Badum... Badum...
A heavy drumbeat pounded in his ears, hammering his brain, which barely knew where it was anymore.
Huff... Huff...
Breathing was exhausting. He could barely stay awake; his eyelids were so heavy that he just wanted to go back to sleep, back to that calmness outside of all this. But, despite how much he wanted to close his eyes again, he grabbed hold of himself and stayed awake...
He had long since lost the strength in his legs; now, on his knees, he had to use his hands to keep from falling to the floor. The sunlight streaming through the hole in the ceiling highlighted the dust particles in the air, but its warmth failed to dispel the cold he felt.
Huff! Huff! Huff!
A warm puddle grew with each gasping breath, slowly covering his hands in a beautiful crimson.
Thump! Thump!
The rumbling blocked out everything he could hear now, drowning out every thought he had. But, forcing himself to look, he raised his gaze.
PUM PUM PUM
Lying on the ground, thrown down as if they were trash, two bodies lay. One with a hole in its chest where its heart should be, and another missing its head, fragments of bone, black hair, and gray matter covering the floor.
At that moment, and before that horrible sight, his sense of self realized what was happening.
"Ah, of course... Another dream."
As soon as he realized what was really happening, he focused and snapped his fingers.
Puuu...
The dream vanished into a cloud of illusory black and red smoke. The next second, he found himself back in his living room on Pinster Street in North Borough, Backlund.
Sigh...
"I'm sorry, Captain. If I had known that being so forgetful felt like this, I would have been more understanding of your poor memory..." Somewhat absent-minded, his gaze fell to his hands.
They were still covered in red, but instead of being that liquid of life, they were elegant red leather gloves.
His right hand rose, placing itself on his chest, above his heart.
Badum Badum
The somewhat accelerated rhythm of his heart greeted him...
One that still beat within him.
Noticing that one of his red gloves was misaligned, he grabbed the belt and adjusted it as it should be. That done, he looked around, making sure he was back in reality.
Several unopened boxes still occupied some corners of his house, waiting to be unpacked. A light layer of dust covered them.
"How long do you plan to wait before emptying those boxes? An orderly place reflects an uncluttered mind after all," a male voice said inside him, full of wisdom despite its simplicity.
"All that's left is the Southeast Zone; once that problem is solved, I'll be done with it, Old Man." Sighing again, the young man smoothed his hair.
With his black hair combed to one side, a handsome face, and green eyes, Nightmare Leonard Mitchell got up from the floor, expressionless, and walked to his kitchen. As usual, he grabbed his mug from the shelf and began to make himself a cup of coffee.
The entire unit was dark; no lights were on. The crimson light of the moon bathed his balcony.
Leonard was hardly ever here, so leaving the lights on all the time would only be an unnecessary expense, especially with the rising cost of electricity. Besides, darkness would never be a problem for a Nightmare like him.
With smoke rising from the coffee maker, he poured himself a cup without much interest.
It was now midnight, the time when his work as a Red Glove of the Church of the Evernight Goddess began.
Most of the team members were from the Sleepless Pathway, and with the kind of problems they still had to deal with in the ruins of downtown East Borough, ranging from specters to wraiths, these hours were when their abilities were at their strongest.
Silently, he took a sip of his hot coffee, enjoying the taste of the freshly ground beans.
It was curious. This coffee was more than four times the price of the one he used to drink in Tingen, but it didn't taste as good.
'Have they ripped me off?' Leonard narrowed his eyes.
"Why are you taking so long? Is it that difficult to make coffee, oh protagonist?"
The sudden, yet familiar voice froze him; the poet turned to his side, stunned.
Across the table and sitting on his sofa, cross-legged and wearing the same suit he had last seen him in, a man with black hair and large eyes raised an eyebrow.
Klein Moretti stared at him expressionlessly, the corner of his lips lightly curled up.
"What's wrong with you now?"
