Page 45 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

“Commander,” she said to Nishi. “It’s back there.”

Nishi nodded once. “Show me.”

We climbed out.

The air hit me immediately. Cold and damp, with that cemetery smell that was half earth, half stone, half memory. The silence here was different from normal quiet. It felt watched.

Faith checked her weapon. Eve’s hands flexed once, as if she wanted to be sure her magic was ready. Tegan pulled a small relic from her coat pocket, its surface etched.

I stepped through the gate and felt something shift. Not a barrier exactly. More like a subtle pressure change, like walking into a room where someone had been crying.

“Do you feel that?” I murmured.

Eve nodded. “Yes.”

Tegan’s gaze swept the rows. “This place is loaded.”

Faith snorted. “It’s a cemetery. That’s the point.”

We followed the hunter along a narrow path between graves. The stones grew closer together, older, less decorated. Some had small iron fences around them, rusted and bent. Some had flowers, real or plastic, limp in the cold.

Then I saw it.

A grave marker with fresh cuts in the stone. Not random scratches. Symbols.

They looked too crisp to be old. Someone had carved them recently.

The hunter pointed. “There’s more.”

She moved her light across the row.

Another headstone had the same style of cuts. Another. And another.

My stomach dropped further with each one.

Tegan crouched, running her fingers near the carvings without touching. “This is not casual vandalism.”

Faith leaned in, eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

I stared at the shapes. My brain flipped through half-remembered books, diagrams, things I’d read at two in the morning when sleep wouldn’t come.

Ankh.

A stylized eye.

Symbols arranged in a way that felt like language, not decoration.

“Ancient Egyptian,” I said slowly.

Eve’s eyes sharpened. “Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be without pretending I’m fluent in hieroglyphs,” I replied. “But these aren’t Norse runes or Latin seals. Look at the lines. The forms. The symmetry.”

Tegan’s gaze locked on one carving, and her face tightened. “Resurrection.”

Faith blinked. “That’s a guess.”

Tegan shook her head once. “No. I’ve seen versions of this in relic catalogs. In restricted collections. It’s associated with raising, returning, calling the dead back.”