I Loaded the Occult Panel

Madam Marie had first used the black cat to lick it, leaving behind a wisp of a ”kiss.”

Before leaving last night, she had used that existing channel to pour a wisp of something new into the ring.

Under Richard’s Spirit Vision, the ring’s ether echoes were now far richer than before.

The outermost layer of disguise was still meant to block perception;

the layer beneath it held a touch of warmth.

From now on, whenever Madam Marie’s people saw the residual power on this ring, they would know Richard’s background.

Within the northern Civilian Guild network, he had gone from being a ”guest” to ”one of their own.”

Even so, Richard still hadn’t formally become her apprentice.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord’s commendation report had also been submitted to the Imperial Capital headquarters yesterday.

Headquarters had approved a circular and sent it down to the Branch Office.When Richard received his copy, he stood under the corridor at the Branch Office entrance for a while.

The circular read:

”In recognition of Richard Williams’s contributions to the Echo Society case in the North District of Briston, he is hereby commended.”

”Upon arriving in the Imperial Capital, he may register at the Imperial Capital Branch Office as an ’Auxiliary Investigating Scholar’.”

”An Auxiliary Investigating Scholar enjoys semi-independent field status and may participate in non-combat support missions.”

When Lieutenant Colonel Ord handed the circular over, he made sure to state the ugly truth upfront.

”Once your name is on the books, you’re on the draft roster during wartime.”

”If the Imperial Capital needs people in the future, you’ll have to go.”

The distribution of spoils took place in the second-floor meeting room of the Branch Office.

The last time Richard had been in this room was for the debriefing after the battle at the Unresponsive Pit.

The long table remained the same, but there were more empty chairs around it than before.

Wentworth’s seat was empty.

No one sat in it, and no one moved it. It simply sat empty on the east side of the table.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord first went over the figures in the ledger.

The bulk of the income from this operation came from the post-incident cleanup.

Each of the thirteen anchor points at the Black Trench contained a physical anchor the Echo Society used to operate their network: a broken lantern, a celadon jar, a weighing stone tablet, an Ebony Box...

Unearthed one by one, they turned out to be thirteen relics from the Black Soil River.

Aside from the anchors themselves, there were also the branch locations the Echo Society had established across the North District.

The ledgers of the Mutual Aid Funeral Society, along with a few liaison points hidden in rented houses.

Uprooting those branches had brought in a batch of funds.

”The cash will be converted according to contribution, everyone gets a share.” Ord closed the ledger. ”We’ll divide the items first.”

Mrs. MacNeil spoke up from her wheelchair.

”Madam Marie has already inspected these thirteen anchors.

Twelve of them are essentially purified, and one clay tablet has been sealed for transfer to Manchester.

Purification is one thing, but the resentment of the dead that has steeped into them for twelve years won’t fade so easily.”

She pulled a shallow copper tray from her suitcase, with several objects lined up on it.

”These are the only ones that can be distributed.”

Richard’s gaze fell on the copper tray.

A Canopic Jar, its mouth still sealed with wax;

A Dark Copper Mirror, its surface too dull to cast a reflection;

A string of Black Prayer Beads, carrying a patina worn smooth by rubbing fingers.

Two more items rested at the very back of the tray.

One was a Sacred Ibis Bronze Paperweight the size of a palm, cast as a long-beaked bird crouching on a square bronze base;

The other was a Small Bronze Balance, its two pans suspended by extremely fine chains.

Mrs. MacNeil loosely swept her hand over the tray.

”Among these, a few carry too heavy a trace of the dead.”

She tapped the Dark Copper Mirror.

”The Echo Society used this mirror to ’reflect shadows’.

It has reflected the faces of the dead for twelve years. If anyone takes it home and hangs it on the wall, the reflection they see at night might not be their own.”

She tapped the string of Black Prayer Beads next.

”These beads were used for counting.

Those children underwater wouldn’t fall asleep until they counted to a hundred, and the beads counted for them.

One flick for one number, and it remembered them for twelve years.

