Chapter 398: The Homecoming Tide

"A reminder?"

"Yes. The people who warned us were... business associates of my father's."

Richard understood. Grey's mother had mentioned before that their family knew people on the mystical side.

"We're moving to our house outside the city this afternoon. We'll stay for a few days before coming back."

"That's good." Richard let out a breath of relief.

"Aren't you leaving?" Grey asked suddenly.

Richard gripped the receiver, saying nothing.

He couldn't leave. He had to step into this vortex and do what had to be done.

"I'm staying at the university," he said, it being all he could offer. "The school has made arrangements."

"...I see." Grey didn't press the matter.

"Then... be careful."

"You too."

Neither of them hung up.

Only the faint sound of their breathing lingered on the line.

After a moment, Grey remembered something.

"Oh, right," she said, her voice suddenly lightening.

"That Frost Bean seed you gave me."

Richard raised an eyebrow. "The one from the snowline?"

"Yes," Grey said. "I've kept it planted in a flowerpot on my balcony."

"It still hasn't sprouted."

"Yeah." Richard hadn't expected it to live.

"But..." Grey paused.

"Recently, when I touch the seed, it doesn't feel as cold as it used to."

"Not as cold?"

"Right," Grey said, hesitating slightly.

"I'm not sure if it's just my imagination or if it's real."

"When I first got it, the bean was so freezing it stung. I'd press my finger to it and have to pull back after just a moment."

"Now... although it's still cool, that biting chill seems to have faded a bit. At the very least, it doesn't freeze my fingers anymore."

Grey spoke to him, but she also seemed to be murmuring to herself.

"I was thinking, if it stays planted like this... maybe one day it really will sprout."

Richard leaned against the wooden paneling of the telephone booth, remaining silent.

...

On the Day of Mourning, the outer stretch of Flower Moon Street was far emptier than usual.

The swindlers' shops still stood shoulder to shoulder, their signs hanging in place, but none of the owners had come out to hawk their wares.

Madam Marie's closure notice remained pinned to the door of Number 17. The words "Internal Inventory, Temporarily Closed" had begun to blister and warp, soaked through by the persistent fog over the last few days.

Richard pressed his hand against the spot where the doorknob should have been, and the brass plate beneath his palm softened, molding itself into a handle.

Just like last time, the door opened to a room filled with nothing but mirrors.

But unlike last time, all the hidden ones under Madam Marie who could spare the time to come had gathered here today.

Richard did a rough count; there were about a dozen of them, men and women, young and old.

The two leaning against the wall possessed an aura far stronger than the rest. They were Minor Adepts.

Mrs. MacNeil blended into the crowd of her peers, looking entirely inconspicuous. She wasn't wearing her usual plain scarf today; instead, an extremely small black jade brooch was pinned near her temple.

Madam Marie sat in a high-backed armchair in the deepest part of the mirror room. Her face, as always, remained entirely blurred and unreadable.

"Richard, come over here," she called.

Richard walked over.

No one in the room spoke. The dozen or so people merely offered him faint nods of acknowledgment.

Richard had packed everything he needed the night before.

The Sphinx Lamp rested warmly against his body, while the Sacred Ibis Bronze Paperweight and Small Bronze Balance sat securely in his bag. The half-set of Rune Glyphs were individually wrapped in oil paper.

He had even brought along Clara's small flag for drawing in customers.

Madam Marie cast a glance at the little flag. Offering no judgment, she simply said, "You won't need that tonight."

"The Collection of Strange Tales has already been distributed," Richard said softly.

"I know. I took in two copies myself. Those six rules on the paper are well written."

"Will they actually have an effect...?"

"We'll find out tonight."

The first toll of the midday bell rang out right at that moment.

The steam whistles of factories near and far blew in unison. Their long, drawn-out wail blanketed the entire Imperial Capital.

The carriages on the street rolled to a halt, and even the horses stopped pawing the ground.

