The two moved cautiously. They held hands and ran through the sticky, wet corridor.

Gjorn gritted his teeth and endured the pain in his legs. He couldn’t bear to show he was hurting. Delilah kept up well, not falling behind.

“… We’ll be able to get out, right?”

Delilah whispered, glancing at the dark corridor. Gjorn desperately grasped at hope.

“We must get out. Only then can we hear news about our families…”

“Ah, that’s right. Gjorn’s family would have all entered the Papal Palace too. Don’t worry. As soon as we get out, you’ll quickly hear news. I’m sure they’re all safe.”

Delilah gently comforted him. It was an extremely vague expectation, but right now they needed to think only positive thoughts. They didn’t want to disturb their minds with bad anxieties.

“I suppose so.”

Nodding in agreement, Gjorn turned to look at Delilah.

“… What about you?”

“Well, I don’t have any other family.”

“Will you go back to the grand theater?”

“I wonder, will the theater be safe?”

“What about your hometown?”

“I don’t know.”

Delilah hesitated, then lowered her voice.

“I’ve… never been particularly lucky.”

Gjorn quietly gazed at Delilah’s face, which had sunk into darkness.

“… Delilah. After you left, there was something I always wanted to ask you if I met you again. Even if it was just for one day, did you ever truly love me?”

Delilah answered without hesitation.

“Of course! Actually, I really loved you very much. You loved me unconditionally, Gjorn.”

After finishing what could have sounded somewhat urgent, she took a short breath. Gjorn’s face, immersed in dizziness, was unreadable.

Delilah composed her voice to a calmer tone, to give more credibility.

“What I said when I left you then was never sincere. I always felt out of place in the Sel Wio mansion, and I thought I would be kicked out someday. So I needed a way to survive, and the conditions His Eminence Kirion offered were attractive. I always had to think about my future, so I made choices that couldn’t prioritize emotions. My life has always been controlled by others. … You know that.”

Her confession, stripped of coquetry, contained gentle regret. Delilah smiled sadly.

“Seeing how things turned out, I felt so blind. I was foolish. If I could go back to the past, I would never choose His Eminence Kirion. I gave up love to survive in this painful world, but I ended up losing both my future and my love.”

Gjorn looked at the quiet night draped over each window in the corridor.

“Then, Delilah.”

“Yes.”

“When we get out of here… shall we live together? Just the two of us, without worrying about Sel Wio or anything else.”

Delilah’s eyes widened. Gjorn waited for Delilah’s answer while rubbing his throbbing calf.

“… Alright.”

A very faint answer brushed Gjorn’s ear. The whisper was so soft that he couldn’t hear it properly.

“Alright.”

This time he heard it clearly. Delilah hugged Gjorn’s waist and buried her face in his chest. Gjorn raised his arms and embraced Delilah’s back.

They filled their heads with joyful hope. It was okay if they couldn’t enjoy great wealth. Gjorn could teach children, and Delilah could sing.

As young and healthy youths, taking care of themselves shouldn’t be too difficult.

They just need to reduce their spending. If they find a small house, they won’t need much furniture to fill it. They’ll do housework together, naturally have children, and living like that, someday… someday.

Someday.

The conversation they were having, soft as a song, suddenly stopped.

The night crouching on the windowsill stirred. Gjorn and Delilah looked at each other’s faces.

Their spines tingled.

“… Uh-oh.”

It wasn’t the night.

Beyond the shoulders of the stretching night, the sunset that hadn’t yet set was soaking in red. Even that light was as thick as blood.

“Aah!”

“Run!”

They screamed without anyone going first. Gjorn and Delilah dashed across the corridor. But evil spirits lurking at each window began to poke their heads out one after another.

There was nowhere to escape. Front and back, up and down were all occupied by evil spirits.

They waited with their mouths wide open for the two to fall into the trap in the middle.

“We have to run away!”

“Where can we go!”

“Anywhere! Please do something! Gjorn, please save me!”

“I can’t run anymore…”

Gjorn shook his head.

“My legs hurt too much…”

“No!”

Now Gjorn was starting to fall behind. Delilah panicked and tried to pull her hand out of his.

