My shovel danced through the air, striking the sodden earth that seemed to shriek with every blow. Clumps of mud scattered, clinging to my sweat-soaked arms—sweat that fell in tiny rivulets, like a private rainstorm over this shadowed pit. Above me, Lon held an old lantern, its trembling glow sketching strange, jittery shadows across the torn ground. Up there, the artificial sun had vanished, as if it wanted no part in tonight's sin.
My breath came ragged, chest tight, mind adrift between what was real and what was merely a trick of the night. Just hours ago, these hands were busy scrubbing shirts at home. Now fate had dropped me here, disturbing the rest of someone I'd never known, deep in Wetlands Cemetery.
"You're really serious about this?" I called up from the grave, searching for Lon's face among the gravestone shadows. He stood above, arms folded, his gaze steady as a midnight pond.
"I told you, I never joke about potions," Lon replied, voice flat as a coin on a table. Of course, he'd chosen to stand watch up top, leaving me to play executioner down in the dirt.
Before we got here, Lon had given me a crash course on Mythical Cerebropinal Fluid. According to him, every vertebrate harbors cerebroCerebropinal fluid in its marrow. But Mythical CerebroCerebropinal Fluid? That was the transcendent version—extracted, transferred to another vessel, then left to rest for a time.
Some eccentric scholar from a far-off continent described it as "the serum of choice and purified lymph, expressed from the delicate buds and arterial villi nestled between the laminae and deepest folds of the cerebellum." A mouthful of mad scientist jargon, if you asked me.
To Lon, cerebroCerebropinal fluid was the purest essence—mysterious, revered by truth-seekers. Volatile, elastic, expansive, compressible, and above all, yielding to its owner's will. No wonder people had chased it for ages, believing a single drop could awaken the magic slumbering in every soul.
Maybe this really was the key to unlocking Astraflux and Periplus. If so, it made sense that Mythical CerebroCerebropinal Fluid was the essential ingredient in any system of mysticism.
And so here I was, in the dead of night, between crumbling gravetones, digging up a stranger's grave in search of that hidden spark.
For a moment, my mind wandered: what if someone who'd already unlocked Astraflux and Periplus drank this fluid? My shovel stalled mid-air, paralyzed, as if even the earth was holding its breath.
A sharp clang of wood and iron shattered the hush when i think about that. Lon, quick as a startled owl, whipped his head left and right, eyes scanning for the Grave Keeper who might have heard us from afar. His gaze sharpened, pinning me at the bottom of the grave, as if checking whether I was still sane.
"I think I've reached it," I whispered, breath catching in my throat. My digging had revealed the corner of a wooden coffin, just barely lifted from the earth's muddy embrace.
"There it is, the coffin! Hurry, do exactly as I told you!" Lon's voice cracked through the darkness, urgent and sharp as a whip's snap.
Still, uncertainty tangled around my heart—my hands shook, unwilling to obey. Was this what it meant to walk the Archiveliner's path? Did every step require crossing such sacred boundaries?
"What are you waiting for? If you wanted to hesitate, you should've done it back home! There's no point weighing right and wrong now—you've already dug up someone's grave!" Lon hissed, his whisper cutting deeper than the edge of my own shovel.
Reality slapped me awake. He was right—there was no turning back, no sense in wrestling with morality when the earth was already split and the sin already sown.
With hurried movements, I brushed the last of the dirt from the coffin's lid. Its color was a faded brown, blending with the mud—impossible to tell if that was its true hue or just a disguise painted by time. I set the shovel aside, throat tight, swallowing felt impossible.
My hands shook as I dusted the dirt from my clothes, then slowly pried open the coffin. My heart pounded, cold sweat crawling down my spine, and for a moment the whole world seemed to hold its breath with me.
The corpse lay motionless inside, shrouded in shadows that the lantern's glow couldn't chase away. I held my breath, heart hammering wildly, as if even time itself was unwilling to move forward. Gradually, my eyes adjusted to the gloom, straining to make sense of the vague shape before me.
At first, all I could see was a dark silhouette—a small, curled form. The air was thick with the scent of wet earth and rotting wood, mingled with a strange odor I couldn't quite place. Goosebumps prickled my skin, cold creeping from my toes to the back of my neck.
I squinted, searching for the human face I'd been dreading—an empty-eyed stare, perhaps, or the bitter grin of a skull. But what I saw was something altogether different: the body was far too small, too slender for any grown human. Something was wrong.
The lantern's light danced across the fine fur covering the figure's body. I froze, eyes wide, tracing the delicate lines—a pair of pointed ears rose atop its head, and four limbs were tucked neatly beneath it, as if the creature had simply drifted off to sleep after a long, weary day.
I froze, my mind refusing to accept what I was seeing. Not a human. Not the figure that had haunted my imagination all this time.
A cat's corpse?
I glanced at Lon, then back at the coffin's contents, my gaze darting between the feline remains and his face—searching for any hint of certainty in the midst of this absurdity. No words came out, but my expression said it all: "Seriously, this is what we're after?"
