I Loaded the Occult Panel

Mr. Reeve reached for the sugar bowl at the corner of the table.

In the reflection on the tea’s surface, the shadow’s hand still rested motionless on its knee.

”Mr. Reeve.” Richard set his teacup back on the table, struck by a sudden chill.

”In your line of work, you must have seen more dead bodies than anyone.”

”Plenty.” Mr. Reeve scooped a spoonful of sugar into his mug, stirring slowly.

”In an industrial city, among the people scraping by beneath the smokestacks, not many get to die decently in their beds of old age.”

”Aren’t you afraid?”

Mr. Reeve stopped stirring.

”What is there to fear from the dead?”

”Little sir, it is the living who are terrifying.””The dead just lie there quietly. All they want is a coffin, a handful of dirt, and someone to say a few words over them.”

”You give them that, and they move on.”

”But if you don’t...” He rested his spoon on the rim of the mug. ”...they refuse to leave.”

Richard suddenly understood.

It was playing the part so perfectly precisely because it wasn’t the least bit panicked.

It knew two mystics were sitting in its room, and it knew they had most likely already tracked it down. It didn’t care.

A hunter doesn’t care if the prey trapped in a cage realizes it is in one.

Behind Richard, Mrs. MacNeil hadn’t made a sound.

Her complexion was grayer than when they had first walked in.

”Your tea has gone cold.” Mr. Reeve stood up. ”Let me boil another pot.”

”No need,” Mrs. MacNeil finally spoke. ”We have other business.”

”Then I will see you out.”

At the entryway, Mr. Reeve pulled the door open for them.

Richard stepped over the threshold.

Mr. Reeve held the doorframe, watching them with a beaming smile.

”When the time comes, I will handle both of your funeral arrangements.”

”Free of charge.”

The door closed softly.

The brass knocker struck the wood with a muffled thud.

No one spoke on the way back.

Mrs. MacNeil did not stop until they reached a broken section of an old bridge arch by the canal.

She halted in the shade at the base of the arch.

”It never planned on keeping up the act.”

Outside the arch, the rhythmic clatter of iron coal-cart wheels swallowed her words.

”Because it isn’t afraid of us finding out.” Richard leaned against the brickwork on the opposite side.

”The ritual is already counting down.” Mrs. MacNeil sighed.

”Even if we turned around and left the city right now...”

She shook her head.

”We wouldn’t make it out.”

Richard looked at her.

”Over the past twelve years, they have held at least a few thousand funerals.”

Mrs. MacNeil raised a hand, tracing a faint circle in the air toward the North District.

”It was weaving a web.”

”When a person dies, their family weeps.

As they weep, the hearts of the living tie a thread to the dead.

The more mourners there are, the more threads are attached.”

”It handled the arrangements for these thousands of dead.

With every funeral, it took every living person who cried for, mourned, or remembered the deceased, and strung them onto that web, one by one.”

Richard closed his eyes.

He thought of that loose thread stretching up from deep within the foundation, hooking onto him.

It was draped over the entire city.

”People from the mystical side shine brighter on it.” Mrs. MacNeil’s voice grew cold.

”You, me, Wentworth, Mr. Hutton... we have circuits and ether in us. On that web, we burn a hundred times brighter than ordinary living people.”

”And our priority to be ’answered’ is a hundred times higher.”

She looked at Richard.

”If we run out of the city now.”

”Once we leave the seals of the Branch Office, the foundation maintained by the guilds’ Practitioners... we become a lone candle out in the dark.”

The bridge arch fell quiet for a moment.

Outside, a coal cart rolled past, its iron wheels grinding out a long, shrill screech against the tracks before fading away.

Richard opened his eyes.

”So it isn’t afraid of us knowing. Even knowing, we can’t run.”

”Yes.”

”It told us because it wants us to panic.”

Richard’s tone was perfectly flat.

”Once we panic and fall into chaos, we’ll be easier to harvest.”

Mrs. MacNeil looked at him.

”You see things clearly enough.”

..................

Among the handwritten notes Old Biggs left behind, there was one entry written in exceptional detail.

