The Brass Nest didn’t ask questions. It served root-stew hot, beer cold, and didn’t mind if your boots left soot on the floor. That made it a sanctuary, by Viremoor standards.
So they stayed. Not hidden, but quiet. The kind of quiet that toed the line of security and scrutiny.
Rollen disappeared from the public eye, but not from the work. He moved through basements, borrowed forge-halls, and empty warehouses like ashes in the wind. The lines on his face softened. His hands didn’t. When he smiled now, it stayed.
Lottie became the face of nothing in particular. She laughed too loud in the taverns, offered coin to couriers, and watched the watchers. In the open, she was fire wrapped in charm. In the Nest, she was warmth without a word. She asked about Septimus’s plans more often. She didn’t press. She just... asked.
Silas traced the undercurrent. He mapped who lingered too long near blind alleys and which rumors shifted shape when retold. He wrote in bursts. Totemic reflections, emotional echoes, fragments of a theology he’d never admit he was building.
And Septimus? He listened. To the city. To the team. To the silence between hammer falls. He didn’t speak his purpose yet.
Not until the fifth night.
The three of them sat in a corner booth in the Nest, low lamplight gilding the table in copper.
Two drinks in, maybe three.
Septimus leaned forward, elbows on the wood. Voice a little too loose. A little too tired.
“Maybe I wasn’t born to lead,” he muttered. “Maybe I was born to fix the foundation. Just had to fall in the cracks to see what needed to be replaced.”
He lifted his drink, paused, then set it down again with a soft thunk. “What d’you say, my little brother?”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It just landed.
Then he cleared his throat, eyes flicking away like the words had come out of someone else. “Ah—I mean... buddy. Friend.”
Across the table, Silas didn’t blink. Didn’t shift. Just watched, still as stone. The way only someone who listens before they speak can.
Shadows stretched behind him, crept inch by inch before he finally spoke. “You were born in the rubble, Septimus. That doesn’t mean you belong there forever.”
He took a drink. Set it down with more weight than needed. “You want to fix the cracks? Fine. But don’t forget... We’re standing on the same floor. You fall, I fall.”
Then... finally, he let the edge return. A flicker of that dry, sharpened grin. “And you’re a terrible liar when you’re drunk. I’ve seen bandits bluff better with an arrow in their gut.”
Lottie, still at the table, lifted her bottle with an easy hand. Didn’t look at either of them.
“To fixing the floors,” she said. “Before someone else turns them into traps.”
She didn’t toast anyone in particular. But she clinked her bottle softly against Septimus’s mug.
Septimus rubbed his forehead, then muttered, “I think I should have some water, or some tea…”
Silas just slid a mug of water across the table. Already filled, like he’d been waiting for that all night.
“Good instinct,” he said, deadpan. “One more drink and you’d be proposing we overthrow the Council by sunrise with nothing but ideals and your hammer.”
Lottie snorted into her sleeve, then raised her wine again with a wink.
“To water,” she said, “for keeping drunk revolutionaries alive just long enough to accidentally change the world.”
She downed the rest of her drink and immediately started gesturing wildly toward the barkeep for actual tea, likely spiked with something citrusy and strange.
The water was cold. Clean. Grounding. It slid down his throat like an anchor dropped in calm water, pulling the world back into focus.
“Still,” Septimus said, “everyone should wake up and realize that not accepting aberrations who stray from their hoity-toity Fundamentals is the entire reason we have so many problems.”
Silas raised an eyebrow as he sipped his tea. Noncommittal at first. Then he set the cup down, voice low and sharp with clarity.
“They call it divine structure,” he said, “but it’s just fear wearing a uniform.”
He looked toward the tavern window, where the city’s lanterns glowed like dim constellations behind soot-stained glass. “The Totemic Church thinks the Fundamentals are safe because they’ve spent centuries teaching people to fear anything that isn’t fire, water, or air. Anything they can’t measure, train, or chain to a sermon.”
He leaned in, shadows flickering like a crackling fire. “But aberrations? We’re wild variables in a system they pretend is perfect.”
Lottie, twirling a spoon through her fingers that ended in a flourish, sighed. “I mean, sure. Three elements make for a tidy doctrine. You can slap fire and wind on a banner and sell a war. But try explaining 'I see sound in color and sometimes time skips when I get emotional', and suddenly you’re a heretic with a bounty.”
