Chapter 82

Chapter 82: The Fire That Existed Only in Dreams

Nina went back to her room to sleep.

In this world, most people went to bed early and got up early. After the Sun faded, the hours were dangerous. The faint glow of the World’s Wound pushed the whole world’s distortion to its peak. Even in cities, where lights offered some protection, people still had to face the veil of night with great care.

People could not go out and gather, and there were not many ways to have fun. Reading at night was not as dangerous as reading at sea, but it still easily led to mental fatigue, hallucinations of sound and sight, and sometimes even drew unnecessary attention from the veil of night. So, all in all, the safest thing was to sleep early and wait for the Sun to rise the next day.

But Duncan did not feel sleepy at all.

He put out the lights in the room and stood by the window in just his shirt. He casually enjoyed the view of Pland’s night under the veil of night while he thought back to his talk with Nina after dinner.

Nina remembered a great fire. The leftover memories in this body also held such a fire. In that fire, “he” carried a girl who was only six out of a collapsing, burning building. Far off on the streets, crowds ran wild through thick fog.

However, only the two of them remembered that fire. Nina had gone to other lords to talk about it, but they treated it as confused memories from a little child scared out of her wits. The newspapers from eleven years ago clearly recorded the “truth”: at the border between Pland’s Lower City and Crossroad District, there had only been a factory leak that caused mass hallucinations. There was no record of any fire.

Duncan frowned a little. The other suspicious point lay in “himself.”

According to Nina, “Uncle Duncan” also did not remember this fire. All along, she had been the only one who remembered. When she was little, she had even told Uncle Duncan about the fire—though back then he should still have been “Ron”—and Uncle Duncan had been one of the lords who thought she had only been scared silly and misremembered everything.

But now, scenes of the fire had appeared in Duncan’s memory. They were remnants of this body’s original master, buried in the deepest part of the mind.

Where had the problem started? Why, in Nina’s memory, had her Uncle never remembered the fire, yet Duncan had found matching images in this body’s deepest memories? Had Nina’s Uncle been lying all along? Or had the memory been sealed away until a ghost captain took over this body and the memories in the deep layers finally rose to the surface?

Duncan tapped the window frame with his fingers without thinking as he quietly sorted the timeline in his mind.

He pieced together what he had learned from those Suntists:

Eleven years ago, a fragment of the Sun first appeared within the city-state of Pland. The supernatural phenomena caused by that fragment might have covered a very large area.

That same year, Nina became an orphan. In both her memories and Duncan’s, there had been a great fire in the Lower City. But aside from the two of them, no one remembered such a fire, and there was no evidence at all that it had ever happened.

After that, the fragment of the Sun lay dormant in the city-state and showed no further activity. The only record left from that year’s incident was the “Crossroad District factory leak.”

For several years, Nina and her only remaining relative relied on each other to survive.

Four years ago, the Suntists God in Pland tried to awaken the sleeping fragment of the Sun ahead of time. They held a dangerous sacrificial ritual, but the ritual failed before it could be completed. A newly promoted apprentice Inquisitor, Vanna, led a team and smashed it. The Cult’s power suffered a heavy blow. After a large, sweeping purge, the Sun God’s Church was driven out of the city-state.

But even though that ritual had not reached its final step, the cultists’ attempt to “awaken” it might still have had some effect. After that, the fragment of the Sun slowly began to stir from its slumber.

Around the same time, the “Uncle” who lived with Nina fell ill with a strange sickness. The pain slowly dragged him down. In the end, he accepted the temptation of the Suntists still hiding in the city and became one of the Cult’s lackeys.

Not long ago, news that the fragment of the Sun was active again began to draw Suntists back to this city. The cultists who had lain low for four years once more held a sacrificial ritual. What happened after that… was Duncan’s intervention.

Many things along this timeline seemed faintly linked, yet they all lacked key evidence.

The most suspicious part was still eleven years ago. What kind of supernatural manifestations had the fragment of the Sun really triggered back then? Had that great fire truly existed or not?

Had the city-state’s authority erased the truth of the incident and wiped away all traces of the fire? Had they announced it as a factory leak that caused mass hallucinations, just to keep order?

