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Prologue: The Missing Corpse

1. The First Death

1-0. The Missing Corpse

It was a night when torrential rain obscured the full moon.

At a small cemetery belonging to a church on the outskirts of the city, rain fell steadily onto the rows of stone graves, creating a constant, rhythmic sound.

Among the long-neglected graves stood a small tombstone that looked as though it had only recently been erected.

The intricately carved inscription reflected the pale moonlight.

Cecilia Winterhall

She has entered eternal silence.

Unlike the other graves, Cecilia’s was covered only with loose soil and grass, without a stone slab over it.

Eventually, a crow emerged from the darkness and landed on the tombstone. It stared at the full moon, blinking its go-stone-like eyes, before raising its head and letting out a loud cry.

Then, astonishingly, the mound of earth began to move…

A pale hand suddenly burst through the ground.

“…Phew!”

She emerged from beneath the earth, coughing up soil with her entire body.

“Cough, cough! Cough!”

She instinctively bent forward and spat out the dirt and other foreign matter that had filled her mouth and nose. Her lungs, which had been motionless, suddenly began drawing in oxygen, and her senses gradually returned one by one.

The nerves in her right ear recovered first. As she sensed the silence of the empty cemetery, focus slowly returned to the sea-blue eyes whose light of life had once gone out.

Her legs, whose muscles had lain motionless for an entire week as though she were dead, finally managed to regain enough strength to move. Cecilia staggered to her feet and stood before her own grave.

Her white hair and the dirt covering her burial clothes were washed away by the rain.

As the clouds parted, moonlight enveloped Cecilia. She raised her head toward the sky, which was pouring down the winter rain as though a hole had been torn open in it, and spread both arms wide.

“Ahh.”

She let out a blissful sigh.

“Freedom.”

The Count and Countess of Winterhall had been newlyweds for only four years.

The couple rarely attended banquets or tea parties, and even the people working at the mansion knew little about their private affairs. But one thing was certain:

They were by no means living a happy married life.

After all, Cecilia Winterhall, the mistress of the count’s household, said the same thing every day as though it were a habit.

“I’m going to die.”

And every time, her husband, Davion Winterhall, gave her the same answer.

“Stop joking around. I told you it isn’t funny.”

But Cecilia really did die.

It was just as winter was beginning.

The first person to discover her was her longtime physician, Sir Fernando.

Beside the bed, an empty brown glass bottle lay on the bedside table. Cecilia looked as though she were peacefully taking a nap. Yet her peach-colored skin had suddenly lost all its color, and despite checking her pulse again and again, the doctor could detect no heartbeat.

Thus, Cecilia Winterhall ended her life at the age of twenty-six, apparently by suicide.

The will she left behind was somewhat unusual.

Most people who make such a choice leave behind words blaming whoever drove them to it, or apologizing to their loved ones for leaving them behind.

But Cecilia’s will contained nothing of the sort.

It simply listed mundane requests such as where she wanted her body buried, how much traveling money she wanted, and what burial items should accompany her.

As though determined to discard even the last remnants of affection, Davion followed every instruction in her will.

The funeral was modest.

Many mourners came, but not a single person shed a tear.

That was because Cecilia had never been close to anyone during her lifetime.

It rained throughout the entire day.

With his black hair hanging down and dressed in a black coat, Davion looked almost like an old ghost from the cemetery beneath the shadow of his umbrella.

The priest’s mass ended quickly.

Because Cecilia had specifically requested that she not be buried in a coffin, her small body disappeared beneath the soil after only a few strokes of the shovel.

And so, whether he had wanted it or not, the woman who had spent quite a long portion of his life beside him disappeared from the world.

“Captain Winterhall.”

Davion mechanically saluted the moment he heard the familiar voice.

“Lieutenant Colonel MacGregor.”

“There’s no need for formalities even at a funeral. And today, I’m here as an old friend of your father’s.”

The lieutenant colonel had a beard extending to his sideburns. Though advanced in age, he still possessed the impressive physique of a proper soldier.

He removed his black fedora and stood beside Cecilia’s small tombstone. His daughter knelt down in his place and laid down a bouquet of flowers.

“It’s tragic for someone so young to die. I hear your marriage wasn’t exactly a happy one either. You have no children, and you’re a fine-looking man. I’m sure you’ll be able to find a good woman and start a new family soon.”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t good to remain trapped in grief for too long.”

The lieutenant colonel gave Davion’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before leaving.

As the rain grew heavier, the mourners gradually prepared to get into their cars and return to their estates.

After seeing all of them off, Davion took the handkerchief he had shoved into his suit pocket and wiped Cecilia’s tombstone.

Cecilia Winterhall

She has entered eternal silence.

