Chapter Three: The Funeral Procession

After the detective on the bed finished relaying his final wishes, he closed his eyes. Shade pursed his lips and waited for a moment before pulling his hand away to check the man’s pulse and breathing.

"Dead?"

He could hardly believe the man had passed so easily, and truly within the ten-minute window promised. Before he could react, a flash of black light swept across the corpse’s face. Shade felt a sudden, inexplicable tightening in his chest, and an overwhelming sense of terror instantly submerged him.

But when he gathered his wits, the black light had already dissipated into the air.

As the light vanished from the body, the gaunt, starving-looking corpse began to fill out at a visible rate, as if someone were inflating it from within, until it resembled a normal human body.

"How is this considered normal? What on earth is happening?"

In the silence of the room, Shade looked around uneasily. His anxiety did not stem from being alone with a corpse, but from the unfamiliarity of his surroundings. This world was not the one he had known; he had already caught a glimpse of the truth behind a world of mystery and danger.

The woman’s voice in his mind sounded again, as if to remind Shade that the entity on the bed was no longer just a "person":

[You have made contact with a "Whisper."]

"What contact? What whisper? Can you explain in more detail?"

But the voice offered no further answer.

[Whisper] was one of the "four elements of mystery" the detective had mentioned earlier. It was clear that the so-called [Relics] and [Whispers] were the truth behind his death. Although the oppressive and unknown truth left Shade at a loss, looking at the body on the bed, he was surprised to find he felt no overwhelming horror.

"If this is all just someone’s prank, that would be for the best."

He hoped at this moment that it was all an act, but his reason told him it could not be.

He stood by the bed in silence for a while, then carefully and quietly skirted around the four-poster bed to the window. With cautious composure, he pulled back the heavy curtains. Instantly, the faint morning light filtered through the gray fog of the streets and the windowpane.

This light seemed to momentarily dispel the unease in his heart.

"It’s morning?"

Because of the thick fabric curtains, he had assumed it was night.

*Knock, knock, knock.*

The sound of knocking at the door suddenly rang out, giving Shade a start. He instinctively released the curtain, but immediately grabbed it again to pull it fully open. Squinting his eyes to look out the window—the window faced the street—he didn't have the luxury of observing the strange, fog-shrouded scenery of the Steam Age. He looked down first, confirming that the person knocking was indeed a mortician, as he could see the carriage used for transporting bodies. Only then did he turn to open the door.

"He knew his time of death so accurately that he could coordinate the mortician’s arrival with such precision," he thought, pushing open the bedroom door.

Beyond lay the living room, where gas pipes, typical of the Steam Age, snaked along the walls. Hand-polished solid wood furniture and piles of books and documents scattered with alphabetic text filled the space. A small blackboard hung on the wall, and the formal arrangement of the coffee table and fabric sofa looked very much like a detective’s office.

The living room curtains were not drawn, allowing the dim morning light to filter through the fog, casting a slanted beam onto the floor at Shade's feet.

Floating dust motes danced quietly in the light, like bizarre, tiny organisms. The sheer sense of reality sent a shiver down Shade's spine.

After unlatching the cold bolt and security chain of the front door, he found himself facing a dark, spiral staircase leading downward. There was another door next to his, suggesting this floor held two residences, much like the apartment buildings in Sherlock Holmes novels.

Unable to find a light switch, he could only descend through the dark, oppressive stairwell. His heart seemed to tremble violently with every step. In the darkness, Shade’s overactive imagination made him feel as if some terrifying presence were watching him.

The stairs led straight to the foyer. On one side, the passage to the ground floor was completely boarded up, like a sealed coffin, leaving only the foyer accessible.

This sight left the already nervous "outlander" even more perplexed: "Why seal off the ground floor? What on earth is going on here?"

He passed a shoe cabinet, straightened a fallen umbrella, and glanced at the gas lamp on the wall above the cabinet. Carefully turning the valve, the resulting light brought a sense of stability to his heart.

He took a deep breath and opened the front door.

A silent old man in a black overcoat stood at the door, a badge depicting overlapping leaves pinned to his chest. Behind him lay a gloomy sky and suffocating fog. The old man looked up at Shade, his voice as low as leaves scraping against a damp, cold ground:

"Shade Hamilton?"

He spoke the same language as the late detective—the so-called Delarion language.

"Yes."

Shade nodded reservedly, signaling the numb-looking old man to follow him upstairs. The old man beckoned to a dejected middle-aged man behind him who was calming the horses; the man’s expression was as grim as the weather.

The three of them ascended the stairs. Not knowing what to say, Shade silently led them to the bedroom of the room marked "No. 1" on the second floor.

Throughout the process, almost no one spoke. Both the old man and the middle-aged man smelled of corpses. They donned gloves, confirmed that the detective on the bed was indeed dead, and then handed Shade a document requiring his signature.

