Be that as it may, Lu Li left Raintown as evening approached and set off for Tavitown.
Emin had insisted on accompanying him. The stubborn young woman believed that only by "solving the problem with the cultists" could she advance from a trainee to a full-fledged exorcist.
They reached Tavitown before the anomalous fog could overtake them.
The local residents knew nothing about the cultists and were going about their business as usual.
The carriage stopped on the outskirts of town, and Lu Li, holding a lit lamp, entered the cultists' eting place.
Creak!
The half-open wooden door swung wide, the iron chain on its handle falling with a clatter. Dust swirled through the hut, and the lamplight revealed a ss of tracks on the floor.
Drag marks, strange footprints, a frayed rope.
It was a hut just like the one the drunken man had described—a place where innocent victims were held captive. But now, it was empty.
There was no sign of Anna in the hut. Stepping back outside with the lamp, they saw that the anomalous fog, creeping in from the west coast, had already reached the outskirts of Tavitown.
At dusk, Lu Li and Emin entered the last hut.
The wooden door swung slowly shut behind them. There was nowhere to hide anything in the empty hut, and there was no letter from Anna either.
Perhaps they should ask around in town?
Just then, Lu Li heard a voice in his ear—cold, yet laced with anxiety, as if coming from the other side of the door.
"Lu Li? Is that you out there?"
It was Anna's voice.
A ripple passed through the depths of Lu Li's eyes. He lifted his gaze to the door.
Anna's exclamation imdiately followed: "It really is you... Don't say anything. Act normal. There's a vengeful spirit hiding near you..."
Lu Li's eyes twitched slightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emin inspecting the bed and the wardrobe.
It seed she hadn't heard the voice in Lu Li's ear.
"You're too close. I won't make it in ti... Try to get away from her," Anna said anxiously.
Lu Li glanced around. The hut was small; it would be difficult to put enough distance between himself and Emin.
Emin seed to have been watching Lu Li closely the whole ti. She looked up and asked, "Did you find sothing?"
"There's nothing here. Let's go check the town," Lu Li replied.
"But... alright."
Emin swallowed whatever she was about to say and nodded.
Lu Li walked to the door and placed his hand on the handle, but then he froze.
"Why did you stop?" Anna's voice urged, hurrying him to get away from Emin.
"Where did we first et?" Lu Li asked.
"My mother's gallery... Don't worry, it's really ."
"...What happened on the Ashori?"
The voice in his ear and Emin answered at the sa ti.
"Nothing," Lu Li shook his head slightly, turned the handle, and opened the door just a crack.
Suddenly, a hand reached out and covered his.
Thump.
The door he had just opened slamd shut again.
"Mr. Lu Li... sothing's wrong," Emin said, her worry unconcealed as she stared intently at him with her light brown eyes. "Did you hear sothing? You must be careful... It could be a trap set by an entity from the fog."
"It's noticed ! Run, now!"
Anna scread anxiously in his ear.
Lu Li's hesitation worried Emin. Just then, she seed to notice sothing and pointed to the windowsill. "What's that?"
A white letter lay on the windowsill.
Anna's urgent demands echoed in his ear, while Emin's worried gaze t his. Lu Li's response was to place a hand on his holster and draw the Spirit Gun.
An eerie noise once again assaulted Lu Li's senses—or rather, Lu Li himself had broken into their world. Curious, greedy eyes turned toward him.
But aside from the creatures in the cracks of the In-Between, the hut and the area outside were empty.
"You monster! Get out of my..." Emin suddenly clutched her head in agony and scread hysterically.
Lu Li let go of the Spirit Gun and turned around.
"...house!"
Emin's face was pale, etched with fear. Her eyes red, she looked at Lu Li imploringly. "I just felt a terrible malice, and it's aid at you! Please, believe . Don't go outside, no matter what."
"I've hidden myself, the Spirit Gun can't sense ... You don't even believe ?" the voice in his ear persisted.
As soon as the words were spoken, a loud crash echoed from outside the hut.
The floor trembled, and a choking cloud of dust rose inside. The fog outside churned, and splinters of wood struck the walls with sharp cracks.
"Was that the monster?" Emin grabbed Lu Li and pulled him away from the door. The flickering lamp made the shadows in the hut dance.
Outside, everything gradually fell silent, and the echoes faded away.
And the voice in Lu Li's ear also fell silent.
Lu Li and Emin remained in silence until the choking dust settled. Then, Emin quietly asked what had happened.
"A curse that's following ."
Lu Li was almost certain: the voice in his ear had been the whisper of "the door"—sothing only he could hear, and it was trying to make him open the door.
If he had opened it, "it" would have "seen" him, and the curse would have advanced to the third stage.
He picked up the envelope from the windowsill. Anna's na was on it. She wrote that the strange heretics, frightened by the salvation in the village of Peschanaya Obval, had suddenly and cowardly decided to abandon the area and head east, toward a church.
In the letter, Anna wrote that she had found Aunt Mary, and had also made a surprising discovery about the entity these strange cultists worshipped: Silence.
They were followers of the Third Calamity.
At the end of the letter was the address of the Church of Silence, where Anna would be waiting for Lu Li: Center of the Wastelands. Revoltown, on the edge of the Gauss Highlands, Church of Silence.
The Gauss Highlands—the na was familiar.
It had been ntioned in the exam questions from Prada's Paradise. A colossal anomaly, sixty kiloters across, called the Eye-Worm, floated there above the land.
However, Lu Li hadn't seen any news about it in the papers. Perhaps it had happened a long ti ago, or perhaps it hadn't happened yet.
They left the hut and headed in the direction of the loud crash. There, they found another hut had been destroyed, leaving only wreckage behind.
"It's a good thing we weren't hiding in there," Emin said, relieved.
Upon entering Tavitown, they found the residents frightened by the crash on the outskirts. When they learned they were safe, the people breathed a sigh of relief and, like the inhabitants of the previous towns, pleaded with Lu Li to stay.
But he only stayed in Tavitown for one night.
In a room on the second floor of the inn, Emin was asleep, tucked under a blanket. Lu Li sat on the single bed, calmly reflecting on the day's events.
The dangerous night, Anna's disappearance, Emin's scream, the visit from "the door," the destroyed hut...
The pattern ford by these clues reminded Lu Li of sothing.
"Anna," Lu Li whispered softly.
Emin, who wasn't yet asleep, opened her hazy eyes. "Mr. Lu Li, what did you say?"
"Are you Anna?" Lu Li asked calmly.
Confusion spread across Emin's face. She didn't understand why Lu Li would ask such a thing.
"Of course not... Don't worry, I'll help you. Good night." Thinking Lu Li was just worried about Anna, she offered a quiet word of comfort and went back to sleep.
Lu Li still didn't fully trust Emin, but he trusted Anna.
Because Anna would never deceive him.
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