Sailing Toward the Nightfall

The Nightfall continued. On the twenty-second day after the sun had set, reports from distant places began to include many unsettling developments.

In distant Cold Harbor, an enormous shadow had briefly appeared above the sea—it towered like a sea cliff, yet resembled weightless clouds and mist. The shadow silently drifted from the nearshore waters into the sky, closing along the side of the city-state like a curtain. In the darkness, almost no one saw it appear. Only when the Night Watch Priest suddenly sensed a gaze from the sky in a vision, and every church rang its bells at once, did the shadow retreat in panic into the Nightfall.

In warm Moke, the entire lower district had briefly been soaked in a strange thin fog reeking of scarlet rot. The lighting in several blocks malfunctioned almost simultaneously, and the scarlet, putrid mist even briefly seeped into churches and Nightfall shelters. After the city-state's Truth Keeper finally dispersed the mist that had bred within the Nightfall, several disappearances were reported in the fog-shrouded district—among those who vanished were two Technical Priests inspecting a steam junction.

Reports also came from the Parman Islands that a fleet had suddenly appeared in nearby waters and was approaching the city-state through the Nightfall. The city-state ordered it not to dock and instructed it to temporarily anchor at an assembly point in the surrounding waters. Yet the fleet seemed utterly unaware of the "long Nightfall." They blankly asked about the Nightfall, insisted that it was currently "normal daytime," and claimed that "warm, bright sunlight was shining on the deck," even questioning whether the people of the city-state had gone mad...

When the strange fleet ignored orders and insisted on approaching the city-state, the local navy had no choice but to open fire and destroy every unidentified