Reenactment

The door had clearly been opened with a spell related to Occultism. That also ensured that even if someone really did stumble upon this place by accident, they wouldn't be able to open it.

The space beyond the door was much larger than the passageway, and the oil lamp could illuminate only a few steps ahead.

At the center of the room, a Silver Plate was embedded in the floor.

A thick layer of frost covered its surface. It was the same kind of frost as the frost on the Silver Plates in the passageway, but much denser, almost completely obscuring the plate.

Mr. Hutton entered the room carrying his briefcase and crouched about three steps from the central area.

He poured a little holy water into his palm, rubbed his hands together, then picked up the Graving Chisel.

The original inscription had been eroded, and some of its strokes had grown indistinct.

The old man used the Graving Chisel to deepen the blurred strokes. Though he was over fifty, his fingers didn't tremble at all.

There wasn't much to recopy, and he finished the task quickly.

When he was done, he picked up a jar of Grey-White wax, used the tip of the chisel to pry off a small piece, and pressed it into the grooves of the inscription to repair them.

Richard leaned against the iron door, maintaining his breathing rhythm as he watched the whole process.

He mentally sorted and filed every detail he observed.

The Silver Plate was the "subject," the inscription was the "grammar," and the wax was the "adhesive";

the holy water was probably "extra insurance," to make sure he didn't bring anything dirty back with him.

The logic behind the whole system closely matched what he'd read in that book on classifying mineral mediums.

Theory had become reality.

About ten minutes later, Mr. Hutton repeatedly checked his work, confirmed everything was in order, then put away his tools.

He took a Silver Coin from his pocket, placed it in the exact center of the Silver Plate, and held it down with his index finger.

His lips began to move.

From the shape of them, Richard guessed he was reciting a prayer.

The repeated syllables built upon one another, his delivery growing more forceful with each phrase.

The frost on the Silver Plate began to gather toward the Silver Coin. In the end, the entire layer of frost turned into the finest dust and was completely absorbed by the coin.

Mr. Hutton finished the last syllable of his prayer and fell silent.

The moment the seal was complete, the tightness in the room that had been pressing on Richard's chest abruptly vanished.

Richard was just about to breathe a sigh of relief.

Then a scene appeared before his eyes.

There was no warning, no transition.

The round room in his vision, the Silver Plate, Mr. Hutton's back... Everything was drained of color, fading into a Grey-White negative, then replaced by a new image with his next breath.

He saw the workshop of a Textile Mill.

Silk-reeling machines stood in two rows, their wooden frames strung with countless silk threads. The spools turned, and the belts moved.

Gas lamps hung from the ceiling beams. Their dim yellow light cast the whole workshop in alternating bands of brightness and shadow.

The female workers sat at their stations, their fingers darting swiftly between the silk threads.

The air was filled with the distinctive, sharp, fishy smell of raw silk, mixed with machine oil and sticking to the back of the tongue.

Richard's senses had all been hijacked. He was seeing through someone else's eyes and hearing through someone else's ears.

The workshop door opened. The thing standing in the doorway had once been a young woman.

Her hair hung loose, covering half her face.

She still wore the white dress she'd been buried in, and her bare feet stood on the floor, her toenails blackened.

The visible half of her face had dilated, cloudy pupils.

The first to see her were the female workers at the row of stations by the door.

A middle-aged woman dropped the shuttle in her hand. It struck the iron leg of a silk-reeling machine with a clang.

The sound echoed through the workshop, and everyone turned to look.

They saw a dead woman who should have been in her coffin standing right before them, blood still on the corners of her mouth and on her white dress.

After a brief silence, screams rang out from every direction.

The female workers began backing away. Two bold male workers snatched up iron shuttles and large shears from the corner and charged at her.

The first man's iron shuttle struck the Ghoul's shoulder, making the dull clang of metal hitting metal.

The Ghoul's body didn't even sway.

It reached out, spread its five fingers, and clamped them around the man's face.