Take it home, and if you hear someone counting by your ear in the dead of night, don’t answer.”

The meeting room went quiet for a moment.

Sarah leaned her modified Hunting Rifle against the base of the wall and glanced into the tray.

”Things cursed with that kind of bad luck? I wouldn’t take them if you paid me.”

She waved a hand.

”I use my life to make money, not to pay off debts.”

The other Practitioners under the lieutenant colonel didn’t move either.

”You put in a lot of effort in this operation. Pick first.”

Lieutenant Colonel Ord pushed the copper tray in front of Richard.

”That night, if you and Mr. Hutton hadn’t correctly identified the materials for the Sleep-Return Ritual...”

”I’m afraid not a single one of us would have made it back.”

No one in the room argued.

Richard’s gaze fell on the two items at the back of the tray.

The Sacred Ibis Bronze Paperweight, and the Small Bronze Balance.

He reached out and picked them both up.

The twelve years of steeped resentment on them was significantly lighter than the others.

”I’ll take these two.”

Lieutenant Colonel Ord flashed a grin. ”You certainly know how to pick ’em, kid.”

Mr. Hutton sat in the chair beside them.

The old gentleman’s throat hadn’t completely recovered yet, making speaking a struggle.

”Richard, you have a good eye.”

The old gentleman raised a hand and pointed at the sacred ibis.

”In the Black Soil River Basin, the sacred ibis is the bird of Thoth.

Thoth keeps the records for the Nine Gods. Whatever is written in the ledger, that is what the heart of the dead holds.”

He then pointed at the small scales.

”The scales belong to Ma’at.

When weighing the heart, the heart of the dead is placed on one side, and the feather of Ma’at on the other.”

The old gentleman caught his breath and continued.

”That Virtuoso of the Black Soil River who walked the narrow path modified all thirteen of these items.

It heavily modified the rest. The Dark Copper Mirror and the Black Prayer Beads are ordinary old relics; it could alter them however it pleased.

But for these two, it didn’t dare do too much.”

”Why?” Sarah asked.

”Because they are tied to divine names,” Mr. Hutton said.

”Thoth, Ma’at—names like these carry immense weight in the Black Soil River Basin.

When modifying something tied to a divine name, the more drastically it is altered, the greater the chance of disturbing the entity behind it.

Once disturbed, the resulting price would far outweigh any benefit gained from modifying the item.

Therefore, it only dared to make the lightest of alterations to these two.”

The old gentleman looked at the two items in Richard’s hands.

”And precisely because it didn’t dare change them much, their original wisp of ether is best preserved, and their toll is the smallest.”

Richard nodded. These two had the cleanest foundations of the lot.

But having the ”cleanest foundations” didn’t mean they could be used right away.

After all, they were still steeped in twelve years of dead men’s resentment, and they still bore the slight tampering left by that Virtuoso.

To render them completely harmless, he would have to use a Scholar’s methods to dismantle and purify them layer by layer.

That would be his own ongoing assignment.

Ultimately, no one wanted the remaining items.

Mrs. MacNeil packed the Dark Copper Mirror, the Black Prayer Beads, and the celadon jar back into her suitcase.

”The taint of bad luck on these is too heavy. I’ll take them back and process them slowly. If I can’t clean them up, I’ll hand them over to Manchester for disposal.”

Ord spread the cash ledger back open.

”The funds gathered from the branches, plus the cash conversion for the handed-in anchor relics. We’ll divide it by contribution.”

He read the numbers out loud.

Richard received twenty pounds in cash, along with five or six pieces of Ether Condensate of various sizes.

By the time the meeting adjourned, the sky had already grown dark.

It was past seven o’clock when he returned to Slag Alley.

After dinner, Richard went upstairs.

Setting his satchel on the bed, he took out the two bronze items and placed them on the desk.

He called up his Panel first.

[Speculation Lv.3 Unlock Condition: Met]

That night at the Black Trench, he had personally overturned a judgment he had always held as truth.