Silas looked at Septimus. “You’re not wrong,” he said after a small sigh. “But knowing the truth isn’t enough. Most folks aren’t afraid of aberrations because they’re evil. They’re afraid because we’re mirrors. We reflect everything they’ve been told to bury.”
The table went quiet. The fire crackled. The tavern hummed around them, but their corner sat heavy with truth.
Lottie lifted her cup again. “To the mirrors,” she said. “May we crack a few skulls before they throw us out with the shards.”
It was her third toast of the night, and this time, both Septimus and Silas finally lifted their mugs and clinked them softly against hers. No words. Just a faint roll of the eyes, and a quiet kind of agreement that didn’t need saying.
The tavern quieted more with each passing minute. Laughter had faded into sleep, and the hearth held only a dying glow. Silas had already disappeared up the stairs, leaving Septimus and Lottie alone.
She stretched out across the bench, one boot kicked halfway off, her mug of tea swirled lazily in hand. Then she looked over, something tilted at her mouth, voice low.
“So. Big speeches. Quiet revolutions. Civil drinks.” Her eyes glinted. “Either you’re mellowing out… or you’re about to make a wildly irresponsible decision and try to earn the Totem’s blessing first.”
She set her cup down and sat up, shifting just enough to shorten the space between them.
“You alright, Sep?” Her voice softened. “Really?”
There was no challenge in it. Just presence. The kind of question that held space instead of filling it.
Septimus let out a breath. Rubbed the side of his jaw. “Silas is one thing. He never needed help finding confidence in his shadow. But then we run into grown adults, full of potential, breaking down the moment they awaken, because no one ever gave them a way to be.”
He looked at the table. At the ring left by her cup. “We saved Rollen. Maybe we benefit from it long term. But…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t speak the name of the one they didn’t save.
Lottie didn’t fill the silence. She leaned forward, elbow on the table, resting her chin against her fist like she was reading a page only he could write. When he looked up, her hand moved without ceremony, covering his. Warm. Grounded.
“Maybe we will hit that wall someday,” she said, “maybe we won’t.”
She leaned in a little more. Enough that the firelight caught the sincerity in her eyes.
“But if we do? Then we find a way around it. Or chip at the damn thing until it learns who we are. Or we plant vines and flowers in the cracks, so when it buries us, at least it’ll look pretty.”
A dry chuckle escaped her. “You keep waiting for someone to take all this away from you, Sep.”
Her thumb brushed the back of his hand. “But the only ones who could ever stop us are us.”
She leaned back just slightly. Not retreating. Just steady. “And I’m not going anywhere. So unless you are… let’s keep climbing.”
Septimus turned his hand, palm open. He held hers. He stood from the booth, gently pulling her to her feet. Lottie blinked. Not in confusion, but with something more.
Septimus leaned in and kissed her.
A whisper escaped her lips, barely more than breath. “Took you long enough.”
He pulled back, only slightly. “I love you, Lottie Loring.”
She rose on her toes and kissed him back like she’d been waiting for the world to stop spinning just long enough for this. Then she leaned into him, her head resting gently against his chest. A shared breath passed between them. No need to rush. No need to explain. “I love you, too.”
Septimus looked down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, then stepped back just enough to see her clearly. For a moment he only looked at her, as if expecting the world to correct itself. It didn’t.
Lottie raised an eyebrow. He cleared his throat. “Let’s walk,” he said quietly. “Before I start thinking too hard.”
They stepped out into the Viremoor night. No destination, just motion. The city had quieted around them, the streets thin with fog and warmth still clinging to the stone from the day’s burn.
At times they walked hand in hand. At others, Lottie leaned into him, her shoulder against his chest, his arm drawing her in like it had always known the shape of her. No urgency. Just the rhythm of two people finally sharing a path.
They found a bench tucked beneath a half-wilted tree, where the view stretched clean to the horizon. The Viremoor Totem stood in the distance, carved in black against the night, its faint purple light pulsing steady and slow.
Too slow for any heartbeat. But comforting all the same.
Lottie settled beside him, her hand brushing his knee as she spoke.
“So,” she murmured, “what now, Sep? Keep hiding out at the Brass Nest until your little revolution gets bored of waiting?”
