Chapter 1: Rainy Night

“Bang bang! Bang bang bang!”

A series of violent knocks on the door jolted Everly awake from a sweet sleep.

She blinked in confusion. Through the transparent incubator, she stared at the all-white ceiling. Her sluggish brain lagged behind by half a beat before slowly forming a single question: Why would anyone be banging on the door of a newborn ward?

Yes, a newborn ward.

Everly—perhaps she had another name in her previous life, but when she woke again, born into this world, most of her past had already faded. She simply decided to go by the name people around her called her—Everly. She was a premature baby, born from a tragic traffic accident. Her mother, a strong and determined young woman, struggled to give birth to her in the wreckage of a car, but could not survive until the rescuers arrived and lost her life.

All this information she had pieced together from the occasional idle chatter of the medical staff caring for her.

Because she was born over a month early, Everly was physically weak. For as long as she could remember, she had always lain in a newborn incubator.

Except during visiting hours for the infants’ parents, the ward was almost always quiet. Even when babies cried, the sound was soft, barely louder than a mosquito’s hum. After all, most of the children lying here had various health issues.

And now, the long-held silence of the newborn ward was shattered by urgent, aggressive pounding on the door.

“Open the door! Open the door! Damn it, those two little b*tches locked it from the inside!”

“Hey, don’t rush, Frank. Did you forget? The entire hospital is under lockdown—sh—nowhere they can escape…”

“Exactly! Just thinking about—sh—sh—I get so excited—sh… My Lord will—sh—sh—bring terror—sh—hahaha…”

The pounding on the door paused for a moment. Through the relatively soundproof door, muffled voices reached her—snippets of conversation interspersed with malicious laughter and unpleasant curses.

The people outside were speaking English. It wasn’t the language Everly had used in her previous life, so although some fragments of past memory lingered, she couldn’t fully understand what they were saying. She could only sense that something was wrong, and the feeling of unease settled heavily in her chest.

As a newborn, there was very little she could do. She lay on her back in the incubator, struggling to engage her still-undeveloped neck muscles. Slowly, painstakingly, she twisted her head just enough to glimpse toward the ward door.

A newborn’s eyesight was poor. From her distance, all she could make out were two blurry white figures leaning against the door, breathing heavily, their arms and legs trembling.

One of the figures fumbled, holding something in their hands that looked like a phone, tapping it desperately. The voice trembled with despair: “It’s no use, it won’t go through! The signal’s blocked here!”

From the quivering voice, Everly was able to connect this figure with a gentle nurse who often came to check the ward.

“What do we do… we’re dead, everyone’s dead… those—sh—are completely insane! What do we do, Nancy? Help me, I don’t want to die…”

The voice came from another figure next to the nurse. She held her head in her hands, her back arched, like a prey animal cornered at the edge of survival, letting out hysterical screams from her throat.

Everly recognized her as another nurse from the station. She wasn’t assigned to the newborn ward, but occasionally came here to gossip with Nurse Nancy. They got along well, and she had even made faces at Everly across the incubator before.

“Bang! Bang bang!”

Just as the two nurses were sinking deeper into panic, the pounding on the door erupted again—this time with even greater force. The impact made both nurses, pressed against the door, sway back and forth with each strike.

“No, no! I don’t want to die!”

The nurse from the neighboring ward was the first to break down. She abandoned Nancy, who was still desperately trying to make a call for help, and the white figure screamed as she stumbled past Everly’s incubator. Everly’s neck was too weak to turn; she couldn’t see what was happening behind her. She strained her ears, following the sound of hurried footsteps moving backward, until they stopped at the window, which was pushed open with a loud crash.

“No! You’re crazy! This is the eighth floor!”

Nancy reached out in panic, but it was too late—she couldn’t grab anything. A few seconds later, between the next two thuds on the door, Everly heard the faint but unmistakable sound of something heavy hitting the ground behind her.

Thud.

Like a ripe watermelon smashing to pieces, a life ended so simply, so carelessly. Everly’s mouth fell open, and her fragile heart thumped violently in her chest.

What was happening? What could have scared them so much… had a criminal broken into the hospital?

Everly’s tiny brain couldn’t make sense of the situation. Before she could piece it together, a deafening crash rang out. The metal door of the ward, battered by the relentless pounding, finally gave way and collapsed inward under the pressure.

“Ah!” Nancy screamed as she was caught off guard, falling forward to the ground.

“Waa waa waa…” The other babies in the ward were startled by the noise, their tiny cries rising in a chorus of fear. Amid the chaos, four figures cloaked in black entered in single file through the gaping doorway.

The figure at the front was tall and broad, massive like a black bear. He held a gleaming dagger in his hand, his gaze sweeping across the room before quickly locking onto Nancy on the floor.

