The room was bathed in bright light.

On the walls around, the skeleton of a metal giant was hanging, gears powered by flesh and blood, legs capable of cutting through land mines, and dissected human dolls.

Some items were enveloped in light, becoming indistinguishable.

In the center, a man admired the alchemical artifacts on the wall.

His left hand, articulated like a sphere, betrayed that he was not a doll, but someone who had replaced part of himself with an artificial limb.

From time to time, he stroked his well-groomed mustache, which was shaped like a "V", appearing in excellent spirits.

A woman hugged him from behind, wrapping her arms around his neck while resting her chin on his shoulder.

With her eyes closed, she gently rubbed her face against his.

The man smiled sweetly, stroking the woman’s golden hair, which turned pink at waist height.

He looked toward this side and said, "Ah, Charlotte."

The woman also raised her eyes and, looking in this direction, said: "Come, my protagonist."

She walked, and the distance between them grew.

She ran, and they vanished into the light.

She saw the rain, saw people dressed in black, saw an empty coffin.

She saw her grandfather approaching, announcing that she was the heir.

She saw Caroline naked, kneeling on the ground, holding the spring of reason, offering it before herself.

She saw her own room.

The 24-mark clock had the hour hand pointing to 9 p.m., but the sky outside the window was brightly glowing.

A radiant celestial body replaced the moon, spreading light.

This light was so warm, so bright.

It called life to grow and dispelled ghosts and demons.

It was what those trapped in eternal nights sought, but she couldn't name it.

The light of this celestial body gradually dimmed, illuminating only the desk beneath the window.

In the center of the desk, there was a letter.

The paper was yellowed parchment, with writing that no one in the world could understand, but she comprehended its meaning:

"Come to Solvellon, come meet me. I will take you to your parents."

The light dimmed and cooled, the celestial body descended like the moon.

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It turned orange, no longer blinding, growing larger, almost crushing the window.

Thousands of voices spoke from inside it, like a church choir:

"Come to Solvellon, come meet me. I will take you to your parents."

The celestial body turned into a black hole, and the darkness deepened.

A luminous, human-shaped figure emerged from the dark.

He held a lantern in his hands, with flames shining as brightly as eight moons.

A male voice said:

"Come to Solvellon, come find my bones. I will take you to..."

She heard a scream.

The world rippled, then shattered.

Charlotte woke up from a dream, looking around.

Caroline, sitting at the edge of the bed, was watching her and asked with concern, "Miss, did you have a nightmare?"

Charlotte shook her head, trying to calm down and listen carefully.

She heard many voices speaking in strange tones, saying absurd and fragmented words, liquids shaking, objects clashing.

It seemed that everything was coming from deep underground.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to slow her heartbeat.

She needed to filter the distractions.

White alchemy wouldn’t help her.

Although Charlotte wasn't a member of the Knights' Order, she had been baptized and trained since childhood.

What the knights could do, she could too.

She heard gears turning, a cat purring, bird wings slicing through the wind, tree roots extending downward.

Her ears ached as if they were being squeezed; intensifying a sense came with a price.

"It’s okay," she reassured herself. "It’ll pass soon, just bear with it."

Finally, she caught some understandable sounds.

She struggled to connect the fragments into sentences she could comprehend.

That voice... That sentence... Its meaning was:

"John stole sheep! I saw it with my own eyes!"

They were still drinking downstairs?

If it weren't for her good upbringing and the knights' code that prohibited harming commoners, she would have drawn her sword and cut through the floor, smashing all their drink cups.

"Miss?" Caroline didn’t need to sleep.

She had witnessed Charlotte frantically filling a page of her thesis, then lying down to sleep, only to suddenly sit up, tilting her head to listen, before becoming frozen in place.

Caroline started to suspect that her miss had suffered some mental trauma and was having issues.

If that were true, their journey would end here.

Charlotte would have gears implanted in her head and would live out her life in a sanatorium.

"I heard someone crying," Charlotte said.

Caroline also listened for a while and replied, "I only heard someone named John and something about sheep."

She decided not to tell her miss the specifics.

"If you think it’s necessary, I can go check."

Caroline was a doll.

She had no noble blood and had not been baptized, but she knew that knights had supernatural abilities, granted by the queen or activated by baptism and blood inheritance.

If her miss truly heard something, Caroline needed to act.

"No, Caroline. Maybe it's just my imagination." Charlotte didn’t want Caroline to go out in the middle of the night searching for a possibly nonexistent crying ghost.

She lay back down, letting sleep take over again.

Then, she heard the crying once more.

She opened her eyes and tried to listen, but the sound vanished.

Suddenly, Charlotte understood.

She relaxed her mind and emptied her thoughts.

This time, she finally heard the crying.

The sound became clearer: it sounded like a baby, but even younger, like an unborn being crying.

Charlotte jumped out of bed.

Under Caroline’s bewildered gaze, she grabbed a black box, kicked open the door, and ran downstairs before Caroline could react.

Caroline was about to follow when she noticed a black box on the table, with a red wolf and a white snake glaring at her.

"Miss, you grabbed the wrong box!"

Downstairs, the drunkards were in a state somewhere between drunkenness and unconsciousness, where nothing seemed real.

A gust of black wind descended the stairs, weaving through them, found a clear path among the bodies, and kicked open the inn's door before disappearing into the night.

The innkeeper rubbed his eyes: "Where’s my door?"

"The door... had a few drinks and left," one of the customers said, collapsing onto the counter.

Charlotte ran through the darkness, jumping fences and crossing backyards.

She nearly bumped into a sheep as she passed a pen, then found a straw hut.

The crying stopped.

She smelled blood.

Without hesitation, she broke open the door and saw a bed.

On it, a person.

A corpse.

When Caroline arrived, she saw Charlotte holding a man against the wall with one hand and grabbing... women's clothing?

"My miss... it seems she has awakened a peculiar taste?"