Ode sat speechless for a long moment.
The oxcart jolted along for a few seconds before he suddenly slapped the side panel. “Stop! I want to get off!”
“What?” The driver jumped in surprise, his shyly admiring smile turning awkward. He fumbled for a moment. “Did I ask too many questions? I just thought… Ah, never mind, I won’t ask anymore.”
The young man stole another glance at Ode’s stern face with regret, then quickly turned back and sat straight. He had no idea that Ode’s sudden outburst had nothing to do with his prying, but rather—
Dreamcatcher Town.
Ode’s gaze swept over his surroundings as he silently mouthed the name. His heart pounded heavily and rapidly. This is Dreamcatcher Town? But—shouldn’t it have burned to the ground on the morning of June 2nd?
What’s going on? Did time really reverse? Or… did I pass out from the pain of my wound, and they’ve upped the dosage? Am I dreaming now, reliving the memories I lost?
Ode instinctively raised his hand to slap his own cheek, but as his right hand moved, there came a faint click. He felt something cold and hard gripped in his palm.
“…”
He slowly lowered his head and saw what it was.
A gun.
The handgun that Faust had shoved into his hand.
“What was that sound?” the driver asked in confusion from the front seat.
Ode’s fingers tightened slowly around the gun, as if clutching the only reliable anchor in this suddenly incomprehensible, nightmarishly chaotic world. “Nothing. The rivets on my shoe sole just bumped the cart panel. Good thing it didn’t leave a mark.”
He quickly unbuttoned his suit jacket and slipped the pistol into the spacious inner pocket. In those brief seconds, he pieced together his next plan:
Whether this was the Dream Realm or reality, he had to play along for now to uncover the truth.
…Or perhaps.
A sudden thought struck him.
If this truly was reality… and Faust had been telling the truth… if he’d encountered a time reversal… then maybe June 2nd hadn’t arrived yet?
Could he get off right now, rush back to London, and finalize the loan with Qian Ning?
He might even have time to retrieve Grandfather’s body, arrange the burial, and make it to that final civil service interview on June 2nd!
Excitement surged uncontrollably through Ode, but as he opened his mouth to ask the driver to stop again, a sharp pain like fine wire scraping shot through his left hand. He looked down and saw the pendant necklace the Old Madman had given him wrapped several times around his fingers. The old, rusted Silver Photo Locket swayed in his palm.
The Old Madman’s eyes—desperate yet hopeful—flashed through his mind. Ode’s open mouth froze. Guilt and shame flooded his heart:
He could go back, but what about that child? What about the promise he’d made?
If this was truly a second chance at time, then maybe this was his one opportunity to save that child—and perhaps the entire town. Because on June 2nd, this place would burn to ruins littered with charred corpses.
Lost in this muddled train of thought, Ode didn’t realize until he walked headfirst into a tree that his instincts had guided him off the cart amid his hesitation. He had wandered to the edge of the dense forest.
Ahead lay a green field. From the treeline, he could see the nearest town on the far side. If he hurried there and made connections back to London, he could retrieve Grandfather, nail that final interview, and get his life back on track.
The sunlit field lay just one step away, but he halted in the dappled light where forest shade met sunshine. He hesitated.
He turned back, as if peering through the impenetrable woods to the child he had never met—and might not even be alive—in the town. Then he turned forward again, toward the bright, open highway.
Intense inner conflict made his chest heave. For a moment, his burning desires overwhelmed his moral compass, urging his hand toward the sunlight—
Whoosh…
A faint wind whispered past. The next instant, the clamor of streets erupted from all directions, enveloping him.
“What?!” Ode stared in shock at the drastically changed surroundings. Somehow, he had been teleported into an enclosed backyard.
Tall stone walls surrounded the yard, and ahead loomed a Victorian building. A wooden sign hung on the back door: “Dreamcatcher Inn.”
“How…” Ode snapped out of his turmoil at the sudden shift, instinctively pressing his hand over the gun in his coat pocket.
The hard weight of the pistol gave him solid reassurance. After a moment’s thought, he didn’t head straight into the inn. Instead, he turned and exited through the wooden gate leading to the outside world.
The inn’s backyard opened onto a muddy long street lined with dingy old buildings.
Several antiquated carriages clattered down the street, their wheels splashing up bits of mud.
Listless people leaned against porch railings, smoking. Drunken louts lay sprawled in the muck.
—The architecture aside, these people’s clothes didn’t look like anything from 1980.
Ode frowned and strode quickly through the street, heading toward the distant forest. He had a hypothesis to test:
Why had he been teleported to the inn’s backyard when he reached out from the forest?
If everything before him was real—not a dream—did that mean all of Dreamcatcher Town was enclosed by some… magical barrier? (Ode, ever the rationalist, struggled to form the phrase in his mind.) Preventing anyone from leaving?
…If so, who had cast this magic? And why?
Lost in a whirl of questions, he walked nearly twenty minutes. By the time he reached the forest edge, he was gasping for breath, his feet blistered inside his shoes.
He looked up at the distant field. The earlier sunlight now tinged with dusk’s red; the blue sky had deepened to purple crimson.
