Emptiness

She stood at attention, the energy flowing into her eyes keeping the darkness from blinding her.

Nothing came and silence remained the sole lord of the city.

She could not sense anything apart from the animals that had chosen to hide within the city.

All of them remained as still as corpses, tucked away in gaps and burrows much narrower than what they would normally choose outside of these walls.

The reign of utter silence was challenged as the sound of something being grinding against the ground before slamming shut sounded throughout the once prosperous city.

'The gate...' the source was obvious, whatever terrified the wildlife had gone ahead and closed off an exit point.

Superstes did not know whether the other gate the city possessed was open or not, but judging by the directions taken by the animals before, they had surely seemed convinced that there was only a single exit to this place.

The blonde girl debated what to do right now, was it better to face the unknown creature out in the open or inside one of the abandoned buildings.

She felt confident that it would go after her, since the gates had appeared untouched for a while before she entered and yet, it had definitely just closed them for some reason.

Her best assumption was that it was just trying to cut off her escape route.

In spite of now being certain that something was with her in the city, she still couldn't sense its presence.

'Is it just that good at concealing itself, or is it simply staying out of my range?' realising that it was most certainly watching her at this very moment, or at least aware of where she was, she made the decision to retreat inside of the guild.

Now she knew what exactly wasn't finished about it, the entire place was completely empty, devoid of the hunting trophies, paintings depicting great discoveries or the counters, the entire space was free of anything and the whole guild was oddly clean, save for the dust that had accumulated.

This gave Superstes the same feeling as if she was standing in the middle of a flat plain during a moonless night, completely vulnerable from all sides.

The rooms with half open doors looked like traps to her, as though someone was definitely hiding in a dark corner, waiting for the occasion to pounce.

The closed doors didn't seem much better, same thing different savor.

Still, she could see through the permeating dark and kept on moving deeper inside the guild.

The building looked similar to the first one but it wasn't an exact replica.

The main room she was in was much larger than the previous one for reasons she didn't care about.

A portion of it wasn't visible from the entrance, blocked off by the corner a close room.

She peeked from said corner and was slightly shaken for an instant by what she saw, it wasn't dangerous, simply surprising.

This part of the room was much the same as the other one, only a single detail was different.

Tightly tied around one of the exposed wooden beams on the ceiling was a sturdy-looking rope, the person that had tied it up there seemed to have put their back into it, it seemed impossible to undo without slashing it.

The rope was falling straight down, ending in a hangman's knot, which was itself, fastened around the neck of a man Superstes felt like she had seen before.

It wasn't easy to say however, his face was all bloodied and skin was missing from his forehead.

'Did someone bash his head against something or..?' Superstes was perplexed at this scene.

There were multiple things worth raising an eyebrow for.

One's first assumption would be that the man had been attacked by something prior to hanging himself, but it seemed impossible, for reasons even children would be able to figure out.

There were no signs of what his forehead had been hurt on but it was pretty clear that he had been struck upon the same spot over and over.

If someone or something else had been responsible, the man should have struggled a little bit, it seemed more likely that he had just headbutted a wall repeatedly.

To confirm her suspicion, she tried to use her golden infused eyes on his corpse, one of the abilities of this technique, was to read past events by judging from the traces left by a person or people there.

She had tried it back in her home village but the wretch's presence had been too faint and old, not to mention this decoy had only been there for a few moments.

She was able to retrace the steps of the man, he entered the guild the same way she did, however, much to her disappointement, his forehead was already all bloody.

In any case, she also suspected that he hadn't hung himself, he certainly seemed to have suffocated and his spine seemed to have suffered the damage one should in his position, however, she was left surprised.

She believed he couldn't have done it because there was nothing for him to stand upon, he couldn't have reached the wooden beam or drop from anything.

Yet, his ghostly figure manifested from his lingering presence did the exact steps one that was hanging themselves would.

The only problem with her technique, is that it only recreated a vague silhouette and nothing else, as such, she couldn't see what mystery object he had pushed under the beam and climbed on.

He hadn't pushed it there easily, so it must have been relatively heavy, he had been swaying his arms when entering the guild, so he wasn't carrying it with him.

By all accounts, it had just been sitting right in this room.

"Huh" she scratched her head, then spat in her hand and began rubbing the dry blood of his face to get a better look.

She did in fact remember seeing him at the guild all the way back then, he was a receptionist and quite the amicable guy, he had even bought her a piece of gambeson so that she wouldn't get hurt.

An old guy that treated all kids like they were his.

He seemed... Relieved.

Superstes looked past his body and at the only window that wasn't shut by flaps.

He had probably been relieved to get away from the thing that was staring through the window.