Judging by the marks on the floor, the entrance to the cellar had been sealed long ago. Someone had stripped away the surface layer of wood, nailed the opening completely shut, then concealed the nails with a new layer of matching timber to make the floor perfectly flat.
It was pitch-black below; whatever wooden stairs might have once existed were now completely rotted through. When he jumped down, the sound of his landing was jarringly loud in the cramped space. Jenkins summoned his miner's lamp, held it high, and glanced up to see his teacher and the cat peering down at him from the opening.
“I’ve found a skeleton huddled in the corner. It’s an Enchanter! Yes, it has to be! I can see materials that only we would use!”
He announced loudly, then covered his nose as he moved closer to the skeleton, speculating that the coffin lid on the second floor had originally belonged to this person.
The spiritual glow emanating from the materials beside the corpse was the same color Jenkins had observed from afar. They appeared to form a simple ritual, but the passage of time had left it on the verge of collapse.
Jenkins had no intention of recklessly triggering it—that would be utter foolishness. Yet, upon closer inspection, he noticed something familiar. A long time ago, during a Month's End Whisper, he had acquired a special ritual, a 'Sound Preservation Array', but he had never used it because he lacked the core material: a sonabsorbing stone.
The faded ritual before him was clearly the same one he knew, and activating it required a specific keyword.
He ventured, but there was no response.
The moment he spoke the word, a section of the ground began to pulse with a faint golden light.
Jenkins waited in silence for a few moments before a hoarse, masculine voice drifted out from the light:
“I am...s. Sharon... I was passing through, took shelter for the night... They coveted my possessions, and they killed me... Nolan City, White Oak Walk, Watson the dentist... Beware what is in the coffin. It is... terrifying. It must not fall into the hands of the wicked.”
After so much time, the last words that came through were fragmented and disjointed. Still, they contained vital information—at the very least, Jenkins now knew the dead man's surname.
If he understood correctly, the dead man before him had arrived at this house one day in the past, seeking lodging while transporting a coffin. He had never anticipated that the residents, consumed by greed for a lone traveler’s possessions, would plot his murder. In a moment of carelessness, the low-level Enchanter had actually fallen victim to them. His body was dumped in the cellar, his belongings plundered, and even the coffin he was transporting had been dismantled by the foolish farmers and repurposed into bed boards.
But Jenkins still didn't know the full truth of the tragedy that had occurred here.
He turned to ask Miss Audrey, and she nodded as she answered:
“I heard. I never opened the cellar before, so I didn't expect to find such a ritual. But this aligns with the results of my divination. You are on the right path now, but you still haven't seen the whole truth.”
“There are still two hours until midnight. I’m confident I’ll succeed.”
Aside from the skeleton and the ritual concealed behind it, the cellar offered no other clues. But Jenkins recalled the local rumors of a haunting and figured he might be able to rely on the ghost to find his next lead.
After climbing out of the cellar, he began to pace around the building, feigning contemplation while actually using his Eye of Reality to scan for any hidden spirits. His eyes had been enhanced again after he reached the fourth level. While he could now spot spiritual entities invisible to the naked eye from farther away, this 'farther' range was still not as convenient as simply observing a spiritual aura.
He completed a full circle without finding the spirit he expected and glanced quizzically at his teacher. She simply shook her head.
“I haven’t interfered with this place at all. But perhaps you should just wait.”
So Jenkins followed her advice and waited quietly.
Around eleven at night, the light of the red and blue twin moons cast its glow from high above, bathing the farmland beside the building. This place was far from the urban center of Nolan, not even in its suburbs. The city’s infamous fog couldn't reach this far, allowing the moonlight to fall unobstructed upon the ground.
Immediately, a large patch of the snow-covered ground began to swell upwards. To Jenkins’s eyes, a faint, almost imperceptible black spiritual aura appeared in a small area just outside the house.
Miss Audrey asked, seeing Jenkins frown instinctively.
“Yes. I sense something very unpleasant out there.”
“That’s to be expected. You possess abilities of both life and death, so it’s only natural for you to be sensitive to the undead.”
With that, the two of them and the cat pushed open the door and stepped outside. Five rotting corpses of varying sizes were clawing their way out of the earth. Their state of decay was unusual—they looked as though they had been slathered in a layer of disgusting sludge.
“These are the corpses of the Francis family, who used to live here. After the investigation, the local police buried them on this plot. Don’t ask why they aren’t in the village cemetery—apparently, the family was on terrible terms with the village, which is why they lived so far out... Ever since, on the day of the full moon each month, they claw their way out of the ground...”
Miss Audrey thoughtfully provided the backstory as she and Jenkins watched the five rotting corpses finish their ascent from the grave.
From the information she provided, the Francis family must have died less than a year after they murdered the man in the cellar. Yet, the body in the cellar had been reduced to a skeleton, while these five were in such a ghoulish state. Something was clearly wrong.
“They don’t seem very powerful. I’ve never seen this kind of undead before, but they must be some type of lesser revenant.” The rıghtful source is novel{f}ire.net
The five rotting corpses paid the two living people no mind, shambling aimlessly around the house but never straying far from it. So this was the truth behind the local haunting. It was a shame—this was an isolated place, and since the dead didn't rise every day, the Church had never received a report that would trigger an investigation.
“The item in the coffin is a Mysterious Object? Was that dead Enchanter transporting a Mysterious Object, only to be murdered by this greedy family?”
“Oh, Jenkins, you’ve really surprised me. Did you see the truth? Or was it your inspiration that guided you?”
The woman asked, genuinely amazed. There were many possibilities to consider—special items capable of reanimating the dead weren't limited to just Mysterious Objects—yet Jenkins had guessed the truth in a single stroke.