A week passed by in peace and quiet, so much so that the standoff in the Gulch Pipelines was starting to feel like a thinning memory in Gael's head.

Now, the morning light in Fellstar Cemetery slanted pale and sharp through the Vile, tinting the rolling hills of grass and tombstones with a jaundiced hue. Gael adjusted the beak of his mask as he stood with Maeve, Cara, Liorin, Evelyn, and the five goons near the fringe of Old Banks' manor. So early in the morning, the air still tasted like damp leaves and fresh dew, but beneath his boots, the grave-dirt wasn't cold and hard.

It was fresh and soft instead.

Right in front of all of them, Fergal knelt by the open grave closest to Old Banks' manor, and they watched, quite slowly, as he buried his sister's arm with a gaze that stayed empty the whole time.

Gael wasn't one for funerals, but evidently, everyone else had been to one before, because they were all standing straight up with their heads bowed, hands clasped, and eyes closed.

At least, behind all of them, Old Banks was sipping tea beside a set table under a striped parasol, overlooking the funeral on his estate with merely quiet respect. Gael couldn't bring himself to whole-heartedly pray for somebody he didn't know, especially when that somebody…

…

He sighed.

While Fergal began pushing the small mound of earth back into the grave, he leaned towards Evelyn and whispered.

"Send word to Juno. Ask her how it's going with the pipes directly under the clinic."

"I already visited her this mornin'," Evelyn whispered back, pulling her mask aside to show him a smug smile. "She says they're flowin' properly. All the floodgates and valves and things are active, but there still ain't no direct pipe to the surface."

"Right. Then ask her how much it'll cost to build new pipes—"

"I already asked."

"Of course you did. Brat. Don't take that tone with me—"

"She says five hundred thousand Marks. It's gonna be a two week process if she gets her best men on it."

Gael blinked. His soul nearly climbed out of his throat.

"Five hundred thousand Marks?" he hissed, barely keeping his voice from strangling the silence.

They were decently well off now, but they didn't have that kind of money just lying around. Not unless he sold off Maeve's umbrella, Liorin's entire forest, all of Cara's makeup accessories, and maybe half of the clinic including the statue of the broken Saintess.

Before he could spiral deeper into grumbles, though, Fergal spoke without looking over his shoulder.

"I have the money," he said quietly. "I've saved up a lot working for the Repossessors for over eight years. I can pay for the construction. It's the least I can do after everything the clinic has done for me."

The dirt was still under his nails. The words didn't sound right coming from him. Still, Gael said nothing as Fergal sat down cross-legged before the grave, his head dipped just low enough that none of them could see even the barest hint of an expression on his face.

"Now, if you don't mind…" he said, "I'd like to be alone for a while."

None of them protested. Maeve gave a small nod. Liorin bowed faintly. Evelyn didn't grin as she slid her mask back on. Old Banks immediately broke the silence, though, with a porcelain clink of his teacup.

"Come drink with me, boys and girls," he said, calling out to the five goons. "Don't wait for your boss out in this drizzle. It's a lot warmer in the manor."

The five of them hesitated, looking at Fergal's back for a moment before, one by one, they quietly peeled away from the grave.

Gael watched all six of them head inside the manor with the parasol and teacups in hand—then he turned to Maeve, Cara, Evelyn, and Liorin himself, thumbing out of the cemetery.

"Let's go."

As they made their quiet exit from the graveyard, steps muffled by moss and damp stone, Gael tilted his head towards Evelyn again.

"What happened to the Rustwight carcasses, anyways?"

Evelyn skipped a half-step forward, swishing her wings with theatrical flair. "Two were hauled off by the Repossessors. Two more went to the Rot Merchants. That leaves the last pair rottin' nicely in Rot Merchant storage." Then she tilted her head back at him, and he swore he saw the grin beneath her mask again. "Juno says if you want them, you'll have to go pick them up yourself."

"Alright. Then, you go and—"

"She says storage and retrieval fees will be ten thousand Marks per carcass."

"Alright. Then, you go and tell her she's a bitch while you're at it—"

"I already told her you'd say that, so she changed her mind and said twenty thousand Marks per carcass."

