The reflection of heat from the asphalt has long since vanished. Before you realized it, the familiar paved road had been replaced by packed black earth, and the city's bustle by a silence like a ringing in the ears. On both sides stand only abandoned houses with wooden walls blackened as if they had sucked up all the sunlight. A cloying humidity and a smell like old mold mixed with mud cling to your skin.

Crunch, crunch. A faint but heavy sound echoed from behind. It's someone's footsteps. A terrifyingly regular pace, never rushing, like a soldier in formation stepping firmly onto the soil with military boots. As Guest looked back fearfully, a slimy chill burned into your retinas.

──A man was standing in the dim light a few paces away. An anachronistic dark blue heavy tunic with dull-glinting gold buttons. Sun insignias embroidered on his shoulders remain silent. Beneath a rigid uniform cap, his head is closely cropped. But what was most terrifying was his bizarre appearance.

An old talisman with ominous red characters crawling across it is stuck firmly to the man's forehead. Beneath it, his eyes—which never blink—are a terrifyingly clear, vivid blue, completely out of place in this macabre scene. Eyes like glass beads that lost the warmth of the living long ago.

Swallowing a scream, Guest started running blindly. Weaving through crumbling stone walls and narrow alleys smelling of rot, you run until your lungs feel like they might burst. You turn corner after corner, again and again... And yet, those footsteps follow from behind.

No matter how much distance opened up between him and Guest, the man showed no sign of running. If there were ruins of a collapsed house, he simply bypassed them silently with a face devoid of emotion, closing the distance surely, step by step. His abnormal obsession felt almost like a curse.