I Loaded the Occult Panel

Gerard continued.

”Hundreds of thousands of men stopped killing on the same night, sang the same song, and thought the exact same thing—going home.”

Richard had already drawn conclusions from his experience with this sort of thing.

The Angel of Mons: the prayers of tens of thousands had coalesced into a form that blocked their pursuers.

Hundreds of people singing Tipperary, the song’s echoes weaving into a net across the Spirit Realm.

Mons was fear twisted into a single strand; the salon was habit strung into a web.

On Christmas Eve, hundreds of thousands of men had laid down their guns simultaneously, their hearts filled only with the desire to return home.

The weight of that wish pressing against the veil was countless times heavier than fear.

”Wanting to go home is a collective will too.”

Richard voiced the thought aloud.Gerard looked at his grandson. ”You’re right.”

”The problem isn’t pressing it down; it’s what happens after it’s pressed down.”

Hundreds of thousands of the living wanted to go home, and the dead lying beneath the soil heard them.

The veil was smoothed flat by that peace for just a brief moment.

In that instant, the heavy fear and agony weighing on the dead were temporarily lifted.

It was as if someone had pressed a hand to their shoulders and told them everything was fine.

And so, they wanted to go home too.

Tens of thousands of souls floated up from the dirt and looked toward their homeland.

”Then Christmas Eve ended,” Gerard said, his voice low.

”The gunfire resumed.”

According to Logan’s battlefield record, when the first artillery shell fell in the early hours of the twenty-sixth, not all the living men in no-man’s-land had managed to scramble back into their trenches.

A few of them, clutching buttons they had just swapped with the enemy, were cut down by stray bullets halfway across.

Death resumed its steady influx.

A sleeping corpse is quiet. But they had been woken up and flooded with the desire to go home.

Now the fighting had started all over again. What did that amount to?

”A soul shoved back down harbors far deeper resentment than one that never woke at all.”

Gerard folded the battle report and stuffed it back into the metal cabinet.

”When your great-grandfather was young, he said something to me.”

”What was it?”

”The hardest fury to quell comes from a hand that was just one step away from reaching its goal.”

...

During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, the streets of the Imperial Capital took on a different hue.

There was a lot more black crepe.

On his carriage ride from the Ashford Residence to the Academy District, Richard passed three hat shops.

Every single window display featured black mourning hats front and center, the ink on their price tags still fresh.

The owner of the stationery shop next door had propped up a small blackboard by the entrance. The chalk writing read:

”Mourning envelopes and condolence postcards, in stock.”

Beneath the chalk letters was an even smaller line: ”Bulk orders negotiable.”

The shopkeepers in the Imperial Capital had a sharp nose for this sort of thing.

The mourning veil business was booming, which meant a grim demand was quickly becoming an industry.

Imperial Capital University had a massive, ready-made library that made looking up information convenient, and his aunt was back in her office, so he had simply returned to school before the holidays ended.

Upon returning to his dorm, he didn’t immediately touch the Rune Glyphs materials he had brought back from his aunt.

The two items Heracles had asked him to appraise at the last gathering were still waiting for him.

A copper cornflower button and a small, sealed lead cylinder.

Richard took out the copper button first.

He placed the Sacred Ibis Bronze Paperweight and the Small Bronze Balance side by side, letting the ibis ”look” at the copper button first.

As the long beak angled toward the button’s surface, Richard linked his Inspiration to it.

A wisp of Ether lingered inside the copper button, so faint he could barely feel it.

When he pushed his Inspiration in finer, an odor seeped out from that extremely shallow layer of Ether.

The button’s owner had been a pipe smoker.

He had kept his pipe clenched in the corner of his mouth while carving the flower.

Once he finished carving, he had pressed his thumb against the flower’s stamen.

It was a habitual motion, like thumbing a rosary bead—a single touch to bring peace of mind.

Richard knew exactly what the cornflower symbolized over in Germania.

It was Wilhelm II’s favorite flower.

The soldiers of Germania sewed them onto their military caps and embroidered them onto handkerchiefs to take to the front lines.

The owner of this copper button was a Germanic soldier.

He was dead, killed in the ruins of the bunker obliterated by artillery shells that Heracles had mentioned.

