The heavy metal door of the cabin clicked shut, sealing out the cool evening air.
B let out a long, contented sigh the moment her boots stepped onto the smooth wooden floor. The quiet interior of the cabin felt wonderfully calm and safe.
She walked over to the wooden table by the wide window and set down the heavy bundle of wrapped clothes. She didn't bother unpacking the five new outfits right away; that sounded like physical labor, and she had already used up all her movement quota for the day.
Holding her brown paper bag of fresh bakery treats tightly in her arm, B shuffled straight over to her prized possession, the worn-out brown couch in the corner of the room.
She didn't even take off her oversized pale white dress. She simply kicked off her worn leather boots, let her floor-length white hair spill over the cushions like a soft white blanket, and flopped headfirst onto the sofa.
Puff.
The cushions sank down comfortably under her light weight.
"Ahhhh..." B murmured, her small voice full of pure, blissful satisfaction.
She rolled over onto her back, resting her head on the soft pillow. She pulled the brown paper bag onto her stomach, letting it sit right above her chest so she wouldn't have to reach far to get food.
Reaching into the bag, her small pale fingers wrapped around another soft vanilla-cream bun. She pulled it out, peeled back the brown paper wrapping, and brought it to her mouth.
Nom.
The sweet, cold vanilla cream burst onto her tongue again.
"This is the absolute best life," B muttered to the empty room, chewing happily like a content little animal. "Free housing, no screaming managers, no endless spreadsheets, and sweet cream bread for dinner."
Compared to her past life, where she spent 140 hours a week sitting under harsh white lights, eating cold instant noodles while her heart slowly gave out, this new life felt like a dream. She didn't have to worry about rent, she didn't have to worry about student loans, and her only job duty was sweeping dry leaves off stone paths for an hour or two a day.
She took another big bite of her pastry.
Nom.
Nom.
As she lay there on the soft couch, munching her bread while staring up at the quiet wooden ceiling, a single, tiny thought popped into her mind.
'If I had to find one single flaw with this place...' B thought, staring at her empty pale hands. 'It's that I don't have a smartphone.'
In her previous life, eating food while laying down always came paired with doomscrolling on her phone. She used to spend hours lying on her cheap bed, watching brainless funny videos, reading random online forums, or scrolling through short clips while eating her late-night dinner.
Right now, the cabin was completely silent. There was no screen glowing in her hand, no video playing in the background, and no online posts to read. It felt just a tiny bit quiet.
'Well...' B reasoned, taking a smaller bite of the sweet bun. 'This world has street lamps, phones in bakeries, and electronic cash registers. That means smartphones probably exist here too. Once my weekly envelope arrives with my salary, I can save up my Vicks for a month or two and buy a cheap phone.'
The thought of saving up for a phone to watch videos in her cozy cabin made her feel even more relaxed. There was no rush. She had all the time in the world.
Her eyelids began to feel heavy. The long walk to the village, the standing at the shop counter, and the full stomach of sweet bread were all catching up to her frail fifteen-year-old body.
Her pitch-black pupils drooped low, her long white eyelashes fluttering softly against her pale cheeks.
She held the last piece of vanilla bun loosely in her small right hand, resting it against her stomach. Her breathing slowed down, turning into long, steady rhythms as the quiet darkness of sleep wrapped around her mind.
"No more... overtime..." B whispered in her sleep, her small lips curving into a peaceful smile as she drifted into a deep slumber.
...
...
...
Back in Oakhaven Village...
The orange glow of the sunset had completely faded from the sky, replaced by the dark blue of late evening.
Inside Oakhaven Fresh Bakes, the tall baker woman turned the lock on the front glass door and flipped the sign hanging in the window from 'OPEN' to 'CLOSED'.
She walked past the empty wooden shelves, her face completely free of the friendly cashier smile she had worn during the day. Her expression was cold, serious, and deeply troubled.
She walked through the kitchen area, past the heavy stone ovens, and pushed open a reinforced metal door leading to a small, windowless office room in the back.
She didn't turn on the main light. Instead, she walked over to a heavy steel desk in the center of the room, sat down in a leather chair, and pulled a sleek, heavy black laptop out of a locked metal drawer.
The laptop bore no brand name or commercial logo. Instead, a shiny silver emblem of a shield with a sword through it was stamped onto the metal cover, the official crest of the Aegis Sanctorum.
The baker woman was not just a local baker. She was a covert intelligence operative for the Sanctorum, stationed in Oakhaven to monitor spectral energy output from the dangerous Blackwood Cemetery nearby.
She opened the laptop and pressed her thumb against a biometric scanner. The screen glowed to life, flashing bright blue text across the dark display:
[ AEGIS SANCTORUM - SECTOR 4 MONITORING HUB ]
[ AGENT CODE: BAKER-09 ]
[ CLEARANCE LEVEL: TIER 3 ]
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, opening an encrypted, real-time communications channel to the regional command center.
[ LOGGING IN... ]
[ CONNECTING TO REGIONAL DISPATCH... ]
A sharp beep rang out from the speaker, and a distorted, male voice echoed into the quiet office.
/Agent Baker-09. State your report./
The baker woman adjusted her headset, leaning close to the microphone.
"This is Baker-09," she said, her voice sharp and professional. "I am requesting an immediate status check on the undercover personnel stationed at Site-07... Blackwood Cemetery."
There was a short pause on the line, followed by the faint sound of typing from the dispatcher on the other end.
