Northern Conquest Sea, Navaha In the northern outskirts of the seaside town of Navaha, Dorothy, still in the middle of her sightseeing, discovered a large walled compound at the base of a hillside just as she was preparing to head back toward the city center. With her sharp eyes, she immediately noticed something off about the iron frame mounted on the compound’s heavy gate. Judging by the contrast between the relatively clean screw holes and the rusted, dusty iron frame, Dorothy deduced that a sign had been hanging there until very recently—only to be suddenly removed. That alone stirred her curiosity, and so she directed a corpse marionette to sneak into the compound and inspect the buildings within. What she found left her genuinely surprised. On one of the building columns were pasted letters spelling out the name of the facility—North Hill Psychiatric Hospital. This made it the second such hospital Dorothy had encountered in Navaha. Just yesterday, after dealing with Massimo and returning from the coast, she had passed by Anxica Psychiatric Hospital, a place she’d noted for its pleasant surroundings, which she’d thought would be good for patient recovery. But now, barely a day later, she had stumbled upon another psychiatric hospital in the same town. Standing quietly with her guardian corpse marionette on the hushed road before this new hospital, Dorothy lingered only a moment before continuing toward the city. However, her expression had shifted from relaxed to faintly grim. “Navaha… From what I saw earlier on the hilltop, this city isn’t very big. It’s even smaller than Igwynt. I’d be surprised if the population even breaks one hundred thousand. Why would a town this small need two psychiatric hospitals?” Walking down the road, Dorothy mulled this over. In her memory, even Igwynt didn’t have a dedicated psychiatric hospital—and yet here Navaha had two? That struck her as more than a little strange. “And the sign from that North Hill hospital… it looked like it had only just been taken down. Why? Was it damaged? Are they putting up a new one? Or is something else going on?” Troubled by these questions, she had the small marionette still inside the hospital begin a basic recon sweep. From the initial scouting, Dorothy confirmed that the North Hill Psychiatric Hospital was still in operation, even though its doors and windows were tightly shut. Through the marionette’s vision, she saw numerous patients inside the rooms lining the long hallways. Men and women, young and old alike—thin, pale, and visibly worn out. Some lay in their beds, staring blankly at the ceiling. Others sat by the window, gazing outside in a daze. Every single one of them had large, dark eye bags. Dorothy had her marionette survey several buildings within the compound and estimated there were about forty to fifty patients. What struck her most was how eerily similar they all looked—listless, vacant, and clearly sleep-deprived. Despite the hospital’s spacious grounds, not one patient had stepped outside. They all stayed inside their rooms. The staff numbered about a dozen, and from Dorothy’s observation, they were diligently performing their duties—helping patients eat, clean up, and restraining them when they suddenly flew into hysterics. Even as she made her way back toward the city, Dorothy continued watching the hospital through her marionette. After over an hour of observation, she had yet to spot anything overtly abnormal. Overheard conversations between staff suggested they were just ordinary Navaha locals, chatting about daily routines and life. Nothing they said hinted at anything mystical or secretive. There were no visible traces of the extraordinary anywhere on the premises. If anything stood out, it was the uniformity of the patients’ symptoms. In Dorothy’s view, mental illness usually manifested in countless unpredictable ways. But every single patient here looked almost identical: weak, dazed, with signs of insomnia—more like a case of neurological decay than anything else. “A few patients like that, sure—but all of them?” It was too strange. “There’s no way an entire town would suddenly come down with the exact same mental illness…” After sweeping the entire hospital with her recon marionettes, Dorothy couldn’t shake the impression that something was off. Had the patients exhibited more varied symptoms, she might’ve dismissed it. But the consistent presentation was too suspicious. And mental illness wasn’t contagious. How could so many people develop the same condition all at once? This lingering doubt kept her watching for another two hours, but no new leads emerged. Still, she did manage to learn from overheard staff chatter that the hospital’s sign had been removed as part of a municipal beautification project. The order had come down the previous afternoon, and the new sign had yet to arrive. With no more intelligence to gather, Dorothy recalled her scattered marionettes from the facility and continued her return to the city. By then, the sky had darkened considerably—a new night was approaching. Back in Navaha proper, she quickly found a restaurant that looked decent, ordered a few local specialties, and began eating a slow dinner. “That psychiatric hospital… it seemed fine on the surface, but the uniform symptoms among the patients still bother me. Is that sort of mental illness spreading in this town or something?” Seated at the table, chewing on some Cassatian ham, Dorothy pondered the day’s findings. Her years immersed in the mysticism world had made her extremely sensitive to such anomalies. Still uneasy, she decided to start asking around. As she ate, she began recalling the marionettes she’d sent out earlier to look for a White Craftsmen’s Guild branch. Though they