"Don't be too startled, Grace. I have seen records of Nighthawks advancing at unusually fast rates."
Alec Howard offered mild reassurance to the surprised team member. What he didn't mention was that advancing to Sequence 7 in under five months was, even by the church's lengthy history, on the remarkably fast end of the spectrum.
Howard suddenly recalled something — advice given to him by a senior deacon from headquarters when he had successfully advanced to "Nightmare" years ago. Paired with Ais's account, the words that had once seemed oddly out of place now made a certain kind of sense.
"Tell me in detail how you managed it."
With a hypothesis forming, Howard addressed Ais directly.
"It's actually straightforward. You simply need to behave in ways that match your potion's name. For example, my Sequence 8 potion was Instigator — so I only needed to persuade someone to act on their own desires in ways they would never have considered before, and that would gradually clear the Instigator potion's negative influence on me. It didn't have to mean escalating conflict or inciting hostility…"
Ais was not holding anything back. She knew perfectly well that trying to leverage this against the Nighthawks in exchange for better terms was not realistic.
The reason she'd brought it up intentionally — beyond incidentally building goodwill — was primarily to emphasize her own law-abiding conduct. She wasn't afraid of an investigation. What she feared was Nighthawks dismissing her based on preconceived ideas about unaffiliated Extraordinaries without even looking into things.
Listening carefully to Ais's explanation, Howard not only confirmed his hypothesis but began to suspect that the Witch cult's behavior of spreading disaster was motivated by something far beyond ideology and doctrine.
The rest of the walk passed somewhat quietly. Ais had run out of easy topics to raise, and could only walk in silence ahead of them — and quietly reassure herself that social death was preferable to being in a cult, and at least preferable to actual death. There was also the side benefit of testing how well her transmigration secret would hold up under a Watcher's examination. By any measure, not a bad trade.
The Nighthawks had deliberately avoided residential areas, taking a longer route — so nearly twenty minutes passed before Ais, under Howard's direction, finally arrived at the square in front of Saint Anjelka Cathedral.
"Straight in?"
She looked up at the cathedral — same general shape as the last one, but considerably larger.
"That's right."
Under Howard's direction, Ais entered the cathedral and was brought to the now-empty main prayer hall.
"Vincent."
At the captain's voice, Vincent stepped around Ais and pushed open a concealed door in the corner.
Without being told, Ais followed, watching Vincent's heels. After a dim, narrow passage, Vincent used a key to unlock an iron door, and they descended further along stone steps.
They're not about to put me in the Chanis Gate, are they, Ais couldn't help wondering.
According to what she'd heard, the Church of the Evernight Goddess maintained a Chanis Gate beneath the central cathedral of every city — used specifically for containing dangerous individuals and storing dangerous objects. It was also, in the widespread belief of unaffiliated Extraordinaries, the place where the church conducted its grim experiments on captured Extraordinaries. Rumor had it that even coming near the Chanis Gate could bring misfortune.
At the bottom of the spiraling stone staircase lay a long stone corridor. The walls on either side held nothing but dim gas lamps at intervals and a coat of arms that repeated at regular spacing.
Looking at the brilliant stars on the deep black of the crest, Ais figured this must be the Church of the Evernight Goddess 's emblem.
They walked a little further. At the cross-corridor ahead, Ais asked:
"Why are there gas lamps down here? Surely there aren't ordinary people who come through?"
"Not all Nighthawks have the ability to see in darkness." Howard answered simply.
Past the intersection and a little further along, Ais's inspiration caught something and she instinctively looked up. At the end of the passage ahead stood a heavy black iron door. From its center, seven copies of the same crest from the walls were engraved at increasing scale, radiating outward.
Can something really be kept in there without killing people? She could sense tremendous danger from behind that door even without it being open.
She felt a small surge of relief when Vincent didn't continue straight ahead, but instead opened a door set into the side of the corridor.
The room inside was larger than expected. In the center was a prepared ritual altar. In the somewhat brighter light, a young man with round-framed glasses stood to the side — clearly academic in bearing.
Worried about hitting her head on the doorframe, Ais bent slightly as she entered. Having encountered a complete ritual in the Witch potion's knowledge, one glance at the central altar gave her a rough sense that a ritual was about to be performed.
Howard gave Ais no time to observe further. In a tone that admitted no negotiation:
"Miss Ais, please find a comfortable position and sleep for a while against the wall. I suggest choosing a posture that will be comfortable. Once you wake, we'll formally discuss the matter of you and the cult member."
Don't all look at me — I'm not refusing to go… Sensing five pairs of eyes converge on her, Ais immediately nodded, turned, and walked straight to the wall.
A slightly unpolished voice from behind asked quietly:
"Captain — is this really alright for the lady?"
You really didn't need to be that considerate. Already embarrassed, Ais heard this and could have sworn she imagined the sound of four other people failing to hold in laughter.
Ais immediately lost any interest in speculating about the ritual's purpose. She moved quickly to the wall, folded her legs and sat down, placed both hands on her knees, and pressed her flushed face into them. It wasn't a particularly comfortable position. It wasn't one she could sleep well in, either.
Almost at the same moment, an abrupt but overwhelming wave of sleepiness enveloped her completely. Her eyelids began fighting immediately, and she lost without putting up much resistance — sinking into sleep in under a second. Just before consciousness slipped away, one urgent thought managed to surface:
"Am I going to stay upright in this position? I'm definitely going to fall over, aren't I?"
Ais — who had been about to struggle — found herself suddenly awake again. The scene around her had changed in an instant.
She was back in that New Year's evening, sitting on the rear face of a tall clock tower, dangling her feet and watching brilliant fireworks unfold in the distance.
"Am I dreaming?"
Looking at the completely transformed scene, her mind was sharp and clear with the thought. She quickly noticed something else that was wrong: she seemed to have lost control of her body in the dream. It was as though the dream-body couldn't sense her desire to look around — it simply kept staring at the distant fireworks and the windows lighting up in the houses below, legs swinging without a thought.
What was harder to accept was that she could still feel the weight in her chest and the soft brush of hair against her cheek. In the corner of her vision, she was still wearing the black outfit she'd bought tonight.
"Why am I still a woman in my dream?" She thought with a touch of sadness.
And recalling it more carefully, she realized with greater sadness that she could no longer remember what her previous body had felt like at all.
This gentle melancholy reached the dreaming version of herself, and the original contentment and ease in the dream shifted slightly. The body that hadn't been listening to her now slowly lowered its head, feet easing their swinging.
Only then did Ais notice she wasn't wearing shoes. Her bare feet were simply exposed to the open air. The moment she registered the bare feet, the sensation of coolness reached her.
"This should be a dream — but why is my thinking so clear, while my body only responds to emotions? Still a woman, fine. But why no shoes? I'm not a foot person…"
Just as Ais was puzzling over this thoroughly strange dream, a warm voice interrupted her thoughts:
"A beautiful scene. I hope it eases the sorrow in your heart."
Without waiting for her own response, her body automatically turned toward Alec Howard — who had appeared beside her at some unknown moment — and asked, without any apparent strangeness:
"Sir, am I going to fall?"