"What am I doing here? What's the point of all this?"

"That cursed mirror. That mirror brought me here. To this town. This strange town. This town is full of lies and shadows. And danger. I can feel it."

"I can feel it."

Althur was still awake. Even though the dark curtains had been hanging high in the sky for a long time.

The fire had died down to a few burning embers, and the herbal aroma that had filled the room had been replaced by a smoky odor that pricked his nostrils.

Brahms slept beside him, breathing quietly like a lamb. Perhaps his dreams tonight would take him to a land of beautiful lions and horses.

As if the world had stopped breathing, everything around him was silent as a tomb. Only the nocturnal animals outside stirred, adding a faint rustle to the silence. Pale and cold, the night here was like a corpse.

He felt his mind clouded and heavy. It was as if an old soul was growing inside him, filling him with a cold and weary ache that made him want to bury himself slowly.

The wind from the mountainside whistled through the crack in the door, sounding like a lonely ghost. It chilled men's bones and made them shiver under the thin blanket and mattress in this inn and on this land.

But not this young man. He still would not move, not for fear of breaking the sacred silence with his human noise but because he simply wanted to.

He felt like an intruder in this dead space, where nothing seemed to belong.

Althur's eyes were wide open, staring at the old wooden ceiling. His mind was full of thoughts, but none of them brought him any comfort.

"A few days. Tomorrow. The day after."

"Clues. None."

"Something big. This land. My destiny. Liam. Disappearance. Death."

His thoughts are fractured and scattered. He could not form a coherent or complete picture in his mind. Everything seemed to be floating, as if he were drifting on a raft in the endless ocean, without a compass, without a map, without a destination.

Everything around him was just emptiness, a void that swallowed his senses and his mind.

He remembered the boring history lessons from his time at the Academy. There were many people with different abilities who could interact with ghosts and spirits. He could do that too.

And that young man, who had a hidden syndrome, From what he gathered. It was definitely caused by Force. He would ask Mrs. Mable to look after him if he ever came here suddenly. He believed this boy would be a key clue to uncovering the secrets that were buried under this town.

Those who felt the force of death, however, belonged to a unique race. They were outright opponents of the Haya Church and the holy words that pursued them.

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They are more likely to resurrect as undead horrors than normal humans. To prevent the dead from coming back to life, places mutilate or nail dead bodies, except for purification by the church or burning their flesh. They also fill their mouths with stones to prevent breathing.

The Haya Church gave a solemn name to these people who suffered from this, called Nekros Syndrome.

Across the land, dark rumors whispered of corpses rising from their graves and stalking the living with unholy hunger. In the eyes of the Church, the source of all life, such a foul power was an abomination. A curse that defied the divine order and mocked the holy rites. They must be destroyed. Yet, they still named it Necrkos Sydrome.

Some advisors from the occult faculty always smuggled these people in to protect them from the iron fist of the church. They gave them a chance to live and save themselves.

Death was like life—a cycle of birth, aging, sickness, and death that no one could escape. Someone had said that.

People under the power of death had no choice. They, like Althur, were given the chance to enter a dark room and undergo the first awakening ritual to find a connection to their land.

Althur wondered if he could perform a ritual for Peter to officially make him a user of the Death Force. But that seemed to be difficult.

The dark room was made of a material he suspected to be related to Walaric, which strengthened the connection and the search. It was also delicately designed to make the first ritual possible for anyone with power.

For people with mysterious syndromes, there is a high probability that they have encountered or accidentally come into contact with sacred objects that do not contain such a contaminated aura; pregnant mothers exposed to it will definitely give birth to an infected child.

However, such children are unlikely to live to the age of Peter, who is a few years younger than Althur. Such children will surely die in an unnatural way. This was also Althur's fate if he hadn't met Liam.

Therefore, the prevalence of people with Infernal Syndrome and Wilt Syndrome was quite common in the Helioric Kingdom. The two official names Althur received from his Academy education. Since Clerics possess these powers, they are nothing more than walking sacred objects.

Althur wondered what fate befell the children who found themselves in such a predicament. How about Mr. Claude, really? Was he chosen or picked?

His thoughts drifted again, lost in a sea of uncertainty. He could not focus on anything, as if all his previous stability and direction had been illusions. He thought about that moment in that Mind world where he faced his own shadow.

"Was that who I really am?" He wondered.

He glanced at the puppet beside him. A dream master he had killed, leaving only the records of Brahms. A small, innocent boy. A victim. He treated it like a child. It reminded him of those times. Too good to be true.

"How can a human being who has chosen to walk the path of the mind remain normal?" Someone had warned Althur once.

Was it his mentor or another teacher from the Academy? Was it a lesson he had learned or a word of wisdom he had read in a book? He could not remember. It was hard to accept.

"We are only normal when we lose our identity, when we let madness engulf us in absurdity, when we follow the ultimate will that leads us to a lofty, flashy, but unreal goal."

Althur hears the echoes in his ears, the whispers in his mind, the mysteries in his soul, and the discomfort in his body. Is it real, or is it all an illusion?

Ever since he stood before the Walaric Gate, he felt a strange illusion, a fiery urge, a false impulse that pushed him to enter the place.

But Althur had not lost his mind. He was just a man from the early days of the Gatekeeper. His journey was still ahead of him.

Where would it end? Such haste was like a death wish.

It seemed to lure him to pursue the supreme power, to become an immortal idea, a symbol of the paranormal travelers.

He could explore deeper secrets in this intricate world. He could cross the Misty world and reach the Mind world with ease just by grasping those knots, unraveling them, and turning them into a trail of directions.

He would find what he wanted to know.

He breathed again, smelling the ashen herbs and feeling the coarse threads rubbing against his skin, through his cheap pajamas or his bare flesh.

It all made him feel human—more human than the boy sleeping peacefully next to him.

The wind was still blowing through the door, making the formal suit and the innocent sailor suit sway slightly. All his senses were alert, like the strength of a Walaric.