On Sunday, Ryan went to the church as usual.
Not for service.
But for a free meal.
Every Sunday at noon, the church would distribute hot soup and bread. In the past, there hadn't been particularly many people, but this time, as soon as Ryan reached the corner of the street, he noticed something was off.
The line was at least twice as long as before.
The outside of the church was already packed with people. Many were wrapped in old blankets, and a few children huddled together from the cold. The air was thick with the smell of damp clothes and coal smoke.
The nuns were busy carrying soup buckets, while a priest stood at the door maintaining order.
“Line up!”
“Don't push!”
“There's enough for everyone!”
Yet people still kept crowding forward.
Ryan stood at the back of the crowd, slowly shuffling forward. His ears were filled with coughing.
There was a lot of it.
And it was growing increasingly frequent.
Some elderly people were coughing so hard they couldn't even stand up straight.
Ryan suddenly frowned.
Because he smelled something off.
It was very faint.
Mixed in with the coal smoke and hot soup, it was like the bitter scent of moldy, damp wood.
He instinctively looked up and scanned his eyes across the crowd, suddenly spotting a man in the middle of the line.
The man was wrapped in an old overcoat, his head lowered, coughing incessantly.
In Ryan's eyes, a faint, greyish-white substance hovered around him. It was very light, somewhat resembling fog, but different from the fog in the Wood.
This substance was murkier.
It looked more like powder drifting from rot.
Ryan's gaze shifted slightly.
In the next second, the man suddenly looked up. His face was deathly pale, and there were even traces of blood at the corners of his mouth.
The people around him immediately shrank back.
“Stay away!”
“Dammit, don't cough on me!”
The line fell into brief chaos.
The priest quickly came over to support the man, and a nun brought some water.
Standing at the back of the crowd, Ryan slowly withdrew his gaze. His chest suddenly felt heavy.
Because that greyish-white substance just now was similar to something he had seen in the Wood.
It wasn't Lantern.
Nor was it Grail.
It was more like a certain... aura of decay—Winter.
A cold wind blew past the church doors.
The line continued to move forward slowly as the distant bells chimed in a low, echoing toll.
And winter in London had only just begun.
By the end of November, the East End had grown as cold as a block of iron soaked in water.
Ryan had barely spent any extra money over the past half-month. He strictly ate two meals a day: black bread, hot tea, and occasionally a cheap potato soup.
He hadn't tasted meat in a long time.
Sometimes when he was too hungry to sleep at night, he would just drink water.
He also began to ration his kerosene.
Most of the time, he only lit the lamp in the attic for half an hour, relying on the faint, greyish-white moonlight filtering through the window for the rest of the night.
After all, his eyes could glow now too.
Work at the archive was still the same.
Organizing, filing, and transcribing.
Except that lately, the death records were piling up.
The infection over by the docks hadn't ended yet. Every day, coughing people came to the archive to process paperwork.
Some were relocation.
Some were cancellations.
And some were temporary death registrations.
The office area had recently been smelling of disinfectant.
Simon had been speaking even less lately.
During lunch breaks, he often stood by the window smoking.
Once, Ryan saw him staring at a hearse on the street for a long time before silently snuffing out his cigarette.
No one brought up the docks anymore.
Finally, payday at the end of the month arrived.
In the afternoon, the formal clerks went to the office one by one to collect their pay envelopes.
When it was Ryan's turn, the old accountant slid a paper envelope over.
“Five pounds.”
“Count it yourself.”
Ryan looked down and counted the money.
He instinctively let out a sigh of relief.
He had finally made it through.
Over the past half-month, he had been calculating his money almost every day, figuring out how many days he could last and how long his kerosene would burn.
Now that his wages were in hand, he felt a little lighter.
After work, Ryan didn't go home. Instead, he went straight to the old clock shop behind Whitechapel Street.
The shop was just as it had always been. Clocks ticked all over the walls.
The white-bearded old man was sitting behind the counter repairing something. Seeing Ryan walk in, he glanced up.
“Here to look again?”
Ryan nodded.
“Is that lens still here?”
The old man snorted.
“No one can afford it.”
Bending down, he took a wooden box from the cabinet. The circular lens lay quietly inside.
