"Dear, what happened to you ?" said the receptionist at the doctor's office

"We were in a fire, uh, a lot else happened when we were not there yet, he is gravely injured." Joan and Alessia struggled to keep their balance.

"Obviously all of you need urgent care!" She rang a red bell on the side of the desk. immediately after three people came out of different rooms, when they saw the three of them they rushed over.

A few minutes later the nameless man had been taken away for surgery. Alessia and Joan were also separated to be treated. Alessia was not fond of doctors, as a matter of fact she was scared of them. All her past experience had been...bad, to say the least and she frankly did not keep a good memory of these experiences. But they were very patient with her and maybe, just maybe, did she come out of that experience feeling slightly reassured. Maybe doctors were not that bad after all. They slept at the same inn as before for three more days as they waited for the rescued man to be in stable enough condition for the doctors to let them interrogate him. Every morning and every evening they would go back to the doctors to enquire about their third patient and every time the doctors would turn them down or ask them to stay for more treatments. Alessia paid for all of them, Joan was extremely thankful, he wouldn't have been able too even if he had wished. Which reminded him that he hadn't paid his rent for next month and that it would cause problem. Listening to his worry he took the risk to send a letter back to Margen asking Doctor Tesla if he could take care of it for him and that he would of course reimburse him, plus interest once he'd be back from his trip. He kept secret the "troubles" they had met during said trip, simply stating that they were made with some hard weather conditions that set the whole thing behind schedule.

And so three days after they came back to Meriam, the doctors let them speak with the stranger, asking them to be quick with it and to not neglect their own recovery. Apart from the various burns, Alessia had inhaled a lot of smoke and the physician were almost begging her to stay put at the clinic instead of going back to the inn and taking stroll in the city. Alessia would have none of it and actually continued to disobey the doctors. The room in which the stranger rested was dimly lit, the curtains were drawn, a large jug of water was put on the bedside table and the man himself was laying in the bed covered in all sorts of bandages.

"So it was you two who saved me...I apologise, my memory is a mess I may have done or said things that I do not remember as of now, I apologise for them."

"We understand. We didn't hold it against you, you seemed terrified, and also badly hurt." Alessia came in with a chair and sat next to the bed, the doctor left them alone in the room.

"You saved my life, how could I ever repay you..." He coughed and Joan handed him a glass of water. "I am Paris Berel, an archaeologist, my research...a year worth of them...all gone now!"

"Paris Berel! I am Joan Archebus and this is Alessia Voder, the one sent to help you!"

"Blessed be the gods! How...how this is incredible." He drank some of the water, "We didn't believe you were ever going to come, we thought something might have happened to you, especially after all these..."

"You also had some...uh...troubles ?" Alessia sat closer to the bed.

"You'll think I am crazy."

"I doubt it, we've seen...things"

"Like people that refused to die?" he was shaking, perhaps of fear or maybe of anticipation.

"Until you cut their head off"

"You too! You have seen them too!"

"What happened at the site?" Joan asked, still standing behind the woman.

"You must also tell me what happened to you, maybe we could make sens of the events then. Alright, let me start from the beginning."

Mister Berel, sipped his water and sat more upright, looking directly into Joan's eyes when he began his story. For almost the entire year of careful examination of the site, excavating and dusting old stones and uncovering old buildings they had found nothing dating as far back as the second era. After ten month of this they had uncovered the entirety of an old village that would have been inhabited during and before the Secession war but seemed to have been abandoned in an orderly manner. People took almost everything they owned and left. The team had found some pots and vases but much fewer than what they would have expected for a site of this size.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Then roughly two month ago one of the structure had a cave in revealing a vast underground chamber and in its center an old sarcophagus sat. The entire chamber was empty, there was no ornament, not paintings on the walls, no carving. Just this round chamber carefully crafted and held in place as anonymous as possible.

They decided to leave the sarcophagus unopened until they had made sure that there were nothing else of not in the room and until they had made sure that disturbing the balance would not cause another cave in. During the time between the discovery and the opening of the sarcophagus, almost a month passed. Every day a small team would go down and carefully mesure and calculate the current state of the chamber as accurately as possible and every day they would come back more puzzled than before. Because it was so devoid of features it was hard to determine the age by architecture style alone.