”Female floating corpse, approximately forty years old, actual age difficult to discern.

Submerged in water for too long; tissues have partially saponified.”

”This person did not fall into the water recently. Judging by the degree of saponification, she has ’stayed’ in the water for more than ten years.

Yet the corpse has never fully decomposed, nor has it fallen apart... This does not conform to normal biological phenomena.”

”Suspected to have been ’nailed’ to the bottom, serving as a long-term anchor for something.”

On the final line, Old Biggs’s handwriting suddenly turned erratic.

He had likely stopped writing there, only resuming after a long while.

”This woman is Lizzie. I recognize her.”

”Please do not... let her be submerged in the water anymore.”

Richard closed the notes.

By the time they returned to the Branch Office’s underground autopsy room, the sky was already dark.

Mrs. MacNeil wheeled out a processed corpse, draped in a white cloth.

She pulled the cloth back.

Richard took one look, shifted his gaze away for a split second, and then looked back.

A body soaked in water for too long was an ugly sight.

But Old Biggs had cleaned her up meticulously.

Her hair was gathered behind her head, and the charcoal smiley face on the inside of her left wrist was perfectly clear.

It had been touched up with fresh charcoal.

Right before his death, Old Biggs had retraced the smiley face he had drawn for her all those years ago.

”This smiley face... Bigelow was the one who first drew it for her, too,” Mrs. MacNeil said from the other end of the table.

”You knew her?” Richard asked.

”I know a bit about her.” Mrs. MacNeil’s gaze fell on the smiley face on Lizzie’s wrist.

”She was a serving girl at a teahouse in the South District of the Imperial Capital. Back then, Bigelow had only been with our master’s sect for a few years, and the two of them... saw each other for a while.”

”Then she caught consumption, and vanished without a trace.”

”Later, Bigelow actively requested a transfer out of the Imperial Capital, coming to Briston.”

Mrs. MacNeil said.

”I didn’t understand what he was after back then, leaving the Imperial Capital behind to run off to a drab industrial city like this.”

Richard placed his hand over Lizzie’s wrist.

Spirit Vision seeped from his fingertips.

Her physical body had shut down long ago, but as his Spirit Vision delved deeper, reaching the layer of her circuits... a thread was still connected to her.

Incredibly thin and faint, it stretched toward the Black Trench, sinking to somewhere unknown at the bottom of the water.

Suspended between life and death, she had been nailed into the water.

Used by someone as an anchor for over a decade.

”She was a kind girl,” Mrs. MacNeil suddenly said.

”Bigelow told me back then. Whenever customers at the teahouse couldn’t pay their bill, she never hounded them for it.

In the winter, she would secretly slip bread to the beggar children at the door.”

Mrs. MacNeil pulled the white cloth back over the body.

”In life, she was a kind girl.”

”In death, she was nailed in the water to serve as an anchor for over ten years.”

”Tonight, it is time to let her sleep.”

..................

Old Biggs’s notes recorded the exact spot where Lizzie had been fished out.

Along the stretch of the Black Trench that flowed through the North District, there was an old sluice gate.

The water eddied there, and anything that fell in would be sucked down to the bottom of the gate.

Early the next morning, Richard and Mrs. MacNeil went to that sluice gate.

The Black Trench wasn’t wide—a sewage ditch barely five or six meters across, cutting right through the factories of the North District.

The water was pitch-black, coated in a layer of oil and reeking of coal tar. That was why the workers called it the Black Trench.

By the edge of the gate, a few early-rising workers were taking a break, squatting by the ditch smoking.

Richard walked over and offered a cigarette.

”Friends, mind if I ask you about something?”

The workers glanced up at him and took the cigarette.

”Is there any particular lore about this ditch?”

An old worker squatting at the far end lit up and took a drag.

”The Black Trench.” He spat into the water. ”The Black Trench claims people.”

”Claims people?”

”Whoever falls in doesn’t come back up,” the old worker said.

”A few years back, an apprentice was walking past here at night, missed a step, and fell in. The ditch water only comes up to your waist, it won’t drown a man.”