It’s a sorry thing to say, but if Gjorn became bait to lure the evil spirits, she might survive.

But Gjorn still had a bit of strength left in his grip. He didn’t let go of Delilah’s hand as she tried to abandon him and run away again.

“Delilah. You said you love me. We can’t escape from here anyway. If we could have gotten out, we would have done so already. Let’s just stay together. If we’re together, we won’t be lonely anywhere.”

“No, what nonsense! I want to live! Aah!”

The evil spirits came swooping in, cleaving the air. One of them bit Gjorn’s ankle.

As Gjorn fell, Delilah also tumbled to the floor. She tried to wave her hands to drive away the evil spirits, but it had little effect.

“Let go, let go!”

Delilah struggled. But even as he was being bitten by the evil spirits, Gjorn persistently didn’t let her go.

Although Gjorn, being larger in build, first caught the attention of the evil spirits, they remembered that there was another prey right beside him.

Delilah bit the squirming hand and kicked Gjorn, who was desperately clinging to her.

A fog of death settled thickly. The fading colors of sunset stung their eyes.

* * *

“… Did you just hear something?”

Satin stood with her back pressed against the wall, side by side with Vitalis.

“I-I heard it too.”

It was a cry close to a ghostly wail. As if Kirion and the evil spirits weren’t enough, now there were ghost sounds too — it was truly maddening. A chill ran down their spines with icy fingers.

“C-c-could it be a person?”

Maybe someone was badly hurt and crying.

That seemed the most likely possibility.

“Well, just a moment.”

Satin carefully poked her head out to look around. Startled, Vitalis tried to stop her.

“I-I-I’ll look.”

He couldn’t keep letting a pregnant woman see such terrible sights. He held his breath and stretched his neck out long in the direction of the crying.

“Help me… Help me… Help me…”

A voice frozen in terror scattered faintly.

It was definitely a person. Somewhat relieved, Vitalis sharpened his vision and spotted a figure stumbling down the corridor in the distance.

When moonlight filtering in intermittently illuminated the face, Vitalis gasped in shock.

Messy red hair, arms and legs dripping with blood, a tattered slip torn beyond recognition.

The ghost wandering the Papal Palace, covered in blood and staggering, was Delilah.

It was amazing he could recognize her, as she looked completely different. She was no different from the form of a ghost.

If someone saw Delilah as she was now for the first time, no one would believe she was the actress who used to secure leading roles at the grand theater.

What on earth had she been through?

From any angle, she looked like she had been tormented by evil spirits, but it was impossible to know how she had escaped from them, or what she had experienced to be wandering half out of her mind like an insane person.

“L-Lady Satin… C-close your eyes.”

“… It’s Delilah, isn’t it?”

Satin recognized Delilah’s voice too.

Having lived her whole life as an actress who acted and expressed herself, Delilah’s scream, filled with extreme emotion, sounded particularly desperate even though it didn’t echo loudly.

The echo followed Delilah’s footsteps.

“I didn’t know it would turn out like this… This isn’t what I wanted…”

Sobs lingered stickily. The two who had been holding their breath to avoid being noticed by Delilah only turned around quietly after she had completely disappeared.

Satin and Vitalis didn’t count the time. Instead, they measured their remaining strength, the distance they had to go, and their safety.

They had also seen several people who couldn’t escape and died huddled together.

When such places appeared, Vitalis tried to choose a slightly roundabout path so that Satin wouldn’t have to see the horrific sights.

Even though he didn’t have the ability to protect Satin with force, Satin was grateful to Vitalis for trying to help her as much as he could within his capabilities.

“… I hear the sound of swords clashing.”

Near the stairs leading down to the central hall, Satin perked up her ears with a start.

“C-could the Holy Knights have come in?”

A flash of color returned to Vitalis’s face. Satin gathered up the hem of her skirt. She needed light clothes to hurry her steps.

The sharp friction of metal scraping against metal was pointed. It meant the air was quivering.

Only after hurriedly rushing to the landing did Satin and Vitalis realize that if it were the knights, there would be no reason to hear the sound of metal.