“Hahaha, little b*tch, keep running—running won’t save you, you’ll end up in our hands anyway…” He sneered, bending down and reaching toward Nancy.

“Ah!”

In the moment of crisis, an unprecedented surge of strength erupted from Nancy’s slender frame. She let out a scream, kicked the black-cloaked figure with her left leg, using the momentum to push him back, then scrambled to her feet and ran deeper into the room.

“F

CK! Little b

tch! B*tch!” The black-cloaked man staggered from the kick, snarled viciously, raised his dagger, and gave chase.

Everly’s eyes widened as she watched the scene unfold. In her heart, she silently prayed for Nancy—‘Hurry, faster, run…’ But tragically, Nancy tripped near Everly’s incubator and fell once more.

This time, luck was not on her side. Everly saw the black-cloaked figure reach her, grab Nancy by the hair with one hand, and slam the small nurse down onto the incubator. By terrible coincidence, it was the very incubator Everly occupied.

Smack!

The impact sent a dull, harsh sound reverberating through the incubator. Nancy’s body blocked the overhead light, and through the transparent plastic, Everly came face-to-face with Nancy’s eyes, wide with fear and despair.

It was the first time tonight that Everly truly saw…

She saw crystal-clear tears rolling down the nurse’s eyes. She saw her trembling lips, opening and closing, silently muttering something. She saw the black-cloaked man raise his hand and drive the dagger into Nancy’s throat. And she saw… a twisted, snake-like strange totem flick past the man’s sleeve as he withdrew the blade.

That totem burned itself into her retina like a brand.

Immediately after, a dark flood erupted from the nurse’s neck, a thick gush that splattered over the incubator and blocked Everly’s view. A newborn’s visual cells weren’t fully developed yet and couldn’t distinguish colors, but even in the black-and-white world she saw, Everly knew—that was blood.

Warm. Viscous. Foul-smelling. Blood that meant life and vitality…

A wave of nausea hit her. She couldn’t bear to watch any longer and squeezed her eyes shut in terror.

Nancy, lying in the pool of blood, soon went completely still. Yet the black-cloaked intruders lingered in the neonatal ward even after ruthlessly killing one nurse. They seemed to be searching for something, splitting up to stop at each incubator, inspecting and lingering over every baby.

“Born in June… June… June…”

One of the cloaked figures stopped not far from Everly. Through the incubator, she could hear him muttering the same words over and over.

At first, she didn’t understand what “June” meant—until the black-cloaked figure circled around and came to her incubator.

A soft rustling sound came as the medical record card hanging on the incubator was flipped. Seeing Everly’s birth information, the cloaked figure exclaimed with delight: “Ah, found her! The baby girl born in June…”

Everly barely had time to feel a sense of dread before she heard the figure toss the record aside, cursing violently:

“Damn it! This incubator is covered in blood! Frank, you barbaric idiot, your head’s only the size of a bullet! I told you not to make such a bloody mess—I hate getting my robe dirty!”

“But you were excited when I killed her, weren’t you?” Frank’s coarse voice shot back.

“Nonsense! I was only satisfied because my Lord is about to get the blood and—sh—”

“Cut the act. You’re just a—sh—!”

Just as it seemed the two were about to start fighting, a third black-cloaked figure hurriedly spoke up:

“Hey, you two, calm down. The mission is important. There isn’t just one baby who meets the requirements. Eli, look—here I’ve found one…”

The figure called “Eli” paused his search, flipping through the incubators. After a moment of thought, he let out a dismissive sigh and stepped away from the blood-soaked incubator.

The sound of footsteps—tap tap, tap tap—echoed as he walked away from Everly’s crib. Not far off, an incubator opened, and the wailing of a newborn broke out again.

The four black-cloaked figures lingered in the ward for a while longer. Whatever their purpose, they selected three babies from the continuous cries, checking their birth month and gender. They wrapped each infant tightly in strange black fabric. Curiously, the babies who had been crying immediately went silent the moment they were swathed in the cloth, not making a sound again.

Over ten minutes later, as if carrying something dead, three of the black-cloaked figures each held a wrapped bundle. They moved swiftly, following the strongest and most brutal of them all—the black bear-like Frank—leaving behind a neonatal ward in utter chaos.

Rumble!

Somehow, a heavy rain had begun outside. Amid the thunder and lightning, the incandescent lights inside flickered crackle for a moment before suddenly going out.

Darkness swallowed the entire neonatal ward. In the dead silence that followed, Everly lay face-to-face with the nurse’s lifeless body. She didn’t know how long she remained there, until the dizziness grew unbearable, and she finally drifted into an uneasy sleep.