The cemetery of the Holy City was ancient and decayed. Graves on either side had collapsed, exposing rotting coffins beneath broken mounds of earth. Fragments of bone occasionally spilled from the cracks, rolling across the ground whenever the wind blew.
Rows of crosses stood like sentries around the cemetery's perimeter. Desiccated corpses hung from the splintered wood, their flesh pecked clean by animals, leaving only bones tangled with sinew in roughly human shapes. Their dangling leg bones swayed in the wind, clattering with sharp crackles.
The moment Giles stepped into the cemetery, he proposed that he and Fran split up to explore. His reasoning was sound: covering more ground would give them more chances to trigger side quests and gather enough kindling.
Fran saw no reason to doubt him and readily agreed. Giles watched his back vanish into the depths of the cemetery before turning toward the western district of the Holy City.
Ever since entering the Instance, he had been plagued by a strange feeling. The representatives who had formed a team with him seemed unfamiliar. Their every gesture and manner of speech remained unchanged, yet he could not shake the sense that a large portion of them was not quite right.
Was it because they were acting too theatrically, their logic too muddled, or their thinking too sluggish, constantly rambling in circles around irrelevant matters? He could not name any definite point of suspicion. It was more an instinctive sense of incongruity, like waking up one day to see an identical acquaintance and suddenly recalling urban legends about "impostors."
Giles suspected that something had changed in the representatives. Even if he was merely overthinking it, they were definitely hiding something. Was none of them truly a heretic? Did they really not know the whereabouts of the [Fallen Savior]