Chapter 297

Chapter 297.

Madam Mary, Morris’s wife, stared at the envelope for a long time before taking up a letter opener from the side and carefully slitting it open.

A thin folded sheet of paper slid out of the envelope. Before unfolding it, Madam Mary first noticed the uneven marks pressed into the back of the sheet.

They were the traces of handwriting—someone had pressed so hard with the pen that the strokes were clearly ridged on the back.

The person who wrote this letter must have been in a state of extreme agitation.

Sitting by the fireplace, the old lady adjusted her posture slightly, put the letter she had already finished reading onto the small round table beside her, and glanced at the date stamp on the envelope from Frostholm in her hand.

The sending date on this letter was December 5th.

It had been mailed on the third day after the first letter—in just three short days, the already “deceased” Brown Scott had written this second letter.

Madam Mary unfolded the paper. A few lines of scrawled, tangled writing came into view—nothing like the elegant, neat script in the first letter that folklorist had sent her a few days earlier. In these few short lines, the page was filled with the writer’s deep unease and terror:

“My friend, something… is wrong. I don’t know how to explain it to you. I’m very confused right now, I can barely even think. My mind is being disturbed by something, my memories… Don’t come to Frostholm! In any case, you must not come to Frostholm! Even if you later see other things I’ve written to you, see other kinds of invitations, you must not come to Frostholm!

“There’s a huge conspiracy here.

“Don’t come to Frostholm!”

There wasn’t even a signature at the end of the note, and even the stamp on the envelope had been stuck on crooked.

Madam Mary stared at those few messy lines, and she could almost picture it: a folklorist whose mind had already cracked under a terrible tear in his understanding, using the last of his reason to write down these words, then staggering out into Frostholm’s bitter wind and struggling to hand the letter over at the post office.

She slowly folded the paper again and slid it back into the envelope.

It was a disturbing letter. The whole affair was soaked in a dreadful atmosphere from beginning to end. Under normal circumstances, it would have been enough to send its recipient running to the Cathedral to seek refuge.

But Madam Mary’s gaze drifted instead to the small round table beside her, to the family letter from the Vanished lying there—

“…The Deep Sea spawn really do have a unique flavor, far fresher than ordinary fish. The captain has mastered a special cooking technique, and Anomaly 099—Miss Alice—has learned its essence. I might have to try it myself…”

The old woman quietly tossed the letter from Frostholm into the fireplace beside her and watched as it burned quickly in the bright flames, turning to ash.

“They’ve already left…”

She murmured softly, then rose, took ink, a steel pen, and writing paper from the nearby shelf, and began to write a letter—one that would be delivered to the antique shop in the Lower City.

…

Church staff in black coats were walking all over the cemetery, examining every trace that remained here. Every path, every coffin, every lamp post had been marked and sampled, in the hope of reconstructing what had happened in this place last night.

“Gatekeeper” Agatha, however, stayed inside the warden’s hut. Sitting opposite her was the gloomy, stooped old caretaker.

After an unknown amount of time, the young woman—her body bandaged over in most places—raised her head and glanced out the window. She saw the Sun already sinking, and a faint reddish glow was spreading across the sky over the whole city?state.

Evening was approaching. The Guardians she had brought had already been working in the cemetery for several hours, and the old caretaker in front of her had also sat in silence for several hours.

Strictly speaking, the old caretaker wasn’t only silent—he remained in a state of near total mental closure. He did not move, did not speak, did not respond to any outside stimulus. From the moment the Church Guardians received the report and arrived here, he had been sitting quietly in that chair, like a breathing statue of flesh and blood.

A guard in black pushed open the wooden door of the warden’s hut, came over to Agatha, and bent down to whisper a report. She nodded slightly: “Understood. Send the samples to the great Cathedral first. Keep the scene as it is. Tonight may be crucial—we need people to stand watch.”

The black?clad guard nodded and accepted the order, but before he left, he couldn’t help glancing at the old man sitting motionless in the chair. Seeing those turbid eyes, as if frozen in place, the young guard’s face showed clear unease: “How long is he… going to stay like this? Is he really going to be all right?”

“It’s a protective mental shutdown. He’s using it to fight off and clear out the corruption in himself—and maybe to protect us as well,” Agatha said quietly. “The Gravekeeper must have come into contact last night with something far beyond imagination. It’s like he clawed his way back from the edge of madness… But don’t worry. He’s an experienced Warrior. He’s already managed to stabilize his condition. He’ll be fine.”

