“Echoes… not from the present…”
Ignis’s words echoed in Villanelle’s mind.
She recalled what was taught in her Magic Principles class: intense emotions, especially fear and sorrow, could, under certain circumstances, leave faint spiritual imprints in specific environments.
These imprints were usually harmless and would naturally dissipate over time.
Footsteps, scratching sounds, weeping… these were all traces that human activity could leave behind. It wasn’t impossible for them to form imprints if the emotions were strong enough.
But generally, such spiritual imprints didn’t last long, and the disturbances they caused were very faint.
Assuming the nightly disturbances in these households originated from this, then what was amplifying these echoes, preventing them from sleeping peacefully night after night?
Villanelle felt she was vaguely grasping the key point.
Echoes… ceiling, walls, floor…
Various elements rapidly combined and arranged themselves in her brain, like puzzle pieces, slowly piecing together the vague truth hidden behind the fog.
Villanelle suddenly realized something and quickly turned her head to look at Martha, who was quietly waiting nearby. “Excuse me, how long has it been since the houses in Willow Alley were last repaired?”
Martha didn’t understand the question but answered honestly, “Quite a while. I can’t even remember when the last patch-up was…”
That’s it.
In old, dilapidated houses, the internal structure was bound to develop subtle gaps and cracks. These cavities combined could potentially form a rough, natural resonance chamber.
But this still wasn’t enough to fully explain the phenomenon of the nightly disturbances.
There must still be something she hadn’t noticed yet…
If these cavities were compared to a bomb, and the strange noises to the explosion, they were still missing the “fuse” part needed to detonate it.
“Martha, I need to walk around the alley a few more times,” Villanelle immediately requested, her ice-blue eyes sparkling with the light of thought.
“Did you find something?” Martha and the three behind her all tensed up in unison.
“Yes,” Villanelle said with certainty, trying to make her voice sound more convincing. “It’s not a haunting. It’s most likely just an uncommon magical phenomenon. I need to confirm some details now.”
Hearing it wasn’t a haunting, the tense muscles on the four faces immediately relaxed, and they let out long sighs of relief. As long as it wasn’t some intangible, sinister thing like a ghost, anything was manageable.
Ignis quietly curled up in the backpack, saying nothing.
Villanelle stepped out of Old John’s door and back into the alley.
The afternoon sun slanted in, illuminating the tiny dust particles floating in the air. Her gaze swept over the mottled walls, the upturned flagstones, and the scene behind every window like a probe.
“The small building on the left front, second-floor balcony. There’s a slight magical fluctuation,” Ignis, silent for a long while, spoke up again to remind her.
“What?” Villanelle quickly turned her head, swiftly examining the second-floor positions of every building on the left front.
Soon, she locked onto the target.
It was a two-story building located in the middle section of the alley. The wooden railing on its balcony was already rotten and blackened, the passage of time clearly etched upon it.
A few old, small flowerpots sat on the railing. From Villanelle’s current bottom-up angle, she couldn’t see what was inside them.
But she also vaguely sensed something was off about those pots.
Villanelle waved her staff. The crystal at its tip flashed, rapidly sketching the shape of an eye in the air. Then she closed her eyes, letting that virtual “eye” replace her real vision.
A basic spell, Insight Eye. One of the most fundamental spells for a mage.
The perspective slowly zoomed in on that building as Villanelle adjusted her will, then gradually rose higher. The contents of the flowerpots also came into view.
Most of those small pots were empty. Only one still contained a small cluster of dark green moss-like plants, looking lifeless, with the edges of its fronds curled up.
Villanelle immediately recognized what it was.
Moonlight Moss.
A very common low-level magical plant. At night, it absorbed scattered ambient mana and emitted faint glows of different colors. It was often used by commoners as cheap nighttime lighting or decoration.
Villanelle knew more about it from Emily’s explanations.
This plant, Moonlight Moss, had a stable and weak mana fluctuation when healthy. But once on the verge of death, its metabolic process of absorbing and converting mana would become extremely unstable, even intermittently releasing chaotic mana pulses.
