Chapter 142: The Lovers

That morning, Mr. Hutton asked Richard to come to his private office.

As Richard walked down the corridor, most of the office doors were closed. The teachers who had finished their classes had left early to spend Christmas with their families.

The old gentleman had no lesson plans on his desk today.

A map lay spread across the center of the desk. The paper had yellowed, its edges frayed from being flipped through so often.

The map showed a stretch of wilderness in the northern Empire, dense with contour lines.

Several rivers wound across the highland, accompanied by red arrows pointing in different directions. Black squares marked specific locations across the wasteland.

A few items were stacked beside the map:

a thin, crudely bound report, an old photograph of a mill, and a small rubbing wrapped in oiled paper.

"Sit."

Mr. Hutton tapped one of the black squares on the map with the tip of his pencil.

"This is the location of your field assignment."

He set the pencil down beside the map and leaned back in his chair.

"Before I go into the details of this mission, there's something I want to teach you."

Richard waited for him to continue.

The old gentleman said, "For a Scholar, merely reading books is far from enough."

"When you're out in the field, you usually only get this much to work with: an official report, a piece or two of physical evidence, and a few fragmented oral accounts. The surface information is limited. You have to dig for the deeper layers yourself."

"What are the most common deconstruction methods for the Scholar path?" He shifted into teaching mode.

"Syntactic analysis, textual cross-referencing, and structural deduction," Richard answered smoothly.

"Correct." Mr. Hutton nodded. "But relying solely on those isn't enough."

"We have a saying in this line of work: what the eyes see is only the shallowest layer."

"To go deeper, you need other tools."

Richard had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

"The Secret path."

"Exactly." Mr. Hutton leaned back.

"Haven't you been spending time at the Branch Office recently, learning the basics of Spirit Vision and divination?"

"Yes."

"How far along are you?"

Richard thought for a moment and chose his words honestly.

"I've just found the threshold for Spirit Vision; I can perceive the basic form of an ether field. For divination, they've only taught me wax and stone reading. I haven't formally touched any of the deeper card spreads yet."

Mr. Hutton gave a noncommittal hum, offering no judgment on his progress.

"Today, I'm going to teach you a cross-disciplinary technique."

"It's called 'Evidence Retrospection,' though some call it 'Trace Divination.'"

"You need the foundation of the Scholar path and the Perception of the Secret path. It takes both skillsets to make it work."

"Most single-path Practitioners can't pull it off well."

"How exactly does it work?" Richard pulled his notebook from his satchel.

"You use divination to read a known piece of evidence retrospectively, dragging out the deeper truths hidden beneath the surface information."

Mr. Hutton's explanation was concise and to the point.

"Sounds like standard divination."

"The difference lies in what you read," the old gentleman said. "Standard readings stop at the literal surface, but Evidence Retrospection reads what lies beyond it. Things like emotional residue, ether imprints, and causal links to the event itself."

Mr. Hutton pulled open his drawer.

It held a clutter of odds and ends: a few old memo pads, half a box of matches, and a ring of keys wrapped in twine.

From the very back, the old man fished out a small Cloth Bag.

Seventy-eight Tarot Cards spilled from the Cloth Bag.

Richard found his gaze drawn to the cards.

The card faces featured an old woodcut style in stark black and white. They were heavily worn, and some bore coffee stains.

"A senior Sealer gave them to me," Mr. Hutton said matter-of-factly. "I've used them for over thirty years."

He stacked the deck and pressed his left hand flat against the top to shuffle.

"There are seventy-eight Tarot Cards in total: twenty-two Major Arcana and fifty-six Minor Arcana."

"Every card corresponds to one or more symbols. The symbols are flexible; the reader has to piece them together based on the context."

"Today, we'll use the simplest three-card spread—event, cause, and outcome."

Mr. Hutton placed the deck back on the table.

"You're going to assist."

"What should I do?"

"Use your Spirit Vision." The old gentleman pointed at the police report.

"This document has passed through many hands—officers, clerks, postmen, archivists. Every single one of them left a faint trace on the paper."

"Your Spirit Vision has only just crossed the threshold, but it's enough to perceive the traces left on this file."

"Push your Perception outward and hold a fixed gaze. See what you can feel."

