I Loaded the Mysticism Panel

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

As Richard walked down the hallway, the doors to the office area were mostly closed. The instructors who had finished their classes had already left early to spend Christmas with their families.

There were no lesson plans on the old man’s desk today.

In the very center of the desk lay a map. The paper had yellowed with age, and its edges were frayed from frequent handling.

The map depicted a stretch of wilderness in the Northern Imperial region, covered in dense contour lines.

Several rivers snaked across the entire Highland, marked with red arrows pointing in various directions. There were also black boxes marking specific locations in the wilderness.

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 wax paper.

"Sit."

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

"This is the location of your internship."

He set the pencil down on the edge of the map and leaned back in his chair.

"Before I start briefing you on this mission, there’s something I want to teach you first."

Richard waited for him to continue.

The old man said, "For a Scholar, just reading books is far from enough."

"When you’re in the field, you’ll often only have a few things to work with.

An official report, a piece or two of physical evidence, a few fragmented accounts.

The surface-level information is limited. You have to dig for anything deeper yourself."

"What are the most common analytical methods for the Scholar Direction?" he asked, slipping into lecture mode.

"Grammatical analysis, comparative literature, and structural deduction," Richard answered smoothly.

"Correct." Mr. Hutton nodded. "But those alone are not enough."

"There’s a saying in our line of work: what the eyes can see is only the shallowest layer."

"To go deeper, you need other tools."

Richard had a good idea of what he meant.

"The Secret Direction."

"Exactly." Mr. Hutton leaned back in his chair.

"Haven’t you been learning the basics of Spiritual Vision and Divination over at the Branch Office recently?"

"Yes."

"How far have you progressed?"

Richard thought for a moment, phrasing his answer honestly.

"I’ve just gotten the hang of Spiritual Vision, enough to perceive the basic form of an Ether Field.

As for Divination, they’ve only taught me Wax Reading and Stone Reading. I haven’t properly touched on any of the more advanced card spreads."

Mr. Hutton grunted in acknowledgment but didn’t comment on his progress.

"Today, I’ll teach you a technique that crosses between Directions."

"It’s called ’Evidence Regression,’ though some call it ’Trace Divination.’"

"You need a foundation in the Scholar Direction and Perception from the Secret Direction. You have to use skills from both sides to make it work."

"Most Practitioners who focus on a single Direction can’t use this technique well."

"How do you use it, specifically?" Richard took a notebook from his bag.

"You use divination methods to retroactively interpret a known piece of evidence, pulling out the deeper information that lies beyond what’s on the surface."

Mr. Hutton explained it concisely.

"It doesn’t sound much different from regular reading."

"The difference is in *what* you’re reading," the old man said.

"Regular reading is for what’s literal. Evidence Regression is for what lies beyond the literal.

For example, emotional residue, Etheric imprints, and the causal links to the event itself."

Mr. Hutton reached out and opened a drawer.

The drawer was cluttered with all sorts of odds and ends: a few old notebooks, half a box of matches, a ring of keys tied with twine.

From the very back, the old man pulled out a small cloth pouch.

Seventy-eight Tarot Cards tumbled out of the pouch.

Richard’s gaze was involuntarily drawn to the faces of the cards.

They were an old style, with woodcut-like art dominated by black and white lines. They were heavily worn, and some even had coffee stains on them.

"A senior Sealing Master gave them to me," Mr. Hutton said candidly. "I’ve been using them for over thirty years."

He stacked the cards together and began to shuffle, his left hand pressing down on the deck.

"There are seventy-eight cards in a Tarot deck: twenty-two Major Arcana and fifty-six Minor Arcana."

"Each card corresponds to one or more symbols. The symbols themselves are flexible and require the reader to piece them together according to the specific context."

"Today, we’ll use the simplest three-card spread: Event, Cause, and Outcome."

Mr. Hutton placed the deck back on the table.

"You will assist."

"What do I do?"

"Use your Spiritual Vision." The old man pointed to the police department report.

"This document has passed through many hands—police officers, scribes, mail carriers, archivists. Each person leaves a faint trace on it."

