Chapter 283: The Whispering Rain

【A dream?】

Greene pushed off the desk, straightening his lower back, stiff from prolonged hunching, his neck turning like an unlubricated hinge.

He must have slept at the desk for a long while; wax dripped from the blackened candlestick, hardened in midair by the cold wind, the last flicker of the wick trembling on the verge of extinction.

"The clinic recently..." The open letter before him contained the passage he had just read—a supposedly effective oral medicine, now being distributed by the clinic, in very limited quantities, its formula kept secret.

A few scattered raindrops mixed with the damp, muggy night wind drifted into the room, carrying a background-like scent.

It was hard to call it a stench. Greene had visited other cities; their rainy days usually exhaled the odor of metabolic waste, as if the entire city were a half-paralyzed giant composed of people and stone and wood, lying where it fell, consuming its surroundings. The larger the body, the heavier the pressure sores.

But Dunling was different. Things unsuitable for the city's surface were, for a hundred years, carried by water deep into the underground system.

Few residents ever wondered where these things went, or what they looked like, or simply assumed the space below was infinite.

During the rainy season, rising water levels lifted a certain odor, releasing it through every crack connecting above and below—musty, chilly, evoking the bones buried in subterranean tombs.

A city built atop a vast mausoleum, its abandoned fragments never truly died, always lingering beneath their feet, fermenting into shapes no one could imagine.

That scent was the long breath of the dead, traveling through stone corridors, whispering its tremor to those who sensed its presence.

"..."

Greene lurched backward, kicking the chair into the unlit corner of the room, snatching the dinner knife from the untidy tray and hiding it behind his back.

He heard it again—somewhere beyond the reach of the light, a sound had emerged.

A sudden, adult voice, as if it had stood motionless in that spot throughout his sleep, waiting for him to awaken, making noise to announce its existence.

The kicked chair vanished into the shadow beyond the candlelight, colliding with wooden furniture, spilling the teacup to the floor, rolling to his feet.

Experience told him: no footsteps accompanied the movement. No intruder had slipped into the room. Or perhaps it was an incorporeal, untouchable wraith.

Greene rolled up the letter he had finished reading and held it above the dim candle flame. In the brief darkness, he strained his ears to catch any movement.

Instantly, as heat licked his skin, the light flared bright, the flame engulfing half the rolled paper and flooding the room with a dim yellow glow.

A simple bed, an overturned nightstand, water cups scattered across the floor, and a cabinet serving as both bookshelf and wardrobe—that was all the room contained. No hiding places.

The door was locked from within—likely by Brother Wading when he left. Only two people held the key.

The sound had come from the head of the bed, just as in the dream—like water without a source, flowing from empty air.

"What is it..." Greene shook the paper into the stove, adding two more logs to brighten and warm the room, but the flame brought none of its usual comfort.

His mind should have been fully awake, yet he still felt trapped in a bizarre dream, something lurking around him. Even here, less than two hundred paces from the Sanctuary, the Father's protection no longer reached.

But that did not mean any demon or spirit could wander freely. The Father's servants would teach a lesson to those who faked miracles—or to whatever else dared intrude—provided they had backup.

Greene picked up the sword placed beneath the holy emblem and reached into his pocket for the key—only to find nothing. The pocket was hollow; the key had vanished.

He quickly scanned his usual spots—the doorframe, the desk, the drawer—but the only two objects capable of unlocking the door had simply disappeared.

He could no longer recall the last time he'd lost his key. For someone with low material desires, adding unnecessary clutter to life was rare; his living space had long remained nearly austere in simplicity, making it nearly impossible to imagine where such an essential item could hide and evade his eyes.

After patting down his robe, he confirmed the key was truly gone—coinciding perfectly with the worst possible moment.

This meant he was locked inside this sealed space. The nearest person capable of providing force was two floors below—part of the Church's own armed contingent, likely patrolling a fixed route.

He could shout now, and within two minutes, the corridor outside would be filled with fully armed guards.

Yet doubts lingered. On one hand, Greene wasn't sure if shouting would scare off a potential threat, making him appear like an incompetent superior disrupting patrol protocols.

On the other, his revelatory talent issued a faint warning—a mist-like warning, so vague it seeped into every inch of his skin, yet vast beyond boundaries.

As if any sudden movement would cause the omnipresent mist to turn all at once toward him.

The rain outside grew denser, shifting from drizzle toward a summer downpour; water pooled at the eaves and poured into the mouths of crouching gargoyle statues.

Thick streams cascaded from above, striking the square with the muffled roar of a miniature waterfall.

Just as he hesitated, a shadow moved past the window—the stained-glass image of the Virgin Mother, blue robe, golden-hued infant, radiant halo, stretched long across the ceiling beams, rotating as the light shifted.

Was a night patrol passing outside? That would solve it—if someone looked up, he could signal them with a gesture.

Greene hurried to the window, pushed the desk papers to a dry spot, and opened the pane.

Total darkness.

Cold raindrops stung his face, chilling him so sharply he doubted the season, feeling a disorienting sense of wrongness.

Ignoring the discomfort, Greene peered downward, searching for the patrol he had just seen—but the light was gone. Like a candle dropped into a pond, it vanished instantly into the bottomless rain-soaked night.

Thinking back... it had appeared and disappeared just as abruptly, without process.

He was beginning to doubt whether he was dreaming—so real, yet everything felt subtly off. But if this was a dream, then what had he just woken from?

The gargoyle's water streams kept falling, growing stronger; the sound below was less noisy, as if striking deep pools of standing water rather than hard ground. Even in summer storms, this level of rainfall ranked among the heaviest he could recall.

A question surfaced in his mind: what patrol could possibly carry torches through the streets beneath such a deluge?