Jack drifted swiftly through the night sky. A ghostly blur above the city's industrial sprawl. The Lonestone Noble Cemetery.
It was an old, sprawling place. Ornate mausoleums and weathered tombstones marked the resting places of the city's elite. A quiet, solemn place. Or so it should have been.
He descended. His ethereal form passed through the wrought-iron gates without a sound. The air was cool. Damp. Smelling of old stone and decaying leaves. Moonlight illuminated the paths. Casting long, distorted shadows from monuments.
Nothing seemed suspicious. Nothing in the location felt different from what it should be. No living being but insects. And far away nocturnal birds.
Jack Mystery manifested fully. A masked spectral figure in formal outfit, top hat, and stylish cloak. His presence barely disturbed the air.
He tested the situation by appearing. Nothing changed. Nothing was triggered by his appearance.
He moved once more through the cemetery. The silence was profound. Almost oppressive. There were no strange sounds. No flickering lights. No spectral figures. No hint of the 'huge problem' the twins had mentioned.
It looked like any other high-class graveyard. Well-maintained. Respectful. Not spooky at all. Well, for the standard of a specter like him.
He glided past marble angels. Past graves surrounded by delicate wrought-iron fences. Still nothing.
This was initially disappointing. The twins were rarely wrong. But this place seemed utterly mundane. Still, he wouldn't dismiss their warning so easily.
Jack approached a large, imposing mausoleum. Belonging to the noble 'Elwood' family. He extended a spectral hand, and his form shimmered, allowing him to phase through the stone wall as if it were mist.
Inside, it was dark, dusty. Sarcophagi lined the walls. He somehow had idea to check them. He didn't like to disturb the dead. But his task was to investigate.
He focused. He pressed his intangible hand against the lid of the nearest sarcophagus. Then flowed through it.
Nothing. Empty.
Absolute, profound nothing. No remains. No dust of bones. No tattered cloths. It was empty. Completely, utterly vacant. That was odd.
He checked another sarcophagus. Same result. Empty.
He moved to a third, then a fourth. All empty.
This wasn't right. Noble cemeteries were for the noble dead. And the dead were supposed to stay dead. Preferably in their graves. He phased back out. A prickle of unease beginning to form.
He moved to an individual grave nearby, a simple but elegant headstone marking the resting place of a 'Lady Eleanor Lanceworth'.
He decided to check beneath the surface. His form rippled. And he sank into the earth, his vision undeterred by the soil and stone.
He passed through layers of dark earth, roots, and small rocks. Deeper he went, expecting to encounter a wooden coffin. Perhaps a lead-lined one. And within it, a skeletal remains. Or at least a decaying corpse.
He did find the rotting coffin. But, there was nothing inside.
Just coffin. No corpse. No bones. No indication that anything other than the coffin had ever been buried there.
Jack reappeared above ground. His mask was still impassive, but a jolt of genuine unease ran through him. This was not normal. Not even for a mysterious problem.
He moved to another grave. Then another. A different section. A different family name. A different era of burial. Each time, he phased down. Each time, he found coffins. New, old, or rotten. But all of them were empty.
He checked a dozen more graves. Then twenty. Then fifty. The sheer consistency of the emptiness was what started to truly unnerve him.
Every single grave he phased into. Every single plot marked with a name and dates, was devoid of any remains. No rotting body. No skeleton. Nothing.
It was as if the cemetery was a grand, elaborate farce. A graveyard without the dead.
The initial mundane peace of the cemetery now felt like a sinister deception. This was far more unsettling than any ghoul or phantom. For Jack.
He kept checking. Methodically moving from one gravestone to the next. Sinking into the earth. Verifying the chilling absence. The moon tracked its slow arc across the sky.
The city lights twinkled in the distance. Oblivious to the void beneath the noble ground.
He searched until the first faint streaks of dawn began to paint the eastern sky. The industrial hum of the city began to pick up.
He had covered a significant portion of the Lonestone Noble Cemetery. And the result remained the same. Every grave, empty. Every single one.
He found nothing. And that, in itself, was terrifying. It wasn't a problem he could immediately identify or fight. It was an absence of what should be there.
Jack dissipated. Retreating back to his home as the sun rose. He had other things to do. Other incarnations with different needs.
The cemetery case required more investigation. And he would do that later. When night fell. When Jack Mystery's turn to act came again.
Two days passed in much the same pattern. Each night, as Jack Mystery, he returned to the Lonestone Noble Cemetery. He continued his systematic search. Verifying his initial findings.
The emptiness persisted. It was absolute. Not a single bone. No shred of corpse. It was as if the ground had simply swallowed the occupants whole. Leaving no trace.