Standing inside the mirror room, Richard listened as the faint sounds outside were extinguished one by one. The clatter of wheels vanished. The shouts of vendors fell silent. Even the movement of sparrows beneath the eaves ceased entirely.

The entire city removed their hats for three minutes of silence.

Madam Marie raised her hand, and the entirety of the Imperial Capital slowly surfaced within the largest standing mirror in the room.

"Look at the mourning."

Normally, a city of a million people was never truly still. Even in the dead of night, a few lamps would stay lit, a stray cough would echo, or an insomniac would stand restless by a window. That was the ambient static of a living city.

But in this moment, all of that static had been wiped away.

On a random street, the heartbeats of hundreds of people bowing their heads slowly synchronized, rising and falling in perfect unison.

The flocks of pigeons in Trafalgar Square touched down upon the stone slabs and refused to fly. They huddled close together, every tiny head turning to face the exact same direction.

And the veil, in the span of these three minutes, drew a long, deep breath.

When the three minutes were up, the long wail of the whistles abruptly cut off. The horses began to paw the street once more, the carriage wheels rolled forward, and the city sprang back to life, acting as though nothing had happened.

"This daytime breath is the inhale," Madam Marie said.

Madam Marie reverted the mirror back to reflecting the room full of mirrors.

"When the bells ring tonight at eight o'clock, that will be the exhale."

"The exhale?"

"When the whole city lets out this breath at once... you'll understand when the time comes."

...

Night fell earlier than usual.

Without being told, households dimmed the gas lamps by their doors, leaving only a sliver of light.

Madam Marie had steadily dispatched most of the dozen or so people gathered under her roof. Now, only two or three remained.

Mrs. MacNeil left with the last group. Just before stepping out the door, she gave Richard a nod without saying a word.

"They are heading to the perimeter," Madam Marie's voice drifted from the depths of the mirror room. "You will stay here."

"What am I responsible for?"

"You'll know when the bells ring."

At exactly eight o'clock, the first bell tolled from the nearby St. Clement's Church.

It was immediately followed by St. Martin's, St. Bride's, Westminster... One after another, every church across the entire city rang its bells in mourning.

The tolling cascaded in overlapping waves, flooding in from all directions with such force that every mirror in the room hummed in resonance.

On the surface, this was the Empire giving an answer to its hundreds of thousands of dead.

Madam Marie reactivated the grand standing mirror, and Richard saw the web covering the entire city.

Every tolling bell was a bright node in the web.

Behind every window, the lamps left burning for sons, husbands, and brothers who would not return formed glittering beads.

The items on people's bodies—the Black Jade Mourning Brooches pinned to chests, the Memorial Lockets hanging from necks with a lock of the dead's woven hair—were all knots, one after another.

The bells and hymns, and the melody of Tipperary that had been hummed in every street and alley for the past half-year.

Only now did Richard realize that the song no longer needed a phonograph.

It had taken up residence in people's throats.

Mothers keeping vigil hummed it while mending clothes; drunkards in taverns belted it out while slamming their fists on tables.

Hundreds of thousands of mouths hummed that melody simultaneously, and a radiant web draped over the entire Imperial Capital.

Then, the corridor of the Spirit Realm began to draw fire along the web.

Through the Still Water of the mirror technique, Richard witnessed the exhale.

Madam Marie spoke.

"The moment the bells ring, the grief of the entire city billows upward, and the fire ignites on its own."

"Can't it be stopped?" Richard asked, still somewhat unwilling to accept it.

"It can't. Or rather, the high-ranking figures who can stop it don't want to."

Madam Marie's words were laced with helplessness.

At 9:17 PM, a piercing screech tore through the night sky.

Searchlight beams shot up one after another from the direction of the docks, their stark white glare sweeping across the night sky, painting the underbelly of the low-hanging clouds a ghostly pale.

The long, shrieking wail of the air raid sirens overlapped, one sound burying the next.

Listening to that long wail through the mirror room, Richard suddenly noticed something wrong.

Hidden beneath the long wail was something else.

Three long sounds, one short—the barking of hounds.

