A little earlier, at the entrance of the alley leading from White Whale Street to Black Palm Street.
The night was deep, and the East Borough streets lacked streetlights, plunging them into gloom. A black four-wheeled carriage was parked beside the alley, its horses tethered to a lamp post, and four men and women crowded into the alley, looking into the distance.
At the lead was a middle-aged male wearing a black robe. He wore no hat, and his short, dark brown hair drifted slowly in the wind. Standing beside him were a hooded female and two men with buttoned-up trench coats and proper top hats.
They were senior deacon Pierce Turner, who had set out from Saint Samuel Cathedral an hour ago, and an entire squad of Nighthawks.
"Let's begin. Use the Sealed Artifact '1-63' to trap Beyonders of Sequence 5 and above into the Mirror World," the short-haired male said.
"Understood, Your Excellency Pierce."
One of the trench-coated men behind him squatted down, carefully undoing the seal on a metal box placed flat on the ground before him. From it, he retrieved a silver-plated mirror the size of a book. Its style belonged to centuries past, and its interior reflected the surrounding layers upon layers of endless scenery.
Aiming the silver mirror at a two-story building ahead, the mirror-bearer gently stroked the mirror surface with his un-gloved left hand, causing ripples like water to spread across the silver glass. When the mirror surface grew calm again, it had clearly captured the building ahead within the mirror image; the illusion of overlapping and repetition vanished, making it look like an ordinary dressing mirror.
Yet the Nighthawk holding it instantly flushed bright red, panting heavily as though stricken with a severe illness, on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion.
At