Vincent understood immediately. "You want to get the 'permission' to add weight to the Scale yourself through this?"
"Exactly."
"Let me try."
He entered the Realm of Chaos and attempted to bestow a Gift on Bernadette through the Scale. It failed — because she was already a Sequence 8 Shadow Merchant, and there was simply no way to bestow a second Broker Gift on top of that.
"As I expected."
Bernadette looked slightly disappointed. "In that case, the remaining Gift should be given away as soon as possible to build up Grey Crystals for advancing."
Vincent had originally earmarked this slot for Klein, but given Klein's personality, the chances of him reciting the three-part honorific any time soon seemed remote. By the time he finally did, Vincent would likely already be at Sequence 7 or even Sequence 6 — plenty of Gift slots to go round.
"Any candidates you'd suggest? What do you think of your brother?"
"Do you want the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery knocking on your door personally?" Bernadette said drily. Then: "Give it to Hugh Dilcha. She's the boss of the Zmange Gang now — she should be able to provide you with meaningful assistance."
"Hmm..."
I almost forgot about that.
Vincent sighed. "Hugh is still only Sequence 9. Wasn't pushing her into that position a bit reckless?"
"Perhaps. I expected her to push back — after all, I only put her there as an experiment in playing the Shadow Merchant; I never actually intended to install her as a permanent gang leader. What surprised me was that after some deliberation, she accepted."
Vincent thought about it and guessed: Hugh probably wanted to use the Zmange Gang's resources to investigate her father's disappearance. Using a gang to dig into official matters seemed improbable on paper, but it was still better odds than searching alone.
"Fine. That remaining slot is tentatively hers. Whether she'll ever recite the honorific is another question."
"That's simple enough."
Bernadette snapped her fingers lightly, shifted into the disguised appearance Vivian had previously applied, and a ball of yarn materialised in the air, pointing in a direction.
She had barely taken a step when Stephen's figure stepped out of the Spirit World in a hurry. "Your Majesty!"
"What is it?"
"A major discovery!"
Stephen tossed the unconscious man onto the floor. "I would have come to you last night if it hadn't been so late."
He gave the man a kick. "This fellow crept into my room last night and I caught him in the act. He looks completely ordinary — but he's clearly a Sequence 7 Hunter who somehow possesses a Demoness's Mirror Substitute and Mirror World Traversal as his own native abilities, not through any external artifact."
Bernadette thought it over. "If another Demoness helped him, achieving that wouldn't be especially difficult."
"That was my first thought too. Then I used Spirit Channelling on him — and that's when the major discovery happened."
Stephen took a breath and continued: "This man is from Trier in Intis. His cover identity is a Trier gang member, but his deeper identity is a member of the Iron Cross Society. But that's not even the most significant part."
Another dramatic pause. "His true identity is a Mirror Person."
Bernadette was visibly startled. "A Mirror Person?"
She reached back through her memory. "As I recall... a Mirror Person is a phenomenon specific to the Demoness Pathway. Every person who advances to Sequence 7 Witch generates a counterpart in the Mirror World. The only way for a Mirror Person to leave the Mirror World is to complete their replacement of their 'real self.'"
And yet this man didn't match that description.
Because regardless of the Mirror Person's gender, once the replacement was complete, they should still manifest as a Demoness — a female. Unless they subsequently switched to the Hunter Pathway.
But Stephen had said this man was only Sequence 7.
"Correct — this is a different kind of Mirror Person altogether."
Stephen said: "According to my Spirit Channelling, this world contains a second variety of Mirror Person. They originate from underground Trier — from a particular Mirror World that formed within the Fourth Epoch Trier buried beneath the city. Anyone who delves deep enough into Trier's underground has a chance of producing a Mirror Person. These Mirror People, like those of the Demoness Pathway, are constantly seeking to replace their real-world counterparts. This man is one who succeeded."
What the... I have no idea about any of this.
What is 'underground Trier'? What does 'Fourth Epoch Trier' mean in this context?
Vincent was completely lost.
