ink and old papers was a pleasant substitution to the rot outside.
“Not much of a reader.”
“Picture book, then.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “We could both use it.”
She slipped past him before he could protest. Both of them trying to not to step in the books littering the dusty floor.
Marcoh reached for a chair, knees threatening to give out beneath him. The exhaustion had long since stopped asking nicely for him to relax and now was threatening to take his whole body out again. His brain palpitated more than his heart.
Marina drifted toward the bookshelves. Fresh and full of energy. She wondered for a moment and picked one at random.
“What does this one say?” she asked, holding up the cover for him to read.
Marcoh didn’t look at the book right away. His eyes fixed on the feminine hand holding it instead.
His own were ruined, knuckles split and swollen, scars that refused to close. Much like the rest of his body. He had fought bare handed against abominations until their otherworldly filth had leeched into his pores.
Her hand, by contrast, was flawless.
Not a cut. Not a bruise. Every nail perfectly shaped, pale and smooth as porcelain. Not the hand of someone who had fought for three days and nights. Not the hand of a fellow survivor.
Rage flared in his chest, then burned itself out just as quickly. There wasn’t enough of him left to hold onto it.
Marcoh stopped thinking and focused on the cover. "...Hat and cape. Dressing guide for the perfect gentleman."
Before he finished saying the title she had already tossed it aside. It hit the floor with a dull thud, indistinguishable from all the others scattered across the filthy boards.
A small smile tugged at Marcoh’s mouth. The reason why all the other books were on the floor was probably because of his previous teammate.
"...Can you read?" He asked.
“Not yet. Soon though.” A simple response. “But I can still tell which covers feel right.” Whatever that meant.
Another book. Then another. Her hands moved with steady efficiency, plucking volumes from the shelves and discarding them after a passing glance. He didn’t feel bad about the books, whatever knowledge the town people seeked to keep in them was probably better destroyed and burned.
“She’d never admit it,” Marina went on, “but she liked the sappy romance novels you know.” Her hands never slowed. “Funny, isn’t it? She hid the stories about valiant knights stealing princesses away from evil kingdoms behind guides on which torture methods pleased the gods most.”
She wasn't even looking at them anymore. Just picking, throwing, and her hand already reaching for the next one. Like a toddler throwing a tantrum but without a single bit of emotion behind her actions.
Marcoh watched the torrent of books with indifference.
Then her hands suddenly stopped. Her whole body freezing. "Are you going to kill me too?"
Too.
That wasn't fair. Only a single word and it hit him like a hammer. It wasn’t even accusatory. There was no fear or any emotion behind it.
“No.” He lied.
"Good." It seems that was truly enough for her. She turned back to the shelves as if the question had never mattered.
That single accusation woke him up a bit. He suddenly remembered why he’d agree to go on this little trip.
To make a decision. Or at least get some answers.
So he began questioning "...Are the others alive?."
"Which ones?" A strange response. But Marcoh knew the meaning behind it.
"The ones like you."
“Hard to say. We weren’t as close as your group.” Her tone was even, almost bored. “Saw that Olivia was running with all her might in the forest and impaled herself on some spike pit.”
No pause. No reaction.
“As for Levi, he died in the sewers.” A faint shrug. “I pity him, we all have it hard, but the one he chose barely interacted with anyone. Unlike us he stayed as a mindless beast.”
She selected another book, but this time her hand lingered. Instead of dropping it, she set it carefully at her side.
“And Ossa was dead set on going back to his country. Poor guy, his people will probably notice right away and kill him too.”
Then she looked at Marcoh.
Whatever lay behind her eyes didn’t belong to the girl he remembered.
“That’s why I can’t return to the Vatican,” she said quietly. “They would know what I am. And what comes after that…” She shook her head once. “That’s worse than dying.” At least that’s something they had both in common.
She held his gaze for a heartbeat longer than necessary, then turned back to the shelves and resumed her search, as methodical and empty as before. “All the others were killed or have already run away. We are scared of this town as much as you.”
Her hand stopped for a moment as she suddenly remembered something. She wasn’t used to talking about her own memories. “Oh right. Yours I killed myself.” Marina said with a deadpan tone. “Don’t want another you running around right?”
That explained the ‘gift’ she handed him before. Marcoh didn’t really care. It was just monsters killing monsters.
He continued.
“Where did you come from?”
