Deep Sea Embers

These marks indicated forceful handwriting, suggesting the author was highly emotional while writing.

The older woman, seated near the fireplace, adjusted her position and placed the letter she had already read on a nearby small round table. She glanced at the date stamp on the envelope containing the letter from Frost.

It was sent on December 5th.

Just three days after sending the first letter, the late “Scott Brown” wrote this second one.

As Mary opened the folded note, she saw several lines of untidy, rushed handwriting, strikingly different from the elegant and neat writing of the folklorist in the letter sent only days prior. The lines conveyed immense anxiety and fear: “My friend, something is…wrong. I can’t explain it to you. I’m very confused right now, finding it hard to think. Something is disturbing my mind, my memory…don’t come to Frost! Never come to Frost under any circumstances! Even if you receive other letters or invitations from me, never come to Frost!

“There is a massive conspiracy.

“Don’t come to Frost!”

The note lacked a signature, and even the envelope’s stamp was askew.

Mary stared at the hastily penned words, envisioning a folklorist, his mental state in disarray from overwhelming cognitive dissonance, using his last bit of sanity to write these sentences. She imagined him struggling through Frost’s icy wind to deliver the letter to the post office.

She quietly refolded the paper and returned it to the envelope.

The letter was disquieting, exuding a sinister aura from beginning to end. Ordinarily, it would have been enough to make the recipient seek sanctuary in a church.

However, Mary’s eyes scanned the small round table next to her, examining the letter from the Vanished—

“…The deep-sea offspring heirs do have a distinct taste, more delectable than common fish. The captain has honed special cooking techniques, and Anomaly 099—Miss Alice, has acquired the essence of it. Perhaps I should attempt it as well…”

The elderly woman wordlessly tossed the letter from Frost into the nearby fireplace, watching it quickly burn and turn to ash in the bright flames.

“They’ve already left…”

She whispered before rising and gathering ink, a pen, and writing paper from the adjacent shelf, preparing to write a letter—this one would be sent to the antique shop in the lower city district.

……

Church personnel in black coats were walking around the cemetery, checking all the remaining traces here—every path, coffin, and street lamp was marked and sampled, hoping to reconstruct the events that had taken place the night before.

“Gatekeeper” Agatha stayed in the caretaker’s hut, with the gloomy, hunchbacked old caretaker sitting across from her.

After an unknown amount of time, the young woman, who was mostly wrapped in bandages, raised her head and looked at the sky outside the window, seeing the sun gradually sinking and a faint reddish glow beginning to spread across the sky above the city.

Evening was approaching. Her guards had been busy in the cemetery for several hours, and the old caretaker in front of her had been silent for the same amount of time.

Strictly speaking, the old caretaker wasn’t just silent—he was maintaining a state of near mental closure, not moving, speaking, and reacting to external stimuli. Since the church guards received the report and came here, he had been sitting quietly in that chair, like a breathing flesh sculpture.

A black-clad guard pushed open the wooden door of the caretaker’s hut, came to Agatha’s side, bent down, and whispered something to her. She nodded slightly: “I understand. Send the samples to the cathedral first, and leave the scene as it is. Tonight might be crucial; we need to have someone on watch.”

The black-clad guard nodded and took his leave, but before leaving, he couldn’t help but look at the old man sitting motionlessly in the chair. The young guard’s face showed apparent unease at seeing the old man’s stagnant, murky eyes: “How long… will he maintain this state? Is it really okay?”

“Protective mental closure. He’s using this method to fight and cleanse the contamination he’s been exposed to, and possibly to protect us as well,” Agatha whispered. “The gravekeeper must have encountered something unimaginable last night; he seems to have struggled back from the edge of madness… But don’t worry, he’s an experienced warrior and has successfully stabilized his condition. He’ll be fine.”

At this point, Agatha paused and added, “As for how long this state will last… that’s hard to say. It might end in the next second, or it might not be until this time tomorrow. It depends on how long he was exposed to that terrible contamination.”

The black-clad guard thought for a moment, looked up at the window, and through the slightly dirty glass, saw the bustling church personnel outside on the path.

Then he turned his gaze back to the two bodies in the hut—two intruders who had been confirmed as followers of Annihilation and had apparently died at the hands of the old caretaker. Due to the unclear situation and to protect the scene, the two bodies were still left in place.

They couldn’t possibly be the cause of the old caretaker’s mental closure; even the demons behind them going out of control wouldn’t be at this level.

What could it be? A more powerful shadow demon? A high priest of the Annihilation Cult? Or something else entirely?

The black-clad guard voiced his doubts, but Agatha just shook her head, “No, it should be an even more dangerous and mysterious situation.”

“Why are you so sure?” the black-clad guard asked subconsciously.

“Because there were really only traces left by a few heretical believers at the scene, as well as a pile of Annihilator corpse remains that didn’t leave any supernatural reactions,” Agatha said calmly. “The lack of any observable traces means…”

“It means that the visitor last night did nothing; their mere presence in this cemetery for a moment was enough to push my mind to the brink,” the old man’s voice suddenly sounded in the hut, interrupting the exchange between the black-clad guard and the gatekeeper. Agatha immediately looked in the direction of the voice, and a faint smile finally appeared on her expressionless face: “You’re back, that’s good.”

“I wouldn’t say completely back,” the old caretaker slowly said, gradually stabilizing the various perceptions that were slightly off after reopening his mind. He looked into Agatha’s eyes, consciously blocking out the jumping afterimages behind her, “But at least I can distinguish which part belongs to reality and which part belongs to madness now.”

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

“The corpse you sent suddenly became agitated, talking like a living person. Then four followers of Annihilation entered the cemetery, wanting to take away the agitator. They used the power of shadow demons to disguise themselves, skillfully hiding their identities as experienced summoners. They deceived my eyes but not my intuition.

“I lured two of them here and killed them—these two on the floor. Then, as I was preparing to go to the cemetery to kill the other two, something unexpected happened.”

The old caretaker raised his head, looking in the direction of the door.

“An indescribable… visitor came by. I stared at it for a while, or maybe just a few seconds; my sense of time was off, so I can’t be sure.”

“An indescribable visitor?” Agatha couldn’t help but frown. “Can you be more specific?”

The old caretaker tried to recall.

All that came to his mind were chaotic lights and shadows and an overwhelming noise.

The hasty mental closure had eliminated the temporary contamination he had suffered, but it had also erased some useful memories.

“I can’t. I only remember chaotic lights and shadows and noise,” the old caretaker shook his head. “And even if I could accurately describe what I saw, it wouldn’t make sense to you. What I saw may not have been real, and even if it was real, it may not be the same reality that others see. As humans, our ways of perception are too limited.”

“Alright, then that’s the whole answer,” Agatha nodded. “An indescribable visitor came to the cemetery at the final stage but didn’t actively cause any destruction… Are you sure you want to use the word ‘visit’ in the report? This word is neutral, even friendly.”

“Yes,” the old caretaker answered calmly. “I had a conversation with it, although we hardly communicated anything successfully—the visitor tried to communicate, which is a neutral or even friendly signal.”

“Understood, I’ve recorded it,” Agatha nodded again. “What happened next? Anything else?”

“After the visitor left, I vaguely saw that they left something… on the path at the entrance,” the old caretaker said as he recalled. “But I couldn’t see it clearly; at that time, my vision was severely damaged, and my cognition was also greatly affected, so I’m not sure…”

“If you’re talking about a pile of remains burned by the backlash of shadow demons, we found it,” Agatha calmly interrupted the old caretaker. “If that’s correct, then it seems to be the visitor’s… ‘vessel’.”