Outside the abandoned chapel in the middle of Williams Street, Abner tossed the box over the vine-covered wall onto the ground inside, where stones lay among dead grass. He did not leave at once. He intended to wait a few minutes and see what happened.
He had not expected the box's many seals to open on their own the moment it touched the ground. The lid flipped back, and a cloud of black-and-white mist poured out. In an instant, it slipped underground through the Tomb-Robbing Tunnel that Miss Temperance had filled in last time.
"What's this..." With the Pure White Eye active, Abner immediately sensed that the filled-in passage had become a dividing line. Above it, the chapel displayed the power of Order at its utmost; below it, everything was steeped in chaos.
Under that extreme power of Order, many traces that had been hidden or deliberately erased resurfaced, strikingly clear.
Abner's heart stirred. He had a vague sense that this was the "perk" Princess Vera had given him, so he began extracting the traces, analyzing their origins, and performing Scene Replay.
Soon, a moving scene appeared before his eyes:
A dark-haired, blue-eyed woman with a delicate, ethereal beauty led a hooded man bound in Spider Silk into the chapel. Dressed in a spotless white robe, she said softly, "Lord Medici, I've brought the Gatekeeper as agreed."
Not long after she spoke, two blood-red flames ignited in the hooded man's eye sockets. He was utterly different from a moment ago.
"Well done." As the hooded man spoke, sudden flames consumed every strand of Spider Silk on his body.
"Lord Medici, can you now help me remove the Heartless God's power that man placed on me?" The white-robed woman—the White Saintess, Katarina—glanced at him and smiled faintly.
"Give me your blood