But that still could not explain why so many people had no memory of the fire at all—unless the authority had gone to great trouble to reshape the memories of everyone involved.

There was another point. In this world, Anomalies and Visions were openly known to the public. Even small children knew about the existence and danger of supernatural things. The authority clearly knew this and had always ruled the city by “warning people early so that citizens knew how to protect themselves.” If it had really only been a fire caused by an supernatural power… why would they have to hide it?

Unless… there had been an even bigger problem behind that fire, something so dangerous that even letting the news spread would have sent that danger into a runaway state.

Duncan suddenly frowned.

Or there was another possibility.

supernatural phenomena were strange by nature. Many times, the harm they caused was not limited to the physical world. They could twist human perception and even twist evidence already written on paper. What if people’s memories and understanding of that incident, and even the records kept by the city-state’s authority and the Church, had all been corrupted by the fragment of the Sun?

Duncan felt that his own imagination was going too far. As a half-trained “beginner” in the field of Anomalies and Visions, his thoughts were maybe running wild. But once this idea appeared, he could not stop thinking about it.

People’s memories, the authority’s records, even the words written in black ink on white paper in old files from ten years ago—all of it could be twisted and replaced. In the past he might not have believed such a thing, but now he believed it more than anyone.

Because the place he stood in was now called “Duncan Antique Shop.”

Everyone here knew their old neighbor, Mr. Duncan, who ran the antique shop.

Duncan let out a soft breath. He lowered his head and looked through the second-floor window at the street lit by gas lamps.

Only one question remained.

No matter whether the great fire eleven years ago had really happened or not, no matter whether the fragment of the Sun had corrupted the memories of those involved and the city’s records, one point was crucial:

Why did Nina remember that fire.

…

In the Upper City, inside a mansion that belonged to the Governor.

Vanna woke from a nightmare.

But this time, the nightmare was no longer about the Black Sun, nor did it point toward that ship, the Vanished, which had returned from Subspace. She had simply dreamed about her childhood.

On that night filled with fog, smoke, blood, and maddened crowds, twelve-year-old Vanna had been carried on her Uncle’s back as they fled from a gang of rioters.

In the dream, she seemed to return to how helpless and fragile she had been back then. The martial skills she was so proud of, and her powerful divine magic, were gone. All she could do was run in panic as madmen and shadows chased them. She and her Uncle climbed over the pipes and valves above a factory. In the thick smoke and heat, she looked down at the city in terror and saw endless flames rising everywhere, covering the whole district as far as she could see…

The young Inquisitor, still in her nightgown, sat on the bed and took a deep breath as she looked at the sky outside the window. The pale light of the World’s Wound still hung high in the heavens, and the chronometer clock by the window showed that it was only just past midnight.

She felt as if she had been trapped in the nightmare for a century.

Vanna got up and turned up the electric lamp. She walked to the dressing table and looked at herself in the mirror. She softly spoke the name of the Storm Goddess. Only after she felt her heart calm did she sigh and murmur to herself, as if to comfort herself: “At least I won’t be dreaming about that ship anymore…”

As soon as she finished speaking, she suddenly heard footsteps in the hallway outside her room. Then came a knock on the door: “Vanna? Vanna, did you have another nightmare?”

It was her Uncle’s voice—the most respected Governor of this city-state.

“I’m fine.” Vanna steadied herself, straightened her clothes, and went to open the door.

Dante Wayne stood at the door. The gray-haired, gray-eyed middle-aged man, not very broad in build, had clearly just woken up too. He had thrown on a coat, and when the door opened he looked at his niece with concern.

He had lost one eye in an old incident, and now he wore an eye made of ruby. Delicate golden lines could be seen inside that eye, and around it the socket still carried the fierce scars left eleven years ago. They made his face look frightening.

But Vanna had long since gotten used to it. She knew that her Uncle was actually a gentle and fair man.

“I had a nightmare,” she said, rubbing her eyes with a helpless tone. “I didn’t think it would wake you.”

“It’s nothing. At my age, I sleep lightly anyway,” Dante said as he looked at Vanna with concern. “You dreamed about your childhood again?”

“Yes. I dreamed of that time again.”