"It's an air raid. The Zeppelin airships are coming for the docks."

The muffled explosions of falling bombs echoed across half the city.

In the direction of the docks, leaping flames dyed a small patch of the clouds red.

In that moment, panic was violently ripped straight out of the grief.

"This is the solvent it wants," Madam Marie said.

In the corner of the room, an old telephone connected to the veil's signal suddenly rang.

One of Madam Marie's students hurried to answer it. His expression changed.

"The lines at the switchboard have crossed," he said, covering the mouthpiece.

"They're saying the line got crossed with the coast. Someone on the phone is... asking for addresses."

"What about the barometer?" Madam Marie asked.

The Practitioner glanced at the row of instruments mounted on the wall:

"From the northwest to the southeast, a storm front has formed."

The Wild Hunt had arrived, riding the storm front.

Tens of thousands of mounts trampled the sky at an altitude of eight thousand feet. There was no road beneath their hooves; the surroundings were all wild.

Horns blared before the vanguard, drowning out the long wails of all the sirens below.

That endless procession was sweeping directly over the airships.

In the mirror, a Zeppelin was bitten tight by a searchlight beam.

The airship struggled in the beam, trying to veer back into the clouds. The moment the storm front rolled over its top...

The beam of the searchlight bent at a freakish angle.

Something had waded through the light, dragging the beam off course.

By the time the beam of light straightened back out, there was nothing at the Zeppelin's original position.

Afterward, only half a sentence was left in that Zeppelin's flight log:

"Struck by a flock of geese at an altitude of eight thousand feet, flock flying against the wind..."

Following the direction of the war, the Wild Hunt swept straight toward the heart of the Imperial Capital.

Wherever it passed, the terror was churned thicker.

The guests began to knock on doors. Three raps.

"It's me."

The voice drifted in through the wooden doors—soft and weary, the tail of the sentence tilting slightly upward.

"Let me in."

The six rules that Richard had written were currently being put to the test, one by one, behind hundreds of thousands of doors across the city.

People behind some doors followed them, but some doors opened.

The scene in the mirror landed on an apartment building not far from Flower Moon Street.

A woman in her fifties, her hair pinned up, had not yet taken off her apron.

She was crying tears of joy, her arms thrown wide as she embraced someone.

The person stood dripping wet inside the doorway, the water sloughing off his body already soaking a massive patch into the mother's apron.

Two sets of cutlery were laid out on the table, one on the mother's side, and one opposite.

The chair opposite had sat empty for half a year, and tonight, it had finally received someone to sit in it.

That door had already been bolted shut from the inside.

Richard whipped his head toward Madam Marie.

"She bolted the door."

"I saw." Madam Marie's tone was completely flat.

"When she opened the door, she said, 'My son has come home.'"

Richard stiffened.

"From the moment those words left her mouth..." Madam Marie enunciated every syllable.

"To her, the person standing inside the door is her son. She defined it herself."

Madam Marie let out a soft sigh.

"A guest invited over the threshold cannot be cast out by an outsider."

Richard stood before the mirror, watching as the mother endlessly stroked her "son's" dripping wet hair, murmuring to him.

Perhaps she was asking if he was hungry. Perhaps she was saying the soup was still hot.

Madam Marie drew a piece of chalk from her sleeve and gave her wrist a light flick toward the mirror.

In the mirror, a chalk mark silently surfaced on the doorframe of that apartment.

On the steps, a line of salt scattered out of thin air.

Madam Marie withdrew her hand.

"It can't be stopped now that it's inside," she said. "But I can stop it from taking people away."

Richard said nothing more.

Within the mirror, the sound of knocking echoed up and down the entire street.

Three raps, three raps, one door after another.

Behind half the doors were screams, behind the other half, laughter.

The laughter of mothers, of wives, of sisters...

The laughter of reunion, of welcoming back a loved one after a long separation.

Dishes were set on tables, lamps were lit, and families sat together, chatting amid the laughter.

Listening to the laughter filtering through the mirror, Richard felt only a bone-deep horror.