Chapter 321

Chapter 321: A Snowy Day.

A small figure stood at the cemetery gate. It was a girl of about eleven or twelve, wearing a dark brown wool coat and a black skirt, with warm little winter boots and thick gloves. She seemed to have been waiting at the gate for a long time. Snow had started falling over Frostholm in the evening. A fair amount of snowflakes had already gathered on the gray knitted cap on her head, and faint warmth rose from her in the twilight snow.

The girl lightly stamped her feet where she stood and sometimes leaned forward to look down the slope opposite the cemetery. When she saw the warden appear, she broke into a smile at once and waved hard in his direction.

“…Here she is again.”

The Old Caretaker could not help muttering when he saw the girl. There was a trace of impatience in his tone, but he still quickened his pace a little and walked up to her.

“Annie,” the old man said, frowning as he looked at the young lady in front of him. “You came here alone again. How many times have I told you that a cemetery is not a place for a little child like you to come by yourself, especially when it is close to dusk?”

“I already told my mother,” the girl called Annie answered with a grin. “She said it’s fine as long as I go home before curfew.”

The Old Caretaker quietly watched the smiling young lady in front of him.

Most people here did not like the cemetery wardens. They liked it even less when they had to come close to this eerie and dangerous place. But the world always had its exceptions – for example, a young lady who was not afraid of him.

“Grandpa Caretaker, has my dad been brought here yet?” Annie tilted her head back. Snowflakes fell at dusk, and in that falling snow she looked up at the hunched old man in black with full expectation. The cloudy eyes that made most people feel afraid did not make her nervous at all.

“…No,” the Old Caretaker answered as he always did. His voice was as cold and hard as the wind circling in the graveyard. “He will not arrive today.”

Annie did not look disappointed. She smiled as usual. “Then I’ll come and ask again tomorrow.”

“He won’t come tomorrow either.”

Annie still lifted her head. “But he will come one day, right?”

This time, the old man who always sounded so cold finally fell silent for a moment. Only when snow landed on his eyebrows did his cloudy, dark eyes move slightly. “The dead will always gather in cemeteries and, beyond that gate, enjoy peace forever. But it may not be in a cemetery of this world, and it may not be this particular cemetery.”

“Oh.” Annie answered softly, but she did not seem to take the words to heart. She only turned her head, glanced at the locked iron gate, then asked with curiosity: “Can I go inside and take a look? I want to warm myself by the fire in your little house…”

“Not today.” The old man shook his head. “Cemetery No. 3 is in a special state. Church Guardians are stationed inside. It is not open to visitors today. You should go home, young lady.”

“…All right.” Annie nodded, a little disappointed. Then she reached into the small bag she carried and took out a small package wrapped in rough paper. She held it out to the old man. “Then this is for you. My mother baked these cookies. She said I shouldn’t always be causing trouble.”

The old man looked at the thing in her hand, then at the snow on her clothes.

He reached out, took the cookies, then casually patted her wool cap, brushing the snow from it. “I’ll accept them. You should go home early.”

“Okay, Grandpa Caretaker.”

Annie nodded with a smile. She straightened her scarf and gloves, then started toward the little path that led back to the residential districts of the city.

But she had taken only a few steps when the Old Caretaker suddenly turned and called to her: “Annie.”

“Eh?”

“Annie, you are twelve years old now,” the old man said. He stood in the twilight and looked calmly into the girl’s eyes. “Do you still believe the words I told you when you were six?”

The girl stopped and stared at the cemetery warden in a daze.

The dead would all come to this cemetery. No matter how they had wandered and been scattered in life, Bartok’s Hall would be the place of their final gathering.

Those words were written in the scriptures of the Church. But when they faced that same line of teaching, adults and a six-year-old child would always have different understandings.

Twelve-year-old Annie stood there for a long time, staring. The black-clad cemetery warden stood at the tall, locked gate like a cold iron statue. Snowflakes fluttered between them. The chill of winter filled the dusk.

Then suddenly, Annie smiled. She waved at the old man and said: “Then just think I’m here to see you. My mother says older people need someone to talk to now and then.”

The young lady turned and ran off, light as a small bird as she flitted along the path where snow was starting to gather. She slipped once at the end of the slope, but she got up at once, patted the snow and dust from her skirt and warm pants, and hurried away.

“…Older people…” The Old Caretaker watched the girl’s receding figure. Only when she had run far away did he start to mutter. “This child has picked up some bad tricks.”

“Breaking a child’s hope is a bit worse than that,” a young, slightly hoarse woman’s voice suddenly came from the side, cutting off the Old Caretaker’s grumbling. “You didn’t need to say those words just now. A twelve-year-old child is already starting to understand what she should. Sometimes we hard-hearted grown-ups don’t need to tear every truth open in front of them.”

