"Whoa, what's going on with you two?"
Geno opened his eyes to find two beautiful, vibrant young girls crouched right in front of him, their faces etched with worry as they stared at him.
For a brief moment, Geno felt exactly like some terminally ill patient lying on a hospital bed, on the verge of drawing his last breath.
"Oh, don't even get me started," Lucia said, puffing out her cheeks the instant she saw Geno was awake, letting out a sigh of relief before launching into her complaint. "You were groaning and moaning over there non-stop. You woke both of us up."
It turned out that while Geno had been dealing with the Filth, he had unconsciously let out pained, low groans, which had roused the two girls from their sleep.
Seeing Geno in such a state, neither Alice nor Lucia had dared to shake him awake. They could only sit by his side and keep watch, in case something went wrong.
"Sorry for worrying you both," Geno said, scratching the back of his head with a slightly sheepish look.
"It's fine. You kept watch over us all night, after all."
More than being woken up, what Alice was truly concerned about was whether Geno going an entire night without sleep would cause him any real problems.
"Going without sleep for a day or two is nothing. No big deal."
It wasn't like he could tell them he didn't actually need to sleep.
After that, Geno turned his attention inward to check on his own condition. The Filth that had been raging and chaotic inside him had since settled down, and the mysterious voice had gone quiet once more — as if nothing had ever happened at all.
"There's still a while before dawn," he said. "Do you two want to sleep a little longer?"
He did a rough estimate — it was probably somewhere around three or four in the morning. There was still time for another hour or two of rest.
But both girls shook their heads. Even if the sleep had been short, it was enough for them.
"In that case, why don't we try to find a way out?"
Geno figured that since neither of them needed more rest, they might as well try exploring the Hollow. If they could find an exit directly, all the better.
Both girls agreed to the idea. The three of them gathered their gear, pushed open the door of the safe house, and set out to look for a route out.
"Hm? Where's Cili? She's gone!"
The moment they stepped outside, Lucia noticed that the peculiar little Hati, Cili, was nowhere to be found.
"Maybe she went home," Geno mused. "That one's intelligence is nothing like a normal Ethereal's. She might genuinely have her own den somewhere."
Geno had always felt there was something unusual about that Hati. If she had disappeared on her own, perhaps that was for the best.
"I hope so."
Lucia's ears drooped slightly. She accepted the reality, even if she was a little reluctant to let Cili go — and quietly hoped they might run into the little creature again somewhere down the road.
The three of them began walking along the edge of the path. While the spatial changes inside a Hollow don't follow any predictable pattern, all spatial shifts take time to manifest. In a large-scale Hollow like the Lemnian, those changes take even longer.
With enough time on their hands, there was a chance that Geno and the others could map out a route using the most primitive method of all — trial and error, one passage at a time.
"Hmm? That damp feeling... is it going to rain?"
Geno noticed the moisture thickening in the air. He glanced up at the sky — bright moonlight had been swallowed by a pressing mass of dark clouds, and the heavens seemed to be readying themselves to open up.
"I didn't bring an umbrella! We're going to get completely drenched!"
Lucia looked genuinely distressed. It was already too late to run back to the safe house, and the prospect of being soaked head to toe was not one she relished.
Alice, standing beside her, had the same concern. Getting rained on meant getting sick.
"There's a small town up ahead," Geno said, already moving to the front to lead the way. "Let's shelter there before it starts."
This little town within the Hollow had once been home to many residents. But after the Hollow had swallowed it whole, it had long since been left to decay.
Geno and the others ducked inside an abandoned house. Moments later, the rain began to fall outside.
"Everything here feels so old," Lucia murmured, gazing out at the rain beginning to patter down, her eyes wandering across the crumbling streets of the little town. "Not just the buildings — even the things inside have this whole ancient feel to them."
"This area should be Xiqiu — the outskirts of what used to be the Zenith Aerospace City," Alice said.
As the young miss of the Timefield family, Alice clearly had a far better grasp of the historical details buried within the Hollows than either Lucia or Geno.
"The Aerospace City was built with the labor of tens of thousands of people and an incalculable amount of resources, all for a single purpose: to explore the unknown heights of the sky. But that era is long past. After countless failures, the project was officially abandoned — and the construction only ever made it as far as Xiqiu. That's why this place feels so out of place compared to everything around it."
Listening to Alice's explanation, a strange analogy popped into Geno's head.
"It's like when a city's demolition crews are just about to knock down your block, and then they suddenly announce they've cancelled the whole project."
"Uh... when you put it that way, I suppose that's not entirely wrong."
Alice looked thoroughly flustered. Geno's colorful comparisons were a lot to take in. Lucia, on the other hand, didn't react at all — having spent her whole childhood wandering with her clan, concepts like development and urban change had never meant much to her.
"I don't really follow all that," she said, clasping her hands behind her back and watching the rain grow heavier. "But I get it — a lot of stories happened here, right?"
Staring at the downpour, something suddenly came back to her — a strange tale she had chatted about with Yuzuha not too long ago.
"Oh, right — have you two heard of the sea siren of the rainy night?"
"The sea siren... of the rainy night?"
Alice's ears reflexively tucked back. When it came to creepy stories, her courage was, admittedly, a bit lacking. And yet, her curiosity proved stronger than her fear, and she found herself leaning in, listening with rapt attention as Lucia began her tale.
Geno leaned back against the wall, half-listening to Lucia's story delivered in that deliberately spooky, pinched voice — while the other half of his mind was already worrying about how on earth he was going to explain all of this to the old patriarch once they got out.
After all, sneaking off in the middle of the night with the man's granddaughter and vanishing into a Hollow until dawn — no matter how he thought about it, that was a terrible look.
And then, in that same moment, Geno's sharpened senses caught something — a faint, strange pulse, pressing closer toward their position.
Something was approaching.
"Rumor one," Lucia began, her voice low and drawn out. "The sea siren has thick, writhing tentacles. It appears only on rainy nights."
Slap. Slap.
A wet, squelching sound — soft and sticky, like something damp slapping against the ground — crept closer and closer toward where they sat.
"Rumor two," Lucia continued. "The sea siren has an achingly beautiful voice that bewitches sailors, luring them to their deaths at sea."
La~♪
As if on cue with Lucia's words, a melodic, lilting song drifted into their ears from somewhere outside.
At this point, even Lucia herself had gone rigid. Her eyes glazed over, staring blankly toward the door.
"Rr-Rumor three..." Her voice trembled now. "The sea siren... it comes in the dead of night... and takes the souls of those who are lost..."
Lucia's words were barely above a whisper, her eyes locked, unblinking, on the entrance. Beside her, Alice was in exactly the same state — tears brimming in her eyes, threatening to spill at any second.
Then, with a long, drawn-out creak — the door was pushed open from outside.
And right behind it, sliding into view — a thick, writhing tentacle.
"IT'S THE SEA SIREN!!!!"
____
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