Chapter 1 The Silent Scene

The living room on the first floor was silent, as quiet as the street outside. Everything remained as it had been at nightfall, and the clockwork and magic-driven wooden puppets and tinplate servants stood quietly in their places—it seemed that until the moment the "anomaly" descended, they were still carrying out their cleaning orders according to their programming.

Duncan led the nervous Alice down the stairs, his eyes sweeping over the dimly lit, silent living room. Their footsteps echoed in the stillness, making everything seem even more eerie.

Alice carefully clutched at the captain's clothes as she turned to look at the side—a puppet made in the shape of a maid was standing not far away, holding the stair railing with one hand. This puppet seemed to have been wiping the handrail just a moment ago; "she" maintained a slightly forward-leaning posture, with a bucket at her feet. However, like the other servants, "she" had frozen, and the characteristic ticking and gear-grinding sounds were no longer coming from within.

Alice always felt that the puppet would suddenly turn its eyes to her, just like in many horror stories—this thought scared her half to death.

"It's so scary..." she muttered behind the captain. "There are dolls everywhere... it didn't seem like much during the day, but it's really scary when they're all still now... but it feels even scarier if they suddenly move..."

Duncan silently turned his head, giving the silly puppet a particularly strange look.

But Alice didn't notice at all... nor did she think she had said anything wrong.

Duncan shook his head and refocused his attention on the "marks" he had left on Morris, Vanna, and the others.

The marks were still shining in his perception, but their state was extremely strange—sometimes he would feel that the marks were clearly in this house, even right next to him, but the next moment they would suddenly appear in the far distance, even as if they were on the other side of the city-state, as if... teleporting instantaneously and randomly.

This was the first time Duncan had encountered this situation.

He tried to directly call out to the distant marks in the spiritual world to establish contact with Nina and the others, but because he could not accurately determine the location and state of the marks, several calls were unsuccessful, or only received a weak and meaningless "response" at a certain moment—this was also unprecedented.

The good news, however, was that he seemed to be gradually grasping the pattern of the marks' bizarre state. Even if he could not accurately locate their position, he should be able to accurately establish contact with them after a period of adaptation. On the other hand, as long as the marks were still there, he could be sure that the people carrying the marks were at least not in mortal danger, so there was no need to worry too much.

Duncan walked forward slowly, sensing and familiarizing himself with the state of the distant marks. Just then, a soft cracking sound suddenly rang out in the living room, abruptly interrupting his and Alice's movements.

Duncan turned his head sharply, looking in the direction of the sound.

The puppet maid who had been standing next to the stair railing slowly began to move in the darkness, turning her head stiffly like a machine that had been rusting for a long time, her lifeless eyes slowly searching the living room for something.

Alice almost lost her mind in an instant: "Aah! It really moved!"

Duncan finally couldn't help but say, "Why are you, a living doll, afraid of this?"

Alice was stunned for a moment before finally realizing, "Ah... right?"

Duncan ignored the embarrassing simpleton and instead turned his attention to the stiffly moving puppet maid—he seemed particularly calm, because he had sensed a sudden, familiar aura descending upon the puppet.

"Lucille? Is that you?" he asked tentatively.

"Ah, you really are nearby..." The puppet finally focused its gaze accurately on Duncan. "She" moved her jaw, making a stiff, distorted voice. "But I still can't see you. The quality of this temporary 'medium' is really too bad. I really shouldn't have saved money on the household dolls. Long story short, how are things on your end? I sensed your call a few times just now, but it always cut off before I could respond..."

"Everything is fine here, it's just that the house is empty and everyone is gone," Duncan said immediately, and briefly described the current situation on the streets. "...That's it. In short, from my perspective, it seems that something went wrong on your side, while Alice and I were not affected."

"It seems so," After a few seconds of delay, Lucretia's voice came from the puppet maid's mouth again. "The problem should be on our end. You are still in the real world, but you are seeing the anomalies that have appeared in the real world, while we... seem to have been drawn into the 'inside' of this anomaly."

"Are the others with you?" Duncan asked immediately.

"No, I'm the only one here—it looks like we've been scattered."

"What's around you?" Duncan asked again.

"Around? Trees, vines, endless green—it's a forest," Lucretia replied. "It's very similar to the forest we saw in Master Talan-Eir's dream before, but the atmosphere seems... different."

