The smoke rising from the chimney dissolved into the blizzard-swept night.
The fireplace, clogged with damp mud, had once again fallen silent.
— Don't light a fire. It'll draw too much attention.
Lu Li, who was boarding the windows with planks stripped from cabinets and chairs, cautioned Ophelia.
They were outsiders, and human at that. It was unwise to be conspicuous in a city occupied by anomalies.
— But our clothes and boots are soaked through. If we don't deal with this, getting sick will be even worse, — Katerina pointed out, looking at Ophelia.
— If Ophelia agreed to dry them, that would be just wonderful.
— Only... Lu Li’s... maybe, — Ophelia was unyielding on this point.
Katerina glanced back at the preoccupied Lu Li.
— Or could you ask the rchant to take our wet clothes, dry them, and bring them back?
— The rchant is not a servant to be tasked with such things, Lu Li replied, sealing the windows from prying eyes with the planks.
— So that's a no?
— We can.
After boarding up the last window in the living room, Lu Li blocked the staircase with the remaining furniture.
Of course, it wouldn't stop the anomalies, but it could warn them of their approach.
— ...10 investigator points.
The rchant, it seed, could only express his protest in this way.
— Deduct it from Lu Li, — Katerina said, shrugging off her jacket and reaching behind her back to unfasten her leather armor.
A month ago, if soone had offered her 100 shillings to wash her clothes, she would have shoved their mouth up their own ass.
But things were different now. How could an exorcist be short on cash, especially when Lu Li possessed a fortune that all of humanity combined couldn't match—
Ultimately, Lu Li didn't treat the rchant like a servant and have him "take a pile of wet clothes, dry them, and bring them back." Instead, he simply asked him to bring a few new sets.
The rchant headed for the door, and Lu Li followed with an oil lamp.
— Where are you going? — Katerina asked.
— To see if our tracks have disappeared.
The raging blizzard pressed against the wooden door, its icy breath seeping through the cracks. Even the light from the oil lamp and the glowing fluorite seed to dim in its presence.
The blizzard raged through the streets, piling snow into the corners, and the group's tracks had long since vanished.
After waiting for the rchant to leave, Lu Li closed the wooden door and slid the bolt. A few minutes later, the rchant returned, and Lu Li opened the door for him again.
— Lu Li, help
with my leather armor, — Katerina said.
Her left arm was twisted, making it difficult for her to reach the fastenings of her armor.
A wave of heat ca from behind. Ophelia had approached and was helping her unfasten the leather armor.
— Thanks.
Calmly removing the last of her underclothes, Katerina dried herself with a blanket, carefully working around the eyeball on her stomach, and put on the dry clothes.
— What is... that? — Ophelia asked, staring at the eyeball pushing through the skin.
— My contamination, — Katerina replied, pulling on her clothes and hiding the deformity.
Without a fireplace, they couldn't cook, so they just placed the canned food next to Ophelia to warm it up.
After eating dinner in the howling, blizzard-swept night, everyone drifted back to sleep, leaving Ophelia with a book the rchant had brought from Vinnelag.
For a vengeful spirit who needed neither rest nor food, books were one of her few comforts.
Perhaps, besides her self-imposed isolation, it was these books that had kept her from being defiled by the In-Between and turning into an evil spirit.
Katerina and Prusius slept poorly. Aside from the hypothermia caused by prolonged exposure to the cold, the howling blizzard outside the perilous walls of Rylstein made it impossible to rest.
Shingles and planks battered against the walls like uninvited guests knocking at the door. Katerina drifted in a half-sleep for several hours before finally falling into a deep slumber late at night. Prusius, however, woke up and ran over to Ophelia, reading the book with her.
...
Early the next morning, Katerina slowly awoke.
Opening her eyes, she saw faint light filtering through the cracks in the boarded-up windows; dawn had broken.
Prusius was asleep, curled up next to the oil lamp. Lu Li was buttoning the cuffs of his shirt. Everything was calm.
Katerina felt a sense of relief at seeing the morning light and her companions again.
A low whine...
Suddenly, a whimper from Prusius caught her attention.
Lying on his side, Prusius seed filled with anxiety and fear, his paws twitching as if he were running from sothing.
Ophelia woke him, and a startled Prusius gasped for breath.
— Another nightmare? — Katerina asked, sitting up and pulling the slipped blanket over herself.
— Mmm...
Prusius's damp fur was slick with sweat.
Lu Li gave Ophelia a questioning look.
— Nothing... is chasing him, — Ophelia replied.
— I'm fine... Mr. Lu Li, — Prusius said weakly, getting to his feet and shaking his head, ruffling his fur.
The rchant looked away from Prusius, took out the canned food, and handed it to Ophelia to prepare their al.
A piercing cold wind blew outside the window. The blizzard still raged across the land, but it was less ferocious than the night before.
As the cans ward up in Ophelia's ghostly aura, they listened quietly while Lu Li laid out his plan.
The fortresses built by the previous generation around the excavation site hadn't been found, which ant it would be difficult to reach it directly. Moreover, the gray fog might have already enveloped the entire site.
This ant that, one way or another, they would have to enter the gray fog, encounter the creatures within it, and et the lord nad Socrates.
Assuming the lord hadn't changed.
— To the gray fog.
Lu Li paused, his calm black eyes sweeping over everyone.
— I'll go into the gray fog. You'll stay outside.
— No... don't even think about it, — Katerina said, shaking her head.
— You and I... will go in, — Ophelia said.
— The lord's rank won't be any lower than an evil god's, — Lu Li replied.
Katerina was more insistent than he'd expected.
— We might not be as smart as you, or as clear-headed, but don't underestimate our survival experience.
No one backed down.
Everyone finished their breakfast, put on their bulky clothes and cloaks, and left the hut.
Rylstein gradually vanished into the snowstorm behind them. Perhaps it was because their destination lay ahead, perhaps because the wind was no longer in their faces, or perhaps it had nothing to do with them at all—the gray fog was spreading outward.
The blizzard gradually subsided by noon, and the tiny figures on the vast, white expanse could finally see the border between white and gray in the hazy distance.
They paused for a mont before the strange, gray-shrouded expanse, and then stepped inside.
This was what they had co for, after all.
The howling blizzard outside seed to recede the mont they entered the gray fog.
— Let's stick close so we don't get lost, — Prusius's quiet voice broke off. He whipped his head around in a panic, but there was nothing beside him but swirling gray fog...
...
Lu Li gazed calmly into the depths of the gray fog.
He could feel sothing waiting for him in its depths.
Were the others experiencing the sa thing?
Treading over shattered stones and gravel, Lu Li headed deeper into the abandoned, fog-shrouded excavation site.
Broken stones and shattered pickaxes blocked Lu Li's path, but they gradually beca whole. Intact stones, undamaged pickaxes, the faint outlines of stone statues, tools stacked neatly to the side—
And at the end of the path stood a silent, human-sized stone statue of a head.
— A lost one, seeking answers...
The statue's whisper echoed all around.
— What troubles you...?
— I'm looking for soone. Her na is Anna, — Lu Li felt the statue's gaze upon him.
Its hair and beard were fused together, like tentacles clustered on its chin.
— Why...
The whisper that filled the gray fog was laced with bewildernt.
— She has always been right beside you...
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