/Site-07 status remains classified under DEFCON 2 protocols, why are you asking about the grave keeper agent?/
"Because a civilian, or someone claiming to be a civilian, just walked into my bakery twenty minutes ago," the baker woman reported, her eyebrows pressing together. "She claimed she was hired as the new grave keeper for Blackwood Cemetery."
Silence held the line for three long seconds.
/That is impossible,/ the dispatcher replied flatly. /Agent Miller, the undercover agent assigned to pose as the grave keeper at Site-07, went missing three weeks ago. His tracking charm went completely dead overnight without triggering an alarm. A Vanguard team swept the perimeter twice, but found no body, no blood, and no trace of high-level spectral combat. He simply vanished./
The baker woman felt a cold drop of sweat run down the back of her neck.
Agent Miller was a veteran Tier 3 Exorcist, trained to handle dangerous Rank 3 and Rank 4 ghosts. For a man like that to vanish inside Blackwood Cemetery without even leaving a scratch on the ground was terrifying.
Blackwood Cemetery was not an ordinary graveyard. It sat directly atop an ancient burial ground where a horrific near world ending Calamity-Class entity had been slain centuries ago. The soil was saturated with dense, malicious energy, constantly birthing high-tier ghosts. It was one of the most dangerous supernatural hot spots in the entire territory.
"If Agent Miller is gone..." The baker woman muttered, her voice trembling slightly. "Then who is the girl living in the keeper's cabin right now?"
/Describe the individual,/ the dispatcher commanded instantly.
"She looks like a young girl, no older than fourteen or fifteen," the baker woman described, reading from her memory. "Extremely frail build. Floor-length white hair. Translucent pale skin. And... her eyes. Her pupils are pitch-black voids. She radiates an extraordinarily low, almost non-existent life force. When she stood near my counter, my personal warning charm didn't react with heat... it went completely cold."
She touched her apron pocket, where the yellow paper talisman she had thrown earlier was sitting. It hadn't burned the girl because it wasn't a harm charm, it was a high-grade detection talisman. And when it hit the girl's forehead, the ink had frozen solid.
There was a loud clatter of papers over the radio, followed by rapid typing sounds.
/A child?/ The dispatcher’s voice sounded genuinely bewildered. /The Sanctorum has never deployed a child to Site-07. We have no records of any new assignment for Blackwood Cemetery. The High Council has placed a total quarantine on the zone due to the recent global energy anomalies./
"She didn't look like an enemy spirit," the baker woman insisted, rubbing her temples. "She bought two white loaves, three vanilla cream buns, two chocolate rolls, and a custard pastry. She paid in standard Vicks currency, complained about being startled, and walked out eating a cream bun like a normal kid."
/That makes no sense,/ the dispatcher grumbled. /If a normal fifteen-year-old civilian walked into Blackwood Cemetery alone, the residual curse energy in the air would wither her lungs in ten minutes. The Rank 3 phantoms lurking in the back rows would have devoured her soul before she even reached the cabin./
"I know," the baker woman said grimly. "That's why I'm reporting this. She looked completely innocent, but her claim that she was hired as the new grave keeper sounded entirely sincere. She had no fear in her eyes at all."
The radio line went quiet again as the dispatcher cross-referenced regional databases.
/No new personnel orders have been issued for Site-07,/ the dispatcher confirmed after a minute. /Whoever or whatever that girl is, she is an unknown anomaly operating inside a high-risk Calamity zone./
"Permission to conduct direct surveillance on Site-07?" The baker woman asked immediately, her sharp eyes staring at the dark screen. "If she is an unregistered civilian who somehow wandered into the cemetery, she is in extreme danger. If she is something else... we need to know before HQ initiates a full tactical purge."
The dispatcher remained silent for a long moment, considering the request.
/Request granted, Agent Baker-09,/ the voice finally replied. /You are authorized to monitor Site-07 from a safe distance. Do NOT enter the main graveyard grounds alone. Do NOT engage any spectral entities. If the anomaly shows hostiles signs, fall back to Oakhaven perimeter and report instantly to Vanguard Command. Is that clear?/
"Understood," the baker woman nodded firmly. "I will begin observation tomorrow morning."
/Sanctorum out./
Click.
The line went dead.
The baker woman closed her heavy laptop, locked it back inside the metal desk drawer, and stood up from her chair.
She walked over to the small window of her office, looking out into the dark night toward the distant, shadowy hills where Blackwood Cemetery rested in absolute silence.
She recalled the tiny, white-haired girl standing at her bakery counter, munching happily on a sweet cream bun with a completely flat, exhausted look on her pale face.
'A fifteen-year-old girl, living alone in the most haunted cemetery in the region...' The baker woman thought, her eyebrows knitting together in deep worry. 'Just what on earth are you, little girl?'
...
...
...
Miles away, inside the dark, quiet graveyard...
The night wind howled softly through the tall ironwood trees. High above, thick black clouds drifted past the pale moon, casting long, eerie shadows across the hundreds of stone graves.
Inside the small wooden cabin, B lay fast asleep on her plush brown couch.
Her soft vanilla-cream bun was half-eaten, resting safely in her small hand on her stomach. Her floor-length white hair was spread across the cushion, and her soft, steady breathing filled the peaceful room.
She had no idea that global agencies were hunting for missing agents, that high-tech command centers were screaming in panic, or that a trained secret operative was preparing to spy on her cabin tomorrow.
All she knew was that her belly was full, her couch was soft, and she had twelve glorious hours of sleep waiting for her.
Author's Note
EliteToeCollector
Thanks for reading!