Oh, he couldn't see them right now, but he also swore he heard the three ravens that usually hung out around the cemetery cawing and cackling at him somewhere through the fog.

"Still," Evelyn muttered, finger to her chin, "why didn't the Gulchers defend their turf in the end?"

Gael glanced at her. "They did. They were the ones who dropped the Rustwights on us to begin with."

"I meant after that," Evelyn said pointedly. "Why didn't they swarm us when they had us surrounded and take their key back? Why let the Repossessors take it at all?"

To that, he gave her a noncommittal shrug. "Nobody knows what those rat masks are thinking about. They don't talk to surface folk. Nobody knows where they came from, who they serve, or what their endgame is down there in the rot. Best not to dwell on the pipe dwellers, or you'll start drowning in your thoughts."

Maeve, quiet until now, glanced at them. "We'll be getting busier anyways, so we can't get distracted by adventures again," she said. "When the Gulch water starts coming in, more and more people are going to show up. I think we should hire more staff. Someone to help Liorin manage the forest, and someone to help Evelyn with courier runs."

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"No!" Evelyn and Liorin said at once, voices sharp with offense.

Gael raised a brow beneath his mask, but Maeve didn't even flinch.

"You'll still have your jobs," she said gently, "but you'll get to boss people around. Don't you guys want that?"

Liorin tilted his head left.

Evelyn tilted her head right.

"Cool!" Liorin said.

"I want better clothes!" Evelyn added.

Maeve smiled faintly before turning to Gael. "We can hold interviews. I've seen more well-mannered people loitering nearby lately—probably because of the aero-resonating stones and the fact that there haven't been any Repossessors hanging around these past few days—so with my face, and Cara's, and Liorin and Evelyn's, our reputation should be at the point where we can start looking for extra helpers without people running away at first sight of us approaching."

Gael clicked his tongue as he jabbed a thumb at his own face. "What about my face?"

"No."

"Ouch. Alright, then. You arrange the interviews, and I'll hold them."

Maeve visibly brightened. "Maybe my mom will finally start to hear about us."

As Maeve began to hum, light and content like she hadn't once threatened to cut his leg off for how much she abhorred the idea of living and working with a Plagueplain Doctor, he stole a sideways glance at her.

How much does she know about me now?

He still hadn't told her anything. Never would. But that damned ankle chain connecting their blood vessels together had a habit of whispering things: memories, flashes, and glimpses into the past he hadn't given permission to share. He felt irritated just thinking about the fact that maybe she had another glimpse into his past, but…

When Cara fell—down there in the pipes—she was the first person to snap him out of it.

…

He clicked his tongue softly again, gaze flicking away. It bothered him. Of course it did. But maybe—just maybe—it wasn't the worst thing in the world if she saw him in pieces every now and then.

So, they were nearly at the cemetery gates when he slowed again, noticing Cara had fallen a little behind.

She hadn't said a single word all morning. After all, she was the only one who kept glancing back at Fergal while the rest of them moved forward.

"... If you're gonna talk to him," Gael said, "I've got a little something you should probably pass onto him."

Cara snapped her head around to face him, eyes unreadable but focused, and Gael reached into his coat to pull a small piece of paper out.

The grave-dirt had started hardening some time ago, but Fergal remained seated in front of it, shoulders hunched forward.

The edges of his sleeves were growing dark and wet. He didn't move. Didn't blink much, either. The acidic drizzle traced thin paths down his collar and soaked the backs of his coat, but he barely noticed it.

His sister's arm was in the earth, and the earth, for once, wasn't giving anything back.

Somewhere far to his right, there was the groan of a distant metal gate opening, and then there was the pitter-patter of footsteps approaching him. Light, dainty, and precise. Not the shambling steps of one of his assistants. Not the creak of Gael's boots.

He didn't turn.

A moment later, Cara sat down beside him, her legs folding neatly beneath her dress. No umbrella. The acidic drizzle was already catching in her hair and rolling down the sharp line of her jaw, too, but she didn't seem to care either.

"..."

