The Silence of Blackwood Abbey
The air inside the walls of St. Jude’s Abbey had always tasted of cold incense and ancient dust.
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- 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.
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.
