Mystery: Good Witch

Chapter 1438 Tina's Guess

The moment the candles were blown out, the light around Christina dimmed.

The only light came from the white candle in Dorothy's hand, which still emitted a soft, dim glow. The visitors ahead had long since gone, and on both sides were narrow passageways and countless tombs and skeletons. There were even weathered white bones lying in the corners of the passageways, their outlines blurred by the candlelight.

At this moment, the chill she felt when she first entered the catacombs seemed to return to Tina. The dark areas, untouched by candlelight, seemed to harbor countless menacing monsters, ready to drag her into the depths of the catacombs and make her "disappear" completely.

Suddenly, an angry shout rang out:

"What are you doing!"

This wasn't Dorothy's complaint, but rather came from behind Tina. Immediately afterward, a figure darted out from that direction, holding a lit candle in one hand. The flame flickered and swayed violently with the movement. One of them quickly approached the candle in Tina's hand and relit it, letting the warm light envelop her, Dorothy, and the stranger.

What's going on...? Did I see a ghost?

Tina was startled and quickly shielded Dorothy behind her, swinging the newly lit candle at her like a dagger.

Beneath the light was a young male face, who looked to be around twenty years old. He had short, messy black hair, a slender build, and was wearing a typical Intis outfit of a shirt, vest, and trousers, with his lower legs hidden in the darkness.

No legs... Tina immediately lowered the candle to illuminate the other person's lower body, and only breathed a sigh of relief when she could see a pair of pointed leather shoes.

After confirming that the other person wasn't a ghost, emotions other than fear gradually surfaced in her mind, and she questioned them with a mixture of doubt and anger:
"What were you doing just now?"

"I should be asking you what you're doing! Why did you extinguish the candles just now? Even if you didn't heed the tomb caretaker's warning, you should have seen the sign at the entrance of the catacombs, right?" The young man frowned at Tina's candles that had just been relit. "Don't you know that you have to stay within the candlelight here, or something bad could easily happen?"

That tour guide was actually the tomb's caretaker; no wonder he gave us the candles for free… But the genie said lighting candles was just a ritual, not a real taboo… Tina muttered to herself, shaking her head.

“But I just blew out the candles and nothing happened.”

“That’s because you were lucky and nothing went wrong,” the black-haired man, who was holding a candle in one hand in a somewhat comical pose, said in a tone that was no longer as serious as before, but was still very formal. “If you were completely out of the light of a candle, even if you were carrying an oil lamp and wearing the latest battery-powered headlamp, you could still disappear silently into the darkness.”

"When that time comes, your family will forget you, your friends and classmates will forget you, and even the person next to you will forget you, only remembering that they came to the catacombs alone, not with you."

As he spoke, the man pointed at Dorothy.

After hearing this, the latter, preferring to believe it was true, first shielded the candlelight with his other hand to prevent it from being extinguished by a breeze, and then asked, puzzled:

"If people who extinguish their candles and are left without the protection of candlelight might disappear completely and be forgotten by everyone, how can we be sure that doing so is dangerous? The lucky ones who survive might think that lighting candles in the cemetery is just an ancient and useless ritual, while the unlucky ones who disappear completely can't leave any last words to tell others..."

This is a paradox.

"..."

The man was clearly taken aback by the sharp thinking of a girl who looked to be only thirteen or fourteen. She instantly spotted the flaw in his words, and after stammering for a while, he could only laugh self-deprecatingly and nod.
“You’re right. If there are only two outcomes, ‘nothing happens’ and ‘disappearance and being forgotten by everyone,’ no one will know that a lit candle can save their life. Most people will just follow it as a ritual to enter the tomb, while a few will simply disappear silently… Unless, someone has experienced this before, being swallowed by darkness and forgotten by everyone, but eventually returning to reality.”

As he spoke, he slowly began to walk deeper into the tomb, with Tina and Dorothy following him, holding candles, along the black lines drawn on the ceiling with directions toward their destination—the entrance to the next level of the tomb.

"Are you saying that this is the kind of person you are?"

Tina asked curiously.

The idea of ​​being "forgotten by everyone" and then climbing back from the abyss of darkness to reality is just like the protagonist in an adventure novel!

Is this person a scammer?

Thinking of this, Tina looked warily at the black-haired man's back, finding his body outline, circled by the candlelight, very suspicious.

The other person seemed completely oblivious, strolling among the tombs and skeletons as they spoke:
"I am a student at the Trier Higher Normal School, and my name is Pierre."

"what about you?"

“I’m Christina, and this is my sister, Dorothy,” Tina introduced herself politely, then followed up with, “You also extinguished candles in the catacombs, and then unfortunately became one of the missing?”

Pierre hummed in agreement, slowed his pace, turned to look at Tina, stared at her for a moment as if confirming something, and said:
"To be precise, it's not just me. Since the underground catacombs opened, tens of thousands of people have 'disappeared' by deliberately or accidentally extinguishing their candles. I'm just one of them."

"That day, I entered the underground tomb alone, wanting to go to the third level, which most people would not go to, to find a lady who haunted my dreams... Now that I think about it, I should not have been alone, but the other companions had all 'disappeared' before me."

"I accidentally got lost on that floor and even entered a closed area that hadn't been cleared by the tomb manager. There weren't even any black lines indicating the exits, and nobody would pass by there."

“I wandered around like a headless fly until both candles I carried with me burned out… The moment the candlelight went out, a cold darkness enveloped me, making me dizzy and my body unresponsive. I felt like I was in a half-awake, half-asleep state, just lying there, sleeping… When I woke up, I was back on the surface, in a corner of the underground streets of the market district.” It sounds like sleepwalking… Could he have accidentally wandered into a poorly ventilated underground area, passed out, and then been rescued and taken out of the tomb…? Tina subconsciously started thinking about it from a “scientific” perspective.

