Chapter 78: Chapter 82: The Fire that Exists Only in Dreams
Nina went back to her room to sleep.
In this world, most people went to bed early and rose with the dawn—the ti after the sun set was dangerous, and the faint glow from the Creation of the World would lead to the most severe degree of distortion across the globe. Even with the protection of city lights, people had to face the night cautiously.
Unable to go out and gather, lacking many forms of entertainnt, reading books at night wasn’t as dangerous as reading at sea, but it could easily lead to ntal exhaustion, auditory and visual hallucinations. Occasionally, it would even attract unwanted peering from the darkness. Therefore, considering everything, the safest thod was to go to bed early and wait for the sun to rise the next day.
Duncan, however, did not feel the slightest bit sleepy.
He turned off the lights in the room and stood near the window in his shirt, casually admiring the night view of Plunder City-State beneath the night sky while recalling his conversation with Nina after dinner.
Nina rembered a great fire, and the body’s residual mory he occupied retained that sa event—a fire in which “he” had escaped a collapsing, burning building with a six-year-old girl, while chaotic crowds and pervasive fog filled the distant streets.
Yet only the two of them rembered this fire—Nina had brought it up with other adults, only to be dismissed as “confused mories after a child is frightened.” The newspapers from eleven years ago clearly recorded “the truth”: at that ti, at the boundary of the Lower City District and Cross District, there was only a factory leak that caused mass hallucinations, with no record of a fire.
Duncan frowned slightly, another dubious point was on “himself.”
According to Nina, “Uncle Duncan” actually didn’t rember the fire either, and it had always been only her who rembered the incident. When she was young, she even ntioned the fire to Uncle Duncan (who should have been “Ron” at the ti), and he, like the other adults, thought she had “misrembered after being frightened.”
But now, Duncan’s mory contained images of the fire—those were the deepest recollections of the body’s original owner.
Where did the problem lie? Why was it that in Nina’s mory, her uncle had no recollection of the fire, yet Duncan found corresponding images in the deepest mories of this body? Had Nina’s uncle been lying all along? Or had the mory been sealed until a Ghost Ship captain took over the body, causing the deepest mories to surface?
Duncan tapped the window fra unconsciously with his finger, silently sorting through the tiline in his mind.
He integrated the information he had obtained from the Sun Cultists:
Eleven years ago, the Sun Shard first appeared within the territory of the Plunder City-State, and the Transcendent phenona it caused could have affected a wide area.
Also eleven years ago, Nina beca an orphan. In her and Duncan’s mories, there was a fire at that ti, which happened in the Lower City District—but apart from them, no one else rembered this fire, nor was there any evidence to prove it ever occurred.
Thereafter, the Sun Shard lay dormant within the City-State, without any further anomalies. The only record left from the event of that year was the “Cross District factory leak incident.”
Over several years, Nina and her only relative depended on each other for survival.
Four years ago, followers of the Sun God within Plunder City-State attempted to awaken the dormant Sun Shard ahead of ti and perford a dangerous sacrifice ritual. However, it was extinguished before completion by the newly promoted Judge-in-training Fenna, whose team dealt a heavy blow to the cult’s influence. After a massive crackdown, the Sun God Church was expelled from the City-State.
Although the ritual did not reach the final step at that ti, the “awakening” attempt by the Heretics might have had so effect, and the Sun Shard began to gradually awaken from its dormancy.
It was around that ti that Nina’s “uncle,” upon whom she depended, contracted a strange illness and, under the tornt of sickness, gradually fell into depravity, eventually yielding to the enticent of the remaining Sun Cultists in the city and becoming one of their minions.
Ti moved to not long ago, when activity from the Sun Shard began to attract Sun Cultists back to the city. The Heretics, lying low for four years, perford the sacrifice ritual again, and what followed… was Duncan’s intervention.
Throughout the tiline, many events seed vaguely interconnected, yet all lacked key evidence.
The most suspicious event was from eleven years ago—what Transcendent phenona did the Sun Shard truly trigger at that ti, and did the fire really exist?
Did the City-State authorities erase the true account of that incident, wiping away the traces of the fire? And then, considering maintaining order, did they publicly announce the whole event as a mass hallucination caused by a factory leak?