hadn’t found one, they could still be used to sniff out information on the psychiatric hospitals. Under Dorothy’s command, several corpse marionettes began striking up conversations with nearby Navaha residents under various pretexts, casually weaving in questions about the local psychiatric hospitals. After a round of probing, Dorothy managed to obtain some mildly valuable intel from a food stall vendor. “Huh? You’re asking about those psychiatric hospitals outside the city?” “Yeah… I was out walking yesterday and noticed this city has not just one but two psychiatric hospitals. It struck me as a bit odd. I’m from Falano—a town about the same size—and we don’t even have one. So I was curious… do you treat patients from other cities here?” At the corner of a small alleyway, a tourist corpse marionette, under Dorothy’s control, casually licked a round candy he had just purchased while chatting with the vendor. The vendor mulled over the question, then answered. “Well… you’ve really covered some ground for someone who just disembarked, huh? But actually, you’ve got it a bit wrong. Our city doesn’t just have two psychiatric hospitals—it has three. And no, they weren’t built for outsiders. Most of the patients? They’re Navaha locals.” “Three hospitals? And all the patients are from Navaha? What, is this city just prone to mental illness or something?” The marionette feigned surprise, and the vendor nodded with a sigh. “Yeah… every so often, someone in town—sometimes from this household, sometimes that one—just suddenly starts acting strange. Perfectly normal folks turn vacant and weird in a snap. Then they start shouting, going wild, especially at night… it gets really disruptive. People can’t even sleep.” “The old folks around here call it Sleep Decay Syndrome. It’s something unique to Navaha, apparently—it’s been around for ages, so no one finds it all that unusual. When someone in your family gets it, well… you just chalk it up to bad luck.” “Sleep Decay Syndrome? So you’re saying this illness has existed here for a long time?” “Yep. But back in the day, it was super rare. Some years, you might not even see one case. But for reasons no one can quite explain—whether it’s population growth or something else—cases have steadily gone up over the past seven or eight years. As more and more people got sick, the city had to build facilities to house them. One hospital, then two, then three. Some families have even had multiple members admitted. It’s scary, really. Some of the younger folks were so spooked they ran off to Telva.” The vendor let out a long sigh as he recounted the situation. The marionette nodded, then handed him a few extra coins. “Thanks for the info, sir. I’ll take another one of those candies.” Wanting to show a bit of appreciation to the vendor, Dorothy had the marionette buy a second candy. The vendor chuckled and handed over a new piece—this one shaped like a crescent moon. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖 “Sweet dreams, traveler.” “Sweet dreams? Huh… that’s an unusual way to say goodbye.” “Haha, it’s just local tradition. When we eat these moon-shaped candies, we always say that. When I was little, I’d beg my parents for them by saying, ‘I want sweet dreams! Sweet dreams!’” The vendor chuckled as he explained. The marionette glanced down at the moon-shaped candy and murmured softly. “Sweet dreams, huh…” After gathering intel about the psychiatric hospitals from the locals, Dorothy recalled all her deployed corpse marionettes. Still seated at dinner, she mulled over everything she’d encountered since arriving in Navaha, a slight frown forming on her face. “Sleep Decay Syndrome… if that vendor was telling the truth, then this illness has existed in the city for a long time. The locals are all familiar with it. But something must’ve changed in the last seven or eight years—it’s only recently that the number of cases spiked. And to deal with the surge, they had to build multiple psychiatric hospitals back to back…” “Tch… it really feels like there’s something abnormal lurking beneath all this…” Finishing off the Cassatian sausage in her hand, Dorothy tightened her focus, her thoughts growing more serious. … As evening fell, somewhere in Navaha. In a modest sitting room, a slightly plump woman in her early forties sat on a single-seater sofa, draped in a black robe. Her expression was grave as she stared straight ahead. Standing on the carpet before her was a sharply dressed man in his thirties, wearing a neatly pressed suit. Facing him, the woman spoke. “What’s the situation now, Gómez? Have you figured out what the Church fleet is really doing here? Are they truly just here to drop people off?” “Madam García, based on our investigation, the Church fleet is an escort unit. It seems their decision to dock in Navaha was indeed a spur-of-the-moment thing. They encountered a shipwreck at sea and rescued a number of people—afterward, they brought them to the nearest port, which happened to be here. It appears they’re simply here to disembark passengers and aren’t involved in any secret operations. As far as we can tell, they haven’t sensed anything unusual about us or the city.” The man, addressed as Gómez, responded respectfully to the woman named García. She paused slightly upon hearing this, then continued in a cold tone. “A spur-of-the-moment detour… just to drop people off… not involved in any secret operations? Hmph. If that were truly the case, then how do you explain the noise at the harbor the afternoon they arrived? And what about the disturbance near the Barrenstone Tidal Flats? If they were just disembarking passengers… things like that wouldn’t be happening.” She snorted in disbelief, her expression darkened by deep mistrust.