She paused, then added: “As for how long this state will last… that’s hard to say. It might end in the next second, or it might last until this time tomorrow. It depends on how long he was exposed to that terrible corruption.”

The guard thought for a moment and lifted his head to look out the window. Through the somewhat grimy glass, he could see the Church staff hurrying along the paths outside.

Then he drew his gaze back and looked at the two corpses in the hut—two intruders who had already been confirmed as Annihilators. They had obviously died at the old caretaker’s hands. Because the situation was still unclear, and in order to protect the scene, the bodies had been left where they fell.

They couldn’t be the reason for the old caretaker’s mental shutdown. Even the Demons behind them, in full runaway state, did not have that level of impact.

So what had done it? Some more powerful Abyssal Demon? A higher?ranking priest behind the Annihilators? Or something else altogether?

The black?clad guard voiced his questions, but Agatha only shook her head: “No. It’s probably something even more bizarre and dangerous.”

“Why are you so sure?” the guard asked without thinking.

“Because at the scene there were only traces left by a few heretic cultists, plus a pile of carcass fragments that appear to be from ‘Restless Ones’, with no remaining supernatural reaction at all,” Agatha said calmly. “No observable traces left behind means…”

“It means last night’s visitor didn’t do anything. It merely existed in this cemetery for a brief moment, and that alone was enough to push this old man to the edge of mental collapse.”

The old man’s voice suddenly sounded inside the hut, cutting across the exchange between the guard and the Gatekeeper. Agatha immediately turned toward the sound. Her usually blank face showed a faint smile at last: “You’ve come back to us. Good.”

“I wouldn’t dare say I’ve completely recovered,” the old caretaker said slowly. He was gradually steadying all the shifted perceptions that came with reopening his mind. He looked into Agatha’s eyes, consciously blocking out the leaping afterimages behind her. “But at least I can still tell which parts belong to the Mortal Realm and which parts belong to madness.”

“That’s enough,” Agatha nodded. “What happened yesterday?”

“The corpse you sent here suddenly grew agitated. It said a lot of things, clear?headed as if it were alive. Then four Annihilators came into the cemetery, wanting to take that Restless One away—they used the power of Abyssal Demons to disguise themselves. Their skills were polished; they were veteran Summoners. They slipped past my eyes, but not my instincts.

“I lured two of them here and killed them—that’s those two on the floor. I was just about to head back into the cemetery to deal with the other two when the unexpected happened.”

The old caretaker lifted his head and looked toward the door.

“An indescribable… Visitor came,” he said. “I looked into Its eyes for a while—it may have only been a few seconds. My sense of time was broken, so I can’t be sure.”

“An indescribable Visitor?” Agatha couldn’t help frowning. “Can you be a bit more specific?”

The old caretaker tried hard to recall.

Only a jumble of chaotic light and an overwhelming roar surfaced in his mind.

His hurried mental shutdown had erased the temporary corruption he had suffered, but it had also washed away some useful memories.

“No. All I remember are chaotic lights and noise,” the old caretaker shook his head. “And even if I could accurately describe what I saw, it wouldn’t mean anything to you. What I see isn’t necessarily real, and even if it is real, it isn’t necessarily the same reality other people see. As humans, our ways of perceiving things are far too limited.”

“All right, then that’s our whole answer,” Agatha nodded. “An indescribable Visitor came to the cemetery at the final stage, but didn’t take any active destructive actions… Are you sure you want to use the word ‘visit’ in the report? It’s a neutral term, even leaning friendly.”

“I’m sure,” the old caretaker replied calmly. “I spoke with It, though we barely managed to exchange anything at all. The Visitor did try to communicate. That’s a signal that’s neutral, leaning friendly.”

“Understood. I’ll record it that way,” Agatha nodded again. “And then? Anything else?”

“After the Visitor left, I vaguely saw that It left something behind… on the path by the door,” the old caretaker said, thinking as he spoke. “But I couldn’t make it out. My vision was already badly damaged by then, and my cognition was in chaos. I’m not sure…”

“If you mean a pile of remains burned up by backlash from Abyssal Demons, we’ve found it,” Agatha interrupted calmly. “If we’re right, that should be the Visitor’s… ‘vessel’.”