Blood pooled on the floor.

  The smell of rotten flesh engulfed the atmosphere, thick and cloying. The bodies of the victims lay with multiple wounds, some with organs missing entirely.

  "It seems like a party was hosted in this place," the officer in charge said, his voice straining.

  The investigator didn't look up. "Whose house is this?"

  The officer cleared his throat. "It belongs to the Knights family... Kelvin Knights' home."

  The investigator glanced at the officer’s pale face before squatting beside one of the corpses. He began to examine the damage. "Has anything like this happened before, Officer Mark?"

  Silence followed.

  Mark wasn’t listening. His eyes were locked on the carnage; this was his first time seeing a bloodbath of innocent people, and the sheer scale of it had paralyzed him.

  "Officer Mark!" the investigator shouted.

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  Mark snapped back to his senses. "Yes, sir!"

  The investigator stood up slowly. "Is this your first time seeing a massacre?"

  Mark didn't try to hide his expression. "Yes, sir. It is."

  "There is always a first time for everything," the investigator said, his tone softening slightly. "After all, you’re still young."

  Mark sighed in relief, trying to steady his breathing. "I’m sorry. It won’t happen again."

  The investigator looked at the younger man. At twenty-six, Mark was too young to be tasked with a case this barbarous. He felt concern but shrugged it off. He had a job to do.

  "I asked: has anything like this happened before?"

  "Yes," Mark replied, "but the last murder wasn't like this."

  The investigator frowned. "When did the killings start?"

  "It was—" Mark stopped to think. "It started two months ago, I think."

  Mark wasn’t entirely sure; he’d only been deployed to this post a month ago and had relied on his supervisor’s briefings.

  "If what you’re saying is true, then the killings started recently," the investigator mused. "That means the killer is still in this town."

  "That may be true," Mark stated with uncertainty.

  "Do we have any clues the killer left behind?"

  "No, sir. We tried searching every last crime scene, but not one clue of who the killer is , or why they are doing this."

  The investigator found it strange. No clues. No motive. Something felt off.

  "Officer Mark, get me every document on the murders from the past two months."

  Mark stood at attention. "Yes, sir!"

  The investigator took one last look at the corpse—a silent witness to a monster—and walked away from the scene.