Eduardo Calvin crouched amid the blackened bushes, wearing a battlefield cloak long since caked with ash and muddy water. He looked like a bounty hunter of noble birth.
"Are you sure we can find any worthwhile clues here?"
He tugged at his gloves as he spoke to the gray-and-white hound beside him.
It was a breed specially trained to find decomposing corpses. Its nose quivered and its ears pricked up now and then as it circled restlessly over the scorched ground.
"...Nothing? Another dead end?"
The hound whined twice, indicating that something was buried there.
"Haa..."
Eduardo sighed and flung his cloak back, utterly indifferent to the bloodstains and dust on his clothes.
He scraped aside the crust of scorched earth, then pried apart a heap of burned vines, finally uncovering a piece of remains with black bone fragments clinging to it.
The thing had almost lost its original shape. It resembled a wax figure tossed into a furnace and crushed, giving off a faint but foul stench.
His expression immediately soured. "Lord, what did I do to deserve this..."
Grumbling, Eduardo took a clean white cloth from inside his clothes and wiped the mud from his fingers, though his movements retained an aristocrat's restrained elegance.
The hound watched him, gave a low bark, and licked his cuff, as though consoling him over yet another wasted trip.
"Yes, yes, I know you're even more disappointed than I am."
He stroked the dog's head, then looked up toward the gray-white sky in the distance.
Just as he began questioning his life, his dog, his church, and even why the world had so cruelly condemned him to digging up graves...
A dark shadow swept across the gray-white sky.
Its long wings spread like blades, slicing through the dull rush of the wind