She nudged his side lightly with her elbow. “As much as I love living above a kitchen that smells like burnt onion and miracles... maybe it’s time we put down real roots. Somewhere with doors that lock. And walls that aren’t paper.”
Her voice lilted with mischief, but the want beneath it was sincere.
Septimus turned slightly, studying her in the purple cast of the Totemlight. Then he smiled. Small, but real.
“Play house?” he murmured. “I barely know how to sit still. But maybe we’re due.”
She let the silence sit, warm between them.
Then he added, a touch of that old dry edge curling his word. “I’ll talk to Silas. Maybe we scheme something quiet, start carving out something permanent.” He leaned back, stretching his legs a little. “Maybe I’ll become exactly what this city fears most. A man with a spine and a plan.”
Lottie smiled, then rested her head on his shoulder. “You won’t need fear,” she said. “You’ll have me.”
The Totem pulsed again in the distance. Slow. Patient. Unmoved by any of it.
Septimus sat back, arm loose around Lottie’s shoulders. Her head rested beneath his chin, breath steady. They didn’t speak often, but when they did, it was the kind of quiet that didn’t ask for more. His fingers traced idle patterns along her sleeve, not to soothe her, but to remind himself she was real.
“This,” she murmured, “ain’t bad for a city that once tried to eat us.”
Septimus smiled faintly. “We’ve got a few teeth of our own now.”
She leaned in a little more. “Then we oughta start biting back soon.”
He didn’t argue. He was already thinking through it. Territory. Infrastructure. Who might be flipped, and who’d need to vanish. What it would take to stop being a presence and become a force.
Eventually, they stood. The walk back to the Nest was slow, hand in hand for part of it, Lottie’s arm around his waist for the rest. They passed shuttered stalls and sleeping stones, the city finally too tired to lie. By morning, Viremoor was back to scheming.
So were they.
The table in the back corner of the Brass Nest was buried in the quiet mess of intent.
Half-folded maps, scrawled notes, ink-stained napkins, and mugs gone cold.
Silas set down a slip of parchment just as Septimus sat. Ril’s sigil stamped the corner, burned, not inked.
“Paid her for the full registry of abandoned properties,” Silas said. “Made sure she knew we’re looking to build, not just hide. She offered three potential fronts. But one stands out.”
He slid a sketch across the table. A familiar silhouette. “Marwood Manor. High walls. Collapsed servants’ tunnel. Off-limits since the judge dropped dead.”
Lottie raised an eyebrow. “Mana rupture, right? Whole block talks like the place hums at night. Which means no one’s squatting. And no one’s brave enough to ask who owns it now.”
She reached for a piece of dried fruit and chewed slowly. "I like haunted,” she said, “haunted means unclaimed.”
Silas continued, pulling another note free. “I’ve also got a few smaller contracts from couriers, people you helped. A researcher from Stonehollow wants protection on a dig site. A foreman from the lumberyard is offering coin to resolve a dispute with a Church-linked buyer. Nothing too flashy, but enough to start building name and coin.”
Septimus nodded and added his own finds to the pile, job board copies, rumors folded into the edges of tavern talk. All of it felt like flint waiting for spark.
Lottie tossed down a list of potential merchant deals, each one scribbled in different hands. “We’re popular,” she mused, “at least among the desperate, the weird, and the ones tired of pretending the Church still cares.”
Then she glanced toward Rollen’s name, circled in one corner of the page. “What about the forge?”
Septimus’s answer came before she’d finished the question. “No.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. “Rollen’s not leverage. He’s lightning in a bottle. If we use him like the Church does, we’re no better. Anything he sells should go back to him. He needs materials, apprentices, and to keep Ril off his back.”
Silas didn’t argue, but he tapped the word potential next to the forge name. “Then we make sure it’s protected. Discreet. And any pieces that come from it go to allies. Not buyers.”
Lottie leaned back. “Still leaves us the problem of where to root.”
Silas answered before Septimus could. “Marwood Manor.”
He laid out the reasoning clearly. Strategically. A house feared but not warded. Abandoned but visited. The perfect shell to repurpose from within. And with its history, soaked in judgment, it could become more than a base.
It could become a statement.
“The Church silenced that place,” Silas said. “If we claim it, we don’t just get bricks and roof. We get to rewrite what those walls remember.”
