What ordinary people called a "haunting," Enchanters in this era uniformly referred to as a "restless spirit's return." It was a common supernatural phenonon. Such incidents weren't particularly difficult to handle; an Enchanter with even a little power, or even an ordinary priest, could resolve them. However, the appearance of a restless spirit always signified imnse resentnt, and they usually inflicted great harm on ordinary people before the Church could intervene.
Therefore, the focus in cases involving restless spirits wasn't on dealing with the vengeful or hateful souls themselves, but on properly handling the aftermath.
Jenkins's current predicant was a classic example of this. After arriving at the house, he had surveyed the area with his own eyes more than once but had found nothing out of the ordinary.
The awakened spirit seed to be connected to the man's recent visit, but regardless, he couldn't allow it to linger here.
In the brief mont he spent thinking, the awakened soul had grown quite solid. It took the form of a middle-aged woman. Because of her cause of death and her imnse hatred, bloody tears stread from her eyes, and dark particles drifted around her body.
She could now be classified as a malevolent spirit—the kind that was extrely dangerous and had to be destroyed.
Naturally, Jenkins wasn't about to stand idly by. After soothing his agitated cat, he stood in the doorway, waiting for the spirit to lunge so he could destroy it with a single counter-punch.
"I... they..."
But unexpectedly, even though the room looked like the scene of a horror story, the terrifying female spirit didn't mindlessly attack Jenkins.
She struggled to speak, pointing at the wardrobe, then back at Jenkins. But since Jenkins had no way to communicate with spirits, he couldn't fully understand what she ant.
"It can actually form words? Has it retained its sanity?"
He'd encountered no shortage of strange things today, and a malevolent spirit possessing reason was one of them. It was a rare occurrence, but not unheard of. For experts in necromancy, a spirit that could maintain its sanity on its own, without external influence, was an incredibly valuable servant, test subject, and ritual component.
"You want to open the wardrobe?"
he asked softly.
The malevolent spirit shook its head. The simple gesture, combined with its horrifying appearance, was exceptionally eerie.
"Hmm... are the bodies in the wardrobe your children?"
He had already seen what the bodies looked like.
"Yes... child..."
She couldn't stop nodding.
"You want to bury the bodies?"
Following that line of thought, it was an easy guess.
"Yes... thank..."
Jenkins suddenly understood, a flicker of compassion stirring within him. He guessed that the woman before him was Mrs. Koppel, the very person from whom he was supposed to collect a debt. Now, he had no intention of pursuing the matter of the money.
"I will. Rest assured, I will bury you together."
he promised, then extended a hand:
"So, would you mind if I destroy you now? I think you must realize that sothing is very wrong with your current state."
As soon as the words left his mouth, that bone-chilling wind filled the room again, and Mrs. Koppel's already horrific form twisted into sothing even more terrifying.
Jenkins was prepared for this. He sighed and made a sign on his chest, preparing to purify the spirit. But just as he did, the wind died down again. The woman, who had been shifting into a more monstrous form, reverted to her previous, near-malevolent state.
"No... revenge... go..."
He only understood the word "revenge," but he got the general idea.
"No, no, ma'am, please listen to ... You probably can't understand, but there's no way I can let you go outside in this state. You're a spirit, not an ordinary person, do you understand? As for the murderer, the officers from Karlfax Yard will catch him and make sure he receives the punishnt he deserves."
Even though it had shown a degree of reason, Jenkins would never fully trust the entity before him. A spirit like this could lose control at any mont. No matter how much sympathy he felt, Jenkins would not allow its revenge to take place.
"Do you understand? I won't let you leave..."
Jenkins stressed once more.
"...Not... leave."
With those words, she passed right through the wall. Jenkins, startled, thought the spirit was trying to escape, but when he stepped out of the room, he saw her waiting by the door to the adjacent room.
Jenkins had ntally labeled the room with the five bodies as Room Number Four; the naplate on its door read "Brown." The adjacent one, Room Number Three, had a plate that said "Schultz." These were surnas, representing the rooms' occupants, so he couldn't determine their gender from the nas alone.
Jenkins cautiously leaned over the second-floor corridor's wooden railing to look down. After confirming the entrance hall on the first floor was empty, he turned back to the door behind him.
"You want to go in?"
he asked.
It seed Mrs. Koppel's intelligence was gradually improving through her interaction with Jenkins. This ti, instead of trying to make those indecipherable sounds, she simply nodded.
Jenkins nodded hesitantly in return, regarding her with suspicion. After a mont, he pushed his cat, which had peeked out from his collar again, back down before reaching for the doorknob and turning it.
Click~
It was locked.
The spirit imdiately floated into the room. A few seconds later, the lock turned on its own, and the door was opened from the inside.
Jenkins pressed his lips together and shook his head, pushing the door open. The room inside was also empty. The curtains did a poor job of blocking the light, casting a sickly yellow hue over everything.
The room was about the sa size as the one next door, though it appeared a little larger because the single bed had been stood on its end against the wall.
In the center of the room, an incredibly complex circular ritual array was drawn in white, red, and blue chalk. It consisted of interlocking circles of various sizes, interspersed with runes that even Jenkins couldn't decipher.
A circle of white candles stood evenly spaced around the array. They were now extinguished, but judging by their length, they had clearly been lit before.
The walls were adorned with various morbid decorations, such as a goat's skull, a black mask, and a blood-red dagger. Piles of suspicious-looking books were stacked on the floor like small hills, and sheets of parchnt, scrawled with dense formulas and diagrams, were scattered everywhere. Jenkins even spotted a bone that looked suspiciously like a human femur hanging from the ceiling, which itself was painted to resemble a star chart.
The scene, combined with the dim yellow light, would make anyone think this was the room of a master occultist. But Jenkins knew better; the room's owner was no master, but rely a crazed occult enthusiast.
Because every piece of material here related to supernatural powers was incorrect—completely fabricated.
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