𝔖𝔦𝔩𝔢𝔫𝔠𝔢

Arc 3 (4)

A week later. One ominous deep night.

A melodious enchanting voice lured James' senses. Hearing carefully, it was a voice filled with grievances and sadness. His eyes snapped open as he tried finding the source of that voice in the dark room. 

Looking around, his eyes landed on the brightly lit bathroom across the living room, in stark contrast to the room's eerie darkness and silence. A water tap seemed to have been open, water flowing and draining into the drain continuously, the sound amplified due to the silence in the whole apartment.

Confusion flickered through James' eyes as he got out of his bed, completely ignorant of the pool of deep black liquid on his bed sheet that was dripping from his back, merely dispersing the wetness of his shirt as sweat. 

But what was ignored was the sickening rotten flesh of his back through which his bones were slowly becoming visible while the liquid on the bed sheet was gradually becoming crystalline scales.

The melodious voice continued singing beautifully as James locked on its source- the bathroom. As he gradually moved forward, pieces of rotten flesh and black mucous-like liquid fell on the floor quietly throughout the way, his back appearing extremely gruesome. The fallen elements gradually formed brilliantly shining crystals.

When he finally reached the bathroom, there was no one. However the voice didn't stop. He was very sure the voice was still coming from the bathroom but he was unable to see anyone. Abruptly, the huge mirror inside the bathroom crashed into pieces. 

Startled, James' breaths became short and he stiffly pinned himself at the spot he was standing, not daring to turn his head as cold sweat dripped down his disfigured back.

The painless erosion of his back prevented the maddening pain he should have felt when his salty sweat smeared the corroding flesh of the back.

James was finally determined the source of the melody as the broken shards of the mirror were currently singing in a voice similar to a broken radio. Gathering enough courage, he turned around and picked up a piece of the mirror. To his shock, a shining red eye filled with viciousness equal to that of a horrifying monster stared right at him from that piece.

The pain of his corroding flesh that was veiled for a while was finally being felt by him. 'Crack!' he heard the distinct sound of a bone being smashed into powder. Gradually, his remaining sense of hearing perceived all the bones in his body being smashed and turned into powder. The pain was driving him crazy. 

Death seemed like a relief. 

Screaming until he lost his voice, he saw the broken mirror coming together to become an intact mirror again and finally saw a beautiful lady coming out of the mirror as she slowly changed herself into a doppelganger of him. His final consciousness saw the 'man' giving him a vicious stare with dull eyes and a cruel smirk as 'he' gathered all the crystalline scales of James' now completely corroded flesh remains.

Claire gathered the crystals and expressionlessly smashed them, draining the powder through the drain with water. The scales would somewhat mend the dead soul of that siren.

A dead siren was surely more terrible than a living one.....

All those that had taken part in the research were dead already. Each of them getting turned into crystalline scales and their bones getting smashed to powder. As for the director's wife, she had been 'dead' from the moment she had drunk Alisa's blood. At the point a phone call should soon be coming to James from the director.