The train began to move.
The station at Nakaoka was swallowed by the thickening mist.
Inside, the carriage was almost empty. A single pale flame from a paper lantern flickered, casting the long, thin shadows of the three passengers against their seats. Outside the window, the world wasn't merely gray; it was a wall of white fog.
Kuon noted that the tracks were following a path that avoided the "Center of the Shadow."
"This is a different route than the one we took to Shimozato before."
"Avoiding the Center?" Asahi asked.
"If the Catalog is tainted by any more gray, even the new entries will vanish," Kuon replied. "We’re taking a detour."
Eventually, the mist outside the window began to thin until it vanished entirely. In its place, a night landscape stretched out before them—a vast, black plain dotted with the distant, sparkling lights of a town.
It was a town they did not know.
The Fog Train didn’t just connect the places they knew; it branched into a much wider world.
Koyoi pressed his forehead against the glass. The lights of this unknown town were a different color than the pale blue lanterns of the places they usually visited. They were yellow—a warm, inviting glow.
The light of a place where people lived.
"Are there gods in that town, too? Gods whose names have been frozen?"
"Most likely," Kuon said. "Every town in this world once had a god. And almost all of them have had their names stolen by the Observers."
Kuon had the Catalog open on his lap, the glow of his glass eye dialed down to a soft hum. He was slowly bathing the new text they had retrieved from the Sanctuary of the Moonlight Well in a pale blue light, reading carefully.
"At the bottom of the well in Shimozato, thirty fathoms down, there is a hidden layer. During our last descent, we stopped at fifteen. Below that, there is a bundle of layered names."
"Layered?"
"Multiple names sealed together within a single block of ice. Name-Stacking. It’s more efficient than freezing them individually, but it makes the thawing process incredibly difficult."
Kuon pressed his finger against the page.
"The Observers used Name-Stacking because they were in a hurry. They needed to process a massive number of names all at once. Something happened, and they ran out of time."
"What happened?"
"That’s what we’re going to find out."
The train began to decelerate. The scenery outside changed once again.
The black plains vanished, replaced by a ground covered in white hoarfrost. The air turned suddenly, sharply cold.
Crystals of ice began to blossom across the windowpane.
It was the unmistakable presence of Shimozato. The same silent, biting chill they had encountered before. But this time, Koyoi could feel a faint "fissure" deep within that cold.
His body, now acquainted with the Sanctuary of the Moonlight Well, was able to perceive a gap he had been blind to before.
"We’re here."
Asahi stood up, his hand moving to the hilt of his greatsword.
Koyoi pressed his drawstring pouch against his chest. The Shizuku inside had begun to pulse.
He remembered the chill of Shimozato well. When they had come here last, the Shizuku had trembled as if in terror. But this time, the vibration was different.
It wasn't a tremor of fear; it was the steady beat of resolve.
Outside the window, the pale blue light of a lantern appeared. The Shimozato station stood alone, a silent sentinel amidst the frost.
The train came to a halt with a long, metallic screech. As the doors slid open, the freezing air rushed into the carriage, turning the trio’s breath into white plumes of mist. Koyoi gripped his pouch tightly and took his first step out.
The sound of his boots crunching on the frost was the only thing that broke the silence of the station.