A few days later, when the investigation seemed to hit a wall, “The Spindle” finally endorsed Yvette.

Upon receiving the raven’s summons, Yvette armed herself and boarded the arriving carriage. Among the party sent to retrieve her was an acquaintance—Miss Sharr, the “Mourning Mistress.”

“Good afternoon, Miss Sharr.”

“It’s been too long,” Sharr replied, her smile glacial yet cordial. “Lord Spindle himself recommended you. If even he vouches for you, this matter should resolve swiftly.”

“Let’s not count our chickens,” grunted a disheveled man with a rust-red beard and a faint Irish brogue.

Sharr gestured to him. “Yvette, meet ‘Oak Sage’ Kegan—a spirit shaman.”

In this world, folklore often held kernels of truth. Myths of old gods, their monstrous kin, and occultists had shaped ancient legends.

Shamans—Celtic druids of yore—had dwelled in wild groves, masters of charms and curses. Red hair, common among the Irish, marked their bloodline. Kegan, Sharr implied, carried such ancestry. The Special Missions Bureau had evidently gathered specialists in spectral threats for this assignment.

“Another witless mortal,” sneered a shrill voice.

Yvette spotted its source: a black cat hunched on the carriage seat.

“Blasphemy! How dare you eye the magnificence of Lord Malcolmus, the Nightstrider?!” The cat’s fur puffed like a thundercloud.

“Lord Malcolmus,” Sharr said, her tone frosting over, “you know the rules.”

The cat’s ears pinned back. “Very well! For the morning’s offering of succulent quail, We shall… humor thy plebeian request. Observe Our merciful silence!”

“Malcolmus—”

“Meow.”

Sharr sighed. “Malcolmus was once a scholar of esoterica. After a… mishap in a pharaoh’s tomb, a curse transformed him. The Bureau assures us his condition is ‘benign’—if one ignores the incessant dramatics.”

“A mummy’s curse? Literally?”

“Mummified cats, to be precise. Pharaohs were entombed with them.”

The cat—now a sulking void of fur—licked a paw with exaggerated dignity.

“We’ll settle at our safehouse first,” said Sharr. “It’s vacant, so we’ll grab provisions. Dinner preferences?”

“A sandwich suffices,” Yvette said. She’d eat anything except Albion’s infamous “delicacies” like jellied eels.

“Shepherd’s pie,” rumbled Kegan.

The Irish dish—minced meat under potato crust—was practicality incarnate. In Albion, only the Irish embraced potatoes without prejudice. Others scorned them as “papist tubers,” but the Irish, bound by rocky soil and resilience, depended on the hardy crop. Kegan’s loyalty to his roots, even as a paranormal, was refreshing. Unlike social climbers who bought fake family trees to masquerade as gentry, he wore his heritage unabashed.

“Mrow-mrrrow~” The cat’s tail swished like a metronome.

“One sentence, milord.”

“We demand the ‘Scarlet Herring’s Agony’—freshly reaped, stewed in the molten bowels of perdition until its wretched essence screams!”

“Tomato-braised herring, extra tender,” Sharr translated, jotting notes.

Yvette stifled a grin. Oddly adorable.

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She reached to pet the cat. A paw blocked her.

“Insolent creature! Touch Us and lose the hand!” The cat retreated, nose aloft.

But those toe beans… Yvette’s resolve hardened.

“…Ballylun Asylum,” Kegan droned, “occupies a requisitioned Tudor chapel. Opened in 1795, it’s a graveyard disguised as a hospital.”

Yvette flipped through files the Bureau had raided—patient records citing “insanity” for trivialities: reading novels, “female hysteria” (code for menopause), or husbands tired of wives. True cures were myths; corpses piled high.

“The death toll… it’s monstrous,” Yvette whispered.

Sharr’s reply was clinical. “Asylums exist to warehouse inconvenient souls. No one cares what becomes of them.”

Ship of Fools, Yvette thought. The “mad” were still cast adrift, just in stone cells now.

“We’ll reconvene once His Lordship finishes dining,” Sharr said, checking her watch.

On the balcony, Yvette found Malcolmus mauling his braised herring—gnawing haphazardly, tail lashing. Bones littered the plate.

He’s terrible at this. Her old cat had choked twice; why assume a human-turned-cat would fare better?

She returned with chopsticks.

