The air inside the cell block was heavier than it had ever been.
Dust hung in the silence like a curse, refusing to settle, disturbed by the soft echoes of footsteps over cracked concrete. The same cell block. The same four walls. The same haunting stretch where it had all begun — and where, like a cruel loop of fate, it all seemed destined to begin again.
This was the place they needed to bypass to reach the exit.
Yet, it felt like walking into a memory stitched together by dread.
One by one, Samuel, Owen, Ava, and Victor stepped into the cell with rusted bars and cracked stone. The lights overhead flickered lazily, casting shadows that moved as if they had minds of their own.
The hunt for the key had begun.
They combed through every inch. Every rock dislodged, every bar checked, every crevice examined with growing frustration. The prison wasn't vast. In truth, its size should've made this easier. But the real enemy wasn't space — it was time. Time, and the creeping suspicion that they were searching for something that might not even exist.
A sharp, guttural sound broke the silence.
"Ugh!" Owen groaned, shoving a stone aside that turned out to be just that — a stone. His hand scraped the wall in frustration as he stood up, eyes darting around at the others.
"Where could this damn key be?" he muttered, exasperation etched across his face as he watched his companions continue the search with dragging limbs and weary expressions.
Ava, slumped beside a pile of broken tiles, let out a long sigh. She didn't even bother to hide the fatigue in her voice.
"I have..." she paused, catching her breath. "I have no idea either."
She turned toward Owen, her gaze dull with exhaustion and a flicker of doubt.
"Maybe the key isn't here?" she said hesitantly, the question lingering in the stale air like a dangerous suggestion.
Victor's response was instant — too instant.
"We have no time to be grumpy and relax," he said sharply, the usual cold edge to his voice masked under a layer of forced urgency. "We have to find the key as soon as possible before another trouble arises."
Ava shot him a look — half annoyed, half unconvinced.
"Yeah but—" she started, then rose slightly to glare at the bars overhead. "Where could this key possibly be? We searched the whole cell, and there's no hint of anything!"
She had a point. Even the walls seemed to agree, standing still and silent in their mockery.
Victor didn't answer right away.
Instead, he turned toward Samuel. His mouth curled into what was meant to be a smile — but it was stiff, lifeless. His eyes, however, flickered with something else. Something colder. Something calculating.
"You said it might be here... right, Samuel?" he asked, tone casual, but his gaze sharp like the edge of a hidden blade.
However... while the others scoured every inch of the stone floor and rusted bars, Samuel's focus had already drifted somewhere else.
His hands moved, searching half-heartedly beneath a slab of loose stone, but his eyes — his thoughts — were elsewhere.
Something was wrong. Not with the cell. Not with the prison.
With Victor.
He didn't even hear the first half of Victor's words. It was only when his name echoed through the dim corridor that he blinked back to the present.
"Samuel?" Victor's voice cut through the silence like a dull knife.
Samuel turned slowly.
He didn't speak right away.
Instead, his gaze locked onto Victor's face — and then, it traveled lower. From his shoulders to his boots. From the fold of his sleeves to the twitch of his fingers. It was as though Samuel was watching a puzzle slowly fall into place — piece by unnatural piece.
He didn't miss the faint tension in Victor's smile. Or the slight glint of something metallic tucked too carefully beneath his sleeve.
Five full seconds passed in silence. And in those five seconds, Samuel stopped seeing Victor as a companion.
He saw him as something else.
"Yeah... I'm not sure," Samuel finally replied, his tone calm — too calm. There was something beneath it. Something unreadable.
Victor's expression didn't change, but Ava and Owen looked at Samuel, puzzled by the odd weight behind his voice.
Samuel stepped forward, his eyes briefly scanning the bars again — though it was clearly for show.
"I just wondered if the key would be here," he said casually, brushing dust off his hands, "since the whole Hallow Prison puzzle revolves around this cell."
The others went still, waiting — even Victor, now strangely quiet.
Samuel's words hung in the air like a trap.
Then, he added:
"But maybe... the key isn't here."
A pause. Sharp. Heavy. Measured.
And in that pause, Samuel glanced at Victor again — but this time, he smiled.
Just slightly.
As if he already knew where the key was.
As if he already knew who had it.
A chill swept through the cell block — not from the cold, but from the silence.
"What do you mean?" Owen asked, his brow furrowed as he glanced between the others.
Samuel didn't answer right away.
He took a step forward, then another, his boots echoing softly on the prison floor as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
"It may be with something that was always in front of us," he said at last, voice smooth — unwavering. There was no doubt in his tone. No hesitation.
He wasn't speaking to them.
He was speaking to him.
Samuel's eyes didn't meet anyone else's. They remained fixed — forward. Yet it was clear.
