Bei City · East District, Industrial Zone.
The smog overhead and tall chimneys belching black smoke were the most common sights in the East District. It was evening, and most factories had only their night-watch lights on. The droop-eared hounds that had slept all day in the factory yards were coming alive.
Apartment buildings glowing with lights surrounded the factory district. Poor people could be found everywhere, and the Industrial Zone was where they made their homes. The air was filthy, the area had neither a harbor nor a major road, and its unique environment instead allowed crime to flourish.
Inside Room 205 on the second floor of an ordinary low-rent apartment.
Patrol Captain Arle and his richly dressed yet haggard wife stood guard outside the bedroom. The beautiful woman occasionally poked her head inside to look around. She was frantic, yet afraid that making any noise would disturb the physician treating the patient within.
Several months ago, a type of aging syndrome had appeared. The physicians secretly summoned by the Royal Family believed that it was not contagious. More precisely, it could not even be considered an illness. The patients were merely following the laws of nature and dying of old age—a healthy death from old age.
It sounded contradictory, but that was the truth. Faced with this situation, the Elf Royal Family had taken action. They secretly sent people to collect patients from every region and gathered them near the royal palace, or simply settled them inside it.
Regardless of their identity, every patient had to be cremated within six hours of death.
At present, Patrol Captain Arle was hiding his son, who had contracted the aging syndrome. If this was discovered, it would not merely cost him his position; he would also be sentenced to death.
Arle