"This?" My voice barely made it past my lips.
Lon simply nodded, his eyes as calm as ever.
"But… isn't the Cerebropinal fluid we need supposed to be from a human?"
"Who said that?" he whispered, his voice barely more than a breath. "That's just an assumption you made. Why did you hear 'cemetery' and immediately think we'd be digging up a human grave?"
I fell silent. He wasn't wrong, but still—this was an outcome I never could have predicted.
"But… it's a cat. Why bury it in a coffin this size? Anyone, not just me—even the most seasoned grave robbers—would've assumed it was a person."
"Does that matter now?" Lon replied, his voice thin as mist. "Yesterday, when I came home from buying dinner ingredients, I saw them burying this cat myself."
He drew a slow breath, then added, "Cat, human, tapir—doesn't matter. As long as it's got a Cerebropinal column, it's got the Cerebropinal fluid we're after. Now, hurry up and extract it."
I inhaled deeply, the damp night air biting at my lungs. From my coat pocket, I pulled out Lon's special syringe—this was no ordinary needle. Its barrel was made of thick, clear glass, the metal plunger etched with alchemical symbols that glimmered faintly in the lantern's glow. Inside, a fine layered filter waited to strain every precious drop.
My hands trembled as I aimed for the cat's spine, searching for a gap between fur and flesh already stiff with death. I pressed the needle in slowly, feeling a slight resistance before it slid into the marrow. A strange sensation crawled up my fingers—cold.
Carefully, I pulled back the plunger. Gradually, a clear liquid trickled into the tube, passing through the crystalline filter with a soft hiss, as if the device itself understood the gravity of tonight's task.
One vial, filled to the brim. I swapped out the needle and repeated the process twice more. Each time, guilt and awe tangled inside me, the faint tang of metal mixing with the scent of damp earth and cat fur—a strange cocktail that clung to my nose and memory.
Three vials, finally full. The liquid now trapped behind glass, shimmering like morning dew catching lantern light. I stared at my work, chest heavy with the weight of it.
Forgive me, I whispered silently.
Once finished, I closed the coffin, brushed the last of the dirt from my clothes, and climbed out of the grave. My breath came in ragged bursts, my body filthy, but the task was done.
"All collected," I told Lon, my voice worn thin but edged with relief.
"Good, we need to get out of he—"
Suddenly, a raspy voice shattered the night. "Who's there?" A harsh beam from a flashlight slashed through the darkness, exposing us without mercy.
A flash of gold—my hair, unmistakable under the glare. Instinctively, I shielded Lon, turning my face away from the blinding light. My mud-streaked clothes were impossible to hide now.
"We… we were just playing hide-and-seek around here, sir. Didn't realize we'd wandered into the cemetery," I stammered, trying to sound innocent.
"Playing? Hide-and-seek? In a graveyard? Are you out of your mind?" The man frowned, his flashlight sweeping across the grave at our feet. He stepped into the light—wearing a thick, weathered jacket, his posture straight despite the years etched deep into his face. His hair was cropped white, his brows heavy above sharp, probing eyes. In his left ear hung a small, antique key-shaped earring that glinted with every movement.
His eyes widened, breath catching as if he'd just seen a ghost.
"What do you think you're doing on this grave?" he barked, his voice heavy with suspicion. "And what's with all the dirt on your clothes?"
"I told you, we were just playing hide-and-seek…" I tried to smile, though it probably looked more like a grimace.
But suspicion clung to his face. He stepped closer, eyes combing the grave for anything out of place. Thankfully, I'd already tossed the shovel deep into the bushes, sparing us the most damning evidence.
"Are you aware whose resting place you're standing on? If this grave gets disturbed, it's not just your necks on the line—mine is too!"
His words hung in the air, heavy with threat. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest, my throat gone dry as panic crept up, squeezing tight around my lungs. I swallowed hard, trying to steady my breath, forcing a smile that felt brittle and false.
"If you don't mind me asking, sir, whose grave is this?" I ventured, aiming for a casual tone, though my voice echoed back at me, hollow and thin.
The man stared at me for a long moment, his gaze cutting through the darkness. He drew a slow breath, as if weighing whether we deserved to know. The silence stretched, broken only by the chorus of night insects and the frantic beat of my heart.
At last, he spoke, his voice low and almost a whisper, "This grave belongs to the most influential figure in this city."
I froze. The word "figure" spun in my mind, dancing with the fragile hope that maybe this was all a misunderstanding. For a moment, I nearly let out a sigh of relief, imagining we might just slip away unscathed.
But the man wasn't finished. He looked us over, one by one, eyes narrowing, and then, in a voice even softer—almost as if sharing a secret the night itself shouldn't hear—he continued, "This… is the grave of Tyan Flamino's cat."
The world seemed to stop spinning. Those words hit harder than the chill in the air. A cat? Tyan Flamino? I went rigid, feeling the blood drain from my face. Lon was silent too, and for a heartbeat, neither of us dared breathe.
Only the sound of our breathing lingered among the the weathered graves.
We were dead meat.