I Loaded the Occult Panel

Five li ahead, a disastrous multi-train collision had reportedly occurred.

The military train had used old-fashioned wooden carriages outfitted with steel gas cylinders for lighting.

When a train like that crashed, it truly became a train of fire.

With no adequate water nearby, the fire brigade had dragged pumping hoses from a canal half a li away, connecting them section by section.

By the time they reached the end, the water pressure was too low. The spray scattered into mist in midair.

Everyone in the carriage had woken up, but no one spoke.

From afar, Richard watched someone calling roll by the edge of the scorched earth.

It was a young lieutenant with a torn bandage hanging across his chest. He held nothing in his hands.

The only complete roster had been in the officers’ carriage, and it had burned along with it.

He was calling out the names one by one from memory. Whenever he got stuck, he would start all over from the beginning.Through the carriage window, Richard suppressed his mirror-condensation technique. Lv5 [Perception] allowed him to see the layers clearly:

All the shadows on the scorched earth leaned in the exact same direction, pointing south.

The shadows of the station’s water tower, the twisted undercarriages, and the squatting medics all stretched southward—the direction they were originally meant to go.

Behind the veil, the railway tracks continued southward, stretching out of sight.

Every so often, someone boarded the train.

Their boarding motions were strictly methodical: first passing luggage up, then grabbing the handrail, and finally stepping aboard.

Once a carriage was full, it departed, traveled a short distance, and returned empty for the next batch.

Beneath the train, the steel gas cylinders were still breathing behind the veil, expanding and deflating, expanding and deflating.

Watching them, Richard thought of the eight-thousand-meter stretch of yellow-green poison gas over the Flanders Marshlands last month.

That incident had been premeditated for decades.

This time, according to a well-informed colonel, it was simply the result of two signalmen misreading a newspaper during their shift change.

But on this side of the veil, there was no difference.

MacFie pulled the curtain open a sliver, watched for a moment, and closed it again.

”The Military will take over, and the Branch Office will assist. We don’t need to meddle.”

Just inside the cordon, a young Practitioner squatted by the edge of a pit, holding a copy of the Abridged Manual of Litany and Return-to-Sleep Rituals printed by the parish.

He stopped halfway through his third recitation. If he couldn’t push through the chant, the hook wouldn’t catch.

He flipped the book over to look at the back cover, as if trying to find a misprint.

Richard recognized that expression. He had worn it himself that night by the Black Trench last year.

Beside him, the red-haired girl pressed her pencil so hard into the notebook on her lap that the barrel bent. Her eyes remained fixed on the sliver of the curtain.

The scales of Nemesis tilted above her head.

Hundreds of people had boarded that train and burned without leaving a single name behind, with no one to see them off.

In her mind, this had to be balanced.

The girl’s breathing grew ragged.

Richard glanced at her, pulled out his notebook, and tore out a page.

Gripping his pen, he thought for a moment.

Professor McPhee was right; this wasn’t their job, but it wouldn’t hurt to give a reminder.

”One: don’t chant the Church’s words. These people have probably only set foot in a church twice in their lives.”

”Two: the military has a roll call roster. It doesn’t matter that the book burned; the format remains.”

”Three: the living must answer ’present’ for the dead, one by one, without missing a single one.”

Catherine reached out, snatched the paper, and added two lines at the bottom.

”It doesn’t matter if you mispronounce a name. Just keep reading.”

”When someone corrects you themselves, that’s him.”

Finishing, she set her pen down, and the tight breath trapped in her chest slowly eased.

Richard reached for the carriage window.

”What are you doing?”

MacFie gave him a look.

”Boy, you aren’t thinking of throwing that all the way over there, are you? What, are you stronger than a Hunter?”

The white-haired giant reached out and took the paper.

”Professor, you just said...”

”I said not to meddle.”

He folded the paper, pinched it between his fingers, and lifted a sliver of the curtain.

”I don’t know that boy’s surname, but he’s read over forty names tonight, and he choked on the seventh one three times.”

”The one calling the names gets hooked by the names himself.”

His index finger drew a single stroke across the back of the paper.

That stroke was branch-carved script—a sharp vertical line ending in a diagonal slash. A white trail of condensed ether lingered on the paper for half a second before seeping in.

The paper vanished from his fingers.

Richard watched from the side, his eyes shining. Professor, I want to learn this!

Over by the pit, the squatting young man suddenly lowered his head.

He flipped over the Abridged Manual on his knees, revealing a corner of the note.

He pulled it out, unfolded it, and read it by the firelight.

Reaching the third line, he refolded the paper, tucked it into his breast pocket, and walked over to the lieutenant with the torn bandage.

Catherine was still looking out the window.

MacFie pulled the curtain tight and tipped his hat down over his eyes.

Catherine opened her notebook, wrote a line, and pushed it across.