However, the pulses themselves were harmless and had no effect on the human body.
This knowledge was something Emily had mentioned during a casual chat.
In that instant, the final puzzle piece fell into place. All the clues connected in Villanelle’s mind, and everything suddenly became clear.
The dying Moonlight Moss emitted mana pulses at night. These pulses echoed within Willow Alley’s old, crack-filled houses, amplifying the residual spiritual imprints inside the rooms. Ultimately, this formed the strange nightly noises that plagued the residents.
“I understand,” Villanelle withdrew the Insight Eye, opened her eyes, and turned to Martha and the others behind her, her face showing the clarity of a solved problem. “The cause is right there…”
She pointed her staff in the direction of the Moonlight Moss.
The group followed Villanelle’s staff, looking confused.
“That’s Old Peter’s balcony… that pot of grass?” Tom asked hesitantly.
“That’s not ordinary grass. It’s called Moonlight Moss, a relatively low-level magical plant,” Villanelle explained in the simplest terms possible. “It’s dying.
Dying Moonlight Moss emits a very weak magical disturbance at night, like… a person delirious with fever.”
She paused, pointing at the surrounding houses:
“And these old houses, because they haven’t been repaired for so long, have developed many invisible small cracks and hollows inside. These empty spaces combine to become like a leaky, oversized speaker.
At night, the ‘delirious’ disturbances from the Moonlight Moss get into this speaker, encounter some residual memory echoes inside the houses, and then come out from various parts of the speaker, turning into all the different sounds you hear.”
These metaphors were simple, perhaps not entirely accurate, but vivid and easy to picture.
‘Interesting,’ Ignis thought. ‘Seems somewhat similar to the principle of strange noises in empty houses from my past life. Both involve factors of building decay.’
“You mean… those weird noises at night are because of that pot of grass, plus our houses not being sturdy?” Susie asked carefully.
“Exactly!” Villanelle affirmed her summary. “So, to solve this, there are two methods.
First, and most importantly, deal with that dying Moonlight Moss, or at least make sure it doesn’t get moonlight at night. Without the source, the disturbances will be greatly reduced.”
“No problem,” Martha nodded. “Old Peter is just a bit stubborn. Reason with him a bit, maybe give him a few extra coppers, and it’ll work!”
“Second, when you have some spare money, remember to hire someone to repair the houses. Plug the more obvious gaps to prevent strange noises from happening again. It’ll also make living there more peaceful,” Villanelle added the second point.
The clouds of worry on the faces of the households finally dispersed at this moment. A sense of ease they hadn’t felt in days reappeared on their faces.
Things proceeded smoothly. Persuaded by Martha and with the “Mage’s” definitive judgment, Old Peter grumbled a few words but ultimately agreed to remove the Moonlight Moss and cover it with a black cloth.
Night fell. Villanelle accepted the invitation to stay overnight at Martha’s house to verify if her daytime deductions were correct. The other households also waited restlessly for the “verdict” to arrive.
Outside the window, the moonlight was cold and clear.
One hour, two hours, three hours… The entire night passed peacefully in a long-awaited tranquility.
Early the next morning, sunlight spilled into the small alley.
The residents who had previously suffered from the nightly disturbances looked radiant, thanking Villanelle profusely.
Martha pressed a small pouch containing eight silver coins into her hand and insisted on giving her many of her own baked bread and smoked meats before seeing her off at the entrance of Willow Alley.
“Miss Vela, if you ever pass by Willow Alley again, you must come in for a visit!” Martha waved enthusiastically at Villanelle.
Villanelle bid them farewell and walked with light steps along Emerald Riverside, facing the morning breeze.
“How does it feel?”
Ignis’s voice sounded in her mind.
“It feels… much more interesting than being at the Academy,” Villanelle said in a playful tone. “Ignis… did you know what was going on from the very beginning?”
“Yes,” Ignis didn’t deny it. “But I wanted to see if you could solve it on your own.”
The second day of winter break, the first commission successfully concluded.
It was a good start.
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