Steadying his breath, he reached once more toward the glow beyond the trees—
Whoosh…
The familiar wind. He was back in the inn’s backyard.
“…”
Ode’s heart raced.
For a fleeting moment, he felt as if he stood before a wholly alien world—treacherous and monstrous, its drooling claws reaching greedily for him.
But then a chill swept through him as he realized—
He wasn’t “before” that world. He was already deep inside it.
Last time, he had somehow escaped Dreamcatcher Town without knowing how. But that world hadn’t let him go. It had dragged him back, as if dying here with the other townsfolk was his fated end.
—But would he submit to fate? Bend to its will?
“No… damn… it,” he said through gritted teeth, glaring at the inn’s back door. Green fire burned in his eyes.
He would survive. Survive beyond the great fire.
And this time, he would find that child. He would make that final interview.
He would retrieve Grandfather. He would seal the deal with Qian Ning. If fate truly existed in this world—
He would be the one to triumph in the end.
Ode gradually calmed himself. He straightened up, took steadying breaths, and adjusted his clothes. He drew the pistol from his inner pocket, chambered a round, left the safety off, and tucked the cold barrel into his belt at his slender waist for quicker access.
Then he pushed open the inn’s back door and stepped inside.
“Alas… my love, you do me wrong…” A slow folk tune drifted through the inn’s communal dining hall on the first floor.
Ode caught the scent of fresh bread and malt liquor, mingled with the briny tang of sea air wafting through the front windows. Beyond them, he glimpsed the harbor to the inn’s south and the vast Black Sea farther out.
“Oh, what a handsome face!” The Landlady’s eyes lit up as she rose from behind the counter. “Need a room or dinner, dear?”
Dead broke, Ode patted the single penny in his pocket and went silent for three seconds. Then, without batting an eye, he sauntered to the counter, draped an arm over it, and prepared his performance—only to spot a newspaper casually spread out nearby. The front-page headline screamed in bold, enlarged font: “Jack the Ripper Strikes Again!! Scotland Yard Useless!” “…Uh, what’s this?”
“Oh! That’s today’s paper,” the Landlady said, warming instantly to his good looks, her enthusiasm laced with worry. “Terrible, isn’t it? That’s the third case by that madman… This time he even killed two poor women at once! I know some useless louts on the street who puff up their chests and claim those prostitutes deserved it, but—”
“Today’s… paper?” Ode repeated her words, eyes fixed on the date marked “1888.10.7” on the newspaper.
If this was today’s paper, then he wasn’t in late May 1980 in Dreamcatcher Town. He was in 1888?
How could this be?
Puzzle though he might, it didn’t derail his act.
Ode tossed the paper aside and leaned casually against the counter, posture relaxed with a touch of post-argument irritation. “I wish that Jack fellow would show up at my house and give that old man a proper lesson—whatever. Give me a room, the best dinner, the works—oh, damn it.”
He played the spoiled rich kid who stormed out after a fight, forgetting his money, to perfection. “We had a huge row with that old coot, and I rushed out without grabbing any cash—hey!” He paused dramatically. “Can I put this watch toward the bill?”
A watch fine enough for the bank to allow out of the family estate wasn’t valuable. It had no brand; his father, clueless about luxury goods, had bought it for his mother on a business trip. Its worth lay more in memories than money.
In 1980, even a secondhand shop might not take such an obscure model. But in 1888, even a basic time-telling pocket watch required scrimping for a working-class man to afford—let alone Ode’s, with its perpetual calendar and chronograph functions, toys only for nobility or tycoons back then.
Ode mentally tallied the prices, vowing silently to redeem the watch later. With pleading eyes, he gazed at the Landlady. “Please…?”
He crafted the image of a runaway young master simply to justify pawning his watch as quickly as possible. Otherwise, in this day and age, a broke nobody who couldn’t even afford a hotel room suddenly flashing a priceless timepiece would raise all sorts of red flags—people might think it was stolen. He had no desire to get hauled off by the cops again.
But crafting a backstory was one thing; he didn’t want the landlady to actually peg him as some spoiled, troublesome rich kid. What if he needed to pump her for information down the line?
The landlady nearly melted under the assault of those puppy-dog eyes, their outer corners still red as if from recent tears. She cleared her throat and adopted a serious tone. “Of course you can! That watch of yours could cover a lifetime stay here with cash to spare if you pawned it. I’ll hold on to it for you—come redeem it anytime you’ve got the money for the room.”
She bent down to rummage in the drawer for a key. At that moment, someone came storming down from the hotel’s second floor, slammed a fist on the counter, and launched into a tirade.
“The guest in Room 314 is way too nitpicky! First he griped that the bedding wasn’t soft and fluffy enough, so we swapped it out. Then the bathtub wasn’t clean enough—I wiped that thing down with brandy myself. He said the dinner wasn’t up to snuff, so the chef whipped up a whole cart of food to his exact specs. And guess what? It went up barely touched and came down the same way. What the hell is his problem?”
Ode had been playing his part to perfection, lounging casually against the counter. But in the square mirror hanging behind it, he caught sight of a face that sent his heart lurching.
