The port fog did not enter the ship.The fog stopped exactly at the boundary of the hull, as if even the coastal air of Kagane was reluctant to touch something that had returned from the southern polar waters.The Carrion Unit boarded the deck of the old whaling ship without a word of welcome. There were no pilot ropes lowered. There was no crew to greet them. There was only the sound of the anchor chain creaking softly blown by the wind, holding back something that logically should have long sunk to the bottom of the ocean trench.Elara stepped up first.The architect girl led not because she felt brave. She walked first because her curiosity was far stronger than her fear of death.Her footsteps felt strange. The black ironwood beneath her feet felt wrong. The deck planks were not decayed and brittle like wood frequently exposed to saltwater. The wood surface actually felt too hard, too dense, as if the entire structure of this ship had once been pressed with extraordinary force by