”But he never came up.”

”They dragged it the next day and found him at the bottom of the gate, soaked pale.”

A younger worker nearby chimed in.

”It doesn’t just claim people.” He lowered his voice.

”Sometimes at night, when you walk past here, you can hear someone counting underwater.”

”Counting?”

”One, two, three, four...” the young worker gestured.

”They just keep counting, up to a few dozen, and then start over from the beginning.”

”They call out names, too.” The old worker took another drag of his cigarette.

”Call them out clear as day. Your name, your parents’ names, your dead brother’s name.”

”If you turn around and answer...”

He didn’t finish the thought, merely spitting into the water again.

”Anyway, we never walk past here at night,” the young worker said. ”I’d rather take the long way around.”

”Young folks might think it’s superstition.” The old worker crushed his cigarette butt on the edge of the ditch. ”Nonsense passed down by the old-timers.”

”But you have to believe the nonsense,” the young worker muttered. ”The Black Trench claiming people is real. I’ve seen them pulled out with my own eyes.”

Having rested enough, the workers got up and headed toward the factory.

Richard stood by the edge of the gate, looking at the pool of pitch-black water.

Someone counting underwater, calling out names.

Whoever answered would never come back up.

This probably wasn’t superstition.

The dead nailed to the bottom were the anchors of the Echo Society, ”answering” voices.

Lizzie had been counting in the water for over ten years, and those calling out names were people just like her.

He looked up, gazing north along the flow of the Black Trench.

On Old Biggs’s map, this sluice gate was one of thirteen red dots.

It was also the pivot point for the entire web.

The canal, the Black Trench, those thirteen locations... they all swirled together right here, spiraling outward to blanket the entire North District.

”This river.” Mrs. MacNeil stood beside him.

”It was also a place Bigelow often came to sit over the years.”

Richard turned his head.

”He came here often?”

”He told me so himself.” Mrs. MacNeil gazed at the water.

”He said the edge of this ditch was quiet, away from the noise. After getting off work, he would often bring a pot of tea and just sit here.”

”He’d sit for the better part of the day.”

Richard looked at the sluice gate.

Old Biggs, bringing a pot of tea to sit by the edge of the Black Trench.

Underwater, Lizzie was counting.

..................

The method to break the deadlock had been decided by Mrs. MacNeil back in the autopsy room.

”We can’t brute-force it.”

She packed her autopsy tools into her kit, piece by piece.

”Crouching behind this web is a pupil-less eye.”

Richard remembered that eye... Behind it was that Virtuoso of the Black Soil River who walked the narrow path.

That eye was a reverse hook, prepared for anyone trying to touch upon true names or track down the mastermind.

”If you try to blow it up with explosives or blast it with Spell Formulas, that eye will wake up instantly.”

Mrs. MacNeil latched the kit shut.

”The moment it wakes up, it will trace the line of our attack and lock right back onto us.”

”We have to use their own web. We will preemptively use a Requiem Ritual to release a portion of the remnants trapped inside.”

”There is still an unavoidable problem,” Richard said.

Mrs. MacNeil looked at him.

”Who used the Silence Spell to kill Old Biggs?”

The autopsy room fell quiet for a moment.

”The Echo Society definitely has an operator here in Briston,” Richard said with absolute certainty.

”A Practitioner or a Minor Adept responsible for running this web day to day... and disposing of people who get in the way.”

The two exchanged a look.

”Mr. Reeve.” Richard spoke the name.

Mrs. MacNeil closed her eyes briefly.

A charity organization meant to be a safety net for the poor, run by a great philanthropist everyone praised.

In truth, it was a creature wearing a dead man’s face, exclusively devouring the poor.

It reaped lives while receiving their gratitude.

It strung the names of the living onto its web while digging graves, shoveling dirt, and saying a few kind words for the dead.

This was the mystery of that Virtuoso of the Black Soil River.

Replacement. Taking the shape of others and taking their place.

What this Mr. Reeve wanted to replace was the dead of an entire city, and the living who wept for them.