The forest was shrouded in twilight-like light, and a strange and slightly gloomy sense of chaos seemed to envelop the entire world. The sunlight that filtered through the layered canopy also appeared dim and unable to dispel the gloom among the lush trees.

Occasionally, the sounds of birds and animals or the snapping of branches could be heard in the distance. Although there were no more anomalies, Lucretia felt as if she could smell a strange... tension in the air of this forest.

As if something was about to happen here.

She held tightly to the short magic wand that resembled a "conductor's baton" in one hand, while maintaining a connection with a certain "puppet" she had made herself, so as to communicate information about this side to her father in the distance: "...The forest is filled with a sense of tension. It's very depressing, even with an invisible fear... Yes, it's an emotion. As a witch, I can sense this 'emotion' permeating the air... This looks very similar to Talan-Eir's dream, but there are no invading sunspawn in the sky, and there seems to be something else deep in the forest... I'm walking towards it."

"The scene on the street? I can't see it here... All I can see is trees. Although the view in the dense forest is limited, I can be sure that the range of this forest is far more than one or two blocks... The range of this 'alien realm' is extremely wide. What you see on 'that side' should only be a small part of it that has leaked into the real world."

Lucretia suddenly stopped. She listened carefully to the words coming from afar, and after a moment, nodded lightly. "Yes, I also suspect that this is still that 'dream,' the dream that the Annihilation Cultists call the 'Nameless Dream.' But the situation is different from last time... Last time we entered the Nameless Dream through Talan-Eir as a springboard. The information you got from those cultists also said that, to enter this dream, you must use the mind of an elf as a bridge, but this time things happened suddenly and strangely..."

She paused, raised the magic wand in her hand, and gently pointed it at a vine in front of her. The vine immediately came to life, wriggling and winding forward, forming a bridge-like structure, paved over the deep ditch in front of her.

Lucretia walked forward along the vine bridge, continuing to say: "...I haven't found that 'bridge' yet, haven't found who the 'dreamer' is, but according to the laws of dreams, I should be near that 'dreamer' now."

She stopped suddenly.

There was a rustling of footsteps nearby—the sound appeared very abruptly, as if there was no one there the second before, and the next second someone had appeared out of thin air, stepping on dead branches and leaves and walking this way.

Lucretia instantly concentrated, casting many protective spells on herself before turning around. Then she gripped her magic wand tightly in one hand and looked in the direction of the sound.

However, what appeared before her eyes was not

the cultists invading the dream, nor the twisted things that naturally grew in the dream.

A strange elven woman stood in the shade of a tree not far away, looking at this side with surprise and vigilance.

The first thing Lucretia thought of was the dreamer acting as the "bridge" in this dream. However, she quickly realized the sense of disharmony that the strange elf in the distance brought to her—the other party was wearing light armor that could not be identified as belonging to any city-state or era, and strange "threads" that wandered with faint blue light were woven between her light golden hair. In her hand, she held a strange weapon that looked like a combination of a spear and a halberd. This outfit... she had never seen it in Seabreeze Port, nor had she seen it anywhere else in the world.

While Lucretia was stunned, the elven woman with the strange polearm had already opened her mouth with a serious and vigilant expression:

"Didn't you receive the evacuation order? Why are you still outside the Quiet Wall?"

Lucretia narrowed her eyes slightly. The situation... seemed to be getting subtle.

In the unique eerie night of Seabreeze Port, under the intermingled reflections of "sunlight" between buildings and the cold brilliance of the World Scar, the figures of Duncan and Alice were quickly crossing the street.

Alice was still holding a puppet head in her arms, its mouth constantly opening and closing.

Lucretia's voice came from the puppet head, reporting the latest progress "over there"—

"I am following this strange elf who suddenly appeared. She doesn't seem to realize that I'm not the same race as her at all and has easily dismissed her vigilance... We are heading to a place called the 'Quiet Wall'..."

This scene was as eerie as it could be: a living doll was running in the night, still holding the head of another doll in her arms, and that head was constantly talking, the sound hoarse and distorted due to the limitations of the material—any sane person who glanced at this scene would probably lose sanity.

But Alice showed no abnormalities.

She trotted behind Duncan, her expression even looking a little happy.

She was probably used to holding a head... used to holding her own, so holding someone else's was the same.