Dorothy clearly shared a similar view, and pressed further:

"Is this what you mean by 'forgotten by everyone'? Could it be that he just inhaled underground swamp gas, became disoriented, and then forgot some of what happened after being rescued?"

“If only it were that simple…” Pierre shook his head with a wry smile, stared at Tina for a while, and suddenly frowned. “I’ve thought you look a lot like that lady I know who came to Trier from Rue… How old are you? What’s your mother’s name?”

They look alike? More than one person has had this reaction today… Is he referring to Lady "Chariot," or her mother? A flurry of thoughts raced through Tina's mind. After a moment's hesitation, she replied:
“I’m 13 years old, but I won’t tell you my mother’s name. Why don’t you tell me what Miss Ruenlai’s name is?”

Hearing her answer, which clearly showed a lack of trust in him, Pierre wasn't angry; instead, he smiled.

“They’re very vigilant, which is a good thing in Trier.”

"That lady was named Angelica. She had long, light blonde hair and purple eyes. She was about my height and more beautiful than any of the actresses I'd ever seen in Trier... If she hadn't gotten lost in the catacombs, which gave me the opportunity to help her, we probably would never have crossed paths at all."

"If you think about it, that was 18 years ago, which is why I wanted to know your age to see if you could be her daughter."

Judging from the description, it seems to be her mother, but Angelica... isn't she the protagonist of the "Great Pirates" series, the "Golden Queen" who destroyed the cliff in Bayam and possessed the terrifying ghost ship?

Did Pierre really see his mother? Or was she in the catacombs of Trier?

Tina fell into deep thought, but Dorothy beside her frowned and asked in a probing tone:
"18 years ago? That was in 1350, wasn't it? Aren't you a university student in Trier? Are you over 40 years old already?"

Although the black-haired man's face was somewhat obscured by the candlelight, he did not look like a middle-aged man at all.

Could it be that his fabricated story has finally revealed a flaw?
“That’s the most incomprehensible part of the whole thing,” Pierre said with a knowing smile. “I just mentioned that I appeared in the underground area of ​​the market district unharmed, not even a single cope in my pocket was missing, but when I got home, I found that everything had changed.”

“My parents still live in that old house, but the streets and neighbors are different from before. Steam-powered cars run on the road, power lines are strung in the alleys, and gas lamps have been replaced with electricity... Most importantly, my parents have grown old, my brother who is two years younger than me has gotten married, and his children are about the same age as you. The first thing they saw when they saw me was not shock, but confusion.”

"They asked me who I was."

At this point, Pierre's tone became bitter, as if he were recalling the day he returned to reality and went home.

"No matter how I explained, my parents couldn't remember that there was a member in the family. It wasn't because they had forgotten after 18 years, but because they simply didn't exist... There was no room for me in the house, no trace of my life there, and my younger brother was their only child... I could only apologize sheepishly and leave, wandering the streets until I was found by two members of the Steam Church."

"They told me that there were many people like me, not just one, but tens of thousands. Some of them, like me, disappeared from the catacombs over the past few decades for various reasons and were completely forgotten. Some accidentally entered this area from the ancient catacombs a hundred years ago and were swallowed by darkness. Some can even be traced back hundreds of years to the Solon dynasty before Roselle existed... Until one day this year, these people began to appear in batches in various locations in Trier, as if they had been brought back to reality from hell and the abyss..."

"And what they all have in common is that they have been forgotten by their families, lost their identities, and are homeless."

"By the grace of the steam, the church has saved us, providing us with new identities and accommodations. I have re-entered the Higher Normal School and become a university student, occasionally participating in community service activities, such as maintaining order in the catacombs and helping tourists like you to prevent you from repeating my mistakes..."

At this point, Pierre sighed again, the half-confused, half-sorrowful expression on his face fading, replaced by a smile, and said:

"If I hadn't seen how much you and Miss Angelica look alike, I wouldn't have said these things. Although the church didn't issue a gag order, the fact that someone disappeared for more than ten years and then returned to reality is too bizarre. Even when I made it up as a story and sent it to magazines like Lotus and Mystery, it couldn't be published."

"If this had happened before today, I wouldn't have believed it either..."

Tina stared in disbelief as she commented.

When she first met the college student who rushed up to light his candle, she assumed he was just an overly superstitious local who believed that an extinguished candle meant bad luck, and she never imagined that his experience was so bizarre.

Of course, now that her head is filled with a lot of new occult knowledge, Tina is able to accept this kind of story, and even begins to wonder if it is influenced by the power of a certain potion pathway, or the negative effects caused by a powerful sealing artifact.

Immediately, she realized a possibility in Pierre's words:
The college student saw "Angelica" in the catacombs 18 years ago and thought she looked very similar to Tina;
Angelica Sachs is the famous "Golden Queen" and the "Angel of Calamity" recorded in the scriptures of the Church of Fools and the Church of the End Times;
The many "sealed locations" he had encountered along the way had been confirmed to be related to Angelica, such as the Resurrection Square in Kukva City on the Southern Continent, the Fool's Church in Yharnam City, and the luxury suite in Bayam.

Along the way, more than one angel and saint did good deeds and offered help because of Tina's appearance;

So, what is the relationship between Angelica Sachs and Angel Granger?

Thinking of this, Tina's expression remained unchanged, but her heart was in turmoil. She subconsciously looked at her sister Dorothy beside her and found her lost in thought, head bowed and silent.

She's smarter than me; perhaps she already noticed something was wrong...? Tina pondered, silently calling upon the "genie" who had tricked her out of the house and led her to various places earlier that day:
"Genius, do you really not recognize your mother?"

P.S.: A little less today...

(End of this chapter)