For a long time, they just sat like that. Two silhouettes before a mound of earth. His shadow was broader, built like a wall with arms crossed over iron, while Cara's was slimmer, more upright, like someone who'd never knelt to anyone but the dead.

Neither of them said a word.

Then, with a tiny rustle of parchment, she slipped a small folded page onto his knee.

He glanced down at it. Torn edge. Faint black-and-white print. Medical diagrams, he thought at first. There was some kind of handwritten notation in the corner—not her handwriting—so he lifted it slowly and turned it over between his fingers.

The page had clearly been torn from a textbook. The diagrams weren't of wounds or bone fractures. They were of… limbs. Grafted ones. They depicted detailed cross-sections and nerve alignments, tubes running through muscle, and strange organ-like chambers stitched into veins.

He frowned. "What is this?"

"Something Gael pulled from one of his books," Cara said steadily. "He said it was tucked away in an older edition. That's probably why no one ever talks about it."

He squinted at the fine script at the top of the page. The title read 'Immune Response Mitigation in Multi-Origin Transplants'.

"It's complicated, of course," Cara continued. "It's a bunch of medical jargon layered on medical nonsense layered on more nonsense, but according to Gael, if you sift through the filler… the gist of it is this: you can graft a foreign limb to your body. That much everyone knows. But if you want to keep the limb alive and functional—really alive, as though it's your own—then your immune system has to be tricked constantly. You can't just attach it and wait for it to settle."

Fergal remained quiet, studying the page. Rain ticked off the surface like soft drumbeats.

Cara pointed to one of the paragraphs. "Here. Right there. 'The body may be forced to accept a foreign limb indefinitely if reintroduced to the original donor's blood at least once a lunar cycle.' Otherwise, the body starts rejecting the limb. The flesh becomes necrotic. But as long as it's supplied with the source blood, it keeps functioning as a true and proper part of you."

His brow twitched.

The paper crinkled slightly between his fingers. He exhaled slowly, then lowered it to his lap, letting his eyes linger on the dirt.

"... And?" he eventually said, voice heavy but quiet. "There's no chance Lorcawn didn't kill her after taking her arm. He could've harvested vials of her blood and stored them fresh in some accursed bioarcanic machine, which is how he's kept the arm alive and perfectly grafted all this time."

"Maybe," she said. "That's possible. But you never saw her body, did you?"

"No, but—"

"Then you grieve for nobody," she said sternly. "Don't you dare grieve for an arm when you haven't even found her yet."

Fergal clenched his jaw.

"Maeve hasn't seen her mom in three years," Cara continued, "and still she checks every letter that comes into the clinic. Every package dropped off at our door every single morning. She still listens when people mention names like… Isolde or Flameveil or Blue-Horned Bitch. She hasn't given up yet."

"I haven't—"

"Then prove it." Her voice sharpened, but only slightly. "Keep searching. Get off your ass. Don't put a tombstone in until you find her, unless… this is a battle you don't want to fight because you don't want to win?"

The edge in Cara's voice caught him off guard.

Even now, after all this time, she still found new ways to surprise him—cutting sharper than she looked capable of—so he stayed quiet a moment longer, letting the rain speak instead.

But a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, though he knew she couldn't see it under his mask.

"... No," he said quietly. "Of course not."

His fingers brushed the folded page still resting on his knee.

"Getting her arm back was only half of it, after all," he said. "The other half's still out there."

And Cara didn't need him to explain. She already knew. She'd probably known since she first saw him and Lorcawn standing together under the orphanage, which begged him to ask:

"You talk like someone who knows what it's like," he said, glancing sideways. "Grieving over a ghost."

Her stern face didn't falter, but it cooled.

"I guess you could say that," she murmured, brushing a raindrop off her brow. "But, in any case, you and your goons are going to need something to do. A way to feed yourselves. Something a little more dignified than back-alley bounty work, or whatever it is the six of you are planning on."

His brows knit, the smile fading back into tired lines.

He minded how abruptly she changed the topic of conversation, but he didn't press it further. If she wanted to talk, she'd talk.

"Are you offering us a job?"

She nodded once. "Something that suits big, strong, and physically capable people like you."

"What is it?"

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