After a pause to think, Bernadette said, frowning: "Father once said — the moment you spot one cockroach, there are already countless more. So... could Trier — could this world — already be crawling with Mirror People?"
"Almost certainly. And they've formed an organisation. Their apparent goal is to overturn reality — to have Mirror People replace the real world."
"Why did this one come after you?"
"Because of Louis Ell from the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery!"
"Louis Ell is a Mirror Person too?"
Stephen explained: "Not him. But the squad captain who dispatched him to Backlund apparently is. After receiving Louis Ell's intelligence, his captain reached out to this Mirror Person and sent him to extract information from me about the 'Tudor relic' — meaning the family tomb."
He spread his hands. "What they actually intend to do with that information — that, I couldn't determine."
He added, his expression growing complicated: "Honestly, when it dawned on me — that captain is a Church of the God of Steam and Machinery squad leader. These positions are filled through rigorous Church screening. And even he has been quietly replaced... I can't imagine how many Mirror People are already embedded in Trier."
He gave a small shudder. "I've faced plenty of dangerous things — uncontrolled monsters, ruthless pirates, all manner of threats. You can fight those things. But Mirror People are completely different. You never know when they might swap out someone right beside you — your closest ally — and then strike at the worst possible moment."
Bernadette fixed her gaze on the unconscious man on the floor. Her blue eyes deepened abruptly. In the next instant, her vision seemed to pierce through him, through the floor, into a vast grey void.
Gradually, the void took shape. She found herself standing in a pitch-black space where nothing was visible.
Then a single small candle flame ignited, pushing back the dark. Several round black shapes drifted toward her from the distance — skulls, trailing bloody lengths of spinal column, trailing in their wake as they flew through the air.
Their faces were contorted in agony and madness. Screaming, they hurtled straight at her. Bernadette moved instinctively to dodge — and then, without warning, every skull vanished.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Light footsteps in the darkness. A few seconds later, a tall silhouette emerged from the black and stopped before her.
Bernadette couldn't make out the face at all, yet somehow, in her mind's eye, she "saw" a pair of eyes — eyes that seemed to reach through her own prophetic vision, bridging time and space, looking straight into hers.
The figure opened its mouth and said something. Bernadette couldn't catch the words.
Puff.
The candle went out. Darkness and silence closed in again. And from nowhere, a faint voice drifted: "That is enough."
Then, like a mirror shattering, the vision broke apart.
She snapped out of her prophecy, stumbled back two involuntary steps, and felt something warm at the corner of her eye. Blood.
"Your Majesty!"
Stephen's alarmed voice. He was staring at the floor. "That man — he—"
Bernadette looked down. The man who had been lying there was gone. In his place was a single fragment of broken mirror.
Vincent spoke: "He just... detonated. No blood, no flesh, no Beyonder characteristic released. Only that shard."
"That may be a trait specific to Mirror People."
"What did you see just now in the prophecy?"
"Darkness. Several skulls trailing spinal columns through the air. And a mysterious figure." She said: "The figure used my own prophecy to look at me across the space — and in doing so, destroyed this Mirror Person. They didn't seem to mean me any harm. And they said to 'let it end here' — as if asking me not to pursue the Mirror People matter further."
Vincent said, surprised: "They can do that?"
Bernadette hesitated. "I have the strange feeling... I've seen that person's eyes somewhere before. And they didn't seem hostile toward me."
"What do you plan to do?"
"I'll pass word of the Mirror People to Bornova. The rest I'll leave to the Orthodox Churches. They don't seem to hold any relevance to advancing your Sequence or helping me find Father, so there's no point wasting time on them."
"Mm."
Vincent appeared calm, but inside there was a quiet unease. He knew the broad strokes of the LOTM story well enough — but this was something he had no memory of at all. A discovery this alarming ought to have left some impression.
Which could only mean one thing: it wasn't in the original story.
Wait, wait, wait.
Skulls trailing spinal columns through the air. That image rang a faint bell. In the original novel, Klein encountered something similar at... Bansy?
And Bansy connected to Medici.
And the evil spirit in Stephen's family tomb had already been confirmed as Medici.
Things are starting to connect.
To be continued…
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