Chapter 390: Special Issue for the Day of Mourning

Richard returned to his dormitory, locked the door, and drew the curtains tight.

He first consulted the panel.

Richard had always treated it as if it didn't exist—he refused to think about it, speak of it, write about it, or touch it.

Now, he needed to use it to take his grandfather's place.

The problem was he couldn't even think about it, so how could he take it out?

Richard held his breath, pressing the thought down until it was as faint as possible.

He merely sketched the outline of the question—'can I extract it?'—in his mind, not daring to let his focus land on the true name itself.

The panel provided a new prompt.

[Sealed Entity inspection: Intact.]

[Available operation: Extraction (single segment).]

[Conditions: automatic scribe state; external vessel; encapsulated under the name of "another".]

[Effect: Severs the connection between the extracted segment and the holder. Limited to one use.]

[Warning: If submitted under your own name, the connection will be reestablished.]

Richard stared at those few lines of text, a thin sheen of sweat slowly dampening his back.

The panel had explicitly told him how to decouple himself from this true name.

Automatic scribe state.

That was the trance state where his hand wrote on its own.

"Encapsulated under the name of 'another'" meant he couldn't sign his own name.

He had to deliver this true name like an anonymous letter without a signature.

Richard remembered the words spoken by the mirror-faced head of the god Thoth during the museum's seed trial.

The authority of a recorder was never taken lightly.

When you wrote a name for something, that thing became forever bound to that name.

He also remembered another phrase: a pen could write words that it did not itself recognize.

Richard's gaze slowly fell to the shadow at his feet.

If the shadow acted as his proxy, branding the mirrored afterimage of that true name into a vessel stroke by stroke, the entire process would bypass his own brain.

Then the one writing would be neither his hand nor his mind, but a hand that fundamentally did not understand what it was writing.

The foundation of Richard's Mirror Tradition came in handy at this very moment.

The Mirror Tradition read reflections.

He wouldn't touch the true name itself; he would only have the shadow trace the mirrored afterimage that the true name cast upon the veil.

He had already decided on the vessel: that Dark Copper Mirror Ares had brought back from the Ash Belt.

Its origins were already vague, and he had personally cleansed the Correspondence Curse from it.

The ether had soaked it perfectly evenly, leaving not a single trace of identity within.

Using it as the paper for an anonymous letter couldn't be more perfect.

Moreover, it was a mirror itself; a mirrored afterimage falling into a mirror was perfectly natural.

Richard didn't act immediately. One wrong step in a matter like this would doom him eternally.

He first ran a blind writing test, having the panel transcribe a thoroughly memorized and completely harmless text while he was in the automatic scribe state.

For example, the opening of Cicero's "Pro Murena."

After ingesting the four herbs, he closed his eyes and gripped his fountain pen.

Three minutes later, that thick, sticky layer of water surged up, and the summoned shadow hand began to move.

By the time the routine Mrs. MacNeil had taught him earlier dragged him back from the trance, he opened his eyes and looked down at the paper.

On the paper was the opening paragraph of "Pro Murena," written in a crooked scrawl without a single word missing.

He tried to recall the process, but his mind came up blank.

He only remembered sitting down, closing his eyes, and then opening them to find the paper full.

For the segment in between, his mind held absolutely nothing.

Zero memory and zero recollection of the writing process.

Richard folded the test paper and burned it, washing the ashes down the drain.

He took the Ash Belt's Dark Copper Mirror from the bottom of his drawer.

Under the gaslight, the mirror surface gleamed with a dark coppery hue, coldly reflecting the ceiling.

He had already figured out the rules of encapsulation.

The first layer would be lead, the common metal with the poorest ether conductivity, to lock the vibration pattern onto the mirror surface so it couldn't escape.

The second layer would be coarse salt, the old method for isolating ether. Unlike silver powder or fine salt, coarse salt provided a broad-spectrum shield.

The third layer would be bone. Richard retrieved his great-grandfather's bone needle from the deepest hidden compartment.

Engraved with the inscriptions of the Moon Hunting Tradition, the bone needle itself was a Hunter's seal.

Attaching it to the outside of the lead shell was equivalent to adding a "hunting ground pass" to the envelope.

When the lord of the hunt opened it, he would first sense the familiar aura of Moon-Hunting on the inscription.

