Mr. Abernathy's Funeral Parlor was a quiet establishment, mostly because Mr. Abernathy was deaf in one ear and slept eighteen hours a day.
It was the perfect hideout.
By noon, Silas had secured a job. His interview consisted of lifting a heavy oak coffin with one hand and looking sufficiently grim. Abernathy handed him an apron and a set of keys, grateful to have someone to handle the "messy cases."
Silas stood in the embalming room, polishing his shovel. The smell of formaldehyde was comforting. It masked the scent of the Tar smog outside.
The bell above the door chimed.
Silas walked into the front parlor.
A woman stood there. She wore a black veil, but her hands were trembling. She clutched a handkerchief that was stained not with tears, but with a thick, black substance.
It was Martha Miller. The wife of the Deputy whose wrist Silas had shattered the night before.
Silas didn't flinch. He wiped his hands on his apron.
"We are closed for lunch, Ma'am. Unless it's an emergency."
"I know who you are," Martha whispered, stepping closer. "You're the stranger from the saloon. The one who touched my husband."
Silas rested his hand near the hidden pocket where his revolver lay. "If you're here for revenge, Mrs. Miller, I should warn you: I don't bleed easily."
"Revenge?" She let out a choked laugh. She uncurled her fist.
In her palm lay a piece of dried flesh. It looked like grey jerky, but it pulsed faintly.
"My husband didn't come home last night. The Sheriff took him to the 'Infirmary' in the jailhouse. He said his arm needed setting."
She looked up, her eyes terrified.
"I went to bring him food. I saw him through the window. Silas... his arm isn't broken. It's dissolving."
[The Diagnosis]
Silas took the piece of flesh from her hand.
It was cold. And it smelled of the deep mines.
Spirit Vision.
Silas's eyes shifted. He saw a faint, black thread connecting the flesh to the town's jailhouse.
"The bone broke," Silas said clinically. "But the trauma triggered something else. His containment failed."
"Containment?" Martha asked.
"Your husband isn't just a man, Mrs. Miller. He's a vessel." Silas crushed the flesh in his hand. It turned to black dust. "The Sheriff isn't hiring deputies. He's manufacturing them."
"Please," she grabbed his arm. Her grip was desperate. "He was screaming. Not in pain. In... hunger. He kept asking for the 'Black Milk'. Save him. Or... or end him. Just don't let him become one of them."
Silas looked at the weeping woman. He felt no sympathy—his emotions were too cold for that—but he felt a duty.
An Undertaker's job isn't just burying bodies. It's ensuring the dead don't bother the living.
"Go home, Mrs. Miller," Silas said, grabbing his coat. "I'll make a house call."
[The Jailhouse]
Night fell quickly in Blackwater, the smog choking out the sun by 4 PM.
The Sheriff's Station was a blocky stone building with iron bars on the windows. It sat atop a small hill, overlooking the refinery.
Silas didn't go through the front door.
He went to the back, where the "Criminals" were supposedly kept.
He activated his ability: Silence.
His heartbeat slowed to near-zero. His boots made no sound on the gravel. He became a shadow.
He approached a basement window. It was barred, but the mortar around the stones was crumbling.
Silas wedged his shovel blade into the gap.
He pushed. His enhanced strength flared.
Crumbbbble.
The stone gave way. He slid the bars aside and dropped into the dark.
[The Black Ward]
The basement didn't smell like a jail. It smelled like a slaughterhouse mixed with an oil rig.
Silas crept down the hallway.
There were cells, yes. But they had no cots. No toilets.
Instead, they had troughs.
And the troughs were filled with Live Tar.
In the first cell, a man sat in the corner. His skin was turning grey and hard, like stone. He was drinking from the trough, lapping up the black liquid like a dog.
A Ghoul in the making, Silas realized. Sheriff Clay is building a private army of monsters.
He reached the end of the hall. Cell 4.
Inside lay Deputy Miller.
He was unrecognizable.
The arm Silas had broken was gone. In its place was a puddle of black sludge that was slowly reshaping itself into a tentacle.
Miller's face was half-melted, sliding off his skull. One eye was looking at the ceiling; the other was looking at his own chest.
"Miller," Silas whispered.
The thing on the floor gurgled. The good eye focused on Silas.
"C-cold..." Miller wheezed. "So... hot... inside. Make it... cold."
Silas unlocked the cell. He stepped inside.
The smell was atrocious, rotting meat and chemical burn. Silas didn't blink.
He knelt beside the deputy.
"The Tar is eating you," Silas stated calmly. "Your structure is failing. You are becoming a slime-mold."
"Kill... me..." Miller's voice bubbled. "Before... the Sheriff... feeds me... again."
[The Mercy]
Silas pulled out a long, thin needle from his coat (an embalming tool).
"This won't hurt," Silas lied. "Actually, it will hurt a lot. But only for a second."
He placed the tip of the needle over Miller's heart, or where his heart used to be.
He channeled his Corpse Collector Aura into the needle. He concentrated all the chill of the grave into a single point.
"Rest."
He drove the needle down.
Hiss.
The black sludge in Miller's veins froze instantly. The Tar solidified, turning brittle like obsidian.
The Deputy gasped one last time, his human eye rolling back.
He died. A true, clean death.
As the life faded, a small wisp of grey light floated up from the body.
It hovered for a second, then drifted into Silas.
He inhaled it.
He felt a small click in his soul.
[Digestion Complete. Sequence 9 Progress: 15%]
He didn't just kill him. He harvested the death.
[The Discovery]
Silas stood up. He searched the body.
In Miller's pocket, fused to the melting fabric, was a crumpled ledger page.
Silas peeled it off.
It was a shipping manifest.
Cargo: Subject 44 (Deceased).
Destination: The Iron-Hold Laboratory.
Sender: Sheriff Clay.
Payment: 10 Vials of Refined Serum.
"He's trading them," Silas realized. "He's turning the townspeople into monsters and shipping them to the Capital."
Suddenly, heavy boots sounded on the stairs above.
"I smell a rat," a deep voice boomed. Sheriff Clay.
"And it smells like... grave dirt."
Silas looked at the only exit—the stairs where the Sheriff was standing.
He looked at the manifest in his hand.
He looked at the trough of Tar in the corner.
"Time to improvise," Silas muttered.
He didn't run to the stairs. He kicked the trough over.
Gallons of sticky, flammable Black Tar spilled across the floor, blocking the hallway.
He pulled out his revolver.
He aimed at the lantern hanging on the wall.
"Evening, Sheriff," Silas shouted. "You have a leak."
BANG.
The lantern shattered. Burning oil fell onto the Tar.
WHOOSH.
A wall of black fire erupted, separating Silas from the stairs. The Sheriff roared in anger, blocked by the inferno.
Silas turned to the back wall of the cell. It was made of brick.
He raised his shovel.
"Exit strategy," he grunted.
He began to dig, not through earth, but through the foundation of the jailhouse, while the fire raged behind him.