"Your Spiritual Vision is still at a beginner’s level, but it’s sufficient for perceiving the traces on this document."

"Push your Perception out into a Fixed Gaze and see what you can feel."

Richard followed the method Old Big had taught him, pushing his consciousness out from behind his sternum.

On the Ether Layer, the photocopy was almost "dead."

It was just a copy, after all.

But Richard still managed to capture some extremely faint residue.

As the document was read and reread, the emotions of its readers had seeped into the paper fibers.

"Feeling anything?" Mr. Hutton asked.

"Fear," Richard said.

"It’s deep, and old... It feels like it was left behind by many people who handled this document over and over."

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

Richard looked down at the report.

November 4, 1863. An incident occurred at Whitcombe Mill. Twenty-three workers died simultaneously that afternoon.

Cause of death: Pending.

Autopsies revealed no external injuries, no signs of poisoning, and no signs of asphyxiation.

The only anomaly: the body temperature of all deceased decreased at a rate significantly slower than normal.

Coroner’s conclusion: Cause unknown. Further investigation recommended.

The report ended there. No follow-up, no investigation results, no explanation whatsoever.

Richard put the report down.

"The lack of temperature drop suggests something inside the bodies was maintaining their heat.

Or rather... something was still occupying those bodies after death."

Mr. Hutton didn’t comment on whether this deduction was right or wrong.

He picked up the Tarot Cards and began to lay out a simple three-card spread on the table.

"I’ll turn over the first card. Pay close attention."

Mr. Hutton’s fingers gripped the edge of the leftmost card.

The card flipped over.

The image depicted a tall tower struck by lightning, its masonry crumbling as two figures fell from the top.

It was one of the most impactful cards in the Major Arcana, one that even a beginner like Richard was familiar with.

"The Tower, Upright."

An inscrutable expression appeared on Mr. Hutton’s face, as if he were receiving a signal only he could hear.

In reality, what he was thinking in those two seconds was: ’Good, it’s The Tower Card. This one’s the easiest to spin.’

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

His voice was confident. "Combine that with the timeline from the evidence—1863, the peak of the Imperial industrialization."

He tapped the crumbling masonry on the card with his fingertip.

"The large-scale environmental destruction of the industrial era affected the stability of some ancient Seals. The incident in 1863 was one such case."

Richard quickly organized this information in his mind.

Mr. Hutton turned over the second card.

As the card face was revealed, Mr. Hutton’s fingers froze.

The Lovers, Upright.

The card depicted a man and a woman standing face to face, with an Angel spreading its wings above their heads.

Of all the Tarot Cards, this was probably the one least related to a mysterious incident that caused twenty-three deaths.

Richard also noticed how out of place the card felt.

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

Mr. Hutton picked up the tea on his desk and took a sip.

The tea was long cold, but he drank it slowly, giving his thoughts time to settle.

’The Lovers... The Lovers... Okay, no problem. I can spin this.’

He set down the teacup.

"In Trace Divination, the meaning of The Lovers card is different from its everyday interpretation."

His tone was even calmer than before.

"It doesn’t point to love or relationships. Instead, it points to a fundamental binary structure.

Two things, mutually opposed yet interdependent, inseparable."

His finger moved from the man and woman on the card to the Angel above them.

"In Ether theory, what fits this description?"

Richard’s answer was almost a blurt: "A Shadow."

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

"Whitcombe Mill was built on a Pre-Roman Boundary Stone Array."

"It dates back at least two thousand years."

"The area was inhabited by an Ancient Celtic Tribe at the time. They erected a circle of megaliths at this location, forming a boundary."

"The boundary was used to Seal a being the locals called ’She Who Eats Shadows.’"

Richard silently repeated the name in his mind.

The memory of his own Shadow rising up to choke him in Nail Lane silently surfaced.

"According to the surviving oral traditions of the Ancient Celts, descriptions of her are extremely rare."

Mr. Hutton said.

"A few song Fragments mention that she ’dwells underground,’ ’comes out at night,’ and ’devours the shadows of men.’"

"She has been imprisoned in that land ever since. She has awakened occasionally over the years, but she has never escaped the Seal."