The poet's lips opened to say his name, but his tongue stopped him.
Leonard blinked, and with that, his teammate disappeared from the sofa as if he had never been there. And judging by the cleanliness and smoothness of the spot where he had been sitting, that was indeed the case.
A reminder of his spirituality made him look down, and what he saw tightened his chest and created a great emptiness in his stomach.
On the table, another cup lay. Filled with coffee that the poet didn't remember filling.
Inside, he could feel his potion slowly reacting, melting away.
'Really, between nightmares and reality, there is no difference.'
Whether it was remembering that day every time he slept, the few times he still did, or waking up knowing that what happened really happened, Leonard didn't know which was worse.
The only thing he knew was that the helplessness still tasted as bitter as the first time.
"You're losing yourself in dreams again. Cogitation might be wise." The old man inside him said suddenly,
"… Understood." Closing his eyes and entering a state of cogitation, Leonard ignored everything around him as he calmed his spirit.
This was certainly one way to start the night patrol.
…
Ruins southeast of East Borough.
Debris from collapsed buildings completely covered the streets. Wheels and pieces of carriages peeked out, even with their horses still tied to them, buried under the rubble.
Once a street where hundreds of people crossed to get to their jobs in the factories, it was now nothing more than a vast tomb.
Rumble...
Walking through the parts that were still passable, a woman wearing a classic hooded black robe and a silver bracelet looked around. Unlike the usual blue of her gaze, it was now a pale, pure white with no pupil.
Floating in circles around her, several simple spirits ranging from humanoids to animals reported what they had found in sighs and whispers.
Spirit Guide Daly responded in the language of the dead, and the whispers and sighs ceased; the spirits disappeared, returning to the Spirit World to wait for their summoning back.
Daly Simone closed her eyes for a second before opening them, their color returning to a vibrant blue.
The beautiful woman's lips were pressed tightly together.
"There are no spirits here either..."
Considering the number of people who died here and the brutality of their deaths, this place should be plagued with spirits and specters to pacify. But no matter how hard she searched, neither she nor her controlled spirits found a single one!
It was completely clean of them!
At her side, returning from exploring his own area, Soul Asurer Truquer Drimi walked with his own frown.
"I assume it happened again?" he said, looking around with his light honey eyes.
Sighing quietly, she nodded, "Another clean area."
The man ran a hand through his black hair, grumbling a little, "What number is this? Fifteen? Twenty?"
"Eighteen now."
Both Red Gloves turned to look to the side as Spirit Medium Albert Frankes approached in the distance, his deep black eyes bearing a complicated look.
Reaching them, he spoke heavily, "We found another one."
Daly and Truquer looked at each other, their expressions darkening. Without saying anything, they quickly followed the gray-haired man.
Passing through the rubble, they soon left the street they were searching and entered the area under their captain's charge.
After several streets, they came to a street that was relatively clean of debris. Most of the buildings on this street were still reasonably intact, with a few collapsed walls, but otherwise still standing.
However, while this lifted the spirits of the Red Glove members a little to find something intact after so much destruction, what caught their attention most was the highlight of the street.
Covered in rusted and bent bars, with some dry and new pods covering them, a gate greeted the Red Gloves.
Above the gate, a title was carved into the arch: "Cemetery 12."
The church's elite team crossed the gate, following the dirt path carved out by the constant passage of people visiting their loved ones.
Soon, the group saw the last members of the team in the distance.
Nightmare Lucia Fraust stood a few steps behind the captain, her pale skin taking on the appearance of porcelain under the crimson light of the moon in the black sky.
The same woman turned and, seeing them, raised her hand and greeted them.
Gathering together, Lucia gave her report, updating Daly Simone and Truquer Drimi on this latest discovery.
"Fifty new graves with their respective coffins. After checking them through divination, most of them only have some parts of their own bodies left, but none have parts of a different body.
"Very few graves have complete bodies, but even so, all of them show care, no matter how small the recovered parts may be...