He also expanded his nightly exploration to other cemeteries in Lonestone Capital City.
There were the pauper's fields. Sprawling and crowded. With simple wooden markers.
There was the city's general cemetery. A more modest version of the noble one. With various stone markers. He checked graves in these places.
In the pauper's field, he typically found simple wooden coffins. Often decayed, and skeletons resting within. Sometimes, if the burial was recent. He would encounter decaying corpses. But they were always there.
In the general city cemetery, it was much the same. Coffins. Bones. The expected remnants of the dead.
These cemeteries were normal. Skeletons and rotting corpses were in their graves. Just as they should be.
The problem, undeniably, seemed to be isolated to the Lonestone Noble Cemetery. It was unique. The sheer scale of the absence was staggering.
Thousands... tens of thousand bodies. Likely. Over centuries. They were simply gone. What kind of power could achieve this? What kind of problem manifested something like this?
The anomaly of the Lonestone Noble Cemetery gnawed at Jack. It defied every known principle of the natural world. Or even the supernatural one.
A problem without a clear enemy. An effect without a discernible cause. This wasn't a case for brute force or arcane trickery. At least, not yet. This was a detective work. Requiring observation, patience, and a deep dive into the mundane.
On the third night of his investigation, Jack positioned himself strategically. He hovered near the small lodge at the cemetery's entrance.
Inside, he knew, lived the cemetery's long-serving groundskeeper. An elderly man with gloomy look.
Jack had seen him from afar. A hunched figure. Tending to graves during the day. Seemingly oblivious to the grand, silent disappearance unfolding beneath his very feet.
Jack Mystery became entirely invisible. A mere ripple in the moonlit air. He watched the man through the lodge window. All night.
The old man's routine was painfully predictable. A frugal dinner. A flickering lamp illuminating a well-worn book. Then moving early to bed. There was no furtive digging. No hushed conversations. No strange visitors.
Jack observed his book. It was simply a gardening text book. Nothing significant. The old man himself was as empty of clues as the graves he tended.
The next day, Jack Night abandoned his routine activities. He spent his day in a quiet, unassuming corner of the Lonestone National Library.
As Jack Night, he was a different beast entirely. Gone were the spectral qualities and the masked mystery. Here was a man of impressive build. His broad shoulders and strong jawline giving him an air of quiet power.
The Lonestone National Library was a labyrinth of knowledge. A towering chamber of polished wood and hushed whispers.
Jack spent the entire day absorbed in its depths. He started with city records. Poring over historical maps. Land deeds. And municipal gazettes pertaining to the Lonestone Noble Cemetery.
Founded over three centuries ago. Its establishment was meticulously documented. Its expansion charted. Its notable occupants were listed with solemn reverence.
There was no mention of any major disturbances. No mass burials due to plague or war. No records of a catastrophic structural failure. Or even a simple relocation project that might explain thousands of missing remains.
He cross-referenced the cemetery's history with local folklore. And urban legends. Were there tales of a cemetery curse? A restless spectral devourer? A forgotten, ancient blight?
The librarians were helpful but bewildered by his strange requests. They pointed him to dusty tomes filled with ghostly encounters. And tales of the city's more supernatural past.
None of them mentioned anything remotely similar to what had happened. A cemetery-wide, systematic disappearance of bodies. The Lonestone Noble Cemetery had been nothing but a reputable, stately resting place.
Frustrated but undeterred, Jack broadened his search. Moving into national and even international historical archives. Anything that was available through the library's extensive network.
He spent hours tracing patterns of mass burials. Grave robbing. And even bizarre magical occurrences documented across the realms. He looked for instances of 'empty cemeteries'. Or 'body-less graves' in those texts.
He found records of large-scale grave robbing during famines or wars. But these left tell-tale signs of disturbance. Upturned earth. Shattered coffins. Scattered debris.
He found accounts of powerful necromancers raising armies of the dead. But such events were always localized, violent, and highly public. Leaving behind empty shells of bodies or devastated landscapes.
There were even rare instances of bodies simply dissolving due to strange, decaying magic. But never with such surgical precision. Leaving the coffins intact.
Every single lead was a dead end. Every single historical parallel he unearthed, failed to align with the current case.
The more he searched, the more unique the case became. It wasn't a historical event. Not a common magical phenomenon. And certainly not the work of a normal human.
As the library announced its closing, Jack Night slipped out into the twilight. His mind was a whirl of unfulfilled queries. The day's rigorous research had yielded nothing satisfactory.
The problem wasn't a known quantity. It was something entirely new. Something alien. The Lonestone Noble Cemetery case remained an enigma. He needed a new angle. A way to find the cause.