The Silence of Blackwood Abbey
The air inside the walls of St. Jude’s Abbey had always tasted of cold incense and ancient dust.
E.g. ：My own mother ruined my daughter's 5th birthday, and I finally understood why she truly hated me.
- 1、The Silence of Blackwood Abbey
- 2、The Weight of the Shovel
- 3、A Ghost in White
- 4、The Mark of the Tithe
- 5、The Shattered Reality
For fifteen years, Sister Elena had walked these corridors with her head bowed, a shadow among shadows.
She was known for her devotion and her silence, a woman who seemed to have erased her own soul to serve the divine.
But tonight, the silence was a weapon she used to carve a path through the forbidden woods behind the chapel.
The moon was a wide, unblinking eye that followed her every movement across the uneven terrain.
She carried a heavy iron shovel, its edge sharpened to a point that glinted with a predatory hunger.
Elena reached the center of the old cemetery, a place where the headstones had long since sunk into the greedy earth.
The fog was so thick here that it felt like wading through a sea of ghosts.
She began to dig, her movements frantic and rhythmic, driven by a desperation that defied her age.
Every scoop of earth was a memory she was trying to exhume or bury forever.
She wasn't looking for gold or relics, but for the one thing that could prove the Bishop’s ultimate betrayal.
The Weight of the Shovel
The ground was stubborn, resisting her efforts as if the earth itself wanted to keep its secrets.
Elena’s hands were blistered and bleeding beneath her heavy gloves, but she did not stop.
She remembered the night the girl was born, a night filled with the same suffocating fog and the same bloated moon.
The mid-wives had told her the child was stillborn, a "mercy" from the heavens for her transgression.
They had forced her to take the veil, promising her that her penance would save her soul from the fires of her sin.
But three days ago, she had found the ledger hidden in the Bishop’s private study.
It was a record of "tithes" that included the names of children sent to the industrial orphanages in the north.
There, at the top of the list, was the name she had whispered in her dreams for over a decade.
The child hadn't died; she had been sold to ensure the Abbey’s continued prosperity.
Elena had spent forty-eight hours tracing the lineage, discovering that her daughter was the key to a massive land inheritance.
The Church didn't want a "sinful" mother claiming the fortune that belonged to the Abbey by proxy.
She dug deeper, her shovel finally striking something hard and hollow.
A Ghost in White
The sound of metal hitting wood echoed through the trees like a gunshot in a library.
Elena fell to her knees, her breath coming in ragged gasps that turned to steam in the freezing air.
She cleared away the dirt to reveal the corner of a small, lead-lined box.
"No one will ever find you," she muttered, her voice a cracked rasp of triumph and grief.
She believed that if she could secure the documents hidden in this box, she could expose the Bishop and buy her daughter’s freedom.
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She was so consumed by her mission that she failed to notice the atmospheric shift around her.
The wind died down completely, leaving a vacuum of sound that made her ears ring.
A sudden, sharp chime, like a crystal glass shattering against a stone floor, rang out from the darkness.
Elena looked up, her heart hammering against her ribs with the force of a trapped bird.
Standing just five meters away was a figure that defied the logic of the night.
It was a young girl, perhaps twelve years old, dressed in a glowing white gown that seemed to repel the fog.
Her blonde hair caught the moonlight, shimmering with an ethereal radiance that made her look like a saint from a stained-glass window.
The girl tilted her head, her eyes wide and blue, reflecting a world that Elena had forgotten existed.
"Mama, what are you doing?" the child asked, her voice melodic and impossibly calm.
The Mark of the Tithe
The shovel fell from Elena’s hands, clattering against the lead box with a final, hollow thud.
The word "Mama" acted like a physical blow, knocking the air from her lungs.
She had spent fifteen years being told this child was a handful of ash in a common grave.
Now, the girl stood before her, a living testament to the lies of the institution she had served.
Elena scrambled out of the hole, her habit caked in mud, her face a mask of blind terror and dawning realization.
She reached out a hand, her fingers trembling so violently she could barely keep them extended.
"Is it really you?" Elena whispered, her eyes searching the girl’s face for any sign of a trick.
But as she moved closer, she saw something that made the blood in her veins turn to ice.
On the girl’s neck, just below the ear, was a faint, glowing brand in the shape of a cross.
It was the "Mark of the Tithe," a branding used only for those children who were destined for the Great Sacrifice.
The Bishop hadn't just sold her; he had consecrated her for a ritual that was never supposed to leave the dark ages.
The realization hit Elena with the force of a tidal wave, drowning her hope in a sea of horrific clarity.
The girl wasn't standing there because she had escaped; she was there because she was already part of the ceremony.
The Shattered Reality
The dreamlike atmosphere of the graveyard began to warp and twist.
The reversed audio of the wind seemed to scream in Elena’s ears, a cacophony of voices demanding atonement.
She looked back at the grave she had been digging, the hole now appearing much larger than it had seconds ago.
It wasn't a grave for a box of documents; it was perfectly sized for a human body.
The girl stepped forward, her movement fluid and unnatural, her feet barely touching the churned earth.
"The Bishop said you would be ready for me," the child said, her voice now devoid of its previous warmth.
Elena looked down at her hands and realized she wasn't holding a shovel anymore, but a sacrificial dagger.
The memory of the last hour began to flicker and change in her mind like a corrupted film reel.
She hadn't come here to save her daughter; she had been summoned here to complete the "tithe" she had started fifteen years ago.
The "documents" she thought she was digging up were actually the bones of the real Sister Agnes, the woman she had replaced.
Her mind fractured as the orchestral hits of reality crashed down upon her consciousness.
She was the monster in this story, the one who had traded her soul for a chance to see a ghost.
The girl smiled, a cold and hollow expression that filled the entire world with a sense of impending doom.
As the moon turned a deep, bruised purple, Elena realized that the grave she had dug was her own.
The child reached out a hand, and as their skin touched, the world dissolved into a blinding flash of white.
