October 12, 2027, Pre-Cataclysm
Basement Archive, St. Mary's Library, University of London
This place housed Europe's most complete collection of medieval funeral literature, as well as certain dark secrets that should never be perused by human eyes. The air was eternally mixed with the thick, oppressive scent of formalin and old parchment; the lights always carried a flicker on the verge of breakdown.
Elliott Thorne would forever remember that afternoon—the final segment of "normal" time in his life. His mentor, Professor Hughes, a titan of European folklore, originally a wise and rigorous old gentleman, completely collapsed in that office filled with taboo ancient texts.
"Elliott... close the door... lock it!"
When Elliott pushed open the door, he gasped in horror at the sight before him. In the originally tidy office, bookshelves were toppled, and priceless manuscripts were scattered across the floor like snowflakes. Professor Hughes was kneeling on the cold floor, frantically clawing at the hard wood with his fingers. His fingernails were already torn back, his finger joints filled with blood and wood splinters, leaving shocking dark red grooves on the floorboards.
"Professor, you need a doctor!"
Elliott attempted to rush over but was pinned in place by the professor's beast-like gaze. The professor abruptly raised his head; his face no longer held human expression. His eyeballs were filled with dense, spiderweb-like dark red veins that seemed to be vibrating slightly. His pupils had constricted into a tiny black dot, the surrounding iris appearing a morbid gray.
"A doctor? No... doctors can't save the funeral of logic."
The professor suddenly erupted with strength completely unbefitting his age due to extreme agitation and fear, grabbing Elliott tightly by the collar. A thick, rank smell violently invaded Elliott's nasal cavity—it was the smell of rust, and also the smell of meat rotted to the extreme.
"Listen, child. They are back... they are undying, they are unscatterable! Logic has changed, the base code of the world has been rewritten! God is absent, science is dead!" The professor's voice rasped in his throat, like scraping iron over sandpaper.
"Professor, what are you saying?" Elliott felt the force on his collar nearly suffocating him.
"There is no method to kill them! No religion, no science, nothing! You can only... adapt to them. Find their 'pattern' （规律）, make yourself a link within the pattern." The professor's saliva splashed onto Elliott's face, cold without any temperature. "You must live like a ghost... go learn the rules of the dead... only by understanding the rules can you live!"
The professor's hands trembled violently; he extracted a small box heavily wrapped in lead from his vest.
"Take it... this is your ticket. Do not open it unless you feel the world 'diluting'... unless you smell that iron rust."
The professor's body suddenly went rigid at that moment. His spine emitted a tooth-grinding "crack," as if some invisible threads were hoisting his husk. He violently shoved Elliott away, shutting him out of the room.
"Get out! Leave London! Go back to your Devon! Hide in the dirt!"
Those were the last words Professor Hughes left behind.
The next day, the London Police discovered the professor in his residence. This scholar of European renown had, inside a pure gold safe built at great expense, torn apart his own throat with his teeth. When he died, his face bore a look of twisted relief.
Late that night, Elliott secretly returned to the professor's office. Amidst that ruin, he took the lead box. Inside the box was a fragment of a holy relic, dull in color and rough in texture. When Elliott first touched it, he felt a searing pain as if his soul were pierced by a branding iron. This pain was not physical, but a higher-level "rejection."
"Undying... unscatterable."
Elliott sat in the dark reading room, repeatedly chewing over his professor's dying words. He did not understand what "adapting to patterns" meant back then; he only knew that the charred mark on his palm, burned by the fragment, was throbbing with faint heat.
Three days later, he boarded a long-distance coach returning to Devon. London outside the window gradually blurred in the rain and mist, like an old photograph soaked in water. He did not know that he would never return to this city—or rather, the one who returned would no longer be the same him.
He only knew that from this moment on, he was no longer that history student who only dreamed in libraries. He was a stray dog thrown into a wolf pack, and his only weapon was that stained "survival guide" regarding death patterns, covered in his professor's blood.