Only Prusius was still bewildered, unsure of what had just transpired.
"The Uninvited Guest. That's its ritual," Katerina explained, averting her gaze in response to Prusius's confusion.
"You don't know?"
"Uh... I was very young when..."
Prusius lowered his head.
Katerina gave a brief explanation. For this information, the rchant paid her 200 contribution points.
"You should adjust the reward ratio for information," Lu Li suggested to the rchant.
The contribution point system from the Ancient Era wasn't suitable for the Age of Anomalies, at least not anymore.
Any anomaly was new to the lone rchant, its full value being no less than 500 contribution points—
The ratio of contribution points to shillings, the old currency, was still 1 to 10. Information about a single anomaly was enough to buy thousands of pounds of anomaly at—enough to turn a body into an Inhuman through contamination.
"What should I do?"
The rchant asked for Lu Li's opinion.
This was against the rules, but there was only one exorcist left, and only one rchant, too.
"Have Vinnelag compile a complete catalog of anomalies."
This would prevent people from selling information that everyone already knew.
The fish in the pot began to bubble, releasing a strong, fishy aroma. Prusius loved such intensely flavored food, but for Katerina, it was the opposite. The lack of spices and side dishes made the fishy sll, a hundred tis stronger than the sea breeze, render the al inedible. But Lu Li ate it calmly, so she said nothing.
Ophelia didn't need to eat. Although she could mimic the act of eating, food was rely a burden to her; anything she swallowed would be incinerated by her high internal temperature, turning to waste and ash.
After eating the fish, they took the remaining soup outside. There was still so ti left before they needed to rest.
Prusius, ever the one to bind the group together, started questioning the newest mber:
"Ophelia, are you from the Ancient Era too?"
"I... am a vengeful spirit," Ophelia corrected, the precision in her tone a remnant of her scholarly past.
"Yes, I and... Lu Li... together..."
It sounded sowhat ambiguous, and it was unclear whether it was a problem with her speech or a deliberate act—most likely the latter.
"Can you tell us about that ti?" Prusius asked curiously, and Katerina's interest was piqued as well.
Lu Li never spoke of that ti.
"I... speak... very slowly," Ophelia's reply was hoarse and halting.
"That's okay, the night is still young," Prusius said, sitting down obediently.
Ophelia inclined her head, and it seed as though flecks of ash were falling and scattering from her as she slowly began to tell the story of the Ancient Era.
Her voice wasn't pleasant, but her slow words flowed through the captain's cabin, and a picture of the Ancient Era unfolded in their minds.
They had all briefly, and with astonishnt, glimpsed it on the train: hazy, almost fictional bustling streets bathed in warm sunlight, noisy and cheerful crowds, and the sight of sunbeams falling on fur, exuding a warm scent that Katerina and Prusius rembered well.
People always yearn for what lies beyond their familiar world, especially when it is truly beautiful.
"If we get out of the clouds, will we see the sunlight?"
Prusius looked hopefully out the window, but there was only swirling darkness clinging to the glass.
"No, the Sky... of Illusions... has blocked... the sky."
That is to say, what the people of the Wastelands call "don't trust the sky."
As if in response to the conversation in the cabin, or perhaps due to a shift in the clouds heralding the approach of the Severe Winter, the dense clouds gradually parted, revealing a dim, moon-like light.
It was a perfect, reddish-brown, glowing parallelepiped, nearly half the size of the sky. It did not emit light itself; the light source ca from the natural light beyond the parallelepiped. This gave the shape a layered quality, as if another space existed outside of it.
Lu Li peered intently at the parallelepiped itself, or rather, at the space beyond it.
Curved patterns crawled across the reddish-brown surface, which looked familiar, like a ceiling.
Lu Li's dark eyes gradually narrowed; he saw a head pass by the edge of the parallelepiped.
"I call it... the cardboard... sky," ca Ophelia's near-whisper.
"We are like... creatures... inside... a box, and the ground beneath our feet... is like... the bottom of a cardboard box..."
They all saw the back of a head pass along the edge of the cardboard box and could make out light-brown hair.
Ophelia's words, and the associations evoked by the scene, were filled with an oppressive grandeur.
They suppressed their own sense of insignificance, yet at the sa ti, they yearned for the world beyond the cardboard box.
"I saw this sky in my childhood..."
Katerina whispered, gazing at the sky. She recalled several nightmares she'd had after a high fever, where she had seen this sky: distant images drawing closer, forming the outlines of hideous monsters.
"Is it an evil spirit?" Lu Li asked.
"I don't know..."
The Sky of Illusions lasted for nearly an hour before disappearing again, hidden by the clouds.
Everyone stepped away from the window and returned to their seats, digesting what they had just seen.
It seed that every ti the "Sky of Illusions" appeared, it awakened fear and a desire for exploration in people's hearts; at least, both tis Lu Li had seen it, it had contained these elents.
The previously lively cabin fell silent. Soon it was ti to rest. Prusius, still unsettled by the sight of the sky, wished Lu Li and the others a good night before curling up in a corner and falling asleep.
The Black Crow landed on the locked helm.
"I don't like it when it's too hot," Katerina said, leaning against the far wall, as far from Ophelia as possible.
The captain's cabin fell silent once more.
Ophelia, who had no need for sleep, calmly watched Lu Li as he drifted off. At one point, she leaned forward slightly, as if wanting to get closer to him, but then she noticed the rchant—who also didn't need to sleep—standing by the door like a coat rack. She averted her gaze and straightened up.
The faint sound of waves drifted into the cabin. The night was calm.
...
Lu Li awoke to a surge of cold.
The rchant by the door closed it as Prusius returned, shaking out his wet fur.
"I had to go outside."
Katerina also woke up, stretching and arching her slender waist.
Lu Li looked out the window; the glass was coated with a layer of watery haze, like a thick fog.
The anomalous fog had receded, leaving the world shrouded in a damp mist.
The temperature continued to drop, each day colder than the last.
They heated up so canned food for breakfast. After the al, the Andrea moored at the ruins of a port, stopping at the edge of the shallows.
Through the thin mist blanketing the sea, a wooden boat slowly appeared, approaching the port's shore.
Getting ashore, they surveyed the port's ruins. "Ruins" was perhaps too generous a word; "remnants" would have been more accurate. Of the once-bustling port, only a few columns and shattered stone slabs remained.
But as they moved further inland, they gradually began to notice sothing strange.
Marble columns rose from the rubble, covered in the marks of ti. The stone slabs had long since cracked and shattered, and the dry grass in the crevices had long since died. The damaged and incomplete limbs of stone statues lay scattered everywhere, most of them too worn to identify.
This was not the port of Himmfast.
Rather, these were... lost ruins.
This reminded Lu Li of the ruins foretold by the Everlasting Drear.
Ruins, Abyss, cultists, tree, a brown carriage.
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