Wednesday evening, six o’clock.

  On a quiet country road in the outskirts of New York, under the gentle golden glow of the winter moon, a small, strange group made their way along the street.

  They consisted of two teenage boys, a raven, three pumpkins, a stack of luggage, and two eggs inside a round ether-powered incubator.

  Studying the map on his EPhone, Aaron said:

  “Once we reach the end of this road and take a left, we’ll get there!”

  “Squeak, squeak!” Jack-O hopped forward, leading Squashy and Pompo as the three pumpkins bounced toward the turn and vanished around the corner.

  “Hey, slow down!” Aaron shouted after them.

  The two boys chased ahead and soon caught up, finding the pumpkin trio waiting in front of a large gate with a worn sign that read “Oakwood Cemetery.” The gate itself was made of heavy iron, though its once-dark green paint had peeled away in many places, revealing patches of reddish rust beneath.

  It was a medium-sized cemetery, stretching across several dozen acres. Scattered throughout were massive old oak trees, their crooked branches draped with long strands of Spanish moss swaying in the breeze. The narrow stone paths, grayish-blue in color, were covered in thick layers of fallen leaves, a clear sign that this place had been neglected for a long time.

  They hopped over the gate and moved between tombstones covered in moss and wild grass until they reached a towering grave more than fifteen feet high, crowned with a stone sculpture of a reindeer on its peak.

  “Eiselthon!”

  “Eiselthon!”

  “Squeak!”

  In an instant, the world around them shifted, and they had crossed over into the Dark Side. Here, the graves stood farther apart, with dozens of feet of empty ground between each, and a railway line cut straight through the cemetery.

  The place where they had just been transformed into an old train station.

  The floor was paved with uneven gray bricks. Small tufts of weeds sprouting from the cracks here and there. The roof above had faded tiles, many of which had already collapsed, leaving the rotting wooden beams exposed. Two long iron benches, thick with dust, were placed in the middle, facing one another.

  On the stained walls hung wooden signs so worn and faded that the words carved on them could hardly be read anymore. The air carried a damp, moldy smell, and the silence was so complete that the faint whistle of the wind slipping through broken window frames was easy to hear.

  In the far right corner stood a wooden ticket booth. As they got closer, the dim glow of an Etherlamp shone from within, revealing the bulky figure of someone slumped forward on the desk. The sound of that person’s snoring was so loud that the entire desk trembled with each breath.

  Sitting upon the counter beside the booth was a black cat. He sat still like a statue, and his striking emerald-green eyes stared at them without blinking.

  “Hello? Helloooo?” Aaron called out. “HELLOOO! EXCUSE ME!!!”

  The snoring did not lessen in the slightest. At last, the black cat let out a heavy, annoyed sigh, then lifted its left paw and slashed down hard.

  “Ouch! What the fuck was that, Eden??!”

  The ticket seller woke up, and the two boys now got a good look at her.

  She was a middle-aged woman with a round face and blonde hair tied up in a messy bun. She wore a navy-blue train ticketing uniform, crumpled like an old rag and speckled all over with cat fur. Pinned to her chest was a small name tag that read “Ticketing Agent - Aspasia Kleinos.”

  What stood out most about her was that her face bore just a single eye in the center, which now narrowed with irritation.

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  “One-eyed,” Acher remarked. “That’s a rare race of demi-humans. Back in the days before I was sealed, they mostly kept themselves hidden in remote sandrealms. I didn’t expect to see one here.”

  “Why did they have to hide?” Luther asked.

  “Because their eyes and brains are highly prized for potions, that’s also the reason why their kind is so scarce. And to be honest, they also taste delicious.” Acher licked his beak with a sharp click. “They have a very well-known branch of relatives, too: the cyclopes. The eyes of those giants are even more valuable, which made them rarer than pure-blooded dragons.”

  The ticketing lady groaned, rubbing her face in frustration.

  The black cat lifted its paw again, this time pointing toward Aaron and Luther. When the woman’s lone eye landed on the two boys, her irritation deepened. She had planned to sleep straight through for two whole weeks, yet it had only been three days, and she was already woken up.

  Still, Aspasia forced a polite smile, doing her best to act professional.

  “Good evening, dear customers. How may I help you?” she said.

  “Hello, ma’am. We’d like to buy tickets to Sicily,” Aaron replied.

