Chapter 343

“The Lord sees us as parents see their own children; as long as one sincerely repents, no sin is unforgivable,” Dominic’s voice grew even gentler.

He was a cautious explorer, groping through a labyrinth of the mind woven from vague and obscure words, nearing something that vanished the moment it was touched.

At the very moment the basket-maker wavered, ready to lay bare his heart, the thing revealed a formless shadow—before he could think clearly, it slipped away amid fragmented fragments of information.

Perhaps a subtle shift in tone, a seemingly casual furrow of the brow, metaphorically hinted that it had once been there.

“Hand over the burdens you feel you cannot carry to Him, for He understands your struggles better than you do; He hears every word, every syllable.”

When he came to his senses, his hand was already resting on the other’s shoulder—perhaps a steady, gentle encouragement, or perhaps a nudge to take the first step.

“My father… he may have done something that disturbed the peace of the dead.” Speaking these words seemed to drain all his strength; John Jr. buried his face in his arms, his body hunching inward.

Field scanned the surroundings alertly, ensuring no one passed nearby.

“Why say ‘may’?”

“I didn’t see it myself, but during that time… he was strange.”

The emotional tone in his words shifted, cooling at a pace he didn’t notice, sliding toward the detachment of a stranger—and even a trace of fear.

After the labels—eccentric family member, gifted craftsman, proud father—were torn away, what remained were behaviors so bizarre even his own family found them incomprehensible.

“I can’t describe it to you—he spent his days weaving as always, but something changed. For him, it was no longer work; it became something mesmerizing.”

John Jr. wiped his face, lifted his head again, and stared at the house’s old but sturdy roof. “The current roof was made by his own hands.”

“Sorry, I’ve wandered off. I just want you to know that though he was always reclusive, he wasn’t that kind of man.”

“I understand. Even Saint Peter denied being my disciple three times. Given human frailty, it’s natural to be momentarily lost to worldly temptation—it’s merely a kind soul briefly clouded.”

“Thank you, thank you, I’m grateful.”

The monk beside him sat with his back to the light, his serene face merging with the shadows; the light behind him spilled along his silhouette, outlining a soft, hazy halo.

John Jr. stared, nearly in tears; the pressure from that event weighed far heavier than he’d imagined.

After repeated assurances, he finally opened up to the Servant of the Heavenly Father, tearing open a corner of his memory, letting the long-accumulated dark mist spill forth.

Even after years, some details remained as vivid as if they had happened yesterday.

It was a cloudy afternoon; his father, who had spent the entire day processing branches, suddenly stopped—rarely, for reasons beyond eating or sleeping, he tore his gaze away from the spiraling, curling twigs.

He hadn’t stood or walked for long stretches in too long; collecting materials and selling finished goods had fallen to his son. He often didn’t step outside all day, working from dawn to dusk, his finished baskets piling up half the room.

John Jr. had tried to persuade him, but met only meaningless silence. Sometimes, waking in the night, he’d hear the faint creak of bending twigs. Of course, they never wasted candles at night—he couldn’t imagine how or why his father completed his weaving.

Perhaps the answer lay in his bent, arched back, like the supple branches in his hands, and his stiff shoulders and elbows, yet remarkably flexible, agile fingers.

His bloodshot eyes sank deep in their sockets, pupils dilated from prolonged work in dim light, yet sometimes unnaturally bright, glowing with the fire of someone who had glimpsed a secret. Yet he rarely spoke to anyone; all he knew came from John Jr.’s retellings.

All were mundane village matters: who had a child, who got lucky with work, who among the well-known had died.

His father listened in silence, saying nothing.

That day, suddenly, he rose from his self-made chair, its seat worn with indentations, selected one basket from the mountain of them, picked up a rusted iron shovel, and said he was going out.

At first, John Jr. didn’t think much of it—his father willingly stepping outside wasn’t bad; perhaps it was a sign of improvement.

He took the chance to tidy the spot his father often sat, gathered broken twigs to light a fire and warm the evening bread, then sat by the door waiting.

The harvested fields were barren, littered with sharp wheat stubble. Raindrops fell, sparse at first, then grew denser; the clouds darkened further. A damp, rotting wind blew from the mountains, sweeping up straw stalks and silently hurling them far away, carrying the sour stench of decaying plant matter.

He began to worry. The cumulonimbus clouds, now black-gray, stacked and overlapped, blurring the line between day and night, slowly rolling under the force of high-altitude winds—reminding him of the house’s newly built roof: dense, dim, and upon closer look, revealing subtle, almost invisible vortex-like patterns.

It was a sign of heavy rain. Locals knew this weather well; unless they had something absolutely urgent to finish, they hurried to find shelter.

The noisy return of villagers rose and faded. The embers in the hearth died. The sky turned completely dark.

Torrential rain fell like lead plates. He called neighbors and friends to search outside, but no fire could be lit in the downpour; visibility dropped to less than two steps, and even shouts were swallowed by the roar of water. They nearly got separated.

Everyone was soon forced back, huddling together by the fire, praying for a miracle.

The waiting felt unbearably long; all he remembered was the continuous thunderclaps. Perhaps it was psychological, but he always felt these thunderclaps were different—irregular, more frequent, more terrifying. Each boom triggered an involuntary shudder in his body.

Finally, around the middle of the night, when everyone had given up hope and prepared to wait until morning to decide what to do next, his father returned.

He was drenched in mud and water; his soaked shoes made a dull sucking sound with every step, gripped by the sludge as if trying to drag him back into the rain.

In that mad, rain-lashed night, he hadn’t even scraped himself falling. Before everyone’s eyes, he pushed open the door, clutching a basket filled with something, and ordered everyone—his own son included—to leave the house.

This pushed the already distant ties between his family and the neighbors to freezing point. So when the stonecutter accused Old John of desecrating the graveyard, not a single person dared speak up in his defense.

Rumors had already spread from those present: they believed he rushed to drive everyone away to dispose of stolen goods.

As for the basket—when John Jr. returned the next day from a kind neighbor’s house, it was empty except for congealed mud.

“I shouldn’t have left that night. Even if my father truly did something wrong, I should have stayed, forced him to repent.”

“So even you can’t be certain he actually disturbed the dead?”

“Yes. He said nothing. After another rainy outing not long after, he never returned. We only found the basket he left behind—and no body in the valley nearby.” John Jr. gripped his tangled hair; the unresolved ending haunted him endlessly.

He still believed that if he hadn’t fled that night out of inexplicable fear, if he’d stayed and tried to reason with him, things might have turned out differently.

“Could he have left because he couldn’t bear the town’s judgment?”

“He took almost nothing but the basket—where could he have gone?”

The whole affair carried a strange odor. Dominic vaguely felt he had grasped something—just one thin layer of paper away.

“About that night, do you remember anything else?”

“It was dark…” An inexplicable fear was brewing; Dominic could feel the shoulder beneath his hand trembling, as if transported back to that night—yet even the narrator couldn’t say what exactly he feared.

Darkness was frightening, yes—but not enough to terrify an adult so profoundly.

“All night long, thunder rumbled—but we saw not a single flash of lightning.”

Something invisible seemed to be roaring, devouring.