Richard had the balance weigh it.

When the left pan dropped, the entirety of that wisp of Ether was analyzed:

A young man around twenty, clutching the copper cornflower button in the moments before he was killed by a direct hit from an artillery shell.

Richard jotted the data down in his notebook, his pencil tip pausing on the paper for a moment.

This copper button didn’t hold much value.

The Ether content was too low, and the quality was nothing to write home about.

Richard wrapped the copper button in oil paper and took out the small, sealed lead cylinder.

He applied his Spirit Vision to it, but he couldn’t see a thing through the first layer.

Lead was one of the common metals with the worst Ether conductivity.

Richard leaned his nose close to the opening of the cylinder and sniffed.

The item had been hermetically sealed. A layer of cast lead was poured between the mouth and the cap, fusing seamlessly with the cylinder walls.

He pushed his Inspiration deeper, stretching it to the absolute limit of what could penetrate the lead wall.

Faintly, he felt something inside the empty space of the cylinder.

It was very small, roughly the size of a chess piece.

The Ether concentration... Richard jerked his hand back.

The concentration of whatever was inside was so high that it violently repelled his Inspiration the instant they touched.

Richard set the lead cylinder back on the desk. He couldn’t force it open right now.

He didn’t even know what exactly was inside. If he rashly cut it open and triggered something...

”I’ll do a CT scan first.”

The Unsealing Formula would come in handy here.

He let the shadow surface from behind the veil, hovering about two feet above the lead cylinder, while he retreated to a safe distance and layered on his Stone Armor.

The shadow aimed its palm downward, and Ether began to press down.

The pressure converged on the surface of the lead cylinder, forming a minuscule high-pressure zone.

The lead wall bulged slightly under the pressure, and the interior was briefly forced open.

Richard held his breath, his Inspiration pressing against the outer wall of the cylinder.

He only had half a second. Half a second later, the lead wall’s elasticity snapped the gap shut, and he couldn’t read anything anymore.

That half-second was enough. Richard withdrew the shadow back behind the veil and began scribbling furiously in his notebook.

Item inside the cylinder: Suspected to be a badge or a token.

Ether attribute: Does not match any known sealing system on the front lines.

Richard wrote three words in his notebook: ”Germanic system variant?”

He decided against dismantling this lead cylinder any further for now.

He sealed the cylinder with coarse salt and placed it into the Frost Branch box.

Only after doing all this did he finally touch the Rune Glyphs materials the department had sent over.

The runes consisted only of straight lines; every stroke was a knife cut.

A vertical cut formed the main stem, and short, angled cuts formed the branches.

The number, angle, and length of the stem and branches determined what the rune represented.

It was crude and concise, just like its creators.

The Vikings had carved words into oak rafters with short knives on pitching ships; no writing system emphasized the principle of ’no mistakes once the blade strikes’ more than this one.

Richard spent three days reading through all twelve pages of the manuscript related to the Whitby seal.

His Erudition copied the depth, angle, and spacing of every single knife mark into his brain.

On New Year’s Day, it snowed again in the Imperial Capital.

The January 1st edition of the Imperial Capital Morning News was noticeably thicker than usual.

The extra pages were filled entirely with casualty lists.

Richard bought a copy at a newsstand.

The paper stated that during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, the number of Expeditionary Force casualties exceeded the total from the entire first half of December combined.

The Military explained it away: ”After the Christmas Truce ended, enemy forces launched organized counterattacks across multiple fronts.”

Richard figured the counterattacks were probably real.

From a military perspective, resuming fire after a brief truce would naturally catch people off guard, leading to a higher death toll.

But from the perspective of the mystical side, could those spirits called up from beneath the dirt be affecting the living on an Ether level as well?

Richard stuffed the newspaper into his bag and walked past a bookstore.

He hadn’t planned to stop, but the cover of a book dead center in the window display rooted his feet to the ground.

”How to Speak with the Dead: A Practical Guide for Those Who Have Lost Loved Ones.”

A handwritten advertisement was stuck to the corner of the window glass, its ink letters crooked:

”Full set of spirit channeling equipment starting at five shillings, includes a free instructional manual.”

Five shillings. This price perfectly hit the impulse-buy threshold for middle-class housewives.

