An hour of sprinting across slate and gutter felt like an hour of being punished by the roofs of Blightmarch for unspecified crimes. Gael slipped, skidded, and pinwheeled across the southern ward. He belly-flopped a dormer, discovered an unexpected skylight with his kneecap, then rebounded into a chimney like a particularly determined moth. Twice he vanished from the roofline entirely and had to be fished back up by his own flower gauntlet.

Evelyn, damn her, barely broke stride. She'd pause long enough whenever he tripped to give him a flat look that said 'old', then flutter onward with the rain slipping harmlessly off her cloak.

Wheee, I'm way too fucked up.

Should've laid off the 95% bottles.

By the time he followed her to the cliff, the rain was a steady hiss, the wind was a mouth full of needles, and his lungs felt like someone had traded them for boiled leather. Still, the two of them dropped to a knee at the edge and looked down.

The Fellstar Crater was host to a cemetery that looked like a botanical garden had eaten a cathedral and learned table manners. Vines, trees, and other exotic vegetation looped between headstones gone soft with moss. In the center of the cemetery, a mansion sat fat and cheerful, exhaling light from every window. Gold lacquered the rain. A winding path led from the cemetery gates to the mansion door, properly lined with street-lamps—it was a far cry from the state it'd been in just two years ago.

A lot of people were walking that winding path. Too many for a wake. Not enough screaming for a riot. Gael squinted and spotted handsome cloaks, bad shoes, and laughter tripping over puddles. He squinted even harder till his lenses fogged.

"Old man's throwing a party?" he muttered.

"Beats me," Evelyn said, shrugging with her wings. "I overheard a friend of a friend of a friend sayin' there's an event. Some kind of… celebration?"

He squinted harder. His eyebrows tried to meet at the middle. "And the scent trail?"

Evelyn touched the pouch of antique coins at her belt and nodded towards the mansion. "Trail ends right there. Drowns in the warm air, but… yeah. That's our grave-mint."

He cracked his neck. "Alright then. Let's politely crash the old man's party."

And from within his mysterious, space-defying cloak, he produced a grappling gun. He lifted it, sighted the slanted roof of the mansion, and squeezed the trigger without much further thought.

The gun made a hopeful chirp and exploded in his hands like a festive cough. Soot flowered up his sleeve. The hook itself launched six meters forward, drooped, and then fell off the cliff with melancholy dignity.

Gael blinked. Evelyn blinked.

"Fine," he muttered, flicking cinders off his glove and tossing the gun away. "That shit never works anyways. Plan B."

He stood, swung one leg over the cliff, and threw himself forward. The world tilted. The rain became vertical. He spun midair with a twist and slapped both boots to the cliff face. Of course, the rock tried to be rock about it, but his soles shivered with microhooks, letting him stand horizontally on the wall as his 'Basic Setae' mutation caught purchase.

He walked straight down, and Evelyn glided beside him, keeping her wings fanned out so she descended at the same pace as him.

"Do you work out?" she asked.

"No, why do you ask?"

"How are you walkin' straight down like that? Don't your abs get tired proppin' the rest of your body up?"

"Oh, that's just the drugs."

"Oh."

Quickly, they reached the grassy floor, and they crossed the cemetery together as they headed for the winding path. He recognized more than a few faces walking to and from the mansion: Krane, who'd come into the clinic two weeks ago with a sock stuck in his throat, Dobb, who'd laughed at his joke mid-surgery and accidentally tore open an entirely new lung, and few more patrons of the clinic. As he stepped onto the beaten path, most of them noticed him and turned pale, parting the way with gasps.

At the foot of the mansion's stairs, four three-headed hellhounds regarded him with bureaucratic solemnity. Their wet noses testing the air, and their crimson eyes glared at him, looking for the appropriate paperwork.

Huh?

You want me to show an invitation letter?

Well, he didn't have one, but he had something better. He reached into his coat and pulled out thirteen mashed bone treats—one for each head, and then one more for them to fight over. Flicking them over their heads, he didn't stop walking as the hellhounds immediately started fighting each other over the treats, having completely forgotten about their on-loan duties as the mansion's doorguards.

He patted Grimlet's leg as he walked past. "Good boy. Now go kill your siblings over bone biscuits."

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Then the two of them sauntered through the mansion's doors into Bharncair's take on a banquet hall: a vast chamber with ribs of old timber pillars like a whale's chest, stained glass windows sweating, and multi-colored lanterns hung too low and too many. Heat rolled off bodies, bowls, and arguments. Music stitched the room together with copper wire and broken teeth—somewhere between a scream and a hymn—while a quartet band in the corner flogged their instruments into confessions. The drummer was totally attempting a murder.

Not that Gael had been to too many parties, but he could barely tell this had once been a Vharnish's banquet hall.

… He also recognized too many faces for comfort.

Juno stood near a pillar with two of her Rot Merchants orbiting like moons, her half-crystallized smile carved thin enough to shave with. She saw him, altered the angle of the smile by a degree that meant 'don't you dare talk to me', and returned to buttonholing a mason whose hands were raw with success.