“Me? Prehevil.” Marcoh stared at her. “Just joking.” That didn’t make it better. “I truly don’t know.” And honestly he believed her. Or didn’t care enough.
But before he could ask anything else, Marina spoke first. "Want to know how Marina died?"
Marcoh froze at her words. But let her speak.
"She knew about moonscorch. And she knew she was showing signs. So she ran and ran away. And hid herself. Not fleeing from the moon—no, she knew that it was over for her. But hiding from you all."
The creature's voice was steady now, matter-of-fact.
"She didn't have a single friend, you know? Not in this city and not in the Vatican."
She paused, staring at nothing. Exploring memories that weren't hers. “ But in this fucked up situation she managed to bond with people who were just as screwed as her. And for the first time in her tragic life, she was now scared shitless about getting others hurt more than her own survival.”
"After she transformed.” It continued. “Our connection severed. If it makes you feel better, she was in all intents and purposes dead when you fought her." The creature's voice dropped lower. Like analyzing the events of a movie she had just watched. "Imagine telling her that after all of that she was going to end up killing Levi. And that you would be the one to finish her off. A tragic ending for a tragic life."
Like a cold shower, Marcoh relived her every word.
The memories clicked into place—fragmented pieces he'd been too exhausted to connect before. Marina's absence during that final night. How they'd found her, or what had been her, was already too far gone. How he'd had to—
His hands clenched into fists, knuckles screaming in protest.
"She chose to die alone," the creature continued, "rather than risk hurting any of you. That was her last decision. The last thing I copied from her."
The library felt smaller suddenly. Suffocating.
Marcoh's throat tightened. He'd thought she'd just gotten separated. Lost in the chaos. He'd blamed himself for not finding her sooner, for not being able to save a single kid.
But she'd hidden on purpose.
She was the one protecting them.
"Why are you telling me this?" His voice came out rougher than intended.
The doppelganger looked at him with those borrowed eyes—Marina's eyes. Forgetting entirely about the shelves behind her. A thick book in her hand was barely resisting her grip.
“You wanted to know, right? Why am I doing this? Why I’m here right now, knowing full well you can kill me if you want. Instead of running away like the others.”
Marcoh couldn't deny it.
She turned the book over in her hands, fingers tightening around its spine. For a moment she just stared at it, as if searching for words in its worn leather cover.
"Because I inherited something I don't understand," she said finally. "Her memories. Her feelings. Her last thoughts before the connection broke." Her voice dropped lower. "And it's driving me insane."
"Isn't it a funny joke?" She said softly.
The thick, leather-bound book in her hands folded in on itself. The spine twisted, collapsing beneath a grip that didn’t belong to such small fingers.
"I thought I was the lucky one." She continued. The voice now shifting pitch with her every word. "The more she talked under Rher's light, the more I knew about her, the more human I became." Something like a laugh slipped out of her mouth, stretched a little too wide to be comfortable. "And when she was with you all she talked and talked. Before the others even knew which hole to scream from, I already had pigtails and was pretending to read. But how wrong I was."
The mask of the girl slipped.
Not dramatically—just enough. Her face still resembled Marina’s, but something beneath it strained forward. Shifting like a memory of a face you can’t recall.
Her hands rose to her head.
Fingers pressed hard into her scalp. Nails sank through skin, vanishing as if bone were only a suggestion. Her body trembled, vibrating with restrained force.
“If she weren’t dead, she’d find it hilarious.” she said, breath hitching. “A monster whose only purpose is to pretend to be someone else—ending up wearing the skin of someone who spent her whole life rejecting herself.”
A guttural laugh left her mouth. Breaking through the library to the street outside.
"Did you know she cried on her birthday when her voice dropped? After that, she didn’t speak for months. And mirrors? She hates them. Barely able to look at herself in one while putting a sloppy make up on.”
Its mouth twitched. Moved by a madness from beyond this world. “I could fix it all! Become what she always wanted. No dick. No balls. No need for baggy clothes to hide away her male body.”
The laugh stopped. Her whole monstrous body froze. As quickly as the madness came it went away.
"But then I wouldn't be her right?" She lowered her hands.
For the first time, she looked down at herself.
At the shape she was wearing. The skin she had borrowed. The body she had built was now more deformed than ever.
“If I change it,” she said slowly, as if testing each word for truth, “then I’m rejecting what she was.”
