Luther typed the address into Google and searched for it, but he couldn’t find anything except for an old real estate listing on a property website from almost ten years ago.

  He continued clicking through the pages, scrolling and searching, and it wasn’t until he reached the fifth page of search results that he stumbled across a single short line mentioning a haunted house located on that street.

  Thinking for a moment, he typed in the words “West Esplanade haunted” and pressed enter. This time, a large number of related results appeared, most of them from various online supernatural websites.

  “Photo captures a shadow figure in the window of the haunted house on West Esplanade,” read one post on a site called The Phantom Archives.

  “Strange noises in the middle of the night make the neighbors’ hair stand on end,” said another hot thread from The Paranormal Forum.

  “The Gray House of Jackson Heights: what was the reason that made every tenant move out within a single week?” reported The Ghost Diaries.

  All of these posts discussed numerous strange and unsettling events that neighbors or thrill-seekers had claimed to witness at the house located at 115 West Esplanade Street.

  “Oh? An evil spirit? Seems like we found the right place,” Acher commented.

  Luther started reading through the posts in detail.

  “It’s said that the previous owner of the house was an old woman who lived all by herself. Two days after she passed away, her daughter couldn’t get in touch with her, so she came to check and discovered the lady lying lifeless on the floor, the body already stiff. The autopsy concluded she had died from a stroke,” one person shared.

  Another user left a comment:

  “Rumor has it that all the paranormal activities started appearing after the old lady’s death. Her daughter tried to rent out the house, but nobody could last more than a week. Even those who wanted to buy it said that, during their very first visit to inspect the house, they felt there was ‘something not right’ about the place. That’s why it has been left abandoned for the past seven years.”

  “Creepy, isn’t it?” someone said.

  “Is that even true? There are tons of stories like this on here.” Another person sounded skeptical.

  Yet one user chimed in:

  “I can confirm it. My family lives seven houses away. That old woman’s name was Anna Dixon. She was a very kind lady who often fed the squirrels in the nearby park. My grandmother insists that her spirit still lingers in the house, unwilling to let strangers move in. Some people believe she can’t find peace because her ungrateful daughter never cared for her. And to be honest, that might be true. Ever since the daughter got married and moved out, we had barely seen her; maybe once a year at most. There are even more far-fetched rumors, like she was a witch who cursed the house before she died, or that she was murdered and not taken by a stroke, and now her spirit remains, waiting for her killer to return.”

  “This thing you humans call the internet is just fascinating. I was so curious about it when I saw you using it back when I was sealed,” Acher commented. The creativity of humankind is limitless. Nine thousand years ago, a single piece of news could take weeks, months, or even years to reach the right place. But now, even when they are separated by thousands of miles, humans can speak to each other in an instant.”

  Luther asked:

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  “There was no magic. For sending messages?”

  “Of course there was,” Acher replied, “but that was a privilege reserved for people of high status, as it demanded mages with a certain level of skill. And such spellcasters were already nobles themselves, so how could they lower themselves to serve commoners?”

  He glanced over the wide variety of posts on the computer screen before continuing:

  “Another interesting thing is that back then, knowledge was considered an important resource, yet in this era, it is shared without restraint. Only with such open access to information could a civilization this brilliant be built. I can sense that the gods are no longer present on Earth. Perhaps this is one of the reasons; in a world ruled by divine power, things like this would have been seen as heresy, and anyone daring to create or even use them would have been executed.”

  “Gods are evil?” Luther asked.

  “Not quite. They are just like mortals; some are nice, some not, and in fact, very few of them are evil in the absolute sense or good without flaw. They are just another part of all living beings. And the ones who are even more insane usually are the people who follow them without question,” Acher explained. “I wish that he was still here to witness the Origin today.”

  Luther stroked the raven’s feathers, his touch gentle and soft.

  …

  West Esplanade Street was about a twenty-five-minute bus ride from the Ravenswood house. The boy checked the time; it was already 11:30 at night.

  Looking up at the pitch-black sky outside the window, Luther dressed in several layers of clothing before putting on a large, long cloak over him.

  “You look like a walking clothes rack,” Acher remarked.

  Luther:

  “…”

  He ignored him. If he didn’t dress this way, he would freeze to death. He closed the door behind him and headed to the bus stop, which was four blocks away.

  Walking through the streets of New York at night, especially in deserted and quiet neighborhoods like the one where Luther lived, always gave people a sense of unease.

  The next person you might encounter could be a mugger, a drug addict, or even a serial killer.

  However, Luther’s current appearance did not look the least bit harmless: his entire body and face were shrouded by a flowing pitch-black cloak, he carried a massive scythe on his back, and a black raven with glowing red eyes perched on his shoulder. Perhaps he was the one others would be afraid to run into.

  That is, if they could even see him.

  Luther managed to catch a bus after waiting for about fifteen minutes.

  Many bus and subway lines in the city operate twenty-four hours a day. However, at night, their frequency dropped to a fraction of what it was. During the day, a bus might arrive every ten to fifteen minutes, but after nightfall, it could be every twenty to thirty minutes, or even longer.

  Except for the main streets lined with restaurants, bars, and nightclubs, New York at late hours felt quiet in an unusual way, a stark contrast to the daytime hustle and bustle. On the bus, besides Luther, there were only two other passengers: one appeared to be a janitor who had just finished a late shift, and the other was a drunken young woman who was nodding off in her seat.

  The calm atmosphere on the bus was different from the busy mornings when Luther traveled to school; he enjoyed this feeling, though.

  When he got off, he left behind two one-dollar bills and three quarters next to the driver.

  “You foolish kid.” Acher clicked his tongue in disapproval.

  Luther ignored him.

  “If even you surrender to your own invisibility and use it to do the wrong thing, then that is the moment you will truly disappear from this world,” David had always reminded him of that ever since he was a child.

  After getting off at the bus stop, Luther walked another fifteen minutes to reach West Esplanade Street.

  “So slow. All the other reapers can jump through space, not to mention you’re an Ascended One as well. But never mind, they are all grown divine beings,” Acher said.

  “When you reach the level of an adept mage, you will be able to learn the spell of flying, and by then your magical power will be strong enough for you to travel back and forth across the city. That will save you a lot of time.”

  Fly? Luther’s eyes lit up at the thought.

  Have to reach the adept level as soon as possible! he thought to himself.

  West Esplanade was a rather desolate street. All of the houses there looked old and rundown. Scattered between them were a few empty lots overgrown with weeds, making the area appear bleak and forgotten, not much different from the street where the Ravenswood house stood.

  When Luther reached his destination, he realized he wasn’t the only one present at such a late hour.

  A group of people was standing on the sidewalk in front of house number 115.

  “Hello, everyone! Welcome back to the Midnight Billy channel. Tonight, my friends and I will be exploring the infamous Gray House on West Esplanade Street in New York. Let’s see if we can capture any ghosts on camera, or if it’s all just legends! Don’t forget to hit follow to watch more chilling and exciting content!”