Chapter 435: May Eve

The lord of the hunt hung the horn back up. In the ranks, everyone simultaneously reached beneath their ribs.

They pulled out their ribs, one by one.

As they were drawn, the bones retained the shapes of their respective eras: some were perfectly straight, others curved, and some still bore the scars of old, poorly healed fractures.

The barefoot figure pulled out a bone so pitifully short that he stared at it in midair and chuckled.

Once removed, the ribs bent themselves into bows.

The bows had no arrows.

The shadow had no ribs, but the rule was simply to unleash something with full force—what that something was depended entirely on the shooter.

Following the rules of the pack, Richard controlled the shadow to manifest a Moon Nail.

The lord of the hunt raised a hand.

"Loose."

Tens of thousands of bone bows snapped loose at the exact same moment. The projectiles twisted together in midair into a single, massive bolt, violently wrenching the clouds apart.

Down in the lowlands, the people lining up to return simultaneously raised their heads.

"Boom!"

The massive arrow pierced straight through the yellowish-green poison gas, shattering it so thoroughly that it could not reform for a long time.

The hound pack plunged into that yellowish-green haze, churning up the final, unbreathed gasps of tens of thousands of people from the craters.

The lord of the hunt reined in its mount, hovering in midair and searching through the roiling yellowish-green mist.

That line of text still hung there: "one who causes people to cough out their lungs in a single night."

Finding the spot, the lord of the hunt waved a hand.

The old hound with a patch of white fur on its forehead lunged out from the very front of the pack.

It hadn't barked once all night, nor had it ever tried to rush ahead.

But this time, its bite was so precise and deep that the entire front line shuddered.

The lord of the hunt raised a hand, and the hounds retreated from the yellowish-green haze.

They withdrew completely; not a single one lingered to fight.

"We aren't chasing it?" The young man wielding the axe held it high in the air, his arm aching from the effort.

"No."

"One more bite and it'll fall apart!"

"It won't fall apart," the lord of the hunt said without a trace of regret.

"It is no longer masterless."

It looked toward the deepest part of the veil.

"I do not recognize the one sitting above it."

"You don't recognize them?" The young man was puzzled; their lord of the hunt was considered a veteran even among Virtuosos.

"I don't," the lord of the hunt said.

"That is a newly risen tradition. The one at the top never shows their face."

"Then we should take advantage of this moment to..."

"Go ahead, then."

The young man's hand froze in midair, axe still raised.

"I mean it," the lord of the hunt said, not sounding like it was joking at all.

"If you go down there right now, I absolutely won't stop you."

"If you go and actually manage to come back, everything we harvested tonight is yours."

No one on the clouds spoke.

The young man slowly lowered his axe.

"I... don't really know how deep the waters are down there."

"Heh... I don't know either, and I never touch what I don't know."

The lord of the hunt straightened the horn by its saddle.

"If we truly get into a deathmatch with that newly promoted Virtuoso right here, more than half of you in the ranks would probably end up as fodder."

"And if those people from Germania dared to invite the first one tonight, they'd dare to invite a second or a third.

"Their people always have everything completely planned out before they make a move."

As those words fell, the clouds grew so quiet that only the wind could be heard.

Sitting in his wicker chair, Richard slowly processed the implication.

The Empire's Gale Virtuoso had stepped in at the last minute to put out the fire, whereas the other two had spent years making their preparations.

"Quit while ahead."

The lord of the hunt turned its head as it finished speaking.

"I've earned enough tonight."

In its heart, the lord of the hunt was calculating the ledger far more meticulously.

What it had won tonight was an opportunity—a timing so perfect it might not come around again in centuries.

Just managing to tear off a piece was a monumental harvest.

To truly stuff an entire Virtuoso into the cavity of its horn... It pressed a hand against the horn.

Inside the cavity, the three syllables of the Black Earth River Master were still there.

True name. The lord of the hunt muttered the concept repeatedly in its mind.

Bows couldn't pierce it, hounds couldn't tear it, reins couldn't restrain it. Yet the moment half a syllable of that name emerged, it dropped to its knees.

To truly hold a Virtuoso in the palm of your hand, robbing them of control over their own life and death... you needed the entirety of their true name.

