Deep Sea Embers

Without delay, the door slammed open with stacks of flying paper whirl winding out of the room. It eventually found its way over to the clockwork doll and reformed into the form of the Sea Witch.

“Luni?” Lucretia leaned down and picked up the key, plugging it back into her clockwork doll. Then after a quick winding, she asks: “What happened?”

A series of intermittent cranking noises came from Luni’s body, and after a while, some of her parts finally resumed function. “Old Master… is looking for you…” The doll answers with a very out-of-tune voice from the chest.

With a “clunk,” Lucretia dropped the wind-up key due to shock.

Luni turned her head following the sound, instinctively trying to reinsert the key to no avail because her limbs had stiffened again.

Lucretia’s complexion turned dreadfully white after hearing the word Old Master. She’s an absolute mess, but she still has enough wits to pull herself together after hearing Luni’s failure. Shaking it off with a shudder, she hugged the doll to suppress the chaotic thoughts and muttered: “Luni, standby mode.”

The clockwork doll slowly closed its eyes: “Command received, Luni going on standby mode.”

Minutes later, deep in the cabin of the Bright Star, Lucretia was busy at the workbench inside this brightly lit room.

This laboratory could be evaluated as “complete and advanced” even by the standards of the Truth Academy’s headquarter. It’s equipped with intricate mechanical devices and pressure pipes used to power various equipment. One could even see magical runes, crystal containers, and reactors shimmering with light among the countless machines. Currently, more than a dozen automatic dolls were currently taking care of these pieces of equipment, allowing Lucretia to focus on the work in front of herself.

Right now, Luni was lying quietly on the large workbench in front of the Sea Witch, dissembled for repair.

“Re… Repair…?” From Luni’s chest came a somewhat out-of-tune voice.

“Don’t worry. The transmission device jammed suddenly, causing part of the bearing to warp.” Lucretia busied herself without lifting her head, “It will require a lot of time to repair the area, but the repair itself is simple. Your heart isn’t damaged.”

Luni slowly rolled her eyes sideways to look at the “heart” placed at the center of the workbench.

It was a delicate floating brass ball made of countless intricate metal pieces set together. From time to time, the surface would change positions to reveal the inner structure, and if watched from the right angle, one could even see the shiny engraved runes swirling around the tiny thing at the center.

Well, calling it a tiny thing was a stretch. It’s in fact a finger, a very slender and fragile finger. About a toddler’s size that’s been elaborately crafted by a certain puppeteer a century ago.

That’s the true core of the clockwork puppet known as “Luni”, the true essence – the final proof that a puppet born a hundred years ago remained in this world.

Lucretia noticed Luni’s gaze and followed it, causing her hands to stop as well.

After a while, she resumed work and spoke as if without intent: “I changed you into this. Have you ever resented me?”

“Luni… resent?” The head of the puppet on the workbench made a dull voice, “Mistress… gave Luni life, for this… Luni is happy…”

“But all this was originally done on my own whim, and for that whim, I destroyed your original body,” Lucretia said lightly. “For a long time, I didn’t realize you had developed a real ability to think because of the influence of the border. Back then, I only thought you were a machine and carried out many reckless ‘experimental modifications’ on you.”

Luni took a moment to reply: “Your emotions are tense. You have something on your mind. Under normal circumstances, Mistress wouldn’t suddenly say such inexplicable words.”

Now it was Lucretia to go silent for a while: “… Do you remember what you said just now? After I just arrived at the deck and woke you up.”

“…… Memory retrieval failed. Luni doesn’t remember.”

“You told me that the ‘Old Master’ is looking for me.”

A series of strange noises came from the chest cavity of the clockwork doll again, but not due to a malfunction, it’s confusion.

“Do you really not remember?” Lucretia raised her head and quietly peered into Luni’s eyes.

“Memory retrieval failed. Luni doesn’t remember.”

“…… It seems that my terrible father didn’t want me to have any chance of reverse spying on him,” Lucretia had a complicated expression as she said this. “He just sent a unilateral signal, telling me…he knows where the Bright Star is, and he knows how to find me…”

“You’re afraid.”

“I’m scared to death, but more than scared, I’m more saddened…”

“Sad? Why?”

Lucretia stopped and met Luni’s gaze before shaking her head dismissively: “This emotion is too complicated for you right now. You won’t be able to understand.”

“Okay, Luni will try to understand in the future,” replied the clockwork doll. “Do you think Old Master is giving you some kind of warning?”

“…… I don’t know, but it does feel like a warning,” Lucretia said softly. “In fact, it feels like some sort of declaration before a hunt. He’s back from subspace and even more elusive than the last time he returned. Maybe I should remind my brother…”

“You should indeed remind Mr. Tyrian. He had already set out for Pland, and the admin of that city-state mentioned the Vanished is near their island.”

Lucretia nodded lightly and didn’t say anything more to continue her work.

……

Duncan carefully put “Nilu” back into the antique wooden box before putting the feather-shaped hairpin into the drawer as well. Once done, he kept staring at the wooden box with a worried face.

As a grown man, he always felt something was wrong with putting a girly-styled doll in his bedroom.

But apart from putting it in his bedroom, he couldn’t think of a better place.

Although the first test failed to achieve any results of Nilu being a supernatural item, this was still something related to “Lucrecia”. If he’s not careful, it might open a passage to the other party without his knowledge.

After some struggle, Duncan sighed and temporarily placed Nilu’s box at the end of his bed.

“If you really have something special about you, then hurry and show your hand.” He glanced down at the box again, “Don’t be like Alice. I don’t want to throw you overboard and see another wave surfing fiasco.”

The wooden box certainly didn’t react, but Duncan didn’t care about it either.

He came to the window and glanced at the sky outside.

Night had fallen today, and the pale and dim glimmer of the giant crack in the sky gave the ocean a shimmering appearance.

The mighty exorcism power brought by the sun has subsided in the real world, and those distorted, ominous, and corrosive forces are gradually rising in the world. At this time, humans will enter their dreams to avoid the world’s corruption in their sanity.

But for Duncan… he had never felt any discomfort in the night, nor had he seen the shadows that frightened the ordinary people.

The night was his realm, the time when he’s at his sharpest.

Returning to the desk, he quietly spread a blank piece of paper out and grabbed a pen from the side. These are things he bought today from the city to write down what he found.

After a little hesitation, he begun once he sorted through the details:

In 1889, a sun fragment appeared, triggering the Pland great fire.

Through Dog and Shirley’s help, I found the veiling curtain of the factories inside Block 6. It hides a different reality destroyed by the flame back then.

The origin of Dog’s “humanity” is still unknown, but it is clearly not the influence of the sun fragment’s power.

There is also a distorted space-time in the neighborhood church of Block 6. It’s causing two opposing realities to lapse and superimpose upon the chapel grounds.

I suspect the statue of the goddess inside that church is corrupted by subspace, and the nun discovered in the underground sanctuary had likely died fending off the invasion back then.