"Reunion After a Long Separation"

Time had eroded the writing, and the distortions on either side of the boundary had twisted the writing's carrier into something else as well—on the old, tattered shroud, only a few scattered words such as "Karani," "boundary," and "Leviathan" could now be faintly made out. Even distinguishing those few words required considerable powers of observation and imagination.

Anomaly 077 stared blankly at the shroud before him—Captain Lawrence had ordered it brought from the White Oak's storage hold. Ever since he had lost his peace and become a member of the White Oak, this shroud had remained in the ship's containment chamber.

"I haven't looked at it closely in a long time... No, it seems I've never looked at it closely at all," Anomaly 077 muttered softly, his withered fingers slowly brushing over the marks on the shroud's surface that looked like grime but were actually faded writing. "I never noticed these words were there..."

"That's normal. Unless you were specifically looking for them, even if you saw those traces, you'd usually assume they were insignificant stains," Lawrence said blandly from the side. "If Martha hadn't been observant enough to consider that possibility beforehand, who would connect the impressions on this scrap of cloth to Captain Karani's log? Besides, only this little remains... all useful information has been worn away."

"Yeah, only this little remains..." the sailor said dejectedly. "This can't even be called the captain's log. These scattered letters are useless... It was supposed to be a thick book, not a piece of 'rag' like this..."

"Perhaps it has something to do with how you returned to the Boundless Sea from beyond the boundary. That 'Six Nautical Mile Threshold Line' seems to permanently alter the nature of certain things," Lawrence said. "It turned you into Anomaly 077 and turned Captain