”Professor, you just said not to meddle.”

”I said not to meddle. A piece of paper doesn’t count.”

”Then what does it count as?”

”A passing favor.”

..................

After crossing the sea, the trio’s first stop was Queenstown, a famous deep-water port.

Richard was deeply intrigued by the place; he had heard that ships departing from here could reach the New Continent.

During the Great Famine seventy years ago, highlanders had been shipped by the boatload from here to the New Continent, only to die off in droves over there like wheat.

Three years ago, when the Titan wrecked, both the corpses and the survivors had come ashore here.

On the seventh of this month, the Tania sank, and its corpses washed ashore here too.

MacFie had come here strictly for the passenger manifests of the sunken ships.

They went to the town hall and received the manifests from the clerk.

Standing beside MacFie, Richard could see them clearly.

On the pages for first class, almost every line held a name.

There were names, ages, nationalities, professions, and claimants.

A few lines were followed by a small note, stating that belongings had been handed over to a particular gentleman.

Flipping to the second class, blank spaces began to appear.

By the time they reached steerage, huge swathes of the pages were blank.

MacFie smoothed the page flat.

”The strength of a judgment rests entirely in the name. Wandering spirits are the hardest to deal with.”

”That’s why the local Practitioners are so overwhelmed.”

Emerging from the town hall, they saw another group out on the pier preparing for a salvage dive.

They were salvaging a shipment brought back from the New Continent—cargo marked with the Category Two designation.

Supernatural items were converging on the Imperial Capital, just as they were sinking to the seabed.

Passing by, MacFie simply said, ”They salvage theirs, we do ours.”

That night, the three of them climbed up to the headland.

There wasn’t a single light on the sea; after the blackout mandate, even the lighthouse had altered its cycle.

MacFie stopped at the edge of the cliff.

”Open your Spirit Vision.”

”To what degree?”

”The level you know you can handle.”

Richard brought up his mirror-condensation technique.

As Still Water spread out, he saw a road extending from the western sea.

The road rose from the water, leveling off at a man’s height above the surface.

The surface was unpaved, but the people walking on it were perfectly steady.

A line had formed on the road.

The procession stretched from the base of the cliff westward, trailing deep into the sea beyond where Richard’s water could reflect, with no end in sight.

They walked neither fast nor slow, following one another in single file.

Some carried luggage; others were empty-handed.

Richard pushed Still Water westward to its absolute limit, yet the road kept extending.

In that moment, he understood.

This was the entire North Ocean route—the route sailed for three hundred years from the eastern shores of the New Continent to the western shores of the Old Continent.

The sunken ships of three hundred years connected bow to stern, and the dead did the same.

”Is this the Drowning Line here?”

Beside him, MacFie nodded.

”Keep looking down.”

Richard continued to observe, discovering that the road was layered by era.

The people on the topmost layer wore clothing from the current era.

Suits, sweaters, and a few still wearing the ship’s life jackets. These people had likely frozen to death.

Further down, the clothing was distinctly older.

Men wore soft-brimmed hats, women were wrapped in shawls, and several walked barefoot.

They carried cloth bundles tied with rope.

These were likely the immigrant ships from the Great Famine, meant to go to the New Continent to build railways, only to meet an early end here.

Richard’s breathing slowed. Just as he was about to shift his gaze lower...

MacFie patted his shoulder.

”That’s enough. Look any deeper, and you won’t just be looking.”

Only then did Richard realize the back of his neck was drenched in sweat, biting cold as the sea breeze hit it.

Catherine crouched down, pulled the canteen from his canvas bag, and handed it to him.

MacFie walked back to the edge of the cliff.

”That road of the dead you just saw comes from the west; their landing point is their home.”

”They don’t come ashore at Queenstown?”

MacFie shook his head.

”The people who departed from here kept the road outside their own doors in their hearts to the very end.”

Richard looked up.

”So that’s why we’re going to Covered Fire Village.”

MacFie turned back around.

”Right. The twelve standing stones at Covered Fire Village are exactly the landing point, and that array hasn’t been reinforced this year.”

”The old array needs a new Anchor, and the new dead need sleep-return.”

As the three of them made their way down the hill, a fog rolled in from the sea, obscuring even the path beneath their feet.

Catherine, walking at the front, fished a small flashlight out of her pocket.

She clicked it twice, but it didn’t turn on. She clicked it twice more, even trying to unscrew it to check the batteries.

From behind, MacFie said, ”Stop clicking.”

”Around ether weak points, batteries stop working after dark.”

”Then how do we navigate?”

MacFie took out his hip flask and took a swig.

”Walk toward the smell of coal smoke.”

He stepped into the fog.

”Stay close.”

”Especially you, Richard.

If I leave you on this headland tonight, Old Mo will smash my door in when we get back.”