The cult’s undercover agent.
Ode’s body tensed subtly. He straightened up, his hand drifting toward the pistol at his waist. Keeping his back to the hotel entrance, he watched as the agent strode through the door. How the hell is he…
Faust’s words from when he’d shown Ode the agent’s photo flashed through his mind:
“You think my subordinate jotted down your name to recommend you for a job? Think again.”
“He’s the real deal—a genuine cult infiltrator. He carries that notebook around because he wants to drag you off as a sacrifice to his god.”
Everything that followed unfolded in a mere five seconds.
The waiter was still ranting. “Those coconut pastry horns were so flaky and buttery! And that cream soup—hell, just smelling it made me hungry…”
The landlady rose from behind the counter and handed over the key. “Here you go—Room 214. It’s got a big window facing the sun…”
Ode took the key with feigned calm but lightning speed, gave a polite nod, and headed for the stairs. His pace started even but accelerated with every step.
“Hey! You, the one with the reddish-brown hair!” the agent’s shout rang out from the lobby.
Ode broke into a sprint, taking the stairs two at a time.
He remembered the hotel wasn’t tall; there were decorative eaves on the first floor. He could leap from a second-floor room window and, if luck held, avoid even a sprained ankle.
“Hey! Stop—”
The agent’s voice warped midsentence, shifting from a normal baritone to a thick, guttural croak, like a frog emerging from the mud.
Ode had no time to wonder if the landlady or waiter had caught that eerie call, or if the chase would look suspicious. He jammed the key brutally into the lock of Room 214 and shouldered the door open.
He didn’t have time to steady himself. Whirling back, he slammed the door shut—just in time to come face-to-face with his pursuer in the hallway. “God!”
Bang!!
The door crashed closed.
A section of the agent’s left hand fingers got caught and sheared clean off. It hit the floor with a wet plop. That slimy, grayish-green digit didn’t look human at all—more like a frog’s.
Ode gasped for breath. He shoved the grotesque image from his mind—the agent’s head, now hideously swollen in seconds, eyes bulging sideways like a bloated corpse. Dragging over every piece of furniture in reach, he barricaded the door. Then it hit him:
I have a gun.
Right! He had a gun!
Ode nearly cursed his foggy brain. If the possibility of real magic hadn’t rattled him so badly, he wouldn’t have headed upstairs at all—he could’ve bolted straight through the counter and out the back. “Okay. No problem. Faust gave me this gun. It should handle these monst—”
Before he could finish psyching himself up, the door shuddered under a massive impact.
Boom!
A inhuman force sent the desk and nightstand flying like toys. Ode dropped into a crouch, dodging the nightstand as it whistled past his head and out the window. “Damn it!”
As he crouched, he swung the gun barrel toward the doorway—no time for a proper sight picture. The thing was ballooning to fill the hall anyway; anywhere near the door would hit it. He squeezed the trigger hard.
Bang!
An iridescent bullet streaked from the barrel and sank silently into the monster’s left chest.
It did nothing to slow the beast. The massive corpse-thing lunged with a roar, its fetid breath washing over his face.
Boom!
A burst of multicolored light erupted from the impact site—like a miniature explosion. In the blink of an eye, it carved a hole the size of a grown man’s fist into the corpse-thing’s chest, incinerating the innards (if that’s what passed for flesh in there) to white ash.
“GRRAAAHH—”
The monster reared back with a thunderous bellow.
But even with that gaping chest wound, it kept coming. Those protruding eyes, skewed to the sides of its head, locked onto him with venomous hatred. Its long hand—the one with the missing finger bone—lashed out with a whoosh of displaced air and stabbed straight into Ode’s calf!
—
Pain that intense stole his voice. Ode’s mouth gaped uselessly; his throat locked up, choking off even breath.
His body toppled sideways, but his arms jerked in spasm. Driven by pure survival instinct, he wrenched the gun around toward the monster.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The first shot punched into the monster’s right chest. The next two veered upward as he fell—one into its shoulder, the last into empty air.
None seemed vital, but now the frenzied beast was berserk. It yanked its hand from Ode’s leg and seized his arms before he could fire again. Its mouth split wide like a fish’s, revealing a yawning maw lined with yellow fangs. It lunged to bite.
And stopped dead.
“…?” Out of options, Ode had twisted his head aside, buying every last second he could. Now he cracked his eyes open in confusion and cautiously turned back.
“Grrr…” The monster let out a disgruntled rumble. The long hand pinning his right arm actually released its grip. Cool, slimy fingers brushed his cheek instead, forcing his head back to expose the long, vulnerable line of his neck—like a sacrificial lamb baring its throat.
Ode: “…?”
“I can only speculate that your Charm Value has a greater effect on the stronger the opponent.”
Faust’s words drifted through his mind unbidden once more.
“…………”
Ode lay rigid on the floor. He swallowed hard, holding the pose with his neck exposed, and slowly raised his right hand—the one still clutching the gun.
The monster kept grumbling and cooing, entranced as it traced chilly fingertips along his neck. It never noticed the sleek black pistol creeping closer until the muzzle pressed against its skull.
Then.
Bang!