Ryan picked it up and held it to the light, examining it for a moment.
It was the same as before—pure, whole, and without a single crack in the center.
“Fourteen shillings.”
The old man didn't even look up.
Ryan didn't hesitate this time. He immediately began counting out the money.
The coins made a crisp clinking sound as they landed on the counter.
The old man finally looked up at him.
“Young man.”
“This sort of thing isn't a toy.”
Ryan didn't explain. He simply wrapped the lens back up and slipped it into his inner pocket.
After leaving the clock shop, Ryan didn't return to St. Blaise Street immediately. Instead, he turned into a familiar alley along the way.
At the end of the alley, the old wooden sign that read “Harvey's Pharmacy” was still swaying gently in the cold wind.
Pushing the door open, the brass bell chimed softly. A warm scent of herbs rushed over him.
Behind the counter, old Harvey was looking down, organizing his ledger. Hearing the sound, he looked up. Seeing it was Ryan, a slight smile appeared on his face.
“Ah, the lad from the archive.”
“Is today payday?”
Ryan was taken aback.
“How did you know?”
Old Harvey snorted.
“Every month around payday, the number of times you poor devils come to buy things always goes up.”
Ryan chuckled. He didn't argue. After all, it was the truth.
To save up for the lens, he hadn't visited for nearly half a month.
Old Harvey set down his ledger.
“What do you need this time?”
“Quinine.”
Ryan paused, then added, “And another small bottle of laudanum.”
The old man's eyebrows twitched slightly.
“Insomnia?”
“You could say that.”
Old Harvey didn't pry further, turning around to head toward the medicine cabinet behind him.
Lately, the number of people buying quinine had noticeably increased. Although the strange illness at the docks hadn't spread to the entire East End yet, everyone knew things were getting worse.
Soon, two paper packets and a brown glass bottle were placed on the counter.
“Drink sparingly,” old Harvey said, tapping the bottle. “Last month, a dockworker drank this stuff like water.”
“He didn't wake up for two days.”
Ryan took the medicine, paid, and was about to leave.
Suddenly, the pharmacy door was burst open. A cold wind carrying fog rushed inside.
A deathly pale man clung to the doorframe, coughing violently as blood seeped through his fingers.
The pharmacy fell dead silent.
Old Harvey's expression darkened, and he immediately stepped out from behind the counter.
“Shut the door.”
“Don't let the cold wind in.”
Ryan silently took a step back.
“Hurry and leave,” Harvey said.
Ryan didn't say another word, immediately pushing the door open and leaving.
After returning to St. Blaise Street, Ryan didn't go to sleep immediately. He locked the door first, then laid out the items he had prepared in advance on the table.
Dried orchids, a glass bottle, hot water, and that lens.
He steeped the orchids in the hot water, and a faint fragrance slowly drifted through the attic.
Then, Ryan put out the kerosene lamp, lay back on his bed, and let his consciousness slowly sink.
The familiar greyish-white Wood emerged once more. The air was freezing, the trees silent, and faint glimmers of Glory floated in the distance.
Ryan didn't head into the depths, opting to search slowly along the outskirts instead.
The fog in the Wood drifted slowly.
Before long, Ryan finally stopped beneath a cluster of grey trees.
A few slender plants grew there, their color very pale. The edges of their leaves seemed coated in a faint, golden light.
As Ryan slowly approached, a slight stinging sensation pricked his eyes, and the Lantern lore in his mind surfaced.
He reached out and merged it into his dream-form.
The color, the scent, the sensation.
At the same time, a soft sound suddenly came from the distant fog.
Ryan's pupils constricted slightly.
The white figure.
He didn't dare linger any longer, immediately severing his connection to the Wood.
In the next second, inside the attic, Ryan snapped his eyes open, cold sweat trickling down his forehead.
But he didn't waste any time.
He immediately grabbed the glass bottle on the table. Closing his eyes, he forced the lingering "sensation" from his soul down into the orchid water.
Heat. Glory.
The water in the glass bottle suddenly glowed faintly, extremely dim.
Then, it went dark again.
Ryan stared unblinkingly at the bottle, his breathing gradually quickening.
He had succeeded.
Ryan sealed it tightly and put it away.
...
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