Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 20: Outside the Door

Hailey still insisted on leading the way.

“That place is especially hard to find. A map wouldn’t make it clear at all,” she said loudly. “You said it is only to confirm a document and there’s no danger. I might even run into my uncle on the way.”

Salaar thought for a few seconds. “All right, but you must promise to follow orders.”

This time they went somewhere even more out of the way than Barlow’s place. Hailey led them through a broken bridge tunnel and along a reeking sewage canal, then stopped beneath Rosha’s outer wall.

There was no cobbled road here, only mud that seemed like it would never dry.

Huddled against the wall stood a jumble of houses. They were dull in color and ugly in shape, like the product of some kind of skin disease when seen from afar.

The large buildings were longhouses packed with the poor. Livestock were kept inside, and the stench of manure was unbearable. The smaller ones were a little better. They had crude chimneys and didn’t smell as strong.

Scintilla’s place was in the most remote corner.

The little house had a tightly closed door and a single extremely narrow window in the wall. The window glass had cracked long ago and was coated in dust. The sun hadn’t set yet, but the inside was pitch black and nothing could be seen.

A small bark cylinder hung on the door, with a withered sunflower stuck inside. A few crows perched on the eaves, hopping about restlessly.

Other than that, the house had no special features.

Hailey looked around hopefully for a while but saw neither the priest nor her uncle.

“Thank you for your help, Miss Hailey,” Salaar said. “It’s getting dark. You had better head home early.”

Nearby houses were beginning to light their lamps, which made his words all the more persuasive.

Hailey grumbled and shifted her heels awkwardly. “Is my uncle not inside?”

Yes, he’s not, Myss thought. There was no sign of life in that house. It was like a corpse with a stopped heart. He took two steps forward and pulled the wooden door open.

The door wasn’t locked. Myss yanked it so sharply that the dried sunflower fell to the ground. Since the sun was still up, the light from it fully revealed the scene inside.

Scintilla’s dwelling was pitifully small. There was only one room, and you could see everything at a glance.

The room was fairly clean. A crude fireplace was piled in the corner. A small cooking pot hung inside the hearth, and bundles of dried herbs hung above it, releasing a faint fresh scent.

A quarter of the room was taken up by a bed. Even so, the bed only had room for two people to sleep tightly pressed together. A thin layer of dust lay on the sheets.

A little wooden table was wedged in the gap between the bed and the wall. It was piled with old books and parchment. A feather quill sat in the ink bottle, and the ink inside had long since dried up.

By any look of it, the room had been vacant for some time.

Even so, Myss felt that something was off. He stepped inside and began leafing through the books on the table as if no one else were there. Salaar followed close behind and checked the small pot in the hearth.

Perhaps from worry, perhaps from curiosity, Hailey stepped over the threshold and set foot on the room’s floor.

“See? It’s very likely Huey and the others already left. Go home now,” Salaar told her.

There was nothing particularly strange around them, but it wasn’t a good place to linger.

Hailey answered obediently and headed for the door. Salaar nodded with approval and picked up a stack of parchment from the table—

Bang!

Hailey stumbled back into the room and slammed the door with all her strength. She was shaking badly, and her face was whiter than lime.

Once the door was shut, the room dimmed at once. Myss turned his head with displeasure and frowned at Hailey.

“Ou… outside,” Hailey said, bracing the door with her back, her lips trembling. “Outside is really scary…”

By her side the blood-red afterglow seeped in through the window, just as before.

Salaar turned his wrist, and the ritual dagger was suddenly in his hand. He approached the wooden door in silence. Hailey fled gratefully, running to Myss’s side.

Salaar tugged the door slightly and opened a narrow crack.

Myss looked toward the crack on reflex. He knew that the light of the setting sun should stab in at once, stretch across the dim floor, and lie there like a neat incision.

…But it didn’t

No light shone in at all. It was pitch black outside and frighteningly still. Instead, a trace of the room’s faint light leaked out and stained a small patch of the darkness red.

The ground at the threshold was still wet muddy earth, no different from when they had come.

Myss looked at the pitch-black door crack, then at the small window where the afterglow entered. He walked to the window, pulled the latch, and opened it with a brisk motion.

The instant the window opened, the afterglow vanished.

In a heartbeat the three of them were drowned in a darkness thick as syrup. A strange sweet-and-bloody smell filled the room, like rain-damp bread and also like fresh pus.

Myss reflexively shut the window. The lingering glow lit the room again and slid lightly along the cracks in the glass.

The room was the same as before. Yet when they tried to leave, the outside seemed connected to the wrong world.

Myss: “Wow.”

“Uncle…” Hailey squeezed out a dry whisper. “My uncle hasn’t been here yet, has he?”

“I think someone has already come. Looking on the bright side, Mr. Huey may not have entered.”