But apart from patients, businessmen, and other pieces of shit he'd beaten at least once in the past year and a half, most of the people in this hall were garbed in cloaks and robes stitched with the pattern of interlocking hands.

What's Fergal calling his new gang again?

The… Saint's Hands?

In the absence of the Repossessors, Fergal and the strays who'd refused to become devils decided to become physicians with clubs. As far as Gael remembered, the Saint's Hands' business venture seemed to be ferrying bandages and other medical supplies across the southern ward—supplies bought from him, naturally—as well as directing those with more serious curses and maladies to his clinic.

… And, of course, knocking heads and killing people sometimes. This was still Bharncair, after all. Violence for community service and local protection was part of the job description for any gang.

Now he remembered what this party was for: the Saint's Hands' headquarters had just finished construction over the ruins of the old Repossessor headquarters, so every patron of the new gang had come to celebrate.

Under normal circumstances, he'd beeline straight for the drinks station, but tonight Gael had no patience for it. He plowed through the crowd with Evelyn in tow, elbowing silk sleeves and boot tips alike.

Every few steps, some merchant or magnate with too many teeth and not enough self-preservation instincts leaned into his path.

"Doctor Halloway! Still in good health?"

"Invest with me, Doctor, I'll double your clinic's worth!"

"Doctor, you gonna kill someone tonight?"

He answered none of them and shoved forward with all the grace of a drunk locomotive. If they wanted conversation, they could buy one at the noodle shop like everybody else. He wasn't here for the soup of their words—he was here for his bag.

Beside him, though, Evelyn had stopped listening entirely. She'd gone glassy-eyed at the buffet tables along the walls of the hall where Bharncair delicacies—fried rat skins, noodle blocks lacquered in broth so thick it doubled as glue, and what looked like boiled organs repurposed as dumplings—steamed beneath lantern light. Drool was already slicking the corner of her mask.

He sighed reluctantly.

"Go," Gael muttered, jerking his chin.

"Can I?"

"Yes."

"Really? You mean it?"

"Yes. Now scram."

She didn't need telling thrice. She shot off like a starving crow into a cornfield, leaving him blessedly alone as he reached the grand staircase at the end of the hall.

Up he went, boots creaking against lacquered steps, until the banquet light began to dim behind him. The second floor wasn't made for parties. The air up here was muffled, almost conspiratorial, and as he pushed open a few doors and took a few more dark turns, he found himself in a rare, uninhabited section of the mansion.

A long hallway stretched before him. Only one door leaked a sliver of light across the floor at the very end.

… This feels familiar.

He unsheathed his bladed cane with a rasp, straightened his top hat, and walked over to kick the door open.

The bang rattled the paintings, and the door flung open on a bedroom more modest than he expected. A desk. A dresser. A simple bed with a mattress too stiff for sin. And by the window, framed against the gardened cemetery outside, stood his thief.

Old Banks.

Wine in one hand, back to the door, golden hair slouching but not broken.

"... I knew it was you." Gael narrowed his eyes, leaning on his cane. "Should've smelled the rot of old money a city away. Tell me, old man: why? Why steal from me?"

Old Banks didn't turn. His gaze was fixed out the window, on a lonely tree whose roots swelled around a grave mound.

On that mound was the only gravestone in the entire cemetery that was elevated above the others.

"I am sorry, Plagueplain Doctor. Truly," Old Banks murmured. "But I must have it. There are debts in the ground that I cannot leave unpaid."

Gael's eyes flicked to the side. A wall vault sat squat and sullen near the dresser, lock glinting in the lanternlight. His fingers itched.

"So it means that much to you?" he asked.

"Yes." The old man finally angled his face toward him, eyes still on the grave. "You should be grateful, boy. I used the gentlest route. I paid the thieves better than you paid them. Once, when I was younger and crueler, I would have had you killed instead. Consider this restraint a kindness."

Gael grinned, twirling his cane, blade gleaming like a smirk made metal. "Thank you for your mercy, old bastard. But honestly? You should've killed me when you had the chance."

He lunged in.

His blade swept for the jangling key on Old Banks' belt, but metal rang out. The old man raised his cross-shaped greatsword up to intercept—which had just been leaning against the windowframe beside him—and the clash sparked against the lanternlight.

Old Banks finally turned, pushing Gael back a pace and baring his teeth. "Why so shocked, Plagueplain Doctor? You've only yourself to blame. It's thanks to you I've grown stronger. I didn't even think about buying a system myself, but seeing as the clinic has been steady distributing Myrmur flesh to its allies, I thought to get a Standard Beetle Class myself."

"Beetle, huh?" Gael spat, straightening, cane twirling in his hand. "Cute, but you're still just a bug under my boot. I'll pry that key out of your cold hands if I have to."

"We'll see if that's really the case." Old Banks raised his greatsword in both hands, and his voice rose with old pride reborn. "Tonight, Bancroft Veydris fights again. I will not lose to a drunken upstart."

And as Gael lunged at the old man again, he felt like this was all really, really familiar.

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