Once the triple-layered shell was sealed, it was for the lord of the hunt's eyes only; not even the two professors were allowed to handle the contents.

Richard gathered all the materials and laid them out on the desk.

He didn't perform any divination. Divining at this moment would just be asking for a faster death.

He was going to have his grandfather's name called back from the ledger of the doomed, returning him to the side of the living.

...

The situation in the outside world was rapidly deteriorating.

Clara's third dive took place during the spring tide on January 27th.

The Ether Accumulator that had been leaking since her second dive completely failed this time.

A hundred feet deep on the ocean floor, devoid of sunlight, the ether field was compressed and warped by the seawater.

Down there, a person relied entirely on the breath of life supplied by the accumulator on their back. The moment the accumulator stopped, she became a snuffed-out lamp in the deep water.

What saved her was her uncle. When that Minor Adept alchemist craftsman forged her equipment, he stuffed a single-use Stone Lung Pouch into the interlayer of her diving suit.

Clara only recalled it later. On the day of delivery, the perpetually scowling man uncharacteristically added an extra sentence:

"There's something in the interlayer. Don't go picking at it; it'll save your life."

The moment the accumulator failed, she pressed the interlayer.

The Stone Lung Pouch split open, and enough ether to last five minutes surged into her lungs.

It was precisely during these five minutes that she witnessed the "Bulwark" with her own eyes.

It was a silent burst of white light that detonated directly above her head.

The seawater swallowed all sound. She only saw the light. A hundred feet underwater, it suddenly lit up like high noon.

Then came the snow.

A downward-falling snow.

Splintered wood, military boots, twisted steel plates, and people... slowly sinking from the surface of the sea.

Over eight hundred people, along with the wreckage of that massive steel warship, descended together toward the seabed.

Clara froze in the water.

What chilled her to the bone were the sailors sinking to the bottom.

They were not struggling.

When a person drowned, their limbs would instinctively thrash and kick; their body would desperately try to float up.

Not a single one of the sailors falling to the seabed did that.

They touched the bottom, and they stood up.

On the ocean floor, they fell into formation, row by row.

Facing a specific direction. Clara followed their gaze.

The seabed there had split open in a massive rift. They stayed in line, offered a military salute, and filed inside.

In perfect order, they walked into that maw one after another.

Before walking inside, a young sailor turned his head and gave a single glance.

Across a hundred feet of deep seawater, Clara felt that glance was directed right at her.

The air in the Stone Lung Pouch was almost depleted. With a pop, the eardrum in her left ear ruptured.

Seawater rushed in, cold and agonizing. Her lungs began to burn, the pain radiating from the inside out as the ether scorched her.

She thought of the Standing Stones of Stenness, thought of the Ring of Brodgar.

Those Neolithic standing stones had stood by the sea for thousands of years.

Though the ancient seals beneath their foundations had weakened, a decaying seal always retained a small pocket of Still Water.

It was a small area where the ether was heavily suppressed by ancient inscriptions.

Clara swam frantically in the direction of the Ring of Brodgar.

Swimming into that pocket of Still Water, the chaotic surges of ether behind her finally couldn't reach her.

She clung to the standing stone at the very edge of the ring and hauled herself up.

The sky was already faintly light.

In the early morning of the Orkney Islands, the wind was strong enough to slice a person paper-thin.

She lay sprawled on the freezing stone. Her left ear could hear nothing, and her lungs burned so fiercely she couldn't speak.

The Navy's ships only arrived at the site of the incident after daybreak.

After three days of salvaging, the official conclusion was simple: spontaneous combustion of smokeless powder.

The seabed rubbing Clara had drawn and the testimony she had written were all stamped and archived.

And then, silence.

Over eight hundred families back home received death notices on the exact same day, compounding the long list of fresh casualties from the front lines.

And so, by early February, the Empire announced the National Day of Intercession and Mourning.

Richard read the public bulletin on the front page of the "Imperial Capital Morning News".

"...In this time of national crisis, the subjects of the nation shall mourn together for the fallen soldiers and the martyred military and civilian populace.

February 15th is specially designated as the national day of mourning. Churches across the nation shall ring the bells of remembrance at the exact same moment;

At noon, the entire country will observe three minutes of silence. Carriages will halt, and factories will cease operation;

At nightfall, parishes will recite holy hymns to pray for the deceased. May they rest peacefully in the Lord's embrace..."

