A small figure was standing at the entrance of the cemetery - it was a girl who looked about eleven or twelve years old, wearing a dark brown woolen coat and a black skirt, warm little cotton boots and thick gloves.
She seemed to have been waiting at the entrance of the cemetery for a long time. Snow began to fall in the frosty city-state in the evening. A lot of snowflakes had fallen on the gray woolen hat on the girl's head, and a slight heat was rising in the dusk snow.
The little girl stomped her feet lightly on the spot, and from time to time she looked towards the slope opposite the cemetery. When the caretaker appeared, she suddenly laughed and waved her hand vigorously in this direction.
"……here we go again."
When the old guard saw the girl, he couldn't help but grumbled, his tone seemed a little impatient, but he still quickened his pace slightly and came to the girl.
"Annie," the old man frowned and looked at the girl in front of him, "you came here alone again - how many times have I told you that the cemetery is not a place where a child like you can come alone, especially in a
It's approaching dusk."
"I already told my mother," the girl known as Annie responded with a smile, "she said I just need to go home before curfew."
The old guard quietly stared at the little girl who was smiling in front of him.
Most people here don't like the guards of the cemetery, and they don't like to be close to this weird and dangerous place, but there are always surprises in the world - for example, a little girl who is not afraid of her.
"Grandpa Caretaker, is my father here?" Anne raised her head, and in the falling snowflakes at dusk, she looked expectantly at the stooped old man in black in front of her, with those cloudy eyes that made most people afraid.
It doesn't make her feel nervous.
"...No," the old guard replied as always, his voice as cold and hard as the wind swirling in the cemetery, "He won't arrive today."
Annie was not frustrated, she just smiled as usual: "Then I'll ask again tomorrow."
"He won't come tomorrow either."
Anne still raised her head: "But he will always come, right?"
This time, the old man, who always had a cold attitude, finally remained silent for a moment. It wasn't until snowflakes fell on his eyebrows that his cloudy and dark eyes turned slightly: "The dead will eventually gather in the cemetery, and they will be buried under that door.
There is eternal peace across the way—but not necessarily an earthly cemetery, and not necessarily this one.”
"Oh," Anne agreed, but she didn't seem to take it seriously at all. She just turned her head, glanced at the locked gate, and asked curiously, "Can I go in and have a look? I want to stay in your cabin.
Let’s bake in the fire…”
"Not today," the old man shook his head. "Cemetery No. 3 is under special conditions. There are church guards stationed there. It is not open to the public today - you should go home, girl."
"...Okay," Anne nodded a little frustrated, and then she dug into her small bag and took out a small bag of things wrapped in rough paper and handed it to the old man, "Then this is for you -
Mom baked the cookies, she said I couldn't cause trouble all the time."
The old man looked at the things in the girl's hands and the snowflakes on her body.
He stretched out his hand, took the biscuit, and then patted the other person's wool hat casually, flicking the snowflakes off: "I'll accept it, you can go home early."
"Okay, Grandpa Caretaker."
Annie smiled and nodded, straightened her scarf and gloves, and then walked towards the path leading to the urban residential area.
But just when she took a few steps, the old guard suddenly turned around: "Annie."
"ah?"
"Annie, you are twelve years old," the old man stood in the dusk, looking calmly into the girl's eyes. "Do you still believe what I told you when you were six years old?"
The girl stopped and stared blankly at the cemetery caretaker.
The dead will all come to this cemetery - no matter how separated they were in life, Bartok's foyer will be the place where they finally reunite.
This sentence is written in the church's classics. However, when faced with the same proverb, adults and six-year-old children will always have different understandings.
Twelve-year-old Anne stood blankly for a long time. The cemetery guard in black stood at the tall and locked gate like a cold iron statue. Fine snowflakes were flying between them, and the coldness of winter filled the air.
In the dusk.
But suddenly, Annie laughed and waved to the old man with a smile: "Then just think that I am here to see you specially - mother said that elderly people need someone to talk to often."
The little girl turned and ran away, floating as lightly as a sparrow across the gradually snowy path. She slipped at the end of the slope, but immediately got up and patted the snowflakes and dust on her skirt and warm pants.
Left quickly.
"...an old man..." The old guard looked at the girl's leaving figure and waited until she ran away before muttering, "This kid also has evil intentions."