The lord of the hunt hung the horn back by the saddle.

"Finish clearing out what needs to be cleared before dawn."

In the distant cellar, the magistrate was writing in his notebook.

Halfway through a sentence, his pen tip pierced a hole through the paper.

The magistrate looked up. Everyone in the cellar sensed something at exactly the same time.

Professor Hohenheim had returned.

He—no... it—was a size smaller than when it had left.

"Professor?" the engineer captain called out tentatively, but received no response.

...

Over in the Imperial Capital, the sky was just turning dark.

Fischer spread the sheet music out on the piano bench in the chapel.

"Once more."

The choir's baritone loosened his collar.

"Mr. Fischer, this is already the third version."

"The third version is the right one."

Fischer tapped on the piano bench.

"You sang the first two versions way too fast, like you were rushing to the market."

"This can't be rushed. If you speed it up, it loses the feeling."

"Then how should we sing it?"

Fischer thought for a long time.

"Think of it this way: someone is standing outside the door, and you're sitting inside. Neither of you is in a hurry."

The baritone shot him a look that clearly said, 'Are you messing with me?'

Fischer ignored him. He just found the melody his classmate had written fascinating.

He had stolen a structural framework from the church's evening prayers and tweaked it for this third version until even he felt it sounded authentic.

"It's May Eve, after all," he said, spreading his hands.

"Usually, they'd put up the poles in the south of the city around this time, but they can't do it this year."

"Since we can't put them up, we have to sing something."

Quite a few people were already standing at the chapel entrance.

There were girls from the local academy, women who had just finished their shifts at the laundry, and two patrolling constables with their hands tucked into their pockets.

One of the constables also had a penny pamphlet tucked in his pocket, its corners frayed from heavy reading.

"Let's begin," Fischer said.

The baritone hummed a starting pitch.

When the first line was sung, the crowd at the door just stood there watching.

By the second line, the women from the laundry had joined in.

They had been humming this while scrubbing clothes by their wooden tubs, and now they knew it better than anyone.

At the third line, the schoolgirls joined in.

At the fourth line, the constable pulled his hands out of his pockets and started tapping the beat.

"No answer to the first call, no answer to the second, at the third call go knock on another door."

"Acknowledge not the wet, acknowledge not the cold, even brought inside, acknowledge them no more."

The melody drifted out of the chapel, rolling across the blackout-regulated street.

As it reached the intersection, someone else picked it up.

Further ahead, outside a candy shop that was still open, two children waiting in line sang along.

Even further down, inside a residence marked with a "Bound by the House Oath" plaque...

A maid clearing the dining table paused and hummed half a line.

At the same time, over on East Slag Lane in Briston, there were no poles this year either.

Evelyn wiped the flour off her hands onto her apron and peeked out the back door.

A group of children had already gathered in the alley.

Mrs. Weir's youngest was clinging to the steps of someone's porch, refusing to stand up.

Two boys from next door were fighting over who got to keep a willow branch.

A few girls were holding a half-woven flower garland tucked with two sprigs of early hawthorn.

"Sister Evelyn!"

"Coming, coming."

She untied her apron, draped it over the doorframe, and walked out.

"Are we really not putting up a pole this year?"

"We're not," Evelyn said.

"Then what are we going to do?"

Evelyn took the half-woven garland, crouched down, and re-wound the willow branch for them.

"Sing."

"Sing what?"

Evelyn held the garland up, inspected it, decided it looked fine, and placed it on the girl's head.

"Sing what my brother wrote."

The children let out a collective, "Ooooh!!!"

The youngest one was still clinging to the steps.

"Your brother wrote it?" The boy from next door who had just lost his fight looked completely skeptical.

"My brother really wrote it."

"Our schoolteacher said it came all the way from Manchester."

"My brother still wrote it!"

"I don't believe you."

Evelyn put her hands on her hips.

"My brother studies at Imperial Capital University and was even in the 'Imperial Capital Morning News'. He's the one in the third row, over to the side."

"The picture in the paper is so tiny, who can even see it clearly?"

"The one with the perfectly straight shoulders is him!"

The children erupted into laughter.

