A small figure was standing at the entrance to the cemetery - it was a girl who looked about eleven or twelve years old, wearing a dark brown woolen coat and a black skirt, as well as warm cotton boots and thick gloves. She seemed to have been waiting at the entrance to the cemetery for a long time. It was snowing in the frosty city in the evening, and a lot of snowflakes had fallen on the gray woolen hat on the girl's head. There was a slight heat rising in the evening snow.

The little girl stamped her feet lightly on the spot, and from time to time she looked toward the slope opposite the cemetery. When the caretaker appeared, she immediately laughed and waved her hands vigorously in that direction.

"……here we go again."

When the old guard saw the girl, he couldn't help but mutter something, and his tone seemed a little impatient, but he still quickened his pace slightly and came to the girl.

"Annie," the old man frowned and looked at the girl in front of him, "you came here alone again - I have told you many times that the cemetery is not a place for a child like you to come alone, especially near dusk."

“I’ve already told my mom,” the girl called Annie responded with a grin, “and she said I just have to be home before curfew.”

The old guard quietly looked at the smiling little girl in front of him.

Most people here don't like the cemetery's guards, and they don't like to get close to this strange and dangerous place, but there are always unexpected things in the world - for example, a little girl who is not afraid of her.

"Grandpa Guard, is my father here?" Annie looked up, and in the falling snow at dusk, she looked expectantly at the hunched old man in black in front of her. The cloudy eyes that frightened most people did not make her nervous.

"...No," the old guard answered as usual, his voice as cold and hard as the wind swirling in the cemetery, "He won't be here today."

Annie was not frustrated, but smiled as usual: "Then I will ask again tomorrow."

"He won't come tomorrow either."

Anne still looked up: "But he'll come eventually, won't he?"

This time, the old man, who always had a cold attitude, finally fell silent for a moment, until the snowflakes fell on his eyebrows, and his cloudy and dark eyes moved slightly: "The dead will eventually gather in the cemetery and enjoy eternal peace on the other side of that door - but it may not be a cemetery on earth, and it may not be this cemetery."

"Oh," Anne agreed, but she didn't seem to take it to heart. She just turned her head, glanced at the locked gate, and asked curiously, "Can I go in and take a look? I want to warm myself by the fire in your hut..."

"Not today," the old man shook his head. "Cemetery No. 3 is in a special situation. There are church guards stationed there. It is not open to the public today. You should go home, girl."

"...Okay," Anne nodded a little frustratedly. Then, she rummaged through her small bag and took out a small package wrapped in rough paper and handed it to the old man. "This is for you - it's cookies baked by my mother. She said I can't always cause trouble."

The old man looked at what the girl was holding and then at the snowflakes on her body.

He reached out his hand and took the cookie, then casually patted the other person's woolen hat to flick off the snowflakes: "I'll take it, you can go home early."

"Okay, look after Grandpa."

Anne smiled and nodded, adjusted her scarf and gloves, and then walked towards the path leading to the city residential area.

But just when she took a few steps, the old guard suddenly turned around and said, "Annie."

"ah?"

"Annie, you are already twelve years old," the old man stood in the twilight, looking calmly into the girl's eyes, "Do you still believe what I told you when you were six years old?"

The girl stopped and looked at the cemetery keeper in a daze.

The dead will all come to this cemetery - no matter how scattered they were in life, Bartók's foyer will be the place where they will finally reunite.

This sentence is written in the church's scriptures, but when faced with the same proverb, adults and six-year-old children will always have different understandings.

Twelve-year-old Anne stood there blankly for a long time. The cemetery warden in black stood at the tall, locked gate like a cold iron statue. Tiny snowflakes were fluttering between them, and the winter chill filled the dusk.

But suddenly, Annie laughed and waved to the old woman: "Then you can think of me as coming to see you specially - Mom said that the elderly need someone to talk to often."

The little girl turned and ran away, floating as lightly as a sparrow across the path where snow was gradually filling up. She slipped at the end of the slope, but immediately got up, brushed off the snow and dust on her skirt and thermal pants, and left quickly.

"...Elderly people..." The old guard watched the girl's back as she left, and only muttered after she ran away, "This kid has evil intentions too."

