The room was bathed in bright light.

  Around the walls, the skeleton of a metal giant hung, its gears powered by flesh and blood, legs designed to cut through land mines, and dissected human dolls.

  Some items were enveloped in light, becoming indistinguishable.

  In the center, a man admired the alchemical artifacts displayed on the walls.

  His left hand, articulated like a sphere, revealed that he was not a doll, but someone who had replaced part of himself with an artificial limb.

  Every now and then, he stroked his well-groomed "V"-shaped mustache, looking pleased and in high spirits.

  A woman embraced him from behind, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her chin on his shoulder.

  With her eyes closed, she gently rubbed her face against his.

  The man smiled sweetly, running his hand through her golden hair, which turned pink at waist length.

  He looked toward this side and said, “Ah, Charlotte.”

  The woman raised her eyes and, glancing in this direction, replied, “Come, my protagonist.”

  She walked away, the distance between them growing.

  Then she ran, and they vanished into the light.

  She saw the rain, people dressed in black, and an empty coffin.

  She saw her grandfather approaching, announcing that she was the heir.

  She saw Caroline, naked, kneeling on the ground, holding the spring of reason, offering it before herself.

  She saw her own room.

  The clock, with a 24-hour mark, showed the hour hand pointing to 9 p.m., but the sky outside the window glowed brightly.

  A radiant celestial body had replaced the moon, spreading warm light.

  It was a light so bright, so inviting.

  It called life to grow and dispelled ghosts and demons.

  It was what those trapped in eternal nights longed for, though she couldn’t name it.

  The celestial light slowly dimmed, casting its glow only on the desk beneath the window.

  At the center of the desk, a letter lay.

  The paper was yellowed parchment, with writing that no one in the world could understand—except her, as she knew its meaning:

  “Come to Solvellon, come meet me. I will take you to your parents.”

  The light continued to fade, and the celestial body descended like the moon.

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  It turned orange, no longer blinding, growing larger, almost crushing the window.

  Thousands of voices rose from within it, like a choir:

  “Come to Solvellon, come meet me. I will take you to your parents.”

  The celestial body turned into a black hole, and the darkness deepened.

  A luminous, human-shaped figure emerged from the void.

  He held a lantern, flames burning as brightly as eight moons.

  A male voice spoke:

  “Come to Solvellon, come find my bones. I will take you to…”

  She heard a scream.

  The world rippled, then shattered.

  Charlotte awoke from her dream, looking around.

  Caroline, sitting at the edge of the bed, was watching her, concern in her eyes. “Miss, did you have a nightmare?”

  Charlotte shook her head, trying to calm herself and listen more carefully.

  She heard many voices speaking in strange tones, saying absurd and fragmented words, liquids sloshing, objects clattering.

  It seemed like everything was coming from deep underground.

  Taking a deep breath, she worked to slow her racing heart.

  She had to filter out the distractions.

  White alchemy wouldn’t help her.

  Though Charlotte wasn’t part of the Knights’ Order, she had been baptized and trained since childhood.

  What the knights could do, she could do as well.

  She heard gears turning, a cat purring, bird wings slicing through the air, and tree roots extending downward.

  Her ears ached as if they were being squeezed; the intensifying sensation had its price.

  “It’s okay,” she reassured herself. “It’ll pass soon. Just bear with it.”

  Finally, she caught some coherent sounds.

  She struggled to piece the fragments together into understandable sentences.

  That voice... That phrase... Its meaning was..

  “John stole sheep! I saw it with my own eyes!”

  Were they still drinking downstairs?

  If it weren’t for her upbringing and the knights’ code that forbade harming commoners, she would have drawn her sword and sliced through the floor, smashing their drink cups to pieces.

  “Miss?” Caroline, who didn’t need sleep, had witnessed Charlotte frantically filling a page with notes before lying down to sleep, only to suddenly sit up, tilting her head as she listened, then freezing in place.

  Caroline started to suspect that her miss might be suffering from some mental trauma.

  If that were the case, their journey would end here.

  Charlotte would have gears implanted in her head and would spend the rest of her life in a sanatorium.

  “I heard someone crying,” Charlotte said.

  Caroline listened for a while and replied, “I only heard someone named John and something about sheep.”

  She decided not to mention the details to her miss.

  “If you think it’s necessary, I can go check.”

  Caroline was a doll.

  She had no noble blood and had never been baptized, but she knew that knights possessed supernatural abilities, granted either by the queen or activated through baptism and blood inheritance.

  If her miss truly heard something, Caroline needed to act.

  “No, Caroline. It’s probably just my imagination.” Charlotte didn’t want Caroline out searching for a possibly nonexistent crying ghost in the middle of the night.

  She lay back down, allowing herself to drift back to sleep.

  Then, she heard the crying again.

  She opened her eyes, straining to listen, but the sound had disappeared.

  Suddenly, Charlotte understood.

  She relaxed her mind and emptied her thoughts.

  This time, she finally heard the crying.

  The sound became clearer: it was like a baby, but even younger, like an unborn being crying.

  Charlotte jumped out of bed.

  Under Caroline’s bewildered gaze, she grabbed a black box, kicked open the door, and ran downstairs before Caroline could react.

  Caroline was about to follow when she noticed a black box on the table, with a red wolf and a white snake glaring at her.

  “Miss, you grabbed the wrong box!”

  Downstairs, the drunkards were in a state between drunkenness and unconsciousness, where nothing felt real.

  A gust of black wind swept down the stairs, winding its way between them, finding a clear path among the bodies. It kicked open the inn’s door before disappearing into the night.

  The innkeeper rubbed his eyes. “Where’s my door?”

  “The door... had a few drinks and left,” one of the customers said, collapsing onto the counter.

  Charlotte ran through the darkness, leaping over fences and crossing backyards.

  She nearly bumped into a sheep as she passed a pen, then spotted a straw hut.

  The crying stopped.

  She smelled blood.

  Without hesitation, she broke the door open and entered.

  There, on a bed, lay a body.

  A corpse.

  When Caroline arrived, she found Charlotte holding a man against the wall with one hand, while she grabbed... women’s clothing?

  “My miss... it seems she’s developed a peculiar taste?”