  “Alright then, fifteen Aurion per person.” Her single eye swept over the two boys and the three pumpkins. “Although with this many of you traveling together, I’d recommend buying a private compartment instead. That would suit you better.”

  “How much for a private compartment?” Aaron asked.

  “Sixty-five Aurion.”

  “We’ll take one.” Luther made the decision.

  It was cheaper, and that way, the pumpkins won’t bother other people.

  “That’s perfect. I prefer a private cabin too, it’s so much more comfortable,” Aaron agreed, nodding as he tapped his card.

  Aspasia pulled out a black ticket edged with a thin strip of metal. She lifted the heavy stamp resting on the counter and pressed it down, leaving the mark of a reindeer emblazoned on the paper.

  “Thank you for your purchase. The next train will arrive in twenty minutes. I hope you have a great trip.”

  “Thank you too, ma’am!” Aaron replied with a cheerful grin.

  From the counter, the black cat glanced at the two boys waiting on the bench. Lowering his voice, he spoke:

  “These kids must be descendants of some noble bloodline. The brown-haired one irritates me for some reason, and the black-haired boy… even though he hides it quite well, I can still sense it. He carries a dark magic so pure that even I have never felt anything like it before.”

  “Even you have never encountered it?” Aspasia muttered, eye narrowed.

  …

  “So this is the legendary Orion Route?” Aaron’s eyes wandered around the old station, his face lighting up with both excitement and curiosity. “I heard it’s been running since the Golden Age. It’s hard to believe something that ancient could last all the way until now.”

  Acher replied:

  “That’s not totally correct. Back in the old days, it was just a collection of many separate routes. It wasn’t until the closing years of the Era of Enlightenment that all of them were joined together into one unified line.”

  “Oh, that’s interesting! And I read online that, until about a hundred years ago, this railway was still the main means of transportation for supernatural creatures across Earth. It only started to decline once airplanes became common,” Aaron said. “Compared to the Orion Express, planes are safer, more convenient, faster, and even cheaper. Nowadays, the Orion Express is used mostly by non-human creatures for whom traveling by plane isn’t convenient. I wonder why they didn’t try to turn this place into an air route instead? At first, it was just a dirt path for horse-drawn carriages, and then later it grew into a railway anyway. Why not the skies?”

  Acher shook his head. “It isn’t that simple. The sky of the Shadow World is filled with dangers beyond imagination. Without divine beings guarding the routes, developing a safe path for air travel is almost impossible.”

  “So that’s the reason. I also heard that because this route holds enormous historical value, both the Council and Olympus have agreed to keep it running.”

  Off in the distance, beside a cracked tombstone, Jack-O pressed his vines over his eyes and began to count aloud:

  “Ten… nine… eight…”

  Squashy and Pompo darted off quickly, searching for hiding spots. The pumpkins were playing hide-and-seek.

  In the darkness of night, beneath the pale light of the moon, inside an abandoned cemetery, a few pumpkins with glowing eyes and fiery mouths laughed and played among the gravestones. Not far away, two boys sat and chatted while watching them, with a raven perched, scrolling through a phone screen.

  The scene as a whole formed a strange picture, carrying an eerie edge softened by a quiet warmth.

  “Choo choo choo …” the long echo of a train whistle drifted in from afar.

  Luther summoned some shadow hands, controlling them, reaching outward to seize the three pumpkins and lift them back toward his side.

  Along the railway line, a train rolled closer. It was enormous, stretching out with around fifty carriages, each wide and tall, all coated in a deep gray layer of paint. The engine at the very front carried the shape of a reindeer’s head, its massive antlers forged entirely of dark silver, cold and unyielding.

  “Squeak, so big!” Jack-O’s mouth opened into a perfect round circle of awe.

  The train’s body was wrapped in a black iron frame carved with swirling patterns, giving the whole machine a look of strength and safety. Luther and Aaron directed their gaze toward the locomotive and spotted the driver, a strange creature indeed.

  Its body was translucent orange, wobbling like a block of jelly, with two perfectly round eyes and a wide mouth clenched around a cigar as long as an arm. On its head sat a dark brown cap with the words “Orion Express” embroidered across the front.

  “Luther, look! That’s a slime!” Aaron shouted with delight, raising his phone high.