By the time he left work, the sky outside had gone completely dark.
Winter days in London were incredibly short.
Just past five in the afternoon, the gas lamps along the streets were already fully lit.
The employees in the records hall began leaving one after another.
Some went to the taverns.
Others headed straight home.
A few formal clerks stayed behind to work overtime, sorting through the end-of-the-month files.
Ryan didn't linger.
After handing over today's proofread files to Alvin, he picked up his file folder and left the first floor.
Throughout the entire process, he did his best to act completely normal.
He couldn't afford to be nervous, and he certainly couldn't let anyone notice anything unusual.
Because he knew very well that the glowing booklet was absolutely no ordinary item.
If he were exposed, the consequences would likely be far worse than simply losing his job.
As he pushed open the heavy doors of the archive building, the icy night wind immediately whipped against his face.
Ryan instinctively clutched his file folder a little tighter.
He kept a close eye on his surroundings the entire way, terrified that someone might be tailing him again.
But he was clearly overthinking things.
Night in the East End was as chaotic and bustling as ever.
Carriages rattled, drunks stumbled, paperboys shouted, and police whistles blew in the distance.
Ryan hurried across the street to buy a bit of bread and water, then decided he should also buy some kerosene.
Only when he reached the grocery store counter did Ryan realize he had come empty-handed, having forgotten the previous owner's old tin oil can.
“I'd like a penny's worth of kerosene, but I didn't bring a container,” Ryan said.
The shopkeeper kicked a rusted, empty herring tin out from a pile of trash by his feet.
He gave the inside a careless wipe with a rag and tossed it onto the counter.
“Add half a penny, and this piece of junk is yours.”
Ryan had no choice but to pull out another half-penny copper coin and hand it over.
The shopkeeper opened a large drum and poured a pint of dark, low-grade kerosene into the open herring tin with a loud splash.
Left with no other option, Ryan carefully carried the battered tin—which reeked of salted fish and pungent oil—and walked slowly back through the thick fog, keeping his hands as steady as possible.
Half an hour later, Ryan finally made it back to St. Blaise Street.
The hallway was as dim as ever, and a rat scurried quickly across a corner.
Someone was arguing on the second floor, their voices mixed with a woman's sharp, piercing wails.
Every day in the East End was like this, like a pot of boiling mud that never settled.
Ryan quickly returned to his attic room.
He shut the door and locked it behind him.
The very first thing he did next was draw the curtains, even though the tattered cloth barely blocked out anything.
But at the very least, it gave him a small sense of security.
Silence returned to the room, broken only by the faint patter of rain outside the window.
Ryan stood by the door, remaining silent for a few seconds before slowly placing the file folder onto the table.
His heart began to race.
During the day at the archive, he hadn't dared to examine it closely.
Now, he was finally alone.
Ryan took a deep breath.
He pulled the thin black booklet out from the very bottom of the file folder.
Carefully picking up the smelly herring tin, he slowly poured the low-grade kerosene into his lamp.
He struck a match.
The light of the kerosene lamp fell upon the cover.
Ryan stared at it for a moment, his throat feeling dry.
He suddenly realized something.
His current behavior was no different from those characters in horror stories who willfully opened forbidden books.
But the problem was, he had to read it.
Because this world was not the safe society of his previous life.
Here, the extraordinary truly existed, and ordinary people struggled just to survive.
Ryan slowly sat down, placed the book on the table, and reached out to turn to the first page.
In the next second, he froze slightly.
Because compared to earlier in the day, the text inside the book... had changed.
No.
To be precise, he could now “understand” it.
Those characters, which had originally looked like writhing insects, were actually starting to reveal their meaning to him.
Though still blurry, it was now barely decipherable.
Ryan's breathing grew slightly shallow as he lowered his head to read carefully.
At the very top of the first page, a fragmented sentence was written:
“The Glory... is a fragment of truth...”
“Those who glimpse it... shall be burned...”
The characters wriggled slightly, like living things.
Ryan felt his scalp tingle with dread, but he continued reading nonetheless.
Soon, he realized that the text was not pure English.
Rather, it was a hybrid language.
It contained Latin structures, Old English roots, and even some completely unfamiliar symbols.
Fortunately, the original owner of this body had been an archive clerk, and his level of education was much higher than that of an ordinary laborer.
He frequently handled parish records and old documents, allowing Ryan to barely guess the meanings.
Otherwise, if an illiterate person were here, they wouldn't even be able to read the first page.
Ryan rubbed his temples.
He continued downward.
The more he read, the more he felt something was off.
This didn't look like a normal book; it resembled some kind of... study notes.
Many of the sentences inside were incomplete, and there were numerous scratch-outs and revisions, as if someone had once been researching something.
On one of the pages, written in extremely messy handwriting, was:
“The Lantern is not fire.”
“The Lantern is that which reveals.”
“The true Glory does not grant mercy.”
“It only peels back the hidden skin.”
Ryan felt his heart begin to grow cold.
Because he suddenly remembered the sentence from his dream last night.
“The Glory bears no mercy...”
They were almost identical.
This booklet was absolutely connected to the Lantern in his mind.
He continued flipping through the pages.
Soon, a page that was clearly different from the rest appeared.
The edges of that page were severely yellowed, looking as if it had been flipped through for a very long time.
There was only a single sentence on it.
And it was written in an extremely neat, orderly hand:
“One-Fourteenth of The Glory Fragment.”
Ryan's breath hitched.
One-fourteenth?
What did that mean?
He immediately continued reading, but unfortunately, the subsequent content was heavily missing, leaving only scattered records.
“Those who obtain The Glory... shall gradually glimpse the truth...”
“One must not gaze into it for long...”
“Dreams are doors...”
“The Lantern will ignite comprehension in sleep...”
Ryan's head suddenly throbbed with a sharp pain, and a flash of white light flickered before his eyes once more.
He snapped his eyes shut as the faint sound of a bell echoed in his ears.
Dong—
Dong—
Deep and hollow. Ryan slammed the book shut immediately.
Gasping for breath, his back was already drenched in cold sweat.
He couldn't read any further, at least not tonight.
He could already feel it.
This thing would pollute his mind. Or rather, it was itself a form of extraordinary knowledge, and knowledge of the Lantern was clearly not meant for ordinary people to read.
Ryan leaned against the back of his chair for a long time to recover before slowly opening his eyes again.
The flame of the kerosene lamp flickered gently.
The attic was still quiet, but for some reason, the room now gave him a very unfamiliar feeling, as if the shadows had grown deeper than before.
The air felt even more still.
Ryan looked down at his hands.
He suddenly noticed that his fingertips had somehow been stained with a very faint white ash, resembling the residue of burnt paper.
But the problem was, he hadn't touched any ash at all.
Ryan fell silent for a few seconds, then slowly wrapped the booklet back up.
He stuffed it into the deepest corner under his bed, then blocked it with an old wooden board.
After doing all this, he finally breathed a slight sigh of relief.
But right at that moment, the tolling of a bell drifted in from outside the window—it was a distant church chiming the hour.
Nine o'clock in the evening. Ryan looked out the window.
The gas lamps in the thick fog burned silently.
Their pale yellow light was hazy through the screen of rain.
He suddenly remembered the line from the booklet.
“Dreams are doors.”
Ryan's gaze gradually darkened.
In other words, his true contact with the Lantern might have only just begun, and was far from over.
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