As she listened, Daly's blue gaze moved to the Captain, who was standing with his back to them.
Nightwatcher Crestet Cesimir looked ahead with some regret in his dark green eyes, his loose-cropped golden-brown hair being blown slightly by the night wind, and his briefcase firmly held in his right hand.
The cemetery was not very large, but it was crowded with gravestones, and that was for families who could afford to pay for a burial plot to lay their loved ones to rest with a name.
These gravestones stood out because of the clear signs of age on them, so the new gravestones were hard to ignore. However, that did not mean they were so different from each other.
Whether they were newer or older, regardless of their condition, all the gravestones the Red Gloves could see were clean and well-maintained, having clearly been cared for recently.
"Looks like our friend Gravedigger has been busy again." Crester Cesimir turned around and walked back to his team.
There was no need to go through the ropes of the person responsible for all this, as almost half of the team was part of the Corpse Collector Pathway, not to mention that they had been hunting one not long ago.
This had been going on for almost two months now, just as the cleanup had begun. Cemeteries were found not only with new graves, but also with well-maintained and even repaired headstones and tombs in some cases.
"This is a new record, it's the first time it's reached 50. The last five cemeteries all barely reached 30." Albert commented, crouching in front of one of the headstones and running his hand over the stone.
"Are we sure it's just one? Even for a Gatekeeper, treating a body and preparing its grave would take quite a while. At least 20 minutes, not counting whether or not he has the coffin and the hole ready," Lucia asked.
Every 5 or 6 days, they found a repaired cemetery. That didn't leave much time for a single Beyonder to finish their work and move on to the next one.
"Each member of the path has their own way of caring for and treating a body; it's a personal signature," Albert looked over his shoulder at his colleague, uninterested. "Each of the cemeteries discovered so far has the same characteristics."
"A group could replicate it, but given the way each grave is treated, that's unlikely," Daly joined the conversation, looking at the flowers on each gravestone.
Whoever did this did so with the utmost respect for those who died in the disaster, as evidenced by the extreme care taken in every detail from embalming to burial.
"It's also likely that they want to take advantage of the opportunity to act." Truquer also chimed in with his own perspective.
The large number of deaths from the Moonless Night and the way they perished provided the perfect opportunity to act in any of the middle sequences of Corpse Collector, even some of the Sleepless Pathway.
The Red Gloves knew this perfectly well, as apart from cleaning and securing the area, they were also acting.
Crestet Cesimir looked at his team, sighing inwardly. "You know the process. We will report this area and continue exploring; we cannot waste time here."
The Church's forces were already stretched thin in accommodating and treating the victims; time was the most valuable resource they had.
"Understood, Captain!"
Watching her team pull ahead of her, Daly Simone turned around and looked back at the cemetery. Complicated emotions danced across her face.
After a few seconds, she shook her head gently and turned around, returning to her team.
...
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
Sipping his tea gently, a man with gentle features, bronze skin, and a mole under his right ear breathed calmly.
His black eyes looked at the yellow tea in his cup, stirring it slightly.
"You look better. The digestion of your potion is going very well." He spoke suddenly, looking at no one in particular.
Out of thin air, a few feet from where he was sitting, someone manifested, emerging from the Spirit World. A man in a black windbreaker and long hat, with pale skin like a corpse, slightly receding hair, and crystal-clear gray eyes.
"It's thanks to you... Mr Azik..." The voice was still cold, but the forced softness was no longer so apparent.
Azik Eggers nodded, extending his hand in front of him, "Take a seat, I made chamomile tea."
The man said nothing, just walked over to the table and joined his savior.
A small smile appeared on the professor's face as he picked up the teapot and poured a cup for what could be considered his new student.
"Sugar?"
"Please... lots."
After dying and coming back to life, Dunn Smith found that he appreciated sweet things much more. Sugar also helped him feel like a human being again.