Chapter 339

Chapter 339: Agatha’s Investigation.

The Visitor left as suddenly as he had arrived.

The cemetery’s Old Caretaker stood there in a daze. He stared at the place where the flame had faded, his mind still full of all the information the other had revealed in their brief conversation. Only when Annie tugged at his sleeve beside him did the old man suddenly come back to himself.

He lowered his head and saw Annie looking at him uneasily. In the girl’s eyes there was not only helplessness, but also tension and confusion.

Perhaps she already understood what it meant to part from someone forever, but she could not yet fully understand what had just happened.

The Old Caretaker bent down, his aged, stiff joints aching slightly in the winter cold. He reached out and brushed the snow from Annie’s shoulder as he said: “Annie, do not be afraid. Nothing bad has happened.”

“Grandpa Caretaker…” The girl’s lips moved as she tried to find words, but she did not know where to begin. “That person just now…”

“Do not ask too much and do not think too much. Just like the textbooks say, do not pry into knowledge that is not open to mortals—you only need to know that that was a Visitor. He bore you no ill will. Now He has left, and any connection between you and Him ends here.”

“Then my dad…”

“Your father may have done something very great—beyond anything any of us can imagine,” the Old Caretaker said softly, placing his hand gently on the girl’s hair. “Annie, do not worry anymore. He no longer drifts on the sea. He has gone to a better place. Go back and tell your mother. She has been waiting for this news for a long time.”

Annie pressed her lips together. After hesitating for a long time, she asked quietly: “This time… it is real?”

“It is real,” the Old Caretaker said with a smile. “You are no longer a six-year-old child.”

Annie nodded, half understanding, then said goodbye to the cemetery’s Old Caretaker. She turned and walked toward the little path that led back to the streets, following the ruts in the road that had not yet frozen into ice. She walked slowly in the direction of home, slowly blending into the silver-white backdrop of the city.

At the cemetery gate, the Old Caretaker watched the path for a long time. Only when Annie’s figure vanished at the corner did he let out a soft breath.

The child had not slipped and fallen this time.

Then he raised his hand and pressed lightly against the item in his pocket. A letter that seemed to hold countless secrets lay there in silence.

A letter from an unspeakable visitor. Even material that looked ordinary might carry unimaginable knowledge and mysteries. What did this letter really mean?

The Old Caretaker’s expression grew serious. He turned and went back into the cemetery, waving a hand behind him. The heavy iron gate creaked shut.

The cemetery would not open again today.

…

Agatha looked sternly at the scattered fragments on the ground. The cold wind that kept blowing from the mouth of the alley stirred her long hair and seeped through the gaps in her clothing and bandages. In that bone-chilling air, it felt as if the terror and despair of the two Annihilators at the moment of death still hung, frozen.

Several black-clad Guardians were working nearby. The team that had first come to deal with the scene had already sealed off both ends of the alley, and people were investigating clues in the nearby lanes as well. The evidence work went on in an orderly way, but the confusion in Agatha’s heart had not eased.

What kind of power could shatter a person into pieces like a porcelain doll?

So far, there was no known divine magic or heretic spell that could cause such an effect. Even the many kinds of spells used by Abyssal demons did not produce anything this strange.

The young Gatekeeper lifted her Gatekeeper’s cane and nudged one of the fragments with its tin tip. The pale shard, like a piece of porcelain, turned over on the ground with a crisp sound.

It flipped over, showing about half a face, including the lips, the bridge of the nose, and one eye.

Even broken as it was, it clearly held the cultist’s look of terror in his final moment.

And… a faint, eerie smile?

Agatha frowned. She could see that the lips on that porcelain fragment curved in a suspicious way, as if a calm, peaceful smile had just begun to appear and then been frozen in place. That tiny curve, together with the terror filling the single eye, made the face even more uncanny and disturbing.

After thinking for a moment, she shook her head and walked deeper into the alley, toward another “scene.”

A heap of remains, almost burned to charcoal, lay piled up in the alley. Around the remains she could see traces of fierce fighting and explosions. The area of damage was large, but the battle itself had clearly been one-sided—and the style of fighting was completely different from that pile of fragments at the mouth of the alley.