Septimus looked to Lottie.
She looked back with the grin of someone who knew a trap when she saw one, and stepped into it anyway. “Guess we’re stealing ourselves a manor, then.”
Septimus exhaled slow. Tapped the edge of the map like sealing a pact. “Alright. Let’s build a sanctum the Church can’t name.”
The streets of Viremoor's Eastward Lock slumped into a hush as the trio crossed into forgotten ground. Past sagging shutters. Past broken streetlamps.
Until the jagged outline of Marwood Manor rose ahead, hunched against the night like a broken spine. The gate sagged open, rust bleeding from its hinges. Above, a black iron sign still clung stubbornly to its post. The lettering, flaked and pitted by time, caught the moonlight just enough to be read.
JUSTICE SEES WITHOUT MERCY
Lottie let out a low whistle beside him. "Charming," she muttered, kicking a loose stone into the gutter.
Septimus didn’t answer. He just stepped forward, swung his warhammer in one deliberate arc, and shattered the damn thing. The sound cracked through the stillness like thunder. Metal shrieked. Chains snapped. The sign tore free and tumbled into the brush with a rust-choked rattle that seemed to echo long after it should have fallen silent.
Lottie winced, but grinned. "Subtlety’s dead. May she rest in pieces."
Silas didn’t so much as blink. He simply tilted his head toward Septimus. A shadow’s nod. He gestured toward the overgrown wall.
"You just told the house who’s in charge," Silas murmured softly. "Let’s make sure it listens."
At the far edge of the courtyard, they found the collapsed servant’s tunnel. Ivy clawed the stone, nearly swallowing it whole.
Silas worked in silence, peeling back the debris with patient hands.
Cold air drifted from the gap. Dry. Even. Not the damp chill of a forgotten cellar, but something… curated. There was a rhythm to it. A faint pulse. Like breath exhaled through distant stone.
Beneath it, something deeper pressed out. Not scent or sound. Old mana, rotting pride, memory that hadn’t moved on.
Silas crouched beside the opening, his voice low and steady in the night. "Once we’re inside, we move fast. Secure the front, then the sanctum. If something’s still in there…" His words lingered, slight but deliberate. "It knows we’re coming."
Septimus met Lottie’s eyes. He didn’t speak. Just exhaled once through his nose, shifted the hammer on his shoulder, and ducked beneath the veil of ivy.
And whatever this house remembered? It was about to meet who he’d become.
The door creaked beneath his hand. Not a trap. An invitation. Inside, a hallway stretched long and narrow. The kind that remembered footsteps.
Portraits lined the walls, tall and tarnished, but every one turned inward. Faces scraped blank. Not time. Not rot. Deliberate. Like someone refused to be remembered.
Candles sat long-dead in rusted sconces. Curtains hung in tatters, scorched at the hems. Mildew climbed the corners like old guilt left to grow.
And there, carried by the bones of the house.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Steady. Measured. Judicial. Wood against stone. A gavel that never stopped falling.
Lottie slowed, frowning. “What’s that sound?”
She reached for the edge of a curtain, then paused. Something about the folds.
Then the whisper came. Not from a breath. Not a natural voice. “No trespass. No penance. Totem save you.”
It echoed wrong. Too clean. Too intentional. And then the pressure shifted. Not a tremor. A verdict.
The air in the hall dropped. Subtly at first. Then it trembled under the weight of something wrong.
A panel slid open, seamless until it wasn't. From the dark beyond it, something stepped out like it had never left.
Gaunt, madness in his eyes. Robes hanging from a body that barely remembered how to draw a deep breath. The black vestments of the old judiciary hung scorched and tattered.
A gavel gripped in one emaciated hand, not a weapon but a decree already spoken. The air tilted toward him, as if it owed him its path. Judge Lamont Marwood. Still alive. And worse, still serving.
He moved like a hinge long sealed, no warning, only motion.
Septimus barked the order. "Silas. Pin him."
Silas answered instantly. One hand raised, shadows gathering. Not his own. The Judge’s.
The Judge's silhouette jerked backward, limbs twisting unnaturally. When it struck the wall, it stayed there, pinned against the stone.
