The iron winch above creaked ominously every time Lukas spun it to lower the bucket carrying my weight and I could hear how the individual threads of the rope were straining to hold my weight.

To distract myself from the reality of what I was committing myself to, I connected to Sumi to watch the world above me. As soon as its vision flowed into my left eye, I saw Lukas directly from above, as well as the nine villagers, a few of which had started getting up and were trying to rouse their fellows. It seemed that the curse affected not only their bodies’ temperature, but also their constitutions, because I noticed that each of them had signs of malnourishment and starvation, even though it seemed they had plenty of food despite their dead crops.

While he steadily operated the winch, I saw Lukas keeping an eye on the nearby men. It would be bad news for me if he let go of the lever though, since I’d go plummeting down into the bottom of the well, where the water wasn’t deep enough to prevent serious injury.

I was brought back to the reality of the dark well, when my hand that trailed the brick wall felt the transition from stone to earth. From watching the torch fall down the well the day before, I knew that the transition roughly marked the halfway-point.

Then suddenly the rope snapped under my feet and the bucket fell away, leaving me hanging from my right arm that was wrapped around the rope. I let out a yell of surprise and immediately Lukas stopped winching. A moment later there came a splash from below.

“Are you okay!?” he called from above.

I put my left hand on the rope and my feet against the earthen tunnel wall, then yelled back, “The bucket snapped off, but I’m still hanging on to the rope!”

“Should I pull you up!?”

“No, keep going! I’m not far from the bottom now!”

In truth, I was still only slightly further than halfway and I couldn’t see anything except the brickwork of the tunnel above me and the rope I was clinging to for dear life.

As the winching continued, I let the friction of my boots against the earth wall control the descent and take some of the weight off the rope. I doubted that it would hold me for the return trip up.

“You have to find another rope for when I go back up!” I shouted.

“Okay!” he responded.

A beat of nothing as the sound of the winch continued, then he asked, “Are you going to be okay!?”

“I’ll be fine!” I lied.

Then a sound from just above my hands made me look up, before I heard the fraying rope snap and felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.

I came to, gasping for air, while sitting at the bottom of the shallow reservoir that I’d landed in, my head just barely poking above the water and saving me from drowning.

“Ryūta!?” Lukas yelled down from above, the distance and the earth of the tunnel muffling and distorting his voice.

I tried to yell back but my throat was hoarse.

The impact with the water must’ve knocked me out. It feels like a sledgehammer hit me in the chest.

“Your body is fine, aside from some bruising,” remarked Armen, sounding as though he was right next to me, despite still being above where Lukas protected the well. “You were only unconscious for a few seconds due to the air being knocked out of your lungs.”

Although I couldn’t see anything in the darkness, bizarre geometric shapes and little worms of light were swimming around in my vision; a side-effect of losing consciousness I guessed.

I groaned as I stood up and put my hand on the nearby cave wall to steady myself, since my legs felt rather shaky and I didn’t want to go faceplanting into the water again. When my senses slowly returned to me, as though I’d been rebooted and they were just now switching ‘on’, I noticed the pervasive scent of death around me. I wondered how much of the putrid corpse water I must’ve swallowed and felt my guts curdle at the thought.

Fumbling with my bags in the dark, I managed to produce the Energy Stone which was glowing with so rapid a pulse that it was functionally a lamp. Its pale light lit up my surroundings and cast shadows on the curving walls of the cave I found myself in.

A tiny yelp escaped my lips as I saw just how close the floating corpse of Helen was. Her bloated and decaying body lay facedown and shifted ever-so-slightly in the water. A bit further away from where I’d landed lay the remains of the minstrel, his body sitting firmly at the bottom of the water. Surprisingly, the water itself was fairly clear, but drinking it was no doubt still a bad idea.

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“Ryūta, can you hear me!?”

I cleared my throat and managed to yell back, “I’m okay!” As my voice left my lips, it felt like razorblades dragged along my vocal cords and it triggered a coughing fit.

“More of the villagers have arrived. They are not happy about the man you killed.”

Killed??

I immediately connected with Sumi who was still floating above the well and through its eye saw that the man who I’d used my Repel on was being carried away, while the people around him looked both mad and mournful.

Shit.

I doubted self-defence would be considered valid and my pulse started picking up speed as I imagined the enraged villagers dragging me off to the hanging tree and stringing me up to one of its branches, just like they had done with the minstrel.

Confounding matters, the group of villagers had grown to number more than twenty, and though I was sure Armen could protect Lukas for a moment, I doubted it would take long before the active defence exhausted my energy reserves.