"It's even worse to expose a child's expectations than that," a young and slightly hoarse female voice suddenly came from the side, interrupting the old guard's muttering, "You didn't have to say that just now - a twelve-year-old child has gradually understood what she should understand. Sometimes she doesn't need hard-hearted adults like us to expose the truth."

The old guard turned around and saw that the "gatekeeper" Agatha, dressed in black with bandages wrapped around her, had been standing at the entrance to the cemetery, and the previously locked gate had been opened.

He shook his head. "She continued to expect that her father would be sent to this cemetery, and then she ran to this damn place alone in the snowy cold weather?"

"Isn't it good? At least you looked a little warm when you were talking to that kid."

"…This doesn't sound like something a gatekeeper would say."

Agatha shook her head, said nothing, and turned to walk towards the inner path of the cemetery.

The old guard followed, first turning around to lock the gate, then went to his own guardhouse to put the purchased things away, completed the handover with the guard on duty during the day, and then came to the morgue area in the cemetery and found the "gatekeeper" who had already arrived here.

Compared to before, the morgue is now obviously much emptier. Most of the stone platforms are empty, with only a few simple coffins placed on the platforms at the edge.

And around the few coffins, there were at least two church guards standing next to each platform, and black canes could be seen everywhere in the open space between the platforms. The black canes were the iconic equipment of the guards of the Church of Death. They inserted the canes into the ground nearby and hung sacred lanterns on the top of the canes to maintain a small "sanctuary", which could effectively fight against the polluting forces from the higher beings.

It was already dusk, and the snow made the sky much darker than at this time of day. In the increasingly dark cemetery, the lanterns hanging on the top of the walking sticks burned quietly like phosphorescence, releasing a quiet yet eerie atmosphere.

"We have done a lot of preparations here, but it seems that the 'visitor' has no intention of returning here in the short term," Agatha said casually after seeing the old guard appear. "Are you sure that the 'visitor' has revealed that he will come again?"

"You should trust the hypnosis skills of professional psychiatrists," the old guard shrugged, then paused and added, "I can't remember most of what happened that day, and the buzzing noises are gradually fading from my mind. But after several hypnosis sessions, I can recall some things... The clearest thing is the intention of the 'visitor' to visit again before he left."

Agatha was silent for two or three seconds, and after thinking for a while, she said softly, "But there is another possibility. For a higher being like that, His concept of time is very likely different from that of mortals. The next visit He mentioned could be tomorrow, a few years later, or even after you die, when He will contact you in a way that transcends life and death."

"...Can you hope for me to be better?"

"This is the result of discussions by the Vatican's advisory group."

The old guard snorted noncommittally, his eyes sweeping over the black-clad guards in the cemetery and the lanterns that burned quietly on the tops of their canes.

"...I just hope that these arrangements will not anger the 'visitor' and will not be considered as some kind of offense or 'trap' by Him - after all, we know too little about Him."

"All these arrangements are just for our self-protection," Agatha said. "After all, although you said that you lost control of your clairvoyance because you inhaled too much incense, none of us knows whether the 'visitor' has the tendency to actively release mental pollution. If we want to face the transcendental beings directly, we must at least ensure our own sanity."

The old guard didn't comment. He just thought for a moment and then suddenly changed the subject: "Did you come to any conclusions from the samples you took away earlier?"

"Are you talking about the cultists, or the pile of 'corpses' that melted into mud?"

“Both.”

"There's not much to say about those cultists. They are minions of the Annihilation Cult, extraordinary beings who have deeply coexisted with the devil. They are quite powerful. It would be very dangerous for ordinary church guards to face them. It's a pity that those heretics obviously don't have good luck. As for those 'muds'..."

Agatha paused here, with a strange expression on her face.

"Their 'evolution' has not actually stopped until now. As of the time I left the cathedral, they were still constantly taking on new forms and properties. In the past period of time, they even briefly took on a state similar to metal and rock. It felt like... something that the Annihilation Cultists often mentioned in their heresy."

The old guard slowly frowned: "You mean...'Element'?"

"The essence of truth, the purest and most holy substance, the 'Drop of Truth' bestowed upon the world by the Lord of the Deep - that's how those heretics described it," Agatha said with disgust and sarcasm in her tone. "It's really disgusting for them to use such beautiful words."