"It's a little worse to expose a child's expectations than that," a young and slightly hoarse female voice suddenly came from the side, interrupting the old guard's muttering, "You didn't have to say that just now - a twelve-year-old
My child, she should understand that she has gradually understood that sometimes we don’t need hard-hearted adults like us to expose the truth.”
The old guard turned around and saw Agatha, the "gatekeeper" dressed in black with a bandage under the black clothes, standing at the gate of the cemetery at some point, and the previously locked cemetery gate had also been opened.
He shook his head: "Let her continue to expect that her father will be sent to this cemetery, and then she runs to this ghost place alone on this snowy and cold day?"
"Isn't it good? At least you looked warm when you were talking to that kid."
"...This is not something a gatekeeper should say."
Agatha shook her head, said nothing, turned and walked towards the inner path of the cemetery.
The old guard followed him. He first turned around and locked the door, then went to his guard's hut to put away the things he had purchased, completed the handover with the day guard, and then came to the morgue in the cemetery.
area, and found the "gatekeeper" who had already arrived here first.
Compared with before, the current morgue is obviously much empty. Most of the stone platforms are empty at the moment, with only a few simple coffins placed on a few platforms at the edge.
And around those few coffins, there are at least two church guards standing next to each platform, and pitch-black canes can be seen everywhere in the open space between the platforms - black canes are the signature equipment of the guards of the Church of Death. They will
The cane is inserted into the ground nearby, and a sacred lantern is hung from the top of the cane to maintain a small "sacred area", which can effectively combat the pollution forces from higher beings.
Dusk is already deep at this time, and the snowy sky makes the sky much darker than usual at this time. In the increasingly dim cemetery, the lanterns hanging on the tops of walking sticks burn quietly like phosphorous fire, emitting a quiet but yet peaceful atmosphere.
Eerie atmosphere.
"We have made a lot of preparations here, but it seems that the 'visitor' has no intention of returning here in the short term," Agatha said casually after seeing the old guard appear, "Can you confirm that the 'visitor'
Did he ever reveal any information that he would come again?"
"You should believe in the hypnosis skills of professional psychiatrists," the old guard shrugged, and then added after a pause, "I can't remember most of what happened that day, and the buzzing noises are gradually disappearing.
It disappeared from my mind, but after several hypnosis sessions, I was able to recall some things...the clearest of them was the intention of revisiting that the 'visitor' revealed before he left."
Agatha was silent for two or three seconds, and then she thought softly and then said softly: "But there is another possibility. For a superior being like that, his concept of time is very likely to be different from that of mortals - what he said about visiting again,
It could be tomorrow, it could be a few years later, or it could be after your death, in some way that transcends life and death, to contact you."
"...Can you wish me a better life?"
"This is the result of discussions by the Vatican advisory group."
The old guard snorted noncommittally and glanced at the black-clad guards in the cemetery and the lanterns burning quietly on the tops of canes.
"... I just hope that these arrangements will not anger the 'visitor', and will not be considered by him as some kind of offense or 'trap' - in the final analysis, we know too little about him."
“All these arrangements are just our self-protection,” Agatha said. “After all, even though you said that you inhaled too much incense that caused you to lose control of your spiritual vision, none of us knew.
Does that 'visitor' have the tendency to actively release mental pollution? If we want to face the supernatural directly, we must at least ensure our own sanity."
The old guard was noncommittal, but after pondering for a moment, he suddenly changed the subject: "Have you reached any conclusions from the investigation of the samples you took away before?"
"Are you talking about the cultists, or the pile of 'corpses' that melted into mud?"
"Both."
"There is nothing to say about those cultists. The minions of the Annihilation Sect, the extraordinary beings who have deeply symbiotic with the devil - are quite powerful. It would be very dangerous for ordinary church guards to face them. Unfortunately, those heretics obviously lack good luck, and
As for the 'mud'..."
Agatha paused after saying this, her expression a little strange.
"Their 'evolution', in fact, has not stopped yet. As of the time I left the cathedral, those things were still taking on new forms and properties. In the past period of time, they even briefly took on a metal-like appearance.
And the state of the rock, it feels...actually like something that the Annihilation cultists often mention in their heresies."
The old guard slowly frowned: "You mean...'original elements'?"
"The true essence, the purest and most holy substance, the 'drop of reality' given to the world by the Holy Lord of the Deep - this is how the heretics described it," Agatha said with no trace of disgust and sarcasm in her tone, "Beautiful words