The power of a verdict never lay in the antiquity of its language or the depth of its encryption, but in whether the dead recognized its authority.

What could coax those children to sleep was a lullaby hummed by their mother;

What could guide those men ashore was the work chant they had shouted on the docks their entire lives.

[Inner Awakening]

Turning the critical gaze of Speculation away from the outside world, and directing it inward upon himself.

To illuminate his own judgments—the thoughts he had hidden away and used to deceive himself.

Richard dismissed the Speculation tab and turned to examine another change.

He tried running through a cycle of Tide-Shifting Breathing.

The inhale drew out into a long slope, the exhale collapsed into a short wave, and he held his breath directly in the gap between the waves.

In the past, he had to use his own mental focus to consciously push and pull every single rise and fall of the waves.

Tonight was different.

The moment he sent that breath out, the pool of ether within his chest receded on its own.

Retreating to the very bottom, before naturally welling back up.

Advancing and retreating, entirely without his guidance.

The ebb and flow of the tide kept its own hours; it no longer needed him to stand like a shore watcher, manually beating the rhythm over and over.

It wouldn’t take much more time before he completely familiarized himself with this advanced breathing method and internalized it just as he had before.

Richard slowly opened his eyes and rested his gaze on the Bronze Sphinx Lamp again.

He leaned in close to look at the human face upon it. The gouge across it had split even wider.

In a few more days, the shadow would open another pair of eyes for him.

...

On the morning of the fourth day after the explosion, the newsboys’ voices rang louder than the coal carts.

”Latest on the North District explosion! Public Works confirms thirty-nine victims! Full story on the canal breach! One penny a copy, sir!”

Richard handed over a penny in exchange for a copy of the ”Mirror” that was still damp with ink.

The entire front page was dedicated to the North District.

”Gas mains in disrepair burst in the night, igniting three warehouses along the street and causing sections of the road to collapse.

On the same night, the northern banks of the canal gave way... thirty-nine dead, over a hundred injured.”

In the accompanying engraving, a section of blasted iron pipe peeled back at the edges.

That Virtuoso of the Hearth Fire Tradition had only repaired the sections that would have leaked information from behind the veil, along with a few areas that were too severely damaged.

The basic road and exterior wall damage had been left for the municipal department to handle on their own.

Tucked in the corner of the second page was news of the Western Suburbs.

”Strike riots quelled; seven dead in stampede, forty-two detained.”

The third page featured a fundraising notice from the relief committee. Right next to it was a statement from the gas company expressing deep regret over the aging pipes, announcing that an inquest into the deaths was scheduled for next week.

Below that was a short snippet commending the miners’ picket lines for their orderly evacuation.

Richard folded the paper and tucked it under his arm.

That morning, when he was helping copy the internal ledger at the Branch Office, the total in the death column was one hundred and three.

The missing sixty-four had been dispersed into the ”injured,” ”missing,” and ”relocated” columns. They had been spread so evenly that an auditor wouldn’t be able to find a single flaw.

Once the numbers were printed in the paper, they became the truth.

Half of Canal Road was cordoned off, and a crowd of onlookers stood in a circle.

”I saw it with my own two eyes,” a porter gestured to his companion.

”Blue fire ran all the way down the trench, faster than a dog.”

”It was orange,” his companion argued. ”Blue fire doesn’t burn down houses.”

The two men nearly broke into a shouting match over the color of the fire.

Richard shot them a glance.

There had been no massive fireballs that night, only the deep crimson flames of the Hearth Fire Tradition flashing past.

Yet these two had each invented their own matching colors in their heads.

A lamplighter carried a ladder to repair the streetlamps one by one, while a few women chatted around the well at the alley entrance.

”I faintly heard someone singing in the dead of night,” Mrs. Weir said. ”It made my heart ache, yet feel so relieved.”

”I felt at peace right after,” another woman chimed in. ”I can’t even say why.”

Richard quickened his pace and walked past them.

The world spun forward according to the official version.

The truth was locked away in their few dozen heads, each keeping their own padlock, each holding their own key.