But this didn’t explain why many people’s mories also completely lacked any recollection of the fire—unless the authorities went to great lengths to Reshape the mories of all parties involved.
Moreover, there was one more thing—in this world, anomalies and phenona were public knowledge; even children knew of the existence and dangers of Transcendent things, and the authorities were clearly aware of this, always adhering to a policy of “announcing dangers in advance to ensure citizens have self-preservation knowledge” to govern the city. If it was indeed just a fire caused by Transcendent forces… why hide it?
Unless… there was a bigger issue behind that fire, such that even the re disclosure of the information could lead to a spread of dangerous elents spiraling out of control.
Duncan suddenly furrowed his brow.
“`
Or perhaps there was another possibility.
The characteristics of Transcendent phenona are odd, and often the harm they cause is not limited to the physical aspect, they can even distort human cognition, to the point where they contort evidence already committed to paper—what if the mories of the event by the people, the cognitions, even the records of the City-State authorities and the Church, have all been tainted by the Sun Shard?
Duncan felt that perhaps his mind was going a bit too far, as a “novice” who was only half-versed in the field of anomalies and supernatural occurrences, his imagination might be getting a bit too carried away, but on the other hand, once this thought erged, it seed unstoppable.
mories of the people, records of the authorities, even things written in black and white in archives from over a decade ago, all could be twisted and replaced—sothing he might not have believed in before, but now, he believed in it more than anyone else.
Because the place where he was standing was now called “Duncan’s Antique Shop.”
Here, everyone recognizes their old neighbor, Mr. Duncan, the antique shop owner.
Duncan let out a sigh of relief, lowered his head, and looked through the second-floor window at the gas-lit streets below.
Now only one question remained.
Whether or not the fire that occurred eleven years ago really existed, whether or not the Sun Shard contaminated the mories of the parties involved, and the records left by the City-State, there was one key point:
Why did Nina rember that fire?
…
In the Upper City District, within a mansion belonging to the Governor.
Fenna awoke from a nightmare.
But this ti, the nightmare had nothing to do with the Black Sun, nor did it point to the Holoss returning from the Subspace—she had simply dread of her childhood suddenly.
In that night filled with fog, smoke, blood, and frantic crowds, she, at just twelve, was carried on her uncle’s back, fleeing from the mob’s attack.
In the dream, she seed to return to that helpless, fragile state once more, her proud martial skills and powerful divine arts rendered useless, she could only flee in panic, pursued by madn and shadows, crossing pipes and valves above the factories with her uncle, looking down in terror at the city through the smoke and heatwaves, seeing boundless flas rising everywhere, spreading across the entire district visible to her eyes…
The young Judge, clad in her sleeping gown, sat up in bed, took a deep breath, and gazed out of the window—the clear radiance of the Creation of the World still hung high in the sky, and the clock hanging near the window showed that it had just passed midnight.
She felt as if she had sunk into a nightmare for a century.
Fenna got up, turned on the electric light, went to the vanity, and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She whispered the na of the Storm Goddess to regain the inner calm and let out a sigh as if comforting herself, “At least now I don’t dream about that ship anymore…”
Her voice had just fallen when she suddenly heard footsteps from the corridor outside, followed by a knock on the door: “Fenna? Did you have a nightmare, Fenna?”
It was her uncle’s voice—the Governor, the most revered man in the City-State.
“I’m alright.” Fenna steadied herself, then straightened her clothes and went to open the door.
Dante Wayne stood at the door, this middle-aged man with gray hair and gray eyes, not too burly, obviously just woken up as well, casually draped a coat over himself, and looked at his niece with concern as she opened the door.
Having lost an eye in an earlier incident, he now possessed a ruby-made eyeball that featured intricate gold patterns within; around the eye socket were ferocious scars from eleven years ago, giving his face an intimidating appearance.
But Fenna was already used to it; she knew her uncle was actually a kind and just man.
“I had a nightmare,” she said, rubbing her eyes, her voice tinged with resignation, “I didn’t an to wake you up.”
“It’s nothing, I’ve been a light sleeper in my old age,” Dante Wayne looked at Fenna with concern, “Did you dream of your childhood again?”
“Yes, I dreamt of that ti again.”
“`
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