Salaar glanced at the desk. There was no oil lamp on it, but there was a ring where a lamp had stood. Judging from the dust, it had been taken away not long ago.

Hailey’s breathing quickened. “My uncle would care about Scintilla’s condition. He would come in to look.”

Salaar snapped his fingers and brilliant golden flames rose in the hearth. Myss looked a moment longer and noticed the flames were only floating there and hadn’t set the firewood alight.

With a steady light source, Hailey looked a little calmer.

Salaar turned around, the gold fire lighting his face. “Do you remember? We’re secret investigators. Trust me. We’ll find Mr. Huey.”

He spoke gently, but his arm shot out and grabbed Myss, who was heading straight for the door. To the Demon Lord, darkness was like going home. He had no instinctive fear of it at all, and he was just about to slip through the crack.

Yanked back, Myss was annoyed. “What are you doing?”

Before Salaar could open his mouth, another sound answered first—

Tap. Tap. A soft knocking came from the doorway.

“Hailey?” Huey’s voice sounded from outside the door. “Hailey, is that you? I heard your voice.”

Hailey clapped a hand over her mouth and stared at the wooden door in terror.

The instant the knocking began, Salaar had slammed the door shut. Even so, the voice drew closer and closer. It was as if it walked right up to her out of thin air, and only she could hear it.

“Hailey.” The voice called right by her ear, yet Hailey felt no human breath.

“Mom is here… Mom is here,” it said.

But it was still Huey’s voice. Goosebumps broke out all over Hailey. She clamped her hands over her ears and crouched before the flickering hearth.

“Miss Hailey, wake up. Look at me.” Another voice sounded at her ear, distant and blurry, as if through a layer of water.

Right, that was Mr. Salaar’s voice.

Hailey raised her unfocused eyes to those lapis-lazuli irises.

“It’s my uncle,” she struggled to convey. “My uncle is calling me from outside the door. His voice is getting closer and closer, and he is calling himself ‘Mom’…”

“Yes, Mom,” came Huey’s voice again, this time from deep within her mind.

Hailey couldn’t bear it any longer and began to sob. “He’s in my head… She’s in my head.”

“Oh?” Myss crouched, nose angling toward Hailey, only for Salaar to press him back in place.

“Human etiquette,” Salaar reminded emphatically, hauling him back to a standing position.

Fine. Myss drew his nose back, interest fading.

“She smells like baked wheat cakes… Barlow’s smell,” he said. “She had it before we came here, very faint. I thought it was just the street. Now it is getting stronger.”

“You mean she may have encountered Mina,” Salaar said, his tone darkening.

“Might even be my infection. I gave her curds and berries, and Mina was right in front of me then.” Myss lazily stretched.

“You didn’t notice magic in the food?” Salaar asked.

Myss rolled his eyes and tossed the question back. “What about you? You grabbed a bowl yourself.”

Back then he had only noticed the faint pink magic after Barlow swallowed the croutons. That stuff was extremely hard to observe. He had stared until his eyes ached.

Salaar fell silent. He lowered his gaze and looked at Hailey, who was sobbing under her breath.

Myss grew impatient. Because of this little girl they had already been delayed for quite a while, and it felt completely pointless. Myss certainly knew there was danger outside. The problem was that they couldn’t hide here forever.

“Child, do not cry.”

At last the Great Hero finally spoke. Salaar went down on one knee and looked at Hailey with gentle eyes.

Hailey returned the look on instinct.

Salaar was gripping the parchments he had just gathered from the table. The top sheet lay exposed, and the words right at hand leapt into her sight.

It was a shabby debt receipt, covered edge to edge with the words “Mother sends you her regards.”

The frenzied writing obscured the contents and scarred the parchment all over. Between the strokes only a few pitiful remnants showed through.

[…Scintilla, daughter of Mina, borrowed a copy from my shop…]

[…The title page is stained, compensation required…]

A large name was written at the signature line. The signer wasn’t good at writing, as the letters looked clumsy and tender.

[Philomina]

At the moment the signature was wrapped in line after line of “Mother sends you her regards,” like a coffin buried in earth.

Hailey remembered this name. Her uncle had mentioned it a few times. Philomina seemed to have visited when she was little, but she had long forgotten the woman’s face.

Wait, had she really forgotten?

She distinctly remembered… Mina, her dearest mother Mina.

“I am sorry, Miss Hailey. I am afraid our situation isn’t very hopeful.”

Seeing she didn’t’ respond for a long time, Salaar continued, “Next I have a question that is discourteous—”

“May I ‘kill’ you?”

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The author has something to say:

The same darkness.

For humans: danger, the unknown, instinctive wariness.

For Myss: ah, the smell of home, how familiar—

For Salaar: here we go again.jpg

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