After dinner, Jenkins ran into the young Fini Faithford in the corridor again. She wasn't alone; Mrs. Stress, whom Jenkins had t on his last visit, was there with an unfamiliar young woman.
The young woman appeared to be in her early twenties, her features bearing a closer resemblance to Mr. Stress. Jenkins surmised this must be the eldest daughter he hadn't t on his previous visit—the one who worked at the textile mill.
Mrs. Stress seed very timid, clearly uncomfortable in such a solemn environnt, but she still greeted Jenkins with a warm smile.
Only after they parted ways did Jenkins's expression grow grim. He had seen an evil spirit hovering behind the young Miss Stress.
"What's going on?" he wondered. "Yes, I rember now. A few weeks ago, during the arithtic class, I saw an evil spirit behind another young woman who ca to listen in. And if I recall correctly, she was also a worker from the textile mill."
Lost in thought, he made his way to Miss Bevanna's office. It was Monday, which ant it was ti for his combat lesson.
"This can't be a coincidence, can it?"
He rapped his knuckles on the door and, after hearing a voice grant him entry, turned the handle and stepped inside. He had expected to find Miss Bevanna at her desk buried in paperwork, but instead, she was sitting on the sofa, wrapped in a long-sleeved coat, engrossed in a book.
It was a book of poetry. Having little appreciation for the genre, he'd never been fond of such books.
"Good evening, Miss Bevanna."
"Good evening, Jenkins."
She gently closed the book. "Well then, shall we begin? Last week..."
"Forgive , but could you wait just a mont?"
Jenkins cut her off, offering an apologetic smile. "I'm terribly sorry, but there's sothing I have to ntion. Just now, in the corridor, I ran into..."
He quickly recounted his discovery of the evil spirit and voiced his sowhat tenuous theory. Miss Bevanna assured him that the Church would look into the matter.
Jenkins's guess was that the evil spirit had appeared because of trouble at the textile mill—perhaps the owner or managers were forcing the female workers into sordid dealings, leading to deaths. Such things were common enough; the original Jenkins's mories were filled with similar rumors heard on the streets.
But the problem was far more serious than he had imagined.
The following Tuesday morning, he had just arrived at the antique shop and was idly chatting with Papa Oliver about the newspaper headlines when a carriage ca clattering down Fifth Queen's Avenue and screeched to a halt in front of the shop. The passenger was a Mr. Schleicher, who urgently told Jenkins to get in at once—Miss Bevanna needed to see him.
After a quick word to Papa Oliver, Jenkins scooped up Chocolate and hurried out the door. On the way, Mr. Schleicher couldn't explain exactly what was happening, only that it wasn't a request for Jenkins to treat an injury beyond conventional healing.
When he pushed open the door to a eting room he'd never been in before, he saw Captain Bincy along with two other captains he recognized.
The three of them all wore solemn expressions, so seated and others standing, while Miss Bevanna stood before a table in the center of the room. Spread across the table was a massive sand-table model of Nolan City—the first Jenkins had ever seen in this era.
"I need you to confirm sothing," she said. "Is this the young Miss Stress you saw last night?"
As she spoke, she handed Jenkins a black-and-white photograph. It carried the strong chemical scent of a freshly developed print.
The photograph showed a decaying corpse, its features so distorted that it was difficult to recognize. It took Jenkins a long mont to finally identify the face.
"Yes," he confird, his voice trailing off. "This is definitely the person I saw at the church last night. But this..."
He realized the corpse's state of decay was unnatural. It ant that, barring any supernatural interference, the woman could not have died recently.
"The young Miss Stress you saw last night was not a living person," Bevanna explained. "It's a rare phenonon designated A-12-02-3320: the Revenant Corpse."
"A Cursed Item?"
Jenkins was taken aback. He hadn't seen any of the black aura that signaled a Cursed Item.
"This type of event-based Cursed Item is particularly troubleso," Bevanna continued. "Its danger level increases exponentially over ti. If not stopped, it can silently eradicate an entire human settlent."
She gestured with a finger toward the photograph in Jenkins's hand:
"This was our oversight. A few weeks ago, with that textile worker who had an evil spirit attached to her, the team assigned to the case dismissed it as a simple haunting. This morning, we raided the textile mill where Miss Stress worked. In the waste disposal area, we unearthed nurous bodies. Our investigation has since confird that the individuals to whom these bodies belong are all alive and well, going about their normal lives in the city."
"Then which is fake?" Jenkins asked. "The living people or the corpses?"
"That's difficult to say."
Miss Bevanna's brow furrowed slightly:
"Ah, I imagine you aren't familiar with the characteristics of A-12-02-3320. It's a phenonon most commonly observed in small human settlents, like villages. In this entire Epoch, there has never been a recorded case of it appearing within a city. When it occurs, up to thirty-two people between the ages of twenty and thirty in a settlent will experience natural death. After dying, however, 'they' will spontaneously hide their own corpses and continue on with their normal lives. As for what 'they' are, you can think of them as unstable beings—a volatile mixture of soul, matter, and the essence of the Cursed Item itself.
"Spreading out from these individuals, the Revenant Corpse phenonon will continue to manifest until the entire population of the settlent has been replaced by these creatures, beings that linger between life and death. It's impossible to distinguish a Revenant Corpse from a normal human with the naked eye, but they are far more likely to attract other evil spirits. That's why if a particular settlent experiences a sudden spike in hauntings, we must investigate for the presence of A-12-02-3320."
"And if it isn't dealt with?" Jenkins pressed. "What happens then?"
Jenkins figured the black aura of the Cursed Item must be visible on the actual corpses. After all, it wasn't even clear if the young woman he'd seen last night truly existed in the first place.
"Have you ever heard the legend of the Town of the Dead in Rosebell County, in the Cheslan Kingdom?"
Miss Bevanna asked.
"Yes," Jenkins replied. "Papa Oliver ntioned it."
To ordinary people, it was just a legend. But to an Enchanter, it was a very real, forbidden place. According to Papa Oliver, any living thing that drew near the town would perish without a sound, its soul spontaneously trapped within the town's borders. When the number of souls within the town reached a critical mass, they would surge outward like a great tide of the undead, flooding the nearest human settlent. For that reason, the entire area around Rosebell County was completely sealed off by the Church.
Even the Church's Enchanters couldn't solve the problem at its root; it had beco sothing akin to a natural phenonon, entrenched in that part of the world. The only thing they could do was eliminate as many of the undead as possible whenever the great tide surged forth.
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