My eyes were beginning to burn from staring at the map lines and the rows of the residential registry.
No matter how hard I looked for an obvious connection between the victims, the motive kept eluding me.
But destiny did not give me the time to finish my deductions.
Suddenly, a familiar ruckus erupted outside.
Panicked screams rose from the main street, shattering the heavy torpor of the day.
Another corpse had just been discovered.
I bolted upright, my heart pounding wildly against my ribs.
I turned to call my partner, but my voice vanished into the emptiness of the room.
Alya was gone.
Her cot was empty, and her black blade was missing.
A wave of anxiety washed over my mind, but I didn’t have a single second to lose.
I grabbed my gear and dashed toward the crime scene.
Upon arriving, the shock was brutal.
The victim was none other than the farmer I had spoken with just hours before.
His body lay in the middle of his property, horribly mutilated, rendered nearly unrecognizable by the sheer violence of the Calamity’s assault.
The sheriff was waiting for me near the corpse, his face pale and his hands trembling.
The moment he spotted me, he approached with hurried steps and whispered in a low voice:
“It was the Mother Superior’s assistant who discovered the corpse this time…”
He cast a cautious glance around, ensuring no one was listening, before sharing his theories with me:
“I’m starting to have serious suspicions about the Mother Superior, Eden.
She is never seen anywhere right before the massacres take place.
And every single time, she rushes to have the bodies cremated under the pretext of saving their souls…
It’s too perfect.
I had even ordered my assistant never to let her out of her sight.
And do you want to know the worst part?
Every time my assistant loses sight of her, a new murder happens right on cue.”
The picture he painted was damning, but as a hunter, I knew that appearances were often deceptive when dealing with a Calamity.
The bodies were always so unrecognizable that it was difficult to tell what was the work of the monster or a human staging.
I needed certainty, and for that, I had to confront everyone.
“Bring them all into a closed room.
I am going to conduct the investigation myself.”
The sheriff executed the orders without delay.
A few dozen minutes later, I found myself in a militia room facing the potential suspects.
Around the table, the sheriff had gathered: the Mother Superior, the former village chief who lived isolated, and a terrified man who had tried to flee the town shortly before.
For my part, I had discreetly demanded that one last name be added to the list: the current sheriff himself.
Seeing himself included among the suspects, the latter appeared deeply offended.
He shot me a dark look, crossing his arms in bitterness.
He genuinely believed I didn’t trust him, even though he had told me everything and set everything up since my arrival.
But in the business of survival, no one is above suspicion.
I stood at the center of the room, letting an oppressive silence hang in the air, before asking the fateful question while looking at them one by one:
“Where exactly were you at the time of the massacre?”
The Mother Superior spoke first, her voice soft and perfectly calm:
“The chapel, praying and preparing to cremate the bodies.”
The current sheriff followed, still stung by the accusation:
“In my quarters, looking for clues and registries to help you.”
The former village chief simply shrugged with a detached air:
“At my place, away from the village, as always.”
“I can confirm that,” the current sheriff chimed in, nodding.
“He was indeed at his home.”
All eyes then turned to the last man, the fugitive.
He was trembling in every limb, cold sweat privateering across his forehead.
His eyes rolled from left to right, trapped in a state of total panic.
I took a step toward him and repeated my question in a harder, more pressing tone.
The pressure was too much.
The man broke down completely.
He stood up abruptly, screaming at the top of his lungs:
“It’s me!
I’m the one who killed them!
And I’ll keep doing it!
Until I get every last one of you!”
His sudden confession threw the room into chaos.
Without losing a beat, the sheriff’s men surrounded him, pinned his hands behind his back, and dragged him away by force to lock him securely in the village prison.
A visible sense of relief floated through the room, but deep down, an alarm bell kept ringing.
It was too simple.
Too theatrical.
As the suspects began to disperse, the Mother Superior slowly approached me.
Her mystical eyes locked into mine, and she murmured in a hushed voice:
“If I can do anything at all for you…
know that my chapel will always be open to you, Eden.”
She paused, observing my tense features, before adding:
“Do you truly believe we have the real culprit?
Or do you have another suspect in mind?”
I cast a glance toward the door through which the former village chief had just exited.
“I still suspect the former chief,” I replied coldly.
“His dispute with the farmer is a coincidence far too neat for my taste.”
With those words, the session adjourned and everyone returned home, hoping to finally spend a quiet night now that the alleged killer was behind bars.
Unfortunately, peace in Happy was nothing but a short-lived illusion.
Barely a few hours later, as the pitch-black night reclaimed its dominion, a horrific shriek once again tore through the silence.
A new corpse had just been discovered, shattering all our hopes.
I rushed to the crime scene.
On the ground, sprawling in a pool of blood, lay the lifeless body of the former village chief.
But what froze the blood in my veins wasn’t just his death.
It was what was written right next to him, in giant, macabre letters.
An entire phrase had been traced directly using his still-warm blood:
You’re next, Eden.