Leo blinked in disbelief, his eyes flicking between Tyler and Eileen, both staring at him as if he had just crawled out of hell itself.
"What?" he demanded. "What's with those faces? Where did that woman go?"
He turned—and froze. The woman's body lay sprawled behind him, limbs twisted unnaturally, her hair fanning across the damp soil like dark ink.
"Tyler," he whispered, pulse hammering in his throat, "did you… kill her?"
Tyler shook his head slowly, his Adam's apple rising and falling. "Leo… look at your hands."
Leo lifted them. A thick, black fluid clung to his palms, slick and pulsing faintly as if alive.
"What—what is this?!" he stammered. "Where did it come from?!"
Tyler shot a quick look toward Eileen, silently signaling her to stay quiet. "Forget it for now," he said tightly. "Something's wrong here. We need to leave—now."
Leo turned toward the cemetery gate, but the shimmer of invisible energy still sealed it shut. "The gate's still locked," he muttered.
"Then we wait until dawn," Tyler said, sinking to his knees and wiping sweat from his brow. "God help us."
Leo's voice cracked، "You've got to be kidding. We're trapped here, great! And, Tyler, what the hell is this Jericho thing, or whatever that creature's name was?"
Tyler sighed, rose to his feet, and walked toward the body. He crouched down and carefully lifted the blood-stained veil from her face.
Beneath it, her features were haunting—a pale elegance marred by black veins spreading under her skin like cracks in porcelain. For all her monstrousness, there was still something heartbreakingly human in her beauty.
Tyler's expression softened. He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek and whispered, "You can rest now." Then he closed her eyes with his fingertips, as though performing a final mercy.
He exhaled and leaned back against a moss-covered tombstone, his face hollowed by exhaustion. "Jericho," he began quietly, "was once a woman. Beautiful, kind—too kind, maybe. Like every girl, she dreamed of love, of a husband, of a simple life filled with laughter and children. But fate… had other plans."
Eileen and Leo exchanged a wary glance as Tyler's voice grew heavier.
"She lost her parents overnight. Both gone—sickness, accident, who knows. All that remained was her little sister, no older than ten. And because her fiancé's family were nobles, they saw her sister as a stain. They'd only accepted Jericho because of her beauty—never her blood. When they demanded she abandon her sister, she refused. She broke off the engagement despite her lover's pleading."
He paused, eyes lost in the dark horizon. "From then on, she raised her sister alone. But poverty starved them both. People turned them away out of fear of her ex-fiancé's influence. Work, food, even shelter—they were denied it all. Her sister grew weaker, day by day, until death came quietly one winter night. They said it was hunger. I think it was despair."
"She buried the girl herself," Tyler continued, voice low and rough. "And for a moment, everyone thought that was the end. But grief has a way of feeding the impossible. Jericho began to dream—vivid, terrible dreams. Every night she heard her sister screaming, calling her name, begging for help. The same dream, three nights in a row."
Eileen swallowed hard. "You mean… she saw the dead?"
"Or the dead saw her," Tyler said. "Either way, she couldn't ignore it. On the third night, she went to the graveyard. She thought her sister's soul was trapped—needing release."
He closed his eyes for a heartbeat. "Instead, she found her ex-fiancé. He had dug up the grave—with his friends. They were laughing. Mocking. Doing things no human being should ever do to a corpse. He told her it was punishment. That rejecting him had made her sister 'a toy' for noble amusement."
Leo's face went pale. Eileen's hand covered her mouth.
"She screamed," Tyler said. "But no one came. And when she told the town, no one believed her. He had wealth, power, and charm. She had only dirt beneath her fingernails. 'It's just a corpse,' they said. 'Why make a fuss?'"
His tone hardened. "That's when something in her broke. She turned to the forbidden—black magic. She offered her soul to summon something that could feel her rage. A creature in her image, stripped of mercy. The same face, the same beauty, but empty—no heart, no warmth, only vengeance."
He looked down at the body again, voice barely above a whisper.
"She appeared to her ex-fiancé wearing the wedding dress she'd sewn for him. He thought it was a sick joke. He laughed."
Tyler's hand curled into a fist.
Eileen's voice broke through the silence, low and uncertain.
"You mean… she spoke with the dead?"
Tyler nodded slowly. "I think so. Or maybe the dead spoke through her. Either way, what happened that night…" He drew in a breath, his tone darkening. "It wasn't something meant for human eyes."
He glanced at the corpse again, at the faint shimmer of decay around her skin, and continued.
"Jericho went to the graveyard on the night of her sister's burial. The moon was full, the air heavy. She said she heard her sister calling her—crying from beneath the dirt. So she dug with her bare hands until her nails bled. But she wasn't alone."
