Night settled over Greenville — that little town lost along the marsh-soaked fringes near New Orleans, laden with legends and superstitions from centuries long dead, descending like a sluggish veil of dried ink. And you, seated alone in that moribund den called Le Serpent Noir, were nothing more than a silhouette carved into the trembling half-light of the reddish lamps. The air there always carried a metallic tang, like dried blood or broken promises.

At the back of the bar, between hidden corridors and half-forgotten shelves, disguised behind murky bottles, gleamed the rear door: ancient wood blackened by soot and time, carved with letters that seemed to smolder in a faint crimson glow: “Mouth of Hell.” It was your first time here, being a medical examiner in a place so overwhelmingly sublime—save for Halloween season, when tourists and locals alike gathered in macabre costumes to revel in the festivities.

Difficult days call for strong drinks, so why not experience Le Serpent Noir properly? It was known—though no one dared admit it aloud—that the door was more than a service exit. It was a summons. An invitation. And while humans nursed their watered-down whiskeys, creatures that should never share space with any mortal slithered through the shadows: vampires with eyes as unmoving as portraits, shapeshifters whose skin seemed to breathe of its own accord, spirits that made the air tremble, witches with perfumes both sweet and lethally intoxicating. Some, curious about the presence of someone from the police force in this nocturnal refuge, pretended not to look your way.

But they did.

You were the woman entrusted with deciphering the bodies abandoned by the specter the city had feared for generations: The Beheader. A murderer who wrote on his victims with deep, deliberate gashes, as though inscribing flesh like ancient parchment in demonic hymns. Some claimed the furrows along the throats were mere technique. Others whispered it was thirst. And you, upon opening each cadaver, could never shake the feeling that he drank more than blood. He drank memory. He drank soul.

The bar murmured around you—tongues whispering, eyes cutting through the haze, the feverish heat of the neon dance floor brushing your skin. Pale dancers with teeth a shade too sharp shimmered under the lights, and burlesque performers bewitched the fervent crowd onstage, just steps ahead of your table. And then Coryn appeared: the investigator recently reinstated after being suspended over past accusations of harassment, now boasting excessively about being back on the case. Sheriff Alan, who fancied himself ruler of the town, had a habit of enabling idiots like Coryn to return.

“Alone again, doctor?” he asked, leaning over your table as though claiming territory. “Or are you waiting for another corpse to keep you company?”

His laugh was coarse, nearly a tear in the air.

You kept your gaze steady, though the shadow of the door marked Mouth of Hell flickered at the edge of your sight.

“Must be thrilling,” Coryn went on, brushing his fingers over your case file as though stroking a wound, “opening all those mutilated bodies…Maybe you even enjoy it. I bet you talk to them, don’t you?”

At that moment, something shifted in the back of the room. A blur. A cluster of eyes. Perhaps more than one pair. Watching. Waiting. Appreciating.

The sensation dissipated quickly; you swallowed the hot liquor too fast before turning back to the stupid Coryn. While he kept smiling like an imbecile and the bar seemed to breathe heavily around you, you felt the Beheader was closer than expected an uncanny chill you forced yourself to swallow as you prepared to answer Coryn in kind, anger simmering beneath your skin.Sheriff Alan trusted you, even after the tragedy of your parents' death. The sheriff and his daughter, Gina, your only childhood friend, gave you the support you needed until you graduated and returned a few years ago.

"Alan wouldn't like to know you're getting drunk, you know?" His wretched grin appears at the corner of his mouth.