Chapter 194

Chapter 194: Transmission

Vanna returned to the archives again.

She herself did not even know why she had come back. But a strange sense of wrongness and danger followed her like a shadow at her back. It made her keep going over every detail of how she had searched for information in the archives. The more she thought about it, the more she felt she had forgotten something.

Of course, another reason she came back was that she had nowhere else to go right now anyway.

Because her connection with the Vanished kept growing stronger, she was actually under constant watch. She was still the Inquisitor of the city-state of Pland, but only because no one could replace the important duty she carried right now. So, aside from necessary appearances, she had to stay inside the Cathedral at all times.

Her meeting with “Captain Duncan” in the dream made her anxious. The clues she found in that small cathedral in the Sixth District also would not leave her mind. Here in the quiet and holy archives, at least she could block out some of the stares and devices around her and let herself breathe for a moment.

Her footsteps echoed in the empty archives. Row after row of high shelves rose up to the ceiling like giants, standing silently in her view. Ancient files slept on those shelves, looking down from top to bottom at the young Inquisitor walking through the aisles.

Vanna lifted her head and looked along the shelves stretching into the distance, recalling once again how she had searched here last time. A middle-aged Father who managed the archives walked a short distance behind her, quiet and steady. The consecrated lantern in his hand gave off a warm, gentle light.

She had come into the archives, asked for the records from 1889, and found suspicious traces of a heretic sacrificial rite. Using that as a clue, she had broadened the search and found all the records of heretic sacrificial rites around 1889. In the end, she had noticed that the file for 1885 was missing, an anomaly.

These memories ran through her mind again and again. Vanna could no longer remember how many times she had replayed them. Now they appeared so clear in her head, from beginning to end, perfect, without a single sign of a missing piece or distortion.

Yet Vanna’s eyebrows slowly drew together.

The young Inquisitor suddenly stopped. The middle-aged Father walking behind her also stopped.

“Inquisitor?” the middle-aged man called from behind her.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. She definitely had not come alone that day to look up the files. Someone had been with her. She was sure of it. But who was it?

Vanna acted as if she had not heard the voice behind her. She only frowned and tried hard to think. She remembered that small cathedral in the Sixth District, and the nun there who had died in 1885. That cathedral had disappeared from everyone’s sight. Even Bishop Valentine had forgotten it for many years. How similar that was…

She had fallen into the same kind of “forgetting”. Every person had forgotten the same thing. That was why she could not notice the hole in her memory, and there was no one who could remind her. But what exactly had she forgotten, and when had she started to forget it?

“Inquisitor?” the Father’s voice came again from behind her.

Vanna felt the Power of the Storm begin to gather. The middle-aged Father’s hand had quietly moved toward his waist.

“How long have you been the administrator here?” Vanna suddenly asked.

The Power of the Storm scattered at once. The Father lowered his hand and bowed his head slightly. “Seven years, ever since I retired from active duty.”

“There shouldn’t be only you as administrator here, right?” Vanna asked again.

“There are two of us,” the Father replied. “The other is an older lady. She takes the night shift. She also retired from the Guardian unit.”

Vanna spoke as if making small talk. She kept walking slowly between the shelves and said casually, “Only two people… can you really handle all the work?”

“We can still manage. There actually isn’t that much work for archive administrators,” the middle-aged Father explained carefully. “There are guards on duty everywhere, in plain sight and in hidden posts. Servants and novice monks handle moving and sorting things. We only need to do the filing and retrieval ourselves. Most of the materials here never move again once they’re stored, so the workload is small.

“But because the administrator has to stay inside the archives for long periods and be surrounded by books and records, the person must be a priest with a firm will and rich experience. Even if the workload is small, the job is still very important.”

He paused for a moment, then added, “Of course, since there are only two of us, things can get troublesome when something special happens. I’ve always thought we should add one more person. Three people on shifts would be more reasonable.”

“Three people on shifts…” Vanna whispered to herself, then asked, “You still haven’t found the files for 1885?”

“No, we still haven’t found them,” the middle-aged Father said, shaking his head. “After you told us about the anomaly here, we organized a full inspection of the archives. We used more than a hundred servants and novice monks, but we found nothing.”

Vanna gave a soft sound of acknowledgment and said nothing more. She simply stood quietly in front of one of the shelves and sank into thought. Her silence made the Father behind her even more nervous.