Her fingers dug into her dress, bunching the fabric in her fists. It wasn't real, just like her hair, just like her face. All formed from the same otherworldly mass.
“But that’s what she did,” she whispered. “She rejected it. She refused her own body. She tore herself apart just to become something else.”
Her breathing grew uneven.
“She chose to change,” the creature said. “And I was born to copy.” A pause. “How can I make those coexist?!.”
Her voice trembled—not with rage, but with something closer to mourning.
“I want what she had at the end of her life” she admitted. “That bond. That self satisfaction. That moment where she cared more about others than herself. In a few instances before dying, the Changeling Soul fully accepted herself, she was truly content with what she was.” Her hands trembled. “I thought I could experience it if I saw you again, I could become that perfect version of her if I interacted with the last person alive she ever cared about.”
She was like a month obsessed with a flame that would kill it. Silence swallowed the room.
“But it won’t mean anything, will it?” she said finally. “Because I’m not her.”
Marcoh stared at the being sprawled across the library floor for a long time.
It didn’t look much different from the corpses rotting outside.
And he had decided.
The choice had been made the moment he’d seen it standing in the plaza, wearing his dead teammate’s face. Every step toward the library had only hardened that resolve. This thing was a parasite—nothing more than a mockery wearing a familiar face.
He pushed himself up from the chair. His joints screamed, but the exhaustion pulled back just enough to let him stand. For the first time in hours, his body listened.
Marcoh had never thought of himself as a good person.
Not now. Not before any of this.
For three days he had killed monsters, people, things in between. Crushed them with his bare hands. Watched his team die one by one while he stood there useless, too weak, too slow, or simply too human. What difference would one more corpse make? What was one more enemy pretending to be someone he cared about?
Yes. He was ready.
Ready to put down one last monster.
He stepped forward.
Then again.
Up close, it barely looked like Marina anymore. The resemblance had stretched thin, warped by whatever lived underneath. And then he saw it.
Resignation.
Not defiance. Not fear. Just quiet acceptance. He doubted it would even try to defend itself if he decided to end its life.
He’d seen that expression before. Too many times. On kids in the slums who had already given up, long before the world finished them off. It wasn’t practiced. It wasn’t borrowed from someone else’s memories.
It was real.
Not Marina’s feelings.
The creature’s.
For an instant, his sister’s face flashed through his mind—wearing that same dead look. His hands began to tremble. He stared down at them. Bloodstained. Shaking. When did they get so dirty?
Even with an empty stomach he wanted to puke. Wanted to throw away the poison eating him from inside.
What the hell was he doing?
Deciding who deserved to die—when had that become his role?
The realization hit him like cold water.
This city had dragged him into it. The fog. The tower. The constant killing. Step by step, it had turned survival into instinct and instinct into cruelty. And he had almost let it finish the job.
Like waking from a nightmare mid-scream, Marcoh came back to himself.
He nearly let this shithole win.
“…Get up,” he said.
The words felt strange in his mouth.
The creature hesitated, as if it hadn’t understood. Then, slowly, clumsily, it pushed itself upright. Its movements were unsure—like someone relearning how to exist inside their own body.
Tears streamed down its face without it seeming to know why.
Marcoh looked at her.
Not Marina.
Not a monster.
Just a kid.
A horribly, impossibly fucked-up kid he had almost killed.
A memory surfaced—himself, far too young, raising his sister. Questions he’d never known how to answer. Where’s mom? Where’s dad? And like the idiot he still apparently was, he’d always done the same thing.
He reached out and patted her head.
Awkward. Gentle. A lie wrapped in warmth.
“It’ll be okay,” he said, empty words not even a kid would believe..
“That doesn’t help,” she whispered.
“I know,” Marcoh replied.
And when he realized that he was doing it again he put his hand back quickly. Dirt and blood had stained her hair now. Dust clung to her dress.
Good.
She looked less untouched.
More real.
Wordlessly. He gathered the small stack of books she’d chosen and headed for the door. Another unsure set of footsteps behind him. Sunlight poured in, harsh and blinding. For the first time since he’d arrived, he welcomed it.
“I’m not calling you Marina” he said.
“…okay” she replied quietly. “I don’t feel like calling myself that either.”
The strong light swallowed her expression, leaving only the silhouette of a stranger beside him.
Against the will of the gods, two souls still managed to leave Prehevil alive.