The young girl’s face was completely flat, with no eyes, no nose, no mouths, just like an egg with a wig on. But somehow, Josephine Wong was able to tell that she was enjoying herself while she played with the matches.

After a short while, the shadow of the young girl started flickering, then just in a few seconds, the shadow crumbled and dissipated like a pile of ashes, leaving a small and simple rag doll on the ground.

Around the time the shadow of the young girl started to flicker, another shadow appeared on the hallway of the second floor, this time it was a man also without a face, who seemed to be walking along the hallway holding someone’s hands. But she could not see the person with whom the man was holding hands with.

As Josephine Wong floated down the hallway, she saw more of this kind of shadows - each one seemed to be a brief piece of memory from a person’s life. Each piece of memory seemed to be stuck inside some kind of cycle of replaying, stopping and crumbling. Josephine Wong also noticed that these memories seemed to be bound to specific items scattered on the ground.

Just when Josephine Wong floated back to the position of the staircase, the memory of the young girl playing with matches started replaying again. This time, Josephine Wong noticed something different about this girl - she seemed to be missing some hair.

From the knowledge she gained from past readings and experience dealing with malice and its memory replays, this would be a pretty normal phenomenon - memories fade and get distorted over time. But she couldn’t help but have a tingling sense of troubling unease at the sight of this young girl’s memory replay.

Josephine Wong stayed where she was and upped the power level of her True Sight Spell, intending to grasp what the source of the feeling was.

“Poof” the young girl’s shadow collapsed into ashes once again.

This time, with increased power of the True Sight Spell, Josephine Wong was able to notice, that a miniscule and dim ball of energy seemed to come out of the ashes and started floating through the air to downstairs.

Josephine Wong immediately followed, while maintaining the power level of her True Sight Spell. The ball of energy was tiny, but its trajectory of flight was steady and smooth. When it finally reached the first floor, it just continued on its way downwards. And at the bottom of the staircase, a dark pit appeared out of nowhere, and swallowed the ball of energy like a big hungry mouth.

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Josephine Wong rushed to the side of the pit as it was about to close up in an attempt to glance at what was underneath.

She did not see anything fully nor clearly, but the mere quick peek of what was under the pit sent a sudden chill down her spine - she saw a vortex of blood red energy and dark smoke, spinning around some kind of pale white energy core. Even from quite a distance, she could still feel the cold and corrosive energy radiated from the core.

Just this moment, some more balls of energy floated down the stairs, the pit opened up again and swallowed them all. And with every ball of energy swallowed, there seemed to be some faint growling noises coming from whatever was under the pit.

When she dispersed the True Sight Spell, the pit disappeared right before her eyes, as with the balls of energy released from the memories.

-------------------------------------------

“Hi, is Mr. Yu here?” a portal opened up right in front of Xianshi Inn, Josephine Wong leapt out of the portal and rushed into the lounge.

The man behind the reception’s desk was someone she’s never met before - the man was tall and thin, with long arms and legs, he had a smiley face and was sitting on the chair, petting a white fur ball that was sitting on the desk.

“Oh, hi. Can I help you?” the man spoke with a strange accent.

“Is Mr. Yu here?” Josephine Wong asked the tall and thin man: “I tried calling him, but he did not pick up. So I was thinking if he would be here.”

“Oh.” the tall and thin man stood up, his posture was as strange as his accent: “He went away for some urgent business. He also told me that the place he went to might be a bit … unstable, even blessed communication lines might not work. Are you a friend of Mr. Yu?”

“My name’s Josephine Wong.”

“Oh, oh, it’s you! Sorry about that - I’m new here.” the man recognized the name and apologized: “My Apologies. Can I take a message from you? I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“Sure.” Josephine Wong sighed and sat down by the reception’s desk: “Can you tell him to find me immediately? There’s a serious matter I need his help with. I will be filing an emergency plea for access to files on his behalf so he won’t need to worry about the policies and access. Just tell him to come find me immediately.”

“Understood. I’ll tell him to find you immediately.” the tall and thin man tried to write something down on a piece of paper, but his arms kept wailing and flopping around uncontrollably and he ended up leaving ink marks on the desk and not writing anything down.

“Are … are you okay?” Josephine Wong asked: “I can write it down for you.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, let me try.” the man laughed out loud: “Sorry, I … I haven’t been in this form before.”

“Human form?” Josephine Wong asked: “I was just wondering, may I know your name? I don’t remember hearing about you.”

“Oh, actually I haven’t been in this inn for very long, and I was in recovery most of the time so I haven’t the pleasure of actually meeting you.” the tall thin man said: “My name is Rashmumba D’Eclaire. Or you can just call me Rash.”

“Huh.” Josephine Wong turned around to look at the fish tank, yet all she saw was an empty tank with nothing in it, not even water: “Also, I am going to leave some notes, can you pass them to him for me?”

“Not a problem, Ms. Wong.”