Tyler's voice grew quieter, harsher. "When she broke through the soil, she saw him. Her ex-fiancé. The noble. He and his friends were already there—laughing like drunken beasts. They'd opened the coffin. And what they were doing to that poor girl—" He stopped for a moment, jaw tight, then forced himself to go on. "They were violating her corpse. Mocking her. He said it was justice for Jericho's pride, for daring to reject a man of his blood for the sake of a 'worthless child.'"
Eileen's face turned pale, her breath catching. Tyler looked down. "I'm sorry, Eileen."
Her voice came steady, cold. "Don't be. Keep talking."
Tyler's eyes glinted in the dark. "Jericho snapped. She screamed until her throat tore. But no one came. And when she went to the authorities—when she told the town what she'd seen—they laughed. They called her mad. They said, 'It's only a body. Why should we care?' The bastard's family buried the truth just like they'd buried her sister."
He ran a hand through his hair, the movement slow and tired. "So she turned to something darker than justice. She went to a forbidden place, where prayers are answered in blood. She gave her soul willingly, traded it for the power to create something that would not weep or doubt—a hollow thing made in her image. A body with her face, her voice… but no heart."
Leo felt a shiver crawl up his spine. "And that's… what we saw tonight?"
Yes, he continues , "She tore him apart before he could finish laughing. Him and all of his friends The next morning, all they found were pieces. They had to scrape what was left of them into sacks and bury the remains in a single pit. But vengeance, when bought with your soul, doesn't end. Her body died, but her rage stayed behind. And now, when night falls and a man touches a woman's corpse… Jericho comes. Over and over again, repeating her ritual."
Leo exchanged a glance with Eileen, then back to Tyler. "So that's why she didn't attack you," Tyler continued, nodding toward Eileen. "You're a woman. And the last time she appeared, we hadn't touched the bodies. But this time…" His eyes moved to Leo. "You climbed into that pit full of corpses. That was enough to summon her."
Leo exhaled shakily. The realization hit like ice water down his spine. Then, after a long pause, he frowned. "Wait. If those corpses brought her here… what about them? Are they connected to Jericho too?"
Tyler hesitated. "No. Or—maybe? Honestly, I don't know." He stepped closer to the pit, peering down into the dark mass of tangled limbs below. "Those bodies… I don't even know where they came from. But they weren't hers. Not originally."
Eileen's brow furrowed. "Then… if she wasn't controlling them, who was?"
No one had an answer. The three of them stood mute, eyes drawn like magnets to the black mouth of the pit. Leo jabbed Tyler in the shoulder, hard enough to make him wince.
"Tyler—look at Eileen."
Tyler turned. For a beat the sight of her stole the air from his lungs: her pupils had rolled white again, the iris swallowed by a milky film that made her look less like a person and more like a statue whose spirit had momentarily slipped free.
"What—?" Leo's voice was a raw whisper.
Eileen sagged toward the lip of the grave as if a hand beneath the earth had hooked her by the waist. Her limbs moved of their own accord, fingers stretching toward the pile of corpses, a terrible magnetism in her movements. Before she could pitch forward into that heaving mass of flesh and decay, both men lunged. They grabbed her arms and hauled, muscles screaming against a body that seemed bent on self-destruction.
"Eileen—hey, are you with us?" Leo shook her so violently it felt as if he might rattle her out of her skin. Slowly, painfully, her eyelids fluttered. Consciousness snapped back into her like a jagged current finding a broken wire.
"Eileen—what the hell's wrong with you? Answer me!" Leo demanded, voice tipping from panic to anger. There was no answer; her stare remained fixed on the pit as though some unseen thing below had planted a hook in her brain.
"Hold on—hold the line, Eileen. This is important." Leo's voice went cold and hard. The words came out sharper than he meant. Before he could stop himself he swung. His hand connected with her cheek in a slap that cracked like a pistol report. Eileen hit the earth, hand flying to her face, shock and fury bright on her features as she pulled herself upright.
"Why the hell did you hit me, you son of a—" she spit, venom in every syllable.
"What did you call my mother?" Leo snapped, something ugly and animal rising inside him at the insult. He drew the blade of his scythe with one furious motion, the metal singing in the night. "You dare—?"
Eileen was faster. Two knives flashed from her sleeves as if they had been waiting all along. Steel met steel in the shadowed air. The space between them trembled with the imminence of violence; every heartbeat was a match struck.
"Stop!" Tyler's shout cracked across the graveyard like lightning. "We have a bigger problem than who insulted whose mother."
Leo whirled on him, rage still sparking in his eyes. "No one—no one—" His roar died when he saw them: figures slipping from the trees, moving with the terrible efficiency of men used to giving orders. Jackets gleamed—white, embroidered with gold—and the glints at their hips were guns, black and implacable. A dozen pistol muzzles trained on their skulls said what words could not.
"Lower your weapon, boy, or we empty your head," the man said, voice as neutral as a ledger.