Abnormal Space

Ghosts, walking corpses, miasma, alternate dimensions—none of these things were particularly rare, especially to people like us who had seen even more outrageous things. The only unusual part was when they began appearing in large numbers on Earth.

The cause of these supernatural phenomena could not yet be explained. Or rather, there were too many explanations, making it impossible to determine which one was correct. The Research Center was the pinnacle of the Empire's technological power. Any researcher there could use hundreds or thousands of methods to perfectly recreate the paranormal incidents erupting throughout the city. Take the Porcelain Doll returning home, for example—one Raven had even devised more than 3,700 ways to create a Magic Puppet with exactly the same function. More than a hundred of those methods were so simple that even ordinary people could master them. As a result, the true cause had been buried instead.

The current analysis could only establish one fact: every paranormal event was accompanied by an extremely weak manifestation of energy. The phone-sized Sadako was the most obvious example. But since we had never witnessed such a manifestation firsthand, we could not determine where that energy originally came from. It was so weak that anything in nature could potentially have served as its source.

To be fair, none of these paranormal incidents were a big deal. Leaving everything else aside, even Anweina, who only sang ghost songs in the middle of the night, could drag all of Eurasia back into the age of medieval magic if she went out. A hundred Sadakos lined up together would not withstand one swing of the little maid's broom. But it was precisely these trivial matters that made us feel oddly powerless. Even the eyes of the prophets had been obscured, yet all that kept bothering