Swallowing my mounting dread, I cleared my throat again and then yelled up the well, “Lukas! Run back to Brig and find Rana! Tell her about the situation and have her bring a rope here to get me out!”

I saw the indecision on his face as he heard my order, his head turning from the crowd and to the well, then back to the crowd again.

“Are you going to be okay down there!?”

“I’ll try and exorcise the apparition! Hopefully that’ll calm down the villagers!”

“Okay! I’ll hurry back!”

Part of me wanted to yell at him to not leave me alone, but with how things were looking, he’d have to fight his way through the crowd just to protect the well, which would obviously put him in serious danger. I once again had to remind myself that he was just a boy in his early teens. While someone like Rana possessed superhuman strength and endurance, Lukas had yet to mature completely and reach the full potential of his attributes.

A fist of anxiety gripped my heart, as Lukas ran from the well while I watched through Sumi’s eye. He gave the angry villagers a wide berth.

I took a deep breath, before breaking the connection to my Watcher and returning my focus to the only thing I could deal with in my current situation: the exorcism of the Weeping Widow.

“Should I remain up here to protect the well?”

Do you think they would tear it down to get to me?

“They look very weak from the curse, so I am doubtful.”

Remain there and just let me know what they do.

“As you wish.”

I took in a deep breath, then immediately regretted it as the putrid smell of death flooded my nostrils. There was a small ‘shore’ next to the pool of water, which was waist-high at my end and about three-metres deep at the far end where bubbles emerged from the ground, steadily replenishing the reservoir.

Since it was the thing I wanted to do the least, I started off with hurriedly dragging Helen’s body to the shore, after having to swim a bit to catch it. Although I immediately washed my hands in the water, it felt as though a sheen of her putrefaction was forever stuck to the skin of my hands and my gorge was rising, a taste of acrid bile on the back of my tongue.

As I swam to where the minstrel’s body had sunken to the bottom, I noticed something that reflected the light of my Energy Stone and which floated at the top of the pool, thanks to its buoyant lenses. When I picked them up, I realised it was my Spirit Glasses.

They must’ve fallen off when I fell down here…

Maybe Master Owl was right about the goggles…

I put the glasses back on and immediately noticed a strange phenomenon: the body of the minstrel was connected to the body of Helen with a faintly-red band of light. I had not noticed this reaction before, so it seemed to only be active when the two lovers’ corpses were reunited.

After lifting the minstrel’s body from the bottom of the pool, where it was close to two-metres deep, I dragged it to the shore as well, placing it next to Helen’s bloated and disfigured body.

The moment I stepped out of the water, I realised just how heavy my robe-coat had become after soaking up the nasty water. While hurriedly taking it off, along with most of my other clothes, I checked my pouches and bags, fearing my exorcism tools had been ruined, but it seemed the two ash pouches were watertight, while the Black Candle was hydrophobic, and my incense sticks just needed a bit of drying to be useable again.

The Encyclopaedia had somehow survived intact as well, which honestly confused me, but I guessed that an object of such value had been crafted with longevity and weatherproofing in mind, though I couldn’t tell how, as it seemed its pages were just the same kind of vellum I’d seen elsewhere, yet somehow the ink and pencil markings stuck firm to it.

I breathed a sigh of relief, but then a chill wracked my body, cramping up my calf muscles painfully.

“Your core temperature has dropped significantly,” Armen remarked.

Can’t you heal me?

“It does not work against such ailments as what afflicts you.”

I should get this exorcism over with then…

I opened up the Encyclopaedia to the page with the Weeping Widow, then furrowed my brow when I found no text for the Ritual of Union, only a mention. I leafed through the pages of the first half, but while there were several references to Rituals, such as the one I was looking for, very few entries actually had the Rituals written down.

I’m such an idiot! Why didn’t I check this earlier!?

“Fret not. I am familiar with the ritual you seek.”

Really?

“It was commonly used during wedding ceremonies when I worked at a Church in the city of Altar.”

A wedding ceremony? Wait, am I marrying these two corpses together!?

“That does seem to be the case, yes.”

That’s absurd!

“I believe it makes some manner of sense. After all, the Widow was separated from her lover, causing her to manifest as an apparition. The Ritual of Union binds two souls together. I can see the logic behind using it to exorcise the Widow.”

I nodded. I suppose that did make some sense now that I thought about it. Plus, the entry stated that the Weeping Widow had to be sated, and while it would accept blood offerings, this seemed a more amiable and healthy solution.

“There is but one problem however,” Armen remarked, and I felt my hope falter at his words. “The Ritual requires the given names of the betrothed, but we do not know the minstrel’s name…”