Using the method Old Biggs had taught him, Richard pushed his consciousness outward from behind his breastbone.

On the ether plane, this photocopied document was practically dead.

It was only a copy, after all.

Still, Richard managed to catch some exceptionally faint traces.

As the document was read over and over, the readers' emotions had seeped into the paper fibers.

"Feel it?" Mr. Hutton asked.

"Fear," Richard said. "It's deep and very old... It feels like it was left behind by all the people who repeatedly handled this document."

"Not bad." Mr. Hutton nodded. "Now, read the contents."

Richard looked down at the report.

November 4, 1863. An incident occurred at Whitcom Mill, resulting in the simultaneous deaths of twenty-three workers that afternoon.

Cause of death: Undetermined.

Autopsies revealed no signs of trauma, poisoning, or asphyxiation among the deceased.

The sole anomaly: the victims' body temperatures dropped significantly slower than normal.

Coroner's conclusion: Cause unknown, further investigation recommended.

The report ended there. There were no follow-ups, no investigation results, and absolutely no explanations.

Richard set the report down.

"If their body temperatures weren't dropping, something inside the corpses was sustaining the heat. Or rather... something was still occupying their bodies after death."

Mr. Hutton offered no comment on whether this deduction was right or wrong.

He picked up the Tarot Cards and dealt a simple three-card spread across the desk.

"I'll turn over the first card. Watch closely."

Mr. Hutton pinched the edge of the leftmost card.

He flipped it over.

The image depicted a towering spire struck by lightning. Its masonry was shattering, and two figures plummeted from the top.

It was one of the most visually striking cards in the Major Arcana. Even a beginner like Richard recognized it instantly.

"The Tower; upright."

Mr. Hutton assumed an inscrutable expression, as if tuning into a signal only he could hear.

In reality, his inner thought over those two seconds was: Thank goodness it's The Tower. This is the easiest one to spin.

"The Tower points to a sudden, catastrophic event—the complete collapse of an existing structure."

His voice brimmed with certainty. "Combine that with the timeline of our evidence. 1863 was the absolute peak of the Empire's industrialization."

He tapped the shattered stones on the card.

"The massive environmental destruction of the industrial age destabilized several ancient seals. The 1863 incident was one of those cases."

Richard rapidly sorted through this information in his head.

Mr. Hutton flipped the second card.

As the card was revealed, Mr. Hutton's finger froze.

The Lovers; upright.

The card depicted a man and a woman standing face-to-face, with an angel spreading its wings above them.

Out of all the Tarot Cards, this was perhaps the one least related to a mysterious accident that had killed twenty-three people.

Richard noticed the incongruity as well.

He glanced at Mr. Hutton, waiting for an interpretation.

Mr. Hutton picked up his teacup and took a sip.

The tea had long since gone cold, but he drank slowly, buying time for his thoughts to settle.

The Lovers, The Lovers... Alright, no problem. I can spin this.

He set the teacup down.

"In Trace Divination, the meaning of The Lovers differs from an everyday reading."

His tone was even more composed than before.

"It doesn't point to love or relationships. Instead, it indicates a fundamental dualistic structure. Two entities, opposing yet mutually dependent, completely inseparable."

His finger traced from the man and woman up to the angel hovering above them.

"In ether theory, what fits this description?"

Richard's answer came almost instinctively: "Shadows."

The answer came so fast that even Mr. Hutton slightly raised an eyebrow.

"Whitcom Mill was built upon a pre-Roman Boundary Stone Array."

"Dating back at least two thousand years."

"The ancient Celtic tribes living in this region at the time erected a circle of megaliths on that spot to form a boundary."

"A boundary meant to seal away an entity the locals called 'She Who Eats Shadows.'"

Richard silently repeated the name in his head.

The memory of Nail Alley—when his own shadow had risen up to choke him—surfaced wordlessly in his mind.

"According to surviving ancient Celtic oral traditions, descriptions of her are extremely sparse," Mr. Hutton said.

"A few fragmented ballads mention that she 'dwells underground,' 'emerges at night,' and 'devours the shadows of men.'"

"She has remained imprisoned in that land all this time. She occasionally awakens, but she has never escaped her seal."