The words were exceptionally solemn, bearing the royal seal.

As Richard folded up the newspaper, he committed the date to memory.

The day of mourning was set for February 15th.

On that day, churches nationwide would ring the bells of remembrance in unison.

Millions of people would observe silence, recite holy hymns, and pray for the dead at the exact same moment.

It was a net countless times larger than any Phonograph Wax Cylinder.

The lines outside seance parlors were already looking exactly like the ones at candy shops.

At five in the morning, while the sky was still pitch black, old women wrapped in blankets were already staking out spots outside the doors of rogue mediums.

The day of mourning hadn't even arrived, yet the Imperial Capital was already quietly changing.

Richard decided to have the "Collection of Strange Tales: Special Issue for the Day of Mourning" rushed into print overnight.

He sent a telegram to Charlotte, followed by a letter each to Dawn Paper and the Duckworth Printing Factory.

Mr. Dawn's reply came the fastest.

"I'll give you the paper for free."

The letter contained only one line of actual business, trailed by a half-sentence: "...consider it me making good on earning you as a friend."

That phrase "consider it earning you as a friend" was what Mr. Dawn had thrown down when Richard initially refused the Dawn Family's sponsorship. Now, he was making good on it.

Charlotte edited the manuscript swiftly and ruthlessly.

She crossed out every instance of "the dead" in the original draft.

"Change it to 'guests'," she wrote in small print in the margins of the returned manuscript.

"If a word like 'the dead' gets published, the Censorship Bureau won't sleep a wink tonight, and they'll slap you with the charge of spreading death panic."

"Change it to 'guests'. The Censorship Bureau can sleep, and the readers will still remember it."

A sudden realization struck Richard as he looked at the revision.

Charlotte was absolutely right.

If you told a mother her dead son might come tonight, she would break down, she would cause a scene.

If you told her that on the night of the mourning day, a guest might come knocking on her door, she would be afraid, but she just might follow your instructions.

Fear made people follow the rules.

Duckworth Printing Factory kept their machines running through the night; the rollers didn't stop once.

Grey's family cargo truck also followed the old southern shipping route, helping to distribute the prints into the city.

Richard placed the most critical information right in the dead center of this issue.

An entire page framed by a thick black border—"Guest Reception Rules for the Night of the Day of Mourning".

1. A midnight knock: if unanswered after three raps, it will leave to seek the next house.

2. If you have already spoken, first ask: Which road did you come from?

3. Scatter a line of salt across the threshold, leave a lamp on the windowsill. Milk must only be left outside the door; never bring it into the house.

4. If you have already welcomed the guest inside, do not expose them. Do not cry or shout.

Sit with them until dawn. See the guest off at daybreak. Only after the guest has left may you weep.

...

After Richard finished writing the final rule, his pen lingered on the paper for a long time.

On the third day after the special issue hit the streets, Kasalis followed the scent right to his door.

"Mr. Williams." He held up the booklet. "Did you write this?"

"I did." Richard didn't deny it.

"Distributing this sort of thing on the eve of the day of mourning."

Kasalis flipped to the full page of rules.

"Teaching people not to open the door when they hear a bell at midnight, teaching them not to claim kinship with anyone soaking wet..."

He raised his eyes. "Does this not count as spreading panic?"

Before Richard could answer, a dry, hoarse voice drifted over from the end of the corridor.

"How is this spreading panic?"

Professor Mortimer ambled over at a leisurely pace.

"Your foundation in classics is thin, Kasalis. I don't blame you."

The old professor walked up and plucked the booklet from his hand. "Look at the formatting."

He opened it, pointing to a line of small print at the footer.

"Dictated by a firsthand witness, complete with time, location, origin, and age of the party involved."

Mortimer read it aloud once.

"This is a standard folklore collection format. It's cut from the exact same cloth as the parish archive records of saintly apparitions from centuries ago."

"Professor, this..."

"This is a folklore research appendix." Mortimer shoved the booklet back into Kasalis's hands.

"The Department of Classics at Imperial Capital University has a long history of collecting oral urban legends from the northern industrial cities.

This particular issue was compiled at my request. If you have a problem, you come see me."

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