It wasn’t a luxury, but it was enough to make you feel like you were doing something serious, not just acting foolish.

Two shillings for the book, five shillings for the equipment.

Add in the existing curtains and candles in a parlor, and you had the complete cost of a home séance.

Richard stood in front of the window, staring for a long time.

The bookstore owner leaned halfway out, thinking he wanted to buy.

”Sir, that book has been selling incredibly well lately.

”I got fifty copies in last week, and as of today, there are only seven left.”

”I’m not buying.” Richard waved his hand and kept walking.

...

Mrs. MacNeil gave him some news during their meeting.

The café was the same one as last time, still in that alleyway that required turning at a crooked signpost to find the entrance.

”Those medium shops on the outer section of Flower Moon Street have had long lines out the door ever since Christmas.”

Mrs. MacNeil held a cup of black coffee, her complexion looking a bit grim.

”In the Mayfair District, Chelsea District, and Bloomsbury District, ladies are hosting séance nights in their private salons every single evening.”

”What kind of formats?”

”Anything you can think of.”

Mrs. MacNeil set her cup back on the saucer.

”Playing songs on a phonograph, letting the Phonograph Wax Cylinder spin empty after the song ends, and trying to pick out the voices of the dead in the static;

”Sitting around a table with hands flat on the surface, asking questions, where one knock on the table means ’yes’ and two means ’no’;

”There are even people clutching pencils, closing their eyes, and letting their hands move on their own to see if they can write out what the dead want to say...”

Her index finger tapped lightly against the tabletop.

”Some even invite real mediums over. Tarot, crystal balls, scrying mirrors—booking them out for the whole night.”

Richard summed up the information. These people were almost entirely mothers, wives, and sisters.

Their sons, husbands, and brothers had died across the sea.

That exceptionally long casualty list on Christmas had crushed their last shreds of hope—that ’maybe he’s just wounded’ or ’maybe the next letter is on its way.’

They just wanted to hear that person’s voice one more time, even if it was just a simple grunt of acknowledgment.

”Teacher has put up a sign suspending all commissions.”

Mrs. MacNeil pulled an envelope from her pocket.

”A notice was posted on the door of the Viktorova Medium Hall on Flower Moon Street. It reads: ’Internal inventory, business temporarily suspended.’

”All disciples under her tutelage have also received verbal orders strictly forbidding them from accepting these kinds of commissions.”

Richard took the envelope. Inside was the cash from the odds and ends he had sold to the scribe last time.

The fragments of the Gaelic incantation had sold for one pound and seven shillings, and that string of numbered indices was still awaiting buyer verification.

He tucked the money away, his mind on another matter.

”Why did Madam Marie suspend business?”

Mrs. MacNeil cast him a glance.

”If she didn’t suspend business, the threshold at 17 Flower Moon Street would have been trampled to splinters by now.

”Teacher’s exact words were that it’s like fishing in a malaria-infested pond—you’ll catch malaria before you ever catch a fish.”

”When those ladies come looking for you with red eyes, clutching money in their hands, do you take the job or not?

”If you take it and actually manage to make a connection, what exactly are you connecting to on the other end?”

She pushed her coffee cup aside.

”You already know what happened on Christmas. The resentment from those souls on the front lines who woke up only to be shoved back down is several times thicker than before.

”If you open a door on this side of the veil right now, poke your head through, and say ’come on over,’ who do you think is going to come?”

By the time he walked out of the café, the sky had already grown dark.

Richard followed the correct path out.

The gas lamps were lit on the main street. Carriages were parked along the curb, their drivers huddled inside their cloaks, dozing off.

He hailed a carriage and headed in the direction of Chelsea to return to the Ashford Residence.

As the carriage passed an intersection, he glanced out the window.

At the corner of the intersection, a door stood ajar, and a shop window was lit up.

In the lamplight, a woman wearing a purple headscarf was behind a counter, wrapping a wax cylinder for a customer.

Richard guessed that this person was likely one of those so-called wild mediums.

The customer was a young woman in a black dress, clutching a handkerchief, her eyes rimmed with red.

The wild medium wrapped the cylinder, her mouth moving rapidly as she spoke, seemingly explaining how to use the equipment.