Evelyn's face grew slightly hot from the teasing, but she couldn't exactly argue seriously with a bunch of little kids.

She adjusted the garland on the little girl's head.

"Are we singing or not?"

"We're singing!"

The little girl started them off.

The melody was entirely out of tune, and by the second line, someone was already rushing the tempo.

Evelyn had no choice but to take the lead.

She had heard the alley kids sing this countless times lately, so she knew the lyrics better than anyone.

"No answer to the first call, no answer to the second..."

The children followed along, and as they sang, their voices gradually synced up.

The melody drifted from the east end of Slag Alley to the west. Around the middle of the street, a woman closing her window paused.

Further west, standing by his coal stove, a man who had just returned from his shift in the Western Suburbs hummed a couple of lines along with them.

Margaret stood inside her doorway, not stepping out.

Listening to the tune outside, she silently tapped out the rhythm.

On that same night, in the northern outskirts of Manchester, a few typesetters who had just finished their night shift squatted by a wall, smoking. One of them tapped his foot and hummed a few lines.

Down at the southern Harbor, an old sailor who had just docked his ship sang as he hauled in the moorings. He sang the version his granddaughter had taught him.

In the courtyard of a manor in Northern Yorkshire, a couple dozen people gathered around a May Day bonfire.

The dances that were supposed to be danced around the fire couldn't be performed this year because all the young people were gone, so they sang this instead.

In Devonshire, a gamekeeper stood at his back door.

On the night of the winter solstice last year, he had seen something on the small road in South Valley, and he had survived the encounter.

Tonight, he sang it alone, his voice barely a whisper.

Countless mouths sang the same melody on the exact same night.

Richard heard it from the other side of the veil.

It drifted up from below, swelling from the entire island across the sea, crossing the strait, and spilling onto this land that had been repeatedly plowed by war.

Spirit Vision allowed him to see a web identical to the one on the Day of Mourning.

On that night, churches across the nation had rung their bells in unison. Every bell, every illuminated window, and every Black Jade Mourning Brooch had been a node.

Tonight, the nodes had become a song.

No answer to the first call, no answer to the second;

Acknowledge not the wet, acknowledge not the cold;

If the guest has already been welcomed through the door;

Do not expose them, do not cry out;

Sit with them until the dawn;

At dawn, send the guest away.

From beginning to end, these six lines spoke of only one thing.

How the door between the living and the dead should be opened and closed, and when to send them off.

Richard suddenly felt a wave of déjà vu.

That day in his dorm, holding his pen, he had said to Fischer:

"If this thing gets composed into a tune that's sung everywhere like 'Tipperary', then we're in real trouble!"

Now, real trouble had arrived, but it was exactly the kind of trouble he needed.

On the clouds, the axe-wielding young man was the first to shout.

"It's all divided up cleanly!"

"Shut up."

"The court has already dispersed!"

"Even dispersed, you still need to line up."

"...When was the last time you all said this?"

"Three hundred and twenty years ago."

"Three hundred years."

"Three hundred and twenty."

Laughter rippled backward, rank by rank, spreading even to places where it could no longer be heard.

The old Scholar stood beside the shadow, looking at the road that was now completely empty.

"I have dedicated my entire life to scholarship, always believing that judgments were written for the dead to read."

The old Scholar smiled softly.

"It turns out they were written for the living to recite."

That faint sliver of gray on the horizon widened by a fraction.

And it was right at this moment that Richard felt the Mask of Hermes grow searing hot on the other side of the veil.

Ferryman of Souls—this was the oldest and least mentioned of all the faces of Hermes.

The two golden snakes on the mask simultaneously unclasped their bite.

Instead of twisting back into a staff, they slithered down the shadow's pitch-black legs, wrapping around the ankles once before stopping.

It was hot—so blistering hot that, for the first time, the shadow's feet felt intimately close to this cloud, yet infinitely far away from it.

Richard opened his eyes in the wicker chair.

In the backyard, the gas lamps had completely burned out.

Dawn's light crested over the ridge of the eastern roofs, painting the tips of the holly leaves.

Gerard was still standing behind the porch pillar, his hands clasped behind his back.

He watched his grandson's fingers loosen their grip on the armrest.