As its fingers closed, Richard heard the sound of a skull breaking.

The man was lifted up and flung away, crashing into a silk-reeling machine and snapping several threads.

The second man's large shears stabbed into the Ghoul's back, but only sank in halfway.

The Ghoul slowly turned around and casually shook the shears loose. They fell out.

When the workers saw that their attacks were useless, all order in the workshop collapsed.

The female workers rushed toward the back door, shoving one another. Someone tripped and was trampled underfoot.

Screams, sobs, and the humming of the machines still running empty all tangled together.

The Ghoul didn't pursue the crowd. It fixed on the person who had fallen closest to it.

Its head tilted at an angle no living person's neck could manage, and its mouth opened...

At that moment, Richard went from observer to participant.

He suddenly realized he wasn't watching the scene. He was in it.

He was one of the people at a workstation.

He was backing away when his foot caught on something, and he fell to the ground.

His gaze was forced upward, meeting the Ghoul's cloudy eyes as it fed.

No awareness, no malice, no hunger... Nothing at all.

Whether you cried, ran, or begged, it wouldn't make it move even a moment faster or slower.

Physical attacks were ineffective, its life-force extraction was highly efficient, and its behavior was driven entirely by instinct... The gap between the dry descriptions in books and seeing one with his own eyes was many times greater than he'd imagined.

He wanted that power.

The Ghoul's power was merely a corrupted, defective remnant. What he wanted was the power of the greater system beyond the Veil.

He wanted to make the inscription on the Silver Plate glow, to be able to bind or even drive away Evil Beings.

With that thought, Richard began adjusting his breathing as if he'd learned how on his own.

Inhale for four beats, draw his attention away from the afterimage and back to the space behind his sternum.

Hold his breath for four beats, and the warm mass in the Seat of the Sun gathered again, serving as an Anchor Point amid the chaos of his senses.

Exhale for four beats, and the workshop began to fade, the outlines of the silk-reeling machines blurring.

Hold his breath for four beats, and the basement reappeared. The Silver Plate's reflection flashed into his eyes.

The scene shattered, and fragments of the afterimage peeled away from the edges of his vision.

Mr. Hutton's hand was about to land on his left shoulder and shake him awake by force.

Richard turned his head, and the old man himself looked a little stunned.

He'd expected to see a face contorted with terror.

People swept up in a scene from Vox Mortis usually suffered severe reactions after coming out of it:

vomiting, convulsions, incontinence, even a brief collapse of consciousness.

He'd seen far too many cases like that, but Richard hadn't shown any of those symptoms.

Mr. Hutton's hand hung in midair, and the atmosphere turned a little awkward.

"You..."

"I'm fine."

"What did you see?"

"The workshop at the Textile Mill. What happened after the Ghoul came in."

Mr. Hutton's Adam's apple bobbed.

"The whole scene?"

"The whole thing, from when it pushed the door open to when it started feeding."

"How did you get out?"

"I adjusted my breathing rhythm and used the Quadruple Breathing framework to pull my attention back to the Seat of the Sun. The afterimage dispersed on its own."

The old man sighed and covered his face with his other hand.

"Mr. Hutton?"

"It's nothing."

His voice came through his fingers. "I'm reflecting on my mistake."

He lowered his hand, revealing an old face marked with lingering fear.

"I misjudged the situation. I thought your Aether affinity wasn't strong enough to trigger an afterimage yet...

"The final stage of reinforcing the seal involves a brief release of Aether. That's when they're most active."

"For most people, a release at that level wouldn't have any effect. But your Inspiration is more than a whole tier higher than I estimated."

He brushed the dust off his trouser leg.

"You experienced a scene reenactment without any protection at all, then got yourself out of it."

"Or..." He suddenly stopped, looking a little strange.

"Could it be that you weren't scared at all?"

Richard didn't answer right away.

The old man shook his head.

"I don't want to know. Come on, let's go outside and talk."