Vanna noticed his tension and smiled, shaking her head. “You don’t need to worry so much. I only met that ghost captain once. I’m not so far gone that I’ve lost my mind. Besides, there are more watching eyes and detection devices on this place than I can count, inside and outside the archives. If I notice anything strange about myself, I’ll sound the alarm at once. I am still professional.”

“Please forgive me,” the middle-aged Father sighed. “I’ve seen too many comrades disappear from this world forever because of one careless moment.”

Vanna did not answer. Her gaze turned toward the far end of the shelves, to the place where the archive administrators usually sat. She had walked all the way around the high shelves and come back to the area near the entrance.

In a brief daze, she seemed to see a slightly hunched figure sitting there.

The young Inquisitor’s eyes suddenly widened.

The figure vanished.

The middle-aged Father noticed the change. “Inquisitor, did you see something?”

“Maybe I saw it wrong… no. Let’s go take a look.”

Vanna threw down the words and moved forward before he could answer. Her steps grew faster and faster until she was almost running. In just a few strides she reached the large curved desk, then carefully examined the desk that hid many complicated mechanisms.

No one sat at the desk. The few items on the surface were all clearly in view.

Vanna walked behind the desk and looked it over from top to bottom.

Out of the corner of her eye, she suddenly saw something, a few scattered little parts, tossed at random behind a panel at the edge of the desk. The parts were already rusted. They looked as if they had been thrown there many years ago. From their shapes, they seemed to be pieces of a Mechanical Puzzle Cube.

For some reason, the moment she saw those parts, Vanna seemed to smell something strange. It was like incense mixed with mechanical oil, along with a sharp scent as if something had been burned.

The middle-aged Father, still holding the consecrated lantern, followed her over. He looked along Vanna’s line of sight and made a puzzled sound. “These parts… who left them here?”

“There are marks on the desk,” Vanna said. She had already noticed other clues near the parts. At first glance they looked like oil stains, but on closer look they seemed like a deliberate drawing.

Her heart pounded hard. It felt as if a harsh noise echoed again and again in her head, and even the edge of her vision began to shake. In the shifting lights and shadows, it looked as if fire was jumping and burning. These unpleasant feelings did not make her panic. Instead, they stirred a faint excitement in her chest.

Her Spiritual Insight was beating. She was observing and touching supernatural traces. The clues she was searching for really were in this archive.

Silently reciting the name of the storm Goddess Gamona in her heart, Vanna reached out her hand. “Let me use the consecrated lantern.”

The middle-aged Father at once handed her the lantern, which was covered in runes and burned Holy Oil as its fuel, the administrator’s consecrated lantern. “Here.”

Vanna took the consecrated lantern and carefully brought its light closer to the stained patch on the desk. Under the lantern light, tiny dust or mist seemed to appear out of nowhere and then quickly fade away. In the play of light and shadow from the flame, she finally saw the stain clearly.

It was dark red blood. It looked as if a dying person had dipped a trembling finger into their own blood and drawn on the desk. It looked like a campfire, and in the center of the fire stood a pillar-like object.

It was not any holy symbol used by the Deep Sea Church. It was not any divine blessing from the storm Goddess Gamona.

Yet Vanna still recognized this symbol. It was the mark of the Flamebearer.

Flamebearer? Why would the Flamebearer’s mark appear inside the Cathedral of the Deep Sea Church?

Doubt rose in Vanna’s heart. The four True Gods were indeed on the same side, and the churches of the Four Gods often worked together. But their beliefs were different, and their holy symbols were very strong symbols of each church. Under normal conditions, such symbols would never appear in another church’s sanctuary. So why was the Flamebearer’s mark here?

Flamebearer… the small cathedral in the Sixth District… the forgotten people, the forgotten events, another Pland hidden beneath the Mortal Realm…

Vanna’s breathing suddenly grew faster. In that instant, she finally understood.

This symbol was a warning. It was the only message left to the Mortal Realm by a Guardian whom everyone had already forgotten, on his lonely battlefield.

“Someone has corrupted history!”

The young Inquisitor suddenly cried out and snapped her head around to look at the middle-aged Father behind her.

The archives were empty.

As if from the very beginning, she had been alone here.

—