"That's why we sent this request. Miss Voder would help us find the age of the stone itself and provide insight on whether it is common or not in the region, she would have helped with the dating, and you Professor Archebus you would bring the entire research on the village back to San Vale to be saved into the archives and set for examination."

"But something happened and we arrived a month late."

"Exactly, and as the days passed after the first set date for your arrival things began to happen at the site." He suddenly looked terrified, he paled even more.

"Take it easy, we can still wait a little."

"No I must tell you everything, if I don't make it no one will ever know what happened to us."

He drank some more and a doctor came in to tell them time was up, Berel refused to let his two listeners leave and asked the doctors to give them more time. At this point, the doctors had had enough of the three patients shenanigans and just left disgruntled. Berel calmed down and continued his retelling of the events as they happened.

There had been a series of events which led to the fire at the campsite. The first was the discovery of the body of one of the researcher in the chamber. The theory had been that he fell through the hole in the dark but left open the question on "what was he doing at the site during the night", then there was a series of disappearance, in total five worker were missing. Then, when the first rain of the season came so came a group of men that refused to die unless their head was cut off. Then every time it rained the strange men would returned and attack them. At this point the casualties were at five dead and five missing and the team was starting to lose it's patience. Then a week ago, finally coming to peace with the fact that an ill-fated end had befallen them Berel ask that they opened the sarcophagus.

"Frankly I believed you would never arrive so in desperation I asked that the coffin be opened and then we would that it back with us to San Vale." He swallowed with difficulty, "That's when the thing took a turn from strange and dangerous to terrifying, because when we opened it we found the body of a woman, perfectly preserved, as if she had just died, with her eyes gouged out."

"What?"

"There, was laying a dead woman with her eyes missing, the injury still fresh and the body, despite cold and definitely dead, still perfectly preserved."

"That woman..."

"Was not a part of our team and none of us had ever seen her before, someone would guard the chamber day and night to avoid another person falling through so no one could have put her there during that time."

"What did she look like?" Alessia asked fearful, she was almost expecting to hear that she was the same woman that they had fought against.

"That's the good news of the day." Berel reached for something under his pillow and took out a bunch of papers, that had obviously suffered from their prolonged stay in the brasier. "You will find almost all our findings on the chamber and a drawing of the woman in there. That's all I could save when those monsters came back. I was the one that set the camp on fire, this time they were not only trying to kill us but also to get their hands on our research."

"The woman?"

"I don't know what happened, I threw a torch into the opening but for all I know I could have missed her."

Joan took the papers and quickly scanned through them until he found the drawing. He handed it to Alessia. She breathed a sigh of relief it was not the same woman. The woman in the drawing looked older, perhaps around forty years old, she had a nice face, slightly wavy hair, that the artist had labelled "black", she was wearing a strange dress and pieces of armour labelled "silver plated". She handed it back to Joan.

"Does the dress style or armour remind you of something?" He looked closer, indeed it reminded him of something, the dress of the siren. But most importantly.

"Sol fashion of the late second era, a noble woman who lived during the Great Floods."

"It could be a reproduction." Said Berel.

"You said it yourself, no one could have brought her in and the sarcophagus was sealed. She has been there since the Great floods, the chamber was built to host her and then they built on top of it to hide it." Joan sighed "But a noble would not have been buried in such a structure, they feared her, they were afraid that even in death she could hurt them. Perhaps they thought of her as a witch."

"Maybe she is responsible for those strange drowned undead harassing us." said Alessia.

"Or they thought she was." whispered Joan, "She dress like the Lady from the lake and both had a link with the undead."

"Was she also missing her eyes?"

"She had two pearls instead..."

"To call them pearls perhaps make sens due to the colour but, I don't know, they were a pearly blue, a light blue" Joan cut Alessia, the woman grasped the side of her jacket and brought it against her body. She realized her gesture and let go. Berel fell into silence and Joan put the paper safely inside his own jacket in the pocket against his heart, where the letter was tucked away.

"I should rest, and so should you. The faster we leave Meriam for San Vale the faster things will move, we might find help there."

"You are right, but those findings...Maybe we should keep them secret, it seems this knowledge is dangerous, we can't risk to involve anyone who cannot protect themselves."

"You are right."