It's been a while since I made a new chapter... As you may already know, this fanfic is a direct sequel to the fanfic 'Professor Layton and the White Atlamillia' that I had started last year and is the second story of the unofficial 'third trilogy'. That being said, there will be spoilers from the first story as well as spoilers from nearly ALL of the official games. You have been warned!

It had been about six months since Professor Layton's previous adventure and everyone had attempted to return to their normal lives after the Snow Tower Cataclysm as best as they could. However, it would not be so simple to do that since the incident had irrevocably affected the lives of everyone involved long after the incident subsided.

Luke Triton was doing what he could to help his mother after his father's death and had been living with Professor Layton and Flora ever since the incident. The memories of seeing his father's dead body was plagued him at times, but Luke had matured to an extent since the ordeal. Also, he was brought to grief counseling immediately after he had arrived back at London and still goes there on a fortnight basis. Other than that, Luke is mostly the same helpful and aspiring young man that he had always been.

Speaking of Luke's mother, Brenda was not as fortunate as Luke was. Although her physical injuries have long since healed from the incident, her emotional injuries have not. Like Luke, she was also taken to grief counseling after her physical injuries were healed. Unfortunately, despite Luke's and everyone else's best efforts to try to cheer her up, her husband's death had left her into a deep brooding depression that she had still not returned from. Every once in a while, she would seem perfectly fine at one moment, and then the next moment, she would immediately burst into tears or even manic fits of laughter. There were also a few moments when she referred to Luke as 'Clark' by mistake... These are actually common traits of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and people don't usually fully heal from that during their lives.

Despite Flora's horrible physical injuries since the incident, she was without a doubt, the least emotionally burdened one of the group. The burns on her face have healed completely and the stitches had been removed. There were only slight marks on her face which were barely visible at all and they can easily be covered with make-up if necessary. She was pretty much the same young lady that she had always been: always wanting to be around company and terrible at cooking. However, most people were reluctant to actually tell Flora about her cooking due to not wanting to hurt her feelings.

There was also a very notable inclusion to the quirky cast. During the professor's previous adventure, he befriended a highly intelligent panda bear whom is capable of speech. He refers to himself only as 'Travis' and his most notable qualities are his stunted size compared to other members of his species and his use of vulgar and profane language. These qualities are notable simply because he's only about four feet tall and almost nobody else uses vulgar language in this video game series ever. He also once had a profession for hunting and destroying supernatural entities before he went out of business after the end of the Snow Tower Cataclysm. He had also lost his left eye after it had been forcibly plucked out, but it had since been replaced with a prosthetic. Now, he had lived with Professor Layton for about six months because he's one of the few humans who don't have any bigotry against intelligent animals.

Finally, the titular professor himself... Professor Layton had changed the most from his previous adventure. For starters, even though he is only 39 years old, his body had aged considerably to the point that he had appeared over 80 years old! This had all happened because he had willingly sacrificed his own body and youth to save an innocent undead spirit that was trapped within the Snow Tower for over a decade. As a result, the spirit is now contained within the professor's body because his life literally depends on its presence within him at all times. If the spirit were to ever leave his body for even a brief moment, he would die. He had also lost many qualities that most people would take for granted, such as the ability to taste food or drink of any kind, feel any sensation on his body whatsoever, or even sleep! In essence, Professor Layton had lost his very humanity! Despite all of these negative qualities, the professor does not seem to truly have any regrets for his fateful decision. It is implied that he was once very close with this spirit in life and the two continue to hold some sort of partnership with one another. Because of the professor's drastic change in physical appearance, he does not make public appearances as often as he had used to. Admittedly, he was not one for being a slave to publicity anyways. Regardless, he still regularly performs his duties as a college professor and scholar as if nothing had changed. He doesn't particularly enjoy speaking about his prematurely aged condition, but nearly everyone he know reacts with utter shock or horror after the first time they see him again. After a while, rumors started to spread about the professor's condition. Some say that a puff of smoke or mist comes out of his mouth on occasion. Others say that the professor's eyes actually glow in a light blue color on occasion. It is unclear to the public whether or not these rumors truly occur, but the professor had already accomplish many great deeds in his life, so it seemed plausible...

Now, a new adventure will soon begin... The professor had received a handwritten letter that came from Aurich, Germany.

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Dear Hershel Layton,

I have heard of your renown of your intellect as well as your willingness to aid others in need and I believe that you would be the perfect man to aid the Auric Dominion of our endeavor. Recently, it has come to our attention that Cattleya Auric, the only legitimate heir to the Auric throne, is haunted by what appears to be a malicious spirit. As Cattleya's well being will help determine the future of Aurich in the decades to come, this is a grave matter that must be dealt with great haste! Should you accept this invitation, you shall be fully compensated for time and travel.

Please write back with your answer to our proposal at your earliest convenience!

Sincerely,

M. A.

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The professor was actually reluctant to go solve another mystery... After all of the suffering that had befallen everyone since the previous adventure had made the professor consider giving up travelling completely for the sake of watching over Luke and Flora, and to a lesser extent, Travis. However, this mystery had mentioned a 'malicious spirit' that may be similar to the enormous number of spirits that were trapped within the Snow Tower six months ago. This may lead to the possibility that the man responsible for the Snow Tower Cataclysm, Asimeous Queens, may have some involvement with this as well. After all, there aren't many people in the world that is gifted with the ability to control dead spirits. Although the professor is not a vengeful man by nature, Asimeous captured thousands of spirits for the sake of understand the cycle of life and death and conducted horrible and unethical experiments on them for a very long time! As the other spirit within the professor could describe it, it was truly worse than death itself! With that, the professor had accepted the proposal. It was not for vengeance, but for the hope that nobody, either living or dead, would ever have to suffer the same way ever again!

All this first chapter is meant to be is a prologue for this story, so nothing really happened yet. Here's a fun fact: there really is a district in Germany called Aurich in real life! Hopefully, I will post one chapter every week, but due to college starting in a couple of days and my busy work schedule, that may not always happen. As always, feel free to review!