Septimus felt it press against his chest, a heavy breath he refused to exhale. He surged forward, each step grinding against the invisible gale summoned by the Judge. Robes snapped around the old man, but his eyes widened as Septimus battered through the storm.
The warhammer struck him square in the chest with grim finality. The Judge staggered. Blood spilled freely onto the polished floor, but the storm did not break.
Lottie flicked a marble, sharp and fast. The swirling air caught it, dragging it wide where it glanced off a broken pillar.
Silas lashed out again, but the Judge twisted through the shadow like a fish slipping past a hook.
The Judge retaliated with a sharp motion. Air exploded outward, slamming into Septimus. He stood firm. The blast broke against him and snapped banners from the walls.
Lottie slid back several feet, boots screeching across the tile. She snarled low in her throat, fists lighting with a sudden bloom of flame. She charged and struck, a burning punch slamming into the Judge’s ribs. There was a crack, deep and wrong. The Judge reeled, his cloak beginning to smolder.
Septimus swung again. The hammer cut a brutal arc, but the Judge, even half-pinned, shifted at the last second. The blow smashed through the false wall behind him. Stone and dust exploded outward.
Behind the ruin, thin strands of Whisperglass pulsed between cracked glyphs. Not Aberrant work. Something colder.
The house had hidden more than blood.
Above them, bootsteps thundered across the second floor. Shutters slammed closed. Three shapes dropped from the balcony. A rogue with a flintlock pistol, grinning beneath a half-mask. A swordsman in tight armor, blades flashing. A water elementalist, unscrewing glinting flasks that hissed when they met the air.
Silas narrowed his eyes. One sharp gesture pinned the rogue’s shadow midstride.
Septimus swung at the Judge again but missed, the storm still tearing at his aim.
Lottie pressed the attack, hammering into the old man with relentless strikes. Flame and fury buried deep into his chest.
With a final, shuddering breath, the Judge collapsed. The storm fell silent with him.
The rogue fired once, but the shot ricocheted harmlessly off Septimus’s shield.
Lottie blurred into the water mage, fists snapping fast and merciless. Silas slipped between blades and broken pillars, weaving shadow and survival in equal measure. One by one, the last defenders of Marwood Manor fell. Lottie caved in the rogue’s jaw with a rising strike, the sound sharp and final. Septimus battered the swordsman against a crumbling pillar until blood stained the stone.
Silence took the hall once more. Only breath, raw and heavy, filled the space.
Septimus dropped to one knee among the rubble, his hand closing around a shard of pulsing quartz left behind in the Judge’s wreckage.
Without a word, he turned and pressed it into Silas’s hand.
"Stay sharp," he muttered.
Silas accepted it silently.
The faint mana surged back through him, thin veins of light threading through his hands before fading into shadow again. The quartz crumbled to dust.
Septimus turned to Lottie. She stood strong, fire still clinging to her skin, but he saw how she favored her side. Blood seeped through scorched cloth. The firelight wavered around her edges.
He stepped closer, his voice low enough that only she could hear. "Stay behind me, I can't stand seeing you hurt."
For a heartbeat, Lottie hesitated. Not in fear but in understanding.
Then she smiled, a little crooked, all heat and conviction."You lead, Sep. I’ll burn the road clear."
She nodded once, a vow hammered into the air between them. Stronger still for being spoken.
Silas looked up the stairwell, cold fire simmering low behind his eyes."The Judge’s sanctum is upstairs," he said, voice clipped and steady. "Where judgment was passed beyond the public’s eye."
Septimus shifted his warhammer onto his shoulder, stepping forward without hesitation. "Well," he muttered, voice rough as stone cracking. "He had his gavel."
He hefted the weapon once, feeling the weight settle deep into his palm. "I have mine."
They climbed together, every step pulling them deeper into the house’s wounded spine. At the top, the sanctum door groaned open onto a stillness too heavy for breath.
The Inquisitor stood waiting, armored in scorched black steel, a flanged mace burning low with embers in one hand, a torch flickering in the other. At his sides, two more waited. An Air Elementalist hovered lightly above the cracked marble, sleeves fluttering with gathering cyclones. A Duelist crouched low, twin daggers flashing between his fingers, a thin, hungry smile stretched across his face.
None of them spoke, and neither did Septimus.
