Chapter 43: Tentacles

I got out of bed and walked over to the drawer beside it.

The house had already fallen quiet. At this hour, even the servants had retired to their rooms, leaving only the occasional creak of old wood and the faint ticking of the clock somewhere downstairs. I pulled the drawer open, took out my revolver, and checked it out of habit before slipping it into place.

I sighed.

’Why do I have a feeling I’m not getting any sleep tonight?’

I closed the drawer and left my room.

Moonlight spilled through the large window above the front door, stretching across the upper-floor hallway and leaving a pale patch on the wooden floor. The rest of the corridor remained dim. I walked through it without turning on any lamps.

Then my Spiritual Intuition stirred.

I stopped.

It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but there was something different about it tonight. Usually, the sensation was little more than an instinct—a vague pull in one direction, a feeling that something deserved my attention.

This time, it was persistent.

I turned my head toward the staircase.

’The servant quarters.’

I didn’t particularly want to go there.

Unfortunately, my Spiritual Intuition seemed to care very little about what I wanted.

I descended the stairs quietly, one hand resting against the railing. The lower floor was just as silent as the upper one, and after crossing the corridor, I headed toward the back of the house.

The servant quarters were separated into several rooms. The butler had his own, as did the housekeeper and the valet. The lady’s maid shared a room with the cook, while the housemaid, kitchen maid, and scullery maid shared another.

My Spiritual Intuition pulled me toward the room occupied by the lady’s maid and the cook.

The closer I got, the stronger it became.

I slowed down.

Something was wrong.

There was no sound coming from inside. That alone wasn’t strange. The cook should have been asleep, and the lady’s maid had no reason to be awake either.

But there was something else and I could feel it.

A faint pressure hung around the door, almost like the air itself had become heavier. It wasn’t simply an unpleasant feeling either. The aura leaking through the cracks beneath the door carried a darkness that was difficult to put into words.

It felt as though something from an abyss had been brought into the room. Something filled with demons.

I stood in front of the door and took a deep breath.

Then another.

I slowly exhaled and allowed my thoughts to settle.

I entered that state of cogitation almost instinctively, pushing aside the uneasiness and examining what I could actually perceive. There was an aura inside. It was extremely dark, but I couldn’t determine its exact nature from outside.

’Something definitely happened here.’

My hand reached for the doorknob.

Before I could touch it, my Spiritual Intuition suddenly reacted.

I turned around.

Sera was standing at the end of the corridor.

She had probably noticed the disturbance as well. Her expression was calm, though she wasn’t dressed as if she had planned to leave her room tonight. In one hand, she held three small charms.

’Purifying charms.’

I stared at them for a moment before looking back at her.

’She has Spiritual Intuition too?’

That wasn’t exactly surprising.

Her affinity was the Sun, after all but still, I hadn’t expected her to arrive so quickly.

Sera raised the three charms slightly, then gestured toward the door and then she gestured toward the side.

I understood immediately.

I moved beside the doorway.

Sera stood a short distance away, the charms held between her fingers.

Neither of us spoke.

I reached for the knob.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then I twisted it and pulled it instantly. The moment it opened, I immediately jumped backward.

A shriek came from inside.

It was so sharp that I instinctively tightened my grip around my revolver.

Sera didn’t hesitate.

She threw all three purifying charms through the open doorway.

The moment they entered the room, the paper-like charms ignited with a strange reaction.

Sizzle!

A series of sizzling sounds came from inside.

Then came voices that weren’t clear enough for me to understand what they were saying, but the sound of pain in them was unmistakable.

Sera raised her hands.

Light gathered around them.

For an instant, the corridor became almost completely white.

The radiance surrounding her hands was unlike ordinary light. It was bright and pure, carrying the feeling of something that didn’t belong in a dark servant’s quarters at all. It reminded me of the kind of light one might imagine descending from the heavens.

She aimed her hands toward the room.

A beam of light shot forward.

It crossed the corridor almost instantly and disappeared through the doorway. Then, she immediately jumped backward.

I took another step away from the room.

For a few seconds, there was silence.

Then something struck the other side of the doorway.

Bang!

The wooden frame shook.

I raised my revolver.

Another impact followed.

Bang!

This time, something pushed against the door from within.

The wood bent.

Sera’s expression finally changed.

The next instant, the door burst apart.

Tentacles shot out from the room. One slammed against the opposite wall. Another struck the floor hard enough to crack the wood. A third whipped through the doorway and stopped only a few feet from me.

I took another step back as more of them emerged.

Some were thin, while others were thick enough to look like tree trunks. A few stretched more than ten feet, curling around the walls and ceiling as though the room itself had become too small to contain whatever was inside.

Then I saw the thing they belonged to.

’The cook?’

Or what had once been our cook.

She stood—or rather, occupied—the center of the room, her entire body transformed into something monstrous. Tentacles covered her from head to foot, twisting around her limbs and extending from her body in every direction.