Heavy rain pattered down from the dark sky, giving the dimly lit scenery of Ur’s docks a great eerie feel. And the dense clouds hovering above came together to form the inexplicable features of a sad faceless face.

Warehouses and gas lamps loomed from every corner, each one standing as tall and fearful as giants, and through the uncanny feeling of emptiness which made up the world that was the docks, they watched silently the young boy who was on his knees before a small pothole overflowing with water.

This boy was none other than Elmer Hills.

He was soaked beyond remorse. The fabrics of his shirt and suspenders clinging firmly to his skin, almost like they were glued to him and would never be able to be pulled off no matter how hard that was tried.

His countenance was of a blank state, dazed and without any significant emotion. His palms were red with blood, and even though he had no wounds on them, the red liquid never stopped overflowing.

Although, not a single drop of the blood pouring out of his hands went to the ground nor the pool of water before him, they all kept vanishing into thin air. It was similar to water evaporating due to being overheated, but in his case there was no steam to signify that.

Everything about his scenery was weird—unusual—but his mind was too frozen to notice that. He almost looked like someone who had lost all his senses and had become both mad and stupid—like someone who was both dead and alive.

At that moment, five figures suddenly appeared behind him, every single one of them having already walked out of the shadows of the docks, but still retained the colors of darkness over their features. This made only their body shapes visible, and from it their genders.

In the lead was the figure of a young woman, her height something of an inch or two above average, and at her rear were the figures of four young men, each one lined up behind the other in an orderly manner.

At a first glance they looked like they had emerged from the shadows at the request of Elmer, but with every silence, the darkness clouding their features turned more and more eerie, causing them to no longer seem like his acquaintances.

In fact, they were anything but that.

“You killed us…” Those words came forth as a jumbled mess, making its way into Elmer’s ears in the manner of a scratchy echo.

It hurt him not though; he feared it not.

He had long noticed the figures behind him through the ethereal water of the pothole he was gazing into, and in that regard had readied his heart for their words.

But even though deep down he was not scared, he still had the outlook of someone who was.

He was petrified, shivering, and breathing heavily; though every single one of those actions came from the uncanny emotion he could not explain building up in him.

It was a sensation he could not overcome; he felt as though he had been served up on a platter to the angel of death—or rather, he was slowly losing whatever humane consciousness he had left in himself.

“You killed us…!” The words came again, this time in an intensified tone conjured up from all the figures behind him reciting them in an otherworldly unison. “You killed us…! You killed us…! You killed us…! You killed us…!”

Finally, the blood filling Elmer’s hands began to fall to the ground, a drop at a time, before suddenly being pulled slowly into the water of the pothole he was kneeling before, completely changing its components.

The figures behind him turned red in that instant, as though they had all of a sudden been bathed by blood. The clear raindrops from the sky turned crimson as well, dyeing the docks red. And lastly, Elmer found himself drenched from head to toe similarly in blood.

Brown hair, glasses, shirt, suspenders, trousers, boots, every single thing that made up his being was cloaked in red. And it was then that a loud screech emerged from all over the scenery, causing his ears to bleed and his teeth to rattle.

“You killed us!!”

Out of the blue the scene shattered with a shriek like it was a mildly sized mirror which had been thrown angrily at a wall.

Elmer jerked sharply awake at that.

He sat upright on his bed in an instant while he panted heavily, each breath in and out so exaggerated that anyone who would see him in such a state would think that he’d caught some sort of pneumonia infection.

The halfway buttoned white shirt he was wearing was soaked beyond remorse in sweat alongside his hair and face. It almost seemed like he had just finished working as a digger at a mine or something of a similar nature.

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But regardless of his dazed appearance, he was quite used to this scenario; after all, this sort of thing had become a usual occurrence of his every night.

Although…

It’s become even worse every night… Elmer placed a palm on his sweaty face and the other on the indiscernible white on his brown, spiky hair. And the fact that there are five figures now isn’t helping…

At the start of his nightmares only one figure had been appearing to him—one he’d concluded to be Ms. Edna’s. Then slowly, as he began his job as the reaper, killing those he had been employed to take care of, the figures increased with each kill.

His brain had given him an explanation to his nightmare plight then, stating that each person he killed would join in with the other featureless shadows appearing in his sleep; that it was the spirits of those he’d murdered haunting him.