The air shifted, and Lottie struck first. A marble sang through the space, sharp and fast, but the Elementalist twisted the currents mid-flight. The shot veered wide, cracking uselessly against the far wall.
Septimus drove forward, hammer low, teeth bared.
The Inquisitor tried to brace, but the blow slammed into his chest, armor crumpling under the weight. He staggered, smoke curling from the fractures.
With a bellow, the Inquisitor raised his torch and mace high. The two collided with a sharp crack as a burst of fire roared outward.
The blast engulfed Septimus. The heat peeled at his skin through the armor, blinding him with the white roar of flame.
Still, he stood. Still, he gripped the hammer.
He felt rather than saw Lottie move. A blur of fire and fury. She tore the burning torch from the Inquisitor’s grip, the flame bleeding into her hands, igniting her until she burned brighter than any torch had ever dared.
And she struck. Her fist hammered into the Inquisitor’s side, fire searing through armor, snapping bone beneath.
Septimus, half-blind but unyielding, roared low in his throat and swung on instinct. The hammer sang through smoke and space. It missed, but he did not falter.
Silas, shadow at the edge of their world, lashed a tether toward the Air Elementalist. It hit, thin and sharp, but the Elementalist twisted midair, blood trailing from his mouth as he slipped free.
The Duelist charged low, daggers flashing. One blade found Septimus’s side. A deep, burning cut through armor and flesh. Septimus gritted his teeth, planted his feet, and did not move.
Lottie pressed the attack. Another strike. Another fistful of flame.
The Inquisitor reeled, his jaw sagging like scorched cloth. Then, with a final breath that sounded more like a crack than a gasp, he collapsed. Torch extinguished. Mace silent.
Septimus turned. The Duelist staggered, bloodied but alive. Septimus lifted his shield, steady in one hand. Brought the head of his warhammer down against it, once. A heavy, final sound.
His voice followed, low and certain. "This is my Castle Law."
The hammer’s blow lifted the Duelist off his feet and drove him into a cracked pillar. Stone split beneath the impact.
The Duelist crumpled, barely conscious, daggers clattering from his grasp.
Silas struck again, an uncontrolled flare of energy spiraled outward. Shadows warped the air, dazing the Air Elementalist where he floated, slowing him, blurring his vision.
But he had one desperate breath left. The Elementalist gathered what power he could, forming a lance of compressed air. The blast hit Silas square.
Silas. The boy who had stitched them together with shadow and silent trust since Stonehollow... crumpled hard against the broken floor. The thud of his body echoed louder than anything.
Something inside Septimus cracked open. No roar or curse. Only silence, only the weight of it.
Lottie moved first. A marble flicked sharp from her fingertips, striking the Air Elementalist clean in the ribs. Blood sprayed with the force of it. She dropped beside Silas, fists still burning hot, crouched over him like a flame refusing to die.
Septimus followed. No words, hammer low, shoulders squared, steps deliberate.
The Air Elementalist tried to gather breath. Tried to summon one last defense.
The warhammer caught him first. It struck with the weight of every betrayal, every scar, every name the Totemic Church had tried to bury. Bone snapped and air dissipated.
The Air Elementalist flew backward, smashing into the ancient Whisperglass conduit behind him. Stone and glass rained down, carrying the last of the Church’s broken prayers.
Silence again. This time it stayed.
Septimus dropped to his knees beside Silas, panic clawing at his chest until Silas stirred, coughing weakly. Alive.
Lottie placed a steadying hand on Septimus’s shoulder, her breath still harsh, her fire finally guttering low. For a moment, the world pressed in tight. No enemies left standing. No orders left to bark. Just blood and breathing, and the awful silence between two heartbeats where everything could still fall apart.
Lottie shifted first, voice rasping raw against the broken air. "We need cover. Now."
Septimus nodded once, sharp and silent. He rose stiffly, feeling every crack in himself. The burns, the blade-slice through his side, the bruises blooming under battered armor. Still, he moved.
They hauled Silas between them, light as a dying coal, to a nearby guest room. A long-abandoned hall where the beds sagged with dust but still stood upright.
Septimus kicked aside a rotted chair, cleared a frame with one brutal shove, and lowered Silas down onto the least broken cot.
The boy barely stirred, breaths shallow but steady. Fighting, in his quiet way.