One of the priests examining the scene straightened up from beside the remains, took off his gloves, and nodded to Agatha: “An Annihilation Priest who has completed deep purification. Judging from the degree of flesh distortion, his strength was not low. In theory, even if he ran into a full twelve-person Guardian squad, he might still be able to kill his way out. Yet he was taken down quickly—and we can hardly see any trace of a counterattack.”

Agatha frowned slightly: “Can you tell what kind of opponent he faced?”

The priest shook his head: “The simplest and most brutal kind of attack—pure physical force. That actually makes it hard to judge the other side’s identity. But we did find some traces of water-vapor anomalies condensing nearby. That may be our only clue.”

“Condensed water vapor… only that little trace?” Agatha said softly. She glanced back toward the mouth of the alley. “Two completely different styles of fighting.”

“Yes. One is simple and brutal, the other eerie and dangerous. What they have in common is that both are very powerful—the heretics at priest level had no chance to fight back at all,” the priest said with a nod. “The only good news is that they are clearly enemies of the Cult of Annihilation.”

“The enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend,” Agatha said, shaking her head. “Besides, they clearly prefer to act from the shadows—they do not want to show themselves. That alone is reason enough to be wary.”

She paused, then asked: “What about the investigation of the nearby residents?”

“The nearby residents heard the sounds of battle, but most did not dare to peek. From what they say, we can only estimate the time and how long it lasted—it happened sometime after one in the morning and may have lasted less than three minutes.”

“That is all? Nothing else?”

“We have no more information for now,” the priest said, spreading his hands. “I have already sent people to go door to door, including the alleys further away, to see if we can find any reports of strangers. But Hearth Street is a very large district. I doubt we will get results in a short time.”

Just then, a set of hurried footsteps sounded from nearby and cut off the conversation between Agatha and the priest.

A Guardian with short brown hair hurried into the alley and came to the priest’s side to report.

“Inside a building?” The priest frowned at once as he listened to his subordinate’s report, then looked up at the house standing diagonally across from the alley.

Seeing this, Agatha asked at once: “What is it?”

“We found something in house number forty-two,” the priest said at once. “There is a Senkin woman inside who was attacked by an supernatural power and fell into a deep sleep. And on the second floor of the house, we found a room corrupted by something uncanny.”

…

At Cemetery No. 3, inside the Warden’s little house, the Old Caretaker carefully locked the door, then walked to the writing desk in the corner with a serious expression.

He had already instructed the Guardians outside to keep watch around the hut and lay down plenty of protections in the open ground around it—but that still was not enough.

After reaching the desk, he took incense, essential oils, candles, and powdered herbs from the drawers and began to arrange a powerful altar.

He lit the candles in their appointed places and added essential oil and herb powder to them. Then, with the breath of incense, he blessed the whole desk. He set the censer in the middle of the candlesticks and built the altar according to its symbolic pattern. He carried out all this work with practiced ease, every motion as if rehearsed hundreds of times.

This was the skill a veteran should have.

A few minutes later, the altar was complete.

The Old Caretaker let out a quiet breath. He looked at the pale flames burning on the candlesticks and at the thin incense smoke, almost solid, gathering above the desk. He could feel the power of the God of Death Bartok briefly descend upon the little house. The strength of divine blessing lingered around the desk, stabilizing the order of space and time here and holding his own mind steady.

When dealing with unspeakable knowledge, no amount of careful and complex preparation could be too much.

He slowly sat down and finished a benediction in his heart. Only then did he solemnly take the letter from his pocket.

The old man examined the envelope.

This was what that unspeakable Visitor had given him. The Visitor had told him to pass it on to Gatekeeper Agatha, but had also said that it was enough if the message reached the Great Cathedral in Frostholm. In all that, he had never said that others were forbidden to open the letter.

If all that mattered was sending the message, then he could read it first and then convey it.

After all, the cemetery’s Warden was the first line of defense on the way to the Great Cathedral.

The old man let out a gentle breath. Once he felt fully prepared, he picked up the letter opener at his side and carefully slit open the seemingly ordinary envelope.

A folded sheet of paper slid out of the envelope.

With an expression more solemn than ever and a resolve almost like martyrdom, the Old Caretaker slowly unfolded the paper—

The words “denunciation letter” leapt into view.

The Old Caretaker: “…?”