He wasn't searching for the key anymore.
He was confronting the lock.
Ava stayed quiet, uncertainty flickering in her eyes. Owen looked like he was about to speak again, but before a word could escape, Victor broke the silence instead.
There was something off in his voice.
A tremble of excitement. A hint of madness dressed as curiosity.
"What do you mean..."
"Samuel...?"
Samuel stopped walking.
And then, finally, he looked at Victor.
But his eyes weren't afraid.
They were still.
Sharp.
Like the surface of a lake moments before a storm breaks.
"You tell me, Victor..." he said quietly, stepping into the space between the two of them.
"Do you know..."
"Where" — his voice now almost a whisper — "this" — the word hung like a noose — "key is?"
The tension in the room cracked like lightning splitting through sky.
A single moment stretched across eternity.
And in that silence, a single thought echoed louder than the walls of Hallow Prison could ever contain. The most terrifying monster is the one that learns how to smile while hiding its fangs.
Victor's smile faltered. Just slightly. But it was enough.
And Samuel saw it.
He always had.
Victor's face twitched.
Just slightly.
Almost imperceptibly.
But Samuel caught it.
"What do you mean...?" Victor asked, his voice thinner now — no longer excitement, no longer confidence. It trembled on the edge of something deeper. Something unraveling.
The cell block was silent.
Even the lights above seemed to flicker less — like the prison itself was listening.
Samuel exhaled slowly and took one final step forward. Then, in a voice that echoed like a verdict:
"You have the keys with you... right, Victor?"
A pause.
A long, suffocating pause.
A silence so thick it crushed the air between them.
And in that moment — everything changed.
Owen's eyes widened.
Ava's breath caught in her throat.
And Victor... didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Didn't deny it.
The silence was the answer.
Victor's expression shifted — slowly, dreadfully. That carefully constructed mask, all those practiced smiles, that polished façade of helpfulness — it all began to fracture. And beneath it, something else emerged.
Not human.
Not anymore.
He smiled.
But it wasn't warmth.
It was teeth.
It was death.
"So... you figured it out, huh?" Victor said, his tone low, almost impressed. "I was wondering how long you'd keep pretending you didn't see it."
His voice shifted. Smoother now. Colder.
There was no more need to hide.
He smiled in chaos not because he was brave, but because he is the one who lit the fire."
Samuel didn't flinch.
And just like that — the game changed.
Not a hunt for a key.
But a confrontation between predator and prey.
And the real question now was:
Who was who?
Time stopped.
It wasn't just silence — it was absence. Of thought, of breath, of reason. A moment so thick with revelation, even reality seemed to hesitate.
Ava and Owen turned slowly toward Victor.
He was right there.
Right beside them.
He had always been there.
And now — he was the one who held the key.
Their eyes locked onto him like prey just realizing the wolf had been sleeping in their den.
Owen's expression cracked, terror flashing through his eyes like lightning through broken glass. He had trusted him. Ava stumbled back half a step, her lips trembling. The realization didn't just shake her — it crushed her.
Victor was the monster who was not hiding in the dark, He was the type of monster who will walk beside you, whispering comfort until it's too late to run...
The key they'd bled for…
Searched for…
Despaired for…
Was with him.
All along.
Victor didn't move.
Not yet.
But the way he smiled… it changed everything.
His lips pulled back far too wide.
His eyes… lifeless. And yet gleaming with something vile.
It wasn't the smile of someone caught.
It was the smile of someone liberated.
It was the smile of someone who had adopted the worst kind of evil in them, the evil that isn't loud, the evil that's patient, the evil that waits beside you, the evil that learns your name, learns you, and only reveals its face once escape is literally impossible.
He took a step forward.
Ava flinched.
Owen reached instinctively for something — anything — but his hands were shaking.
Victor's voice didn't need to rise.
It commanded silence.
"You understand now, don't you?"
He raised his hand, and from his sleeve, something clinked softly.
The key.
The silver glint of betrayal.
"You were never hunting for a key," Victor whispered, his eyes gleaming. "You were walking into the slaughterhouse... and I was holding the door open."
No one spoke.
They couldn't.
Because they knew.
They weren't going to take the key from Victor.
They weren't going to stop him.
They weren't facing a traitor anymore.
They were facing death wearing the face of someone they once called "friend."
Victor tilted his head.
Three people stood before him.
Ava. Owen. Samuel.
And in his mind — they were already dead.
"Do you feel that?" he said, taking another slow, casual step. "That trembling in your legs? That's not fear of me."
He smiled wider. Monstrous. Unholy.
"That's the weight of the truth finally settling in."
And now that the truth is here... nothing will ever be the same again.
The cell block stood still — the walls bearing witness, the lights flickering like dying stars.
And then —
He moved.