It was a confirmation form stating that the body was to be handled by the City Public Cemetery Administration, bearing the official seals of both the Cemetery Administration and the City Funeral Committee. At the very bottom was a prayer for the deceased, the translated meaning of which made Shade, who was very much alive, feel deeply uncomfortable.

As the two men examined the body, Shade sat at the desk and picked up a cold fountain pen.

His mind was a mess, but he realized he could understand and read the language, though he had never learned to write it. Fortunately, the knowledge he had just received included not just the ability to speak, but also the ability to write. Translating his name into the phonetically similar "Delarion—the common tongue of the Northern Human Kingdoms," he prepared to sign.

The cold paper contained nothing of note, mostly just confirming the handover of the body and the settlement of funeral expenses.

"Judging by the other signature from the Committee Secretariat, the naming convention in this world is very similar to the West of my previous life, consisting of three parts. Formal documents require a middle name. My first name is 'Shade,' the surname can be 'Hamilton,' but the middle name..."

The confused and anxious outlander did not know whether the late Mr. Hamilton had given the original owner of this body a middle name. But this was no time to search the room; he had to come up with a name immediately to get through this.

[Suellen.]

The whispering voice sounded in his mind again, making Shade nearly jump. The voice provided a word that existed in both the ancient language the woman used and the common Northern tongue. Its meaning was [Silver Moon].

"I can use this as my middle name, but you need to explain."

Shade tried to communicate again, his heart racing with tension. The whispering voice responded:

[This is destiny, outlander. The silver moon is your destiny. When you gather the four elements, push open the Gate of Transcendence, and behold this terrifying world, the meaning will naturally reveal itself.]

Shade frowned, suppressed his inner panic, and after a moment's thought, firmly signed his name:

Shade Suellen Hamilton.

The morticians did not ask Shade for a death certificate or a coroner's report, nor did they show any intention of notifying the police for an autopsy. It was as if the death of a detective were as mundane as the passing of a stray dog on the street.

After retrieving the "Body Handover Authorization" from Shade, they handed him a receipt with the grave location, then silently carried away Mr. Hamilton’s pajama-clad corpse.

Shade saw them to the door downstairs but did not step outside. He watched as the body was placed into a narrow coffin inside the carriage, lined with brown fabric that looked stained with blood. The middle-aged man drove the carriage, carrying the coffin and the old man deep into the thick fog in the distance.

"Well then, goodbye, Mr. Spire Hamilton."

He thought to himself silently and closed the door. Shade stood for a while in the dim light of the foyer before making his way back up the terrifying, dark staircase. The outlander's footsteps were heavy, yet with no one else around, he felt a strange sense of relief amidst the tension:

"Simpler than I thought. They didn't ask about Mr. Hamilton’s cause of death, didn't even care if I was really Shade Hamilton, and didn't even want a tip for moving the body... Detective Hamilton really had everything taken care of."

The body had left with many secrets, leaving Shade—this lowly outlander who had taken over another man’s body—with countless mysteries. He actually had many questions he wanted to ask Mr. Hamilton, and endless doubts waiting to be answered.

But the dead could not return to life. He had to accept the fact of the man’s death and strive to establish himself in this world that seemed deeply, fundamentally wrong.

The only good news was that the second-floor apartment that previously belonged to Mr. Spire Hamilton now belonged to Shade. In an instant, in this strange world resembling the mid-19th-century Victorian era, he had become a homeowner.

The ground floor was boarded up, the "No. 2" room next door on the second floor was padlocked from the outside, and the staircase leading to the third floor was completely broken. Thus, in this empty house, Shade was now the only one left.

He returned to the room labeled "1," carefully checked every corner of the lightless study, living room, washroom, and bedroom, and only after confirming that no one was hiding in the shadows did he let out a long sigh. He sat on the living room sofa, his head tilting slightly as he watched the morning fog outside with a touch of ease.

Shade finally had time to organize his situation:

"I've transmigrated and inherited a detective agency. The original owner of the body might have had issues; he was trained by the previous detective to help him complete a seemingly simple task after his death... Detective Spire Hamilton had secrets. This world possesses mysterious powers; the detective’s death and the voice in my head prove this. What I need to do is gather the four elements, and the detective’s death has already brought me into contact with a 'Whisper'..."

He rubbed his face. Though worried, the current situation was at least not bad. Even though Mr. Spire Hamilton had died suddenly, Shade at least had a foothold in this brand-new world.

This was enough to sustain his life, allow him to investigate the secrets of this world, and perhaps find a way back home.

Shade was not the type to just drift along, but he was certainly not one to complain about everything. While it was unfortunate to have been inexplicably taken from his home, all he could do for now was accept it, live well here, and strive to live even better.

"And by the way, I'll get to see this world of transcendence—the mysteries of the Steam Age, those rituals and incantations... How could I be content with being ordinary?"

Shade whispered to himself, and the woman's laughter echoed in his mind, as pleasant as a breeze blowing across a field of lavender.