Even as he rubbed the name engraved into the tombstone, Davion never shed a tear.

Returning to the cemetery two weeks later had not been planned at all.

Davion had wanted to respect Cecilia’s wishes, but members of the Winterhall family had insisted that she should at least have a proper coffin and be buried in the family cemetery.

However, when Davion and his aide Liam arrived at her grave, what they witnessed was…

“It’s empty.”

Quite literally, the grave was completely empty.

“My lady’s body… Who could have dared to do something like this?”

Not only was the body gone.

The burial items and traveling money buried alongside her had also disappeared without leaving behind a single coin.

Davion knelt down and rolled the soil around in his hand.

“…”

The dark soil that had covered the body had become completely dry.

That meant the evenly flattened earth had been dug up and turned over once.

“Could the grave have been robbed in the meantime?”

“Ever since the people who dug up Princess Jane’s grave were publicly executed, grave robbers have practically disappeared. And if they had been grave robbers, they would have been too busy escaping to carefully fill the inside like this.”

The gravedigger who had accompanied them pointed toward the branches and stones filling the hole.

If it was a grave robber, then he was incredibly bold.

If it wasn’t, then he was at least insane.

Whoever had done this, Davion felt as though the person had deliberately made a mockery of him.

“Then if it wasn’t grave robbery, how do you explain this situation? How did my wife disappear?”

“My lord.”

Liam, who had gone off briefly with the hunting dogs to inspect the surrounding area, interrupted.

“This boy claims he witnessed something strange on the night two weeks ago.”

Unexpectedly, he was accompanied by a young boy.

The boy, who looked barely twelve years old, began trembling the moment he saw Cecilia’s tombstone.

Davion frowned and stood up.

His enormous frame must have appeared threatening, because the boy nervously stepped backward.

“I-I live over there.”

Gulp.

He swallowed nervously and pointed toward a small hut beside the cemetery.

“I heard a crow crying at night, so I came out to ch-chase it away. But then a woman suddenly burst out of the ground! Sh-She stood here with her arms raised for a long time, and then she took a whole bunch of things out of the grave and went into the church!”

He didn’t appear to be lying.

Davion was about to light his cigarette when he exchanged a glance with Liam.

After repeatedly turning over the boy’s rambling explanation in his mind, he shoved the lighter into his pocket and bent down.

“What did the woman look like?”

“I-It was raining really hard, and her face was too far away for me to see clearly… but she was completely white from head to toe. She wasn’t very tall, either.”

“…Did she have a crow or a snake with her?”

“Y-Yes! It looked like she was actually t-talking to the crow! I-I was so scared because I thought I’d seen a ghost that I ran away, but when I checked the next morning, there were f-footprints!”

“There were indeed footprints that appeared to belong to a woman, but they stopped in front of the church. And we found this inside the church as well.”

Liam held out a crumpled burial garment and a shoe.

The burial garment was the one the undertakers had personally dressed Cecilia in.

And the shoe…

Its heel had been horribly crushed.

Considering Cecilia’s usual habits, there was no doubt that she had worn it.

Cecilia had definitely died.

Davion, the doctor, the undertakers, and many others had all personally confirmed her death.

That was why the situation felt so confusing that it almost seemed like a dream to both Davion and Liam.

“I’ve fought on battlefields where hundreds of people died, and I’ve never seen a moving corpse.”

“Neither have I, my lord. That’s why I also think this is completely impossible. But judging from what I’ve seen…”

Even though they were the only people in the cemetery, Liam lowered his voice considerably.

“This definitely isn’t grave robbery. The Countess came out of her own grave and left this place herself.”

…Could that really be true?

Davion bit down on his unlit cigarette as he went through possibility after possibility.

But every explanation was riddled with contradictions and lacked credibility.

This time, he thought back to Cecilia’s death.

The empty medicine bottle found on the bedside table.

They had examined the substance left inside it, but all anyone could determine was that it might have been some kind of poison. No one had been able to identify its exact composition.

Cecilia Winterhall had never been an ordinary woman to begin with.

She was a woman who was strange—so strange that she went beyond merely being unusual.

People claimed that magic had completely disappeared as technology advanced.

But Davion knew otherwise because of Cecilia.

He knew that traces of magic still remained throughout the world, and that sometimes they could cause phenomena that defied common sense.

At the end of the chain of thoughts that had followed one after another, he finally reached a conclusion.

Light filled the black eyes that had been empty until now.

Davion lit his cigarette and took a deep breath.

He raised his head toward the cold winter sun and slowly closed both eyes.

‘My wife is alive.’

As he exhaled gray smoke, his lips curved into an inexplicable smile.

‘Cecilia is alive.’