“Vile thief!” The cat hissed. “Defile Our feast and perish!”

“This peasant fare insults you, Lord. Allow me to cleanse its impurities.” She tweezed out bones with surgical precision.

The cat sniffed the deboned fish, then inhaled it, purring like a rusty engine. Post-meal, he permitted neck scratches, even flopping over for a belly rub (quickly revoked).

“We grant thee… limited privileges,” the cat mumbled, drowsy from grilled tuna and vanity.

Too cute. But no naps yet.

Yvette scooped him up, ignoring indignant yowls.

“Work first, Your Lordship.” She smuggled a chin scratch, marching him back to the others.

"...The omens are clear: Burylun Hospital is cursed," declared Kegn, the Oak Sage. "Though abandoned, the whispers of nature’s spirits scream warnings. Some unseen horror festers there—a darkness our eyes cannot pierce."

Like all Celtic shamans, Kegn communed with primal spirits dwelling in trees and beasts. Yet these entities were simple creatures of instinct, capable only of broadcasting raw dread or comfort like crude alarm bells.

"Even the dead know nothing," added Sharl, her voice edged with frustration. For seven days, she’d interrogated every fresh soul crossing the veil. But ghosts were broken mirrors—reflecting only shards of their dying obsessions before fading into oblivion.

A black cat leapt onto the dusty archives, tail lashing. "Fools! When shadows bar your path, why grovel in ignorance? The great Malcuse sees beyond your pitiful material plane."

Yvette scratched under its chin. "And what does His Feline Eminence propose?"

Purr. "A hidden realm overlaps your world—a spiritual mirror called the Shadow Realm!" The cat’s claws kneaded documents. "Twilight thins the veil between worlds. Bring your star-eyed novice to the hospital at dusk... after suitable offerings, of course."

"Let’s kill it," Sharl said flatly. "Ghost or cat-spirit, we’ll pry answers from Malcuse’s corpse."

The cat’s fur bristled. "W-wait! Let this merciful lord enlighten his unworthy servants! The threads of fate themselves decree your young comrade holds the key. At twilight, we strike!"

——

Burylun Psychiatric Hospital loomed through London’s coal-stained dusk. Centuries of industrial grime crusted its red brick bones like a mourning shroud. Inside, madness lingered in the mildew—walls scrawled with deranged murals, floors littered with soiled rags that might’ve been bandages or straitjackets.

"Humans reek!" Malcuse yowled, tail lashing a trash heap as investigators picked through the asylum’s corpse.

Kegn stiffened. "Fog."

Not natural fog. This mist slithered like a living thing, swallowing light and sound. Sharl flung open a window—thick tendrils coiled outside, strangling streetlamps into faint halos.

Yvette thumbed silver-tipped bullets into her revolver. Shadows moved in the haze.

"We leave. Now," Kegn rasped through a handkerchief. "Who knows what this miasma does to lungs? And if..." His voice dropped. "Others witness supernatural events, containment becomes a nightmare."

But the fog thickened to soup. Groping blindly toward the exit, they emerged gasping to clear air—only to freeze.

No fog. No anomaly.

And Yvette was gone.

——

Silence.

Yvette’s boots echoed alone through a cotton-white void. Phantoms flickered past—four? Six?—ignoring her pistol’s gleam. She stumbled toward remembered streets, but the mist thickened with every step until liquid clogged her throat. Gagging, she retraced her path.

A spectre floated through her torso.

[Surgical saws sing! Blood waters the garden of thought!]

The delusion struck like fever. Her fingers itched for bone drills until the ghost passed, leaving icy revulsion.

Through thinning fog, Burylun Hospital reappeared—older, fouler. Moss veined its walls; lunatic sigils oozed across plaster like infected sores. Inside, things wearing human shapes drifted between roles—doctor to patient, orderly to raving prophet—all bearing the marks of psychiatry’s failed experiments.

One doctor-ghost peeled off his bloody coat. Beneath lay a patient’s shift—and a gaping hole where his skull should be.

Yvette recoiled as another spirit drifted through her:

[Madness is the scalpel of progress! Rational men build cages—the insane forge keys!]

The compulsion to join them nearly overpowered her. No—remember the ice pick scars. Remember what happens when we play god with minds.

Gun steady, she advanced into the asylum’s rotting heart.