Lottie dropped to her knees beside him immediately, hands moving with a grim urgency, tearing into her dwindling supplies. Bandages and rags, no salves, no tonics left.
Septimus knelt down as well, reaching instinctively to help, but her hand caught his wrist hard. "You’re still leaking," she snapped, eyes flaring, voice low and fierce. "Go. Patch yourself up before you drop."
For a moment, he hesitated. The stubborn instinct to protect rising. Then he caught the real fear in her gaze. Not fear for herself. For him.
He grunted something half an apology, half a growl, and pushed himself upright again. He staggered down the cracked hallway, stripping free the battered remnants of his armor, piece by piece, feeling every stitch of pain that the fight had bought. Tore a moth-eaten curtain down from a side chamber. Rough linen, but strong enough to bind. He wrapped his ribs first, hard and fast. Too tight. He did not care. Tight was good. Tight meant no more bleeding.
Then a rough tourniquet around his arm, where the blade had sliced deep. Another knot at his thigh, where the pressure had opened an older wound.
He buckled the chestplate back into place with shaking fingers, the straps biting into raw skin. It anchored him. Pulled him back from the slow drift into exhaustion.
Only then… When the worst leaks were stemmed, did he look up and take stock of the house. The manor had not been stripped bare. No time. No witnesses. It was wounded, not broken.
And if they meant to survive this night… they needed more than grit and barricades. They needed supplies. Septimus grabbed the nearest broken lantern, rigged it with an old shard of crystal to cast a dim, dirty glow, and stalked into the halls.
The search was not clean. Every movement scraped his ribs raw. Every breath tasted of dust and memory.
He found what they needed. Buried in a locked apothecary cabinet behind the Judge’s abandoned study. Three glass vials of coagulant paste, seals still intact beneath a film of dust.
A half-empty jar of battlefield salve, edges hardened but still breathing sharp with copper and herbs. A bone-handled scalpel, blade dulled by time but clean. Two rolls of treated linen, yellowed but unspoiled. And a cracked bottle of antiseptic wine, thick with the scent of over-proof spirits and something bitter beneath.
Enough to patch wounds, enough to hold the line. Barely.
He shoved it all into his satchel and limped back toward the guest hall. When he reached them, Lottie was still crouched over Silas. Hands bloody, jaw clenched hard enough to crack stone.
Septimus dropped the satchel down beside her with a thud. "Found something," he rasped.
She didn’t look up. Just reached blindly for the supplies, already peeling the coagulant paste open with her teeth.
Septimus leaned against the wall for a breath. Just one. Then he pushed away again and began dragging whatever wreckage he could find toward the doorways.
The barricades would not build themselves.
The work was mindless. Necessary. Stacking broken bedframes against thresholds. Shoving splintered tables against shattered windows. Dragging fallen shelves into place like makeshift walls.
His body moved out of habit. Out of the old rhythms. The ones he thought he'd left behind in the mud of a thousand ruined towns. Bandit’s work. Refugee’s work.
Not a builder’s hands. Not yet. But it was what he knew.
And as he worked, the manor seemed to breathe around him. Walls flexing. Floor groaning. Like the house itself was learning who it belonged to now.
Maybe he should have felt victorious. Instead, all he felt was the weight. Of what they'd taken. Of what they'd have to defend.
Because the easy part was over. And surviving the night... meant surviving everything that would come hunting for them afterward. The last board slammed into place with a hollow crack.
Septimus leaned his weight into it, testing the brace. It held. It would have to do.
He staggered back a step, sucking in a shallow breath through gritted teeth. Blood still wept slow down his side, despite the bandaging. His body throbbed with every heartbeat.
The manor had gone still around him. Silent in the way old places breathed when no one was looking.
He set his hammer down, just for a moment, letting his hand fall heavy against the crumbling windowsill. The moonlight caught the battered steel of his bracers. The cracked leather at his waist. The old blood drying across his knuckles.
And for the first time since the fighting started, Septimus allowed himself to feel the question clawing at the edge of his mind. What have I done?
He glanced around the wreck of a hallway. Rubble sagging in piles, dust thick enough to choke on, blood soaking into cracked stone.
This was Viremoor. The same city where he'd lost everything. The same city that raised a boy out of ash and spit and hatred. Taught him to survive by the blade. Taught him to bury his name and