Another small bone boat forged ahead with great difficulty amidst the undulating waves.
At the stern, Ryan's face was deathly pale. Deep within his left eye, the knowledge of the 【Lantern】 was whirling frantically.
He had calculated it.
The time was correct.
He was the real Ryan, the one walking the correct timeline.
But if he was the only "correct" one, why was the sea ahead still shrouded in nothing but freezing, dense fog? Why did the surrounding laws still reject them?
If he was correct, why was there no way back? If he wanted to protect himself now, would he have to draw his blade against his companions like his predecessor to eliminate the so-called "uncertainty"? Or should he find the "real" Ryan, kill him, and take his place? If he wasn't strong enough, should he ally with the other Ryans?
“Ryan! Fog is rolling in! I hear reefs ahead!” Simon's anxious shouts tore through the wind and waves.
The bone boat pitched violently in the surging black tide; they were still far out at sea. Alvin gritted his teeth, his muscles tensing as he strained with all his might to row with the heavy bone oar. Every time the oar sliced through the water, it stirred up a thick, viscous black froth.
Ryan stared intently ahead.
Just as the bone boat breached another violent wave and forged ahead through the black sea, a massive rift was suddenly torn open in the depths of the seemingly endless, dense fog ahead by an extremely domineering, pure paleness.
That paleness was so bright and so high that the moment it appeared, it swept away the gloom of the entire sea.
Almost instinctively, Ryan raised his head and looked in that direction.
At the far, far end of the horizon, the White Door, grand to the point of absurdity and too colossal to describe in words, stood quietly in the void.
It was too tall; the two sides of its doorframe pierced straight into the clouds, as if splitting the entire leaden sky in two. It radiated an ultimate, pure white, standing like a magnificent miracle too dazzling to behold in that dead, gloomy, storm-tossed sea.
“Simon! Alvin! Look over there!” Ryan's voice rasped in a hoarse shout.
The other two turned their heads in the direction of his gaze. The moment they saw the towering White Door rising beyond the sky, Simon and Alvin completely lost themselves, forgetting even the violent shuddering of the boat as the waves lashed against it.
“Is... is that a door?” Simon muttered to himself, his expression almost pious.
The oar slipped unconsciously from Alvin's hands. The colossal gate that propped up the sky was at the absolute limit of their vision—distant yet crystal clear, radiating an irresistible, magnetic pull.
“Row toward it.”
Ryan's left eye reflected that absolute, pure white. At this moment, all the doubts and struggles in his mind finally vanished without a trace:
“Row toward that door! That is the correct path!”
Alvin suddenly snapped out of his daze. Letting out a roar, he gripped the oar with all his might once more. The bone boat surged forward frantically amidst the undulating waves, heading straight toward the colossal gate on the horizon.
The small bone boat was ultimately smashed to pieces on the black stone beach beneath the colossal gate.
That was the shadow cast by the colossal White Door onto the sea. Only when their feet actually stepped onto the gravel bathed in the white glow did Ryan, Simon, and Alvin truly feel that immense, sky-propping pressure.
The two doors, constructed of pure light and devoid of any earthly impurities, slowly and silently swung inward.
Behind the door, there was no light, no miracles, nor any extraordinary spectacles imagined by mortals. There was only a leaden sky slowly drizzling a fine mist of rain, the wind carrying a bone-chilling cold.
It was still winter in East Port.
Ryan was the first to step across the illusory threshold of light.
Boom—!
The instant his right foot stepped firmly onto the black stone pavement, before Ryan could even react, a massive, freezing, and violent torrent of memories crashed brutally into his mind like a burst dam!
The screams of those sixteen hundred deaths, the sensation of the dagger piercing flesh each time, the countless desperate roars in the storms of the black sea, and the struggles on every inch of withered white bone sand on Bone Island... those memories belonging to the other "incorrect Ryans," which had originally been filtered out by the "timeline," transformed into the most visceral sensory experiences at this moment, flooding his skull to the brim!
Ryan's body swayed violently, his face turning as white as paper in an instant. His eyes were bloodshot, and he clutched his temples tightly, letting out a painful, low growl from his throat.
“Ryan?!” Simon and Alvin stepped across the threshold right after him.
The moment they crossed, the two of them also felt a splitting headache as countless memories assaulted them. It took a long time before the three of them finally recovered.
Gulls cried in the low, grey sky. In the distance, steam locomotives blew their whistles on the narrow-gauge railways, rumbling heavily. On the nearby docks, hundreds of workers in coarse cotton coats and dirty knit caps shouted as they worked together to hoist heavy wooden crates onto carriages. Some bare-backed sailors cursed rudely at delayed cargo ships. Along the edges of the streets, the hoarse cries of teenage paperboys hawking the morning papers could faintly be heard.
The smell of heavy oil, the choking stench of low-grade coal smoke, and that signature cold winter rain laced with the fishy odor of sea beasts.
East Port.
The real East Port.
The three of them stood side by side on the stone steps at the edge of the harbor. For a moment, none of them spoke.
Behind them, the colossal White Door closed silently in the sea breeze, then vanished into air like a chalk drawing washed away by the rain, as if it had never existed.
Yet, the strangest part was that the bustling crowd around them did not seem to notice them at all.
A porter pushing a handcart piled high with cotton bales dashed past them, drenched in sweat. The edge of the cart practically brushed against Simon's thigh, nearly knocking him over, yet the porter didn't even raise his head, let alone offer a rude apology. It was as if, in his eyes, there was nothing but empty air.
Two dock police officers in black uniforms strolled slowly past the three of them, heads bowed as they chatted about the pretty girls in the tavern the previous night. Their eyes stared blankly ahead, not even a sidelong glance casting over these three men who reeked of the sea.
“They... can't see us?” Alvin felt a twinge of fear.
Instead of answering Alvin, Ryan took a step forward, suddenly reached out his right hand, and firmly grabbed the shoulder of a passing paperboy who was clutching a thick stack of newspapers.
“Yikes!”
Startled by the sudden force, the paperboy shrank back. The damp stack of newspapers in his arms nearly scattered into the muddy water.
Patting his chest, he looked up at the deathly pale Ryan and cried out, still shaken:
“Sir! When... when did you get here? You scared the life out of me!”
Ryan let go of his hand. Simon and Alvin also fell silent.
They could be seen.
The residual influence left by the White Door was like an invisible veil, slowly washing off them under the rinse of the mortal rain.
Simon seemed to suddenly remember something. His expression changed abruptly, and he whipped his head around, staring intently at the red-brick warehouses and busy streets deep within the harbor.
“Wait.”
Simon's voice trembled slightly. “Where are the ghouls?”
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