The Old Caretaker turned and saw a black-clad “Gatekeeper”, Agatha, already standing at the cemetery gate without him noticing. Bandages were wrapped under her black clothes, and the gate that had been locked a moment ago was now open.

He shook his head. “Let her keep hoping that her father will be sent to this cemetery, and then let her come alone to this cursed place on a snowy, freezing day?”

“Is that so bad? At least when you talk to that child, you look like you still have some warmth.”

“…That doesn’t sound like something a Gatekeeper should say.”

Agatha shook her head and said nothing. She turned and walked along the inner path of the cemetery.

The Old Caretaker followed. He first turned back to lock the gate again, then went to his warden’s hut to put away the things he had bought. After he finished handing the shift over to the day warden, he went to the mortuary area inside the cemetery and found the Gatekeeper, who had already gone ahead.

Compared to before, the mortuary yard was clearly much more empty. Most of the stone platforms were bare now. Only a few of the platforms near the edge still held plain wooden coffins.

Around those few coffins, at least two Church Guards stood by each platform. In the open areas between the platforms, black Gatekeeper’s canes were stuck into the ground. The black Gatekeeper’s cane was the mark of a guardian of the Death God’s Church. They planted the canes into the earth nearby and hung holy consecrated lanterns from the tops. In this way they kept a small area of Sanctum, which could effectively resist the forces of corruption that came from Higher Beings.

dusk had deepened, and the snowy weather made the sky far darker than on a normal day at this time. In the steadily darkening cemetery, the consecrated lanterns hanging from the tops of the Gatekeeper’s canes burned quietly like ghostly fire, filling the place with a still, eerie atmosphere.

“We have done quite a lot of preparation here, but it seems our ‘visitor’ has no plans to return anytime soon,” Agatha said casually when she saw the Old Caretaker arrive. “Are you sure that ‘visitor’ really mentioned the intention to come again?”

“You should trust the hypnosis skills of a professional psychiatrist,” the Old Caretaker said, shrugging. After a short pause, he added, “I can’t remember most of what happened that day. Those buzzing noises are also slowly fading from my mind. But after several rounds of hypnosis, I can recall a few things… The clearest of them is that the ‘visitor’ did reveal an intention to visit again before leaving.”

Agatha stayed silent for two or three seconds. After thinking, she said softly: “But there is another possibility. A Higher Being’s sense of time is very likely not the same as a mortal’s. When They speak of returning, it might mean tomorrow, or it might mean several years from now. More likely, it might mean after you are dead, when They reach you in some way that goes beyond life and death.”

“…Can’t you hope for something better for me?”

“This is the conclusion of the Holy See’s advisory council.”

The Old Caretaker only gave a vague grunt in reply. His eyes moved over the black-clad guards in the cemetery and the consecrated lanterns burning quietly on top of the Gatekeeper’s canes.

“…I only hope these arrangements don’t anger that ‘visitor’,” he said at last. “I hope They don’t see this as some kind of insult or trap. In the end, we know far too little about Them.”

“All these arrangements are only for our own protection,” Agatha said. “After all, even though you say you fell into a Spirit Sight runaway state just because you breathed in too much incense, none of us knows whether that ‘visitor’ has any tendency to actively release spiritual corruption. If we want to face a high-ranking supernatural, we must at least make sure of our own sanity.”

The Old Caretaker neither agreed nor denied it. After a short moment of thought, he suddenly changed the subject. “Those samples you took away earlier – have you found any conclusions?”

“Do you mean those cultists, or that heap of ‘corpses’ that melted into sludge?”

“Both.”

“As for those cultists, there isn’t much to say. They were claws of the Cult of Annihilation, supernatural individuals who had already formed deep symbiotic pacts with demons. Their strength was impressive. An ordinary Church Guard would be in great danger fighting any one of them. Sadly, those heretics clearly lacked good luck. As for that ‘sludge’…”

Agatha paused here, and her expression turned a little strange.

“Their ‘evolution’ has in fact not stopped even now. By the time I left the Great Cathedral, those things were still showing new forms and properties. In the recent period, they even briefly took on states similar to metal and stone. The feeling they gave… was almost like a certain thing those Annihilators often mention in their heretic teachings.”

The Old Caretaker slowly furrowed his brow. “You mean… ‘elements’?”

“The true essence, the purest and holiest matter, the ‘drops of reality’ that the Abyssal Lord gifted to the mortal world – that’s how those heretics describe it.” Agatha’s voice held open disgust and mockery. “Such beautiful words, put in their mouths, are simply sickening.”