But even though that discovery made sense, one thing kept bothering him with it.

Only Ms. Edna’s figure had appeared in his first nightmare, and only she had it been until after he’d taken on Kingsley’s job. So if he was to believe his conclusion was right, then why had Eddie’s figure never appeared to haunt him?

A sharp headache hit his head with a bang, making it seem as though he’d been struck by the base of a mortar, and Elmer heaved out a pained grunt at that.

Even though his resistance to pain had increased considerably, since he was basically a masochistic person now, he still hated experiencing it. And there was only one thing that could help him clear his mind and give him a bit of peace—well, two things to be precise.

Elmer wasted no time in filling his body with the essence of vitality, reinvigorating himself, then he stretched his hand to his side and picked up his glasses, putting a temporary stop to his eye problem with it.

A quick glance at Mabel, after which he took himself off his bed and strode weakly to his reading desk where he took a seat. The glows of the oil lamps flanking the walls of his room were doing their jobs of brightening his room’s scenery.

Ignoring the only sounds left in High street—the night songs of crickets—Elmer pulled open the right drawer of his desk and brought out his metal box of cigarettes and his round, metallic ashtray.

He took out a stick, lit it up, and began to fill the air above his head with the fragrance of tobacco while he leaned back onto his chair.

Though that posture he only had for a little over a minute.

Elmer shifted forward once again, discarding the relaxed pose he’d been in as he pulled open the drawer to his left, bringing before his eyes his revolver, divination pendant, and brown adhesive tape.

But neither of those had been what had crossed his mind and persuaded him to take such an action. And a slight further pull of the drawer revealed those which had; two items hidden within the shadows of its depth.

One was a pristine white cardstock paper the size of an elegant lady’s palm, and on it were emblazoned two familiar emblems. To its left was an eye which had uneven edges, and a pupil designed in the form of an elaborate clock bearing only an hour hand pointing up at twelve. While to its right was an irregular but gear-like crest of a clock in the same design as the pupil of the former logo.

Elmer picked up the license, its weight nonexistent in his palm. And then with a huff of smoke he mumbled, “The watchful eye of the Heavens. The peering gaze that rains down upon the world. I pray for a minuscule portion of the power of your sight. Grant me the ability to see what I seek. The essence of my license.”

As usual, his eyes were instantly smeared by a burning sensation which slowly petered into a warm one, and in return caused his line of sight to turn blurry and hazy, as bizarre lines of uncountable colors spread out before his view. But through them all, one stood out the most, that which was swirling upon the logo of the eye on his license. An illusory black.

Still the same, huh…? Elmer sighed, the tightness of anticipation his chest had had releasing at once.

What had he been expecting? Of course nothing would have changed.

He’d had the intuition to check the essence of his license on the day he’d left Tooth and Nails street as a corrupted one, and he had noticed that the illusory green which had been swirling about it the day before had turned to a color black.

It had only taken him a second to understand the change then. The Church had rendered his license useless as soon as he’d gone against their rules.

As he was now, he had a license but at the same time he was unlicensed. The cardstock paper was completely unusable in the world of Ascenders at this point.

But still, his intuition told him to hold onto it. He had a feeling it would come in handy one day.

Elmer tapped the butt of his cigarette, falling its ashes into the round tray to his right, as he returned his license back into his desk’s left drawer. Then he took out the other item that had been hidden within its depths.

This one was not much more than the size of a pebble; it was a purple crystalline object, clear and transparent. But most of all, it was alluring.

Elmer held it between his thumb and forefinger and scrutinized it in the air, his tired eyes narrowed almost to the form of slits as he perused the item in his hand. His silent gaze made it seem like he was searching for something within the crystal.

Opium… Elmer muttered in his mind as he recalled Egor Mason’s words. If one of these drugs really sells for a thousand mints then I can double my living status if I become a dealer… I don’t know when a new job will come for me as ‘the reaper’, but with this I should still be able to earn even if that takes a little while… Well, I won’t say I have no choice, but I can’t possibly look for a good job in my current state; that would be exposing myself to the public wholeheartedly…

Elmer turned his hand into a fist, squeezing the crystalline opium between it as he closed his eyes.

Sunday seems like the best day for a task like this… The streets will be less filled then, and the chance of me bumping into anyone I know will lower considerably… He nodded. Alright… On Sunday I guess I will find a way into the underground network…