novelraw Chapter 598: It Has Come
Chapter 598: It Has Come
Even in the darkness, the light in Anna's bright eyes instantly faded. "I didn't hear anything..."
"I know."
Lu Li cut through her confusion. "Check if the door is open."
Anna moved automatically, forgetting she was in a human body. She stumbled, then silently made her way to the door. When she slowly turned back, her face was etched with a look of helplessness and despair she had never shown before.
"The door... is open..."
It came inside...
If it had been the Uninvited Guest, Lu Li would already be dead.
"It's not the Uninvited Guest," Lu Li replied quietly.
The ritual of the Uninvited Guest didn't end with just the sound of an opening door.
Anna couldn't feel its presence, couldn't hear it—this had to be a trait of the "Door." But the "Door" wasn't supposed to be able to influence reality. At least, the last time it masqueraded as the Uninvited Guest, it hadn't been able to.Does that mean...
Suddenly, a cautious head poked out from behind the door, glancing around.
"York?" An immense wave of relief washed over Anna, momentarily erasing the memory of the ominous knocking.
"Anna? Is that you?" York looked just as overjoyed, and he stepped into the restaurant with a visible sigh of relief. "Reid figured something out and sent me to get you... Where's Lu Li?"
"He's inside," Anna replied, her brow furrowed. The usual crescent shape of her eyes vanished. "What about that knocking? What was it?"
"What knocking?" York froze, his expression clouding with concern. He stammered, "I walked up, but the lights were out, so I thought no one was here... I just pushed the door and stepped inside..."
Anna whipped around and saw that Lu Li, who should have been standing by the basement entrance, was gone. A hand stretched out from the cellar's darkness and took hold of the wooden door.
He had retreated into the basement.
Anna understood in an instant. She rushed to shut the kitchen door and whispered a warning to York, "It's here for Lu Li. Be quiet."
York suppressed his questions, pressed himself against the door, and clamped a hand over his mouth.
He felt a strange chill run down his back, like a sudden draft... or like something was touching his rear. York risked a furtive glance behind him and saw a desiccated, clawed hand reaching out from a black slit in the air, scraping against his buttock!
"Mmph!"
York’s eyes shot wide. He leaped into the air, barely stifling a scream.
Anna strained her ears, listening intently to the sounds around her, trying to catch the faintest stir in the air. But she could perceive nothing beyond the frantic drumming of her own heart. It felt as if an unseen presence was roaming the restaurant.
The "Door" had always been described as something mysterious and inevitable.
The tense, eerie silence stretched on for several minutes. At last, the basement door slowly opened.
"It's gone."
Lu Li appeared in the doorway, his voice as calm as ever.
The situation had been more dangerous than it seemed. Anna realized that when she'd been shutting the kitchen door, the entity was already inside. Lu Li had even heard its heavy footsteps in the kitchen. Luckily, the basement door had stopped it. After three distinct knocks, the presence of the "Door" vanished from the other side.
"Did I mess things up?" York was still whispering.
"No."
However, the "Door" had indeed used York's arrival as a trap. If Lu Li and Anna had assumed it was the Uninvited Guest bursting in, they wouldn't have hidden. In that case, the "Door" would have taken Lu Li.
Don't let it hear you, or it will see you. Don't let it see you, or it will touch you. Don't let it touch you, or it will take you...
The "Door's" traps were becoming more insidious and dangerous.
"What did Reid find out?" Lu Li, the one who had been at the center of the incident, recovered more quickly than Anna or York. Or perhaps he had never been shaken at all.
York remembered his task. "He didn't say. Just that it was urgent and I had to bring you back."
"We're going back," Lu Li said, shutting the basement door as casually as if he were straightening a blanket.
This was probably because of the soft whisper he'd heard while hiding in the basement.
Back in the clothing shop, a steady, warm flame was burning in the fireplace. Gemini Reid sat before the hearth, his face alternately lit and shadowed by the flickering light, his expression grave. "I've remembered something about Prada."
Anna, bringing up the rear, shut the door behind them. She and Lu Li sat near the storefront window to listen to what Gemini Reid had to say.
At first, he hadn't connected the "Prada" Lu Li mentioned with a particular phenomenon: people had been hearing a strange, distorted, prayer-like whisper from their radios, but few ever remembered the content of the incoherent murmuring.
Gemini Reid only remembered it because one long word, which contained the sound "Prada," was repeated frequently in the prayer. So when he saw the radio in the shop, he immediately made the connection and sent York to fetch Lu Li.
"The radio is here, but there's no guarantee it works," Gemini Reid said, nodding toward the device on the counter. It was covered in a thick layer of dust, marred only by the handprints left from carrying it.
The royal city still had power; the streetlights were on, though their glow barely pierced the surrounding gloom.
"When did you hear this?"
"Around the same time the city became Paradise. They appeared almost simultaneously."
Lu Li walked over to the counter and switched on the radio. A piercing static immediately filled the shop's ground floor.
Lowering the volume, Lu Li asked Gemini Reid about the frequency.
"Um... I was listening to the exorcist channel when they suddenly broke into the broadcast."
Lu Li tuned to the exorcist frequency.
A human voice cut through the noise, but it was like a shout muffled by a torrential downpour—only faint scraps of phrases managed to push through the crackling static.
"[To all... survivors... kssshh... evacuate... leave... the district... kssshh... at dawn... this is... the last...]"
Bong!
The quartz clock in the shop struck the hour with a dull chime.
Four o'clock.
Two hours until dawn.
Unfortunately, the static-choked message played only once before the radio returned to a constant crackle. Luckily, they had caught a portion of it.
Lu Li tried to assemble the scraps of the message, piecing together possible meanings: an order for all survivors to evacuate to a specific district, a warning about something happening at dawn, a final warning; or an order for all survivors to leave this district, a warning about something happening at dawn, a final message.
But it wasn't certain. The opposite could also be true: a message informing survivors that the exorcists had already evacuated, that help would arrive at dawn, to stay clear of the danger zone, a final message; or a message telling survivors that the exorcists had evacuated from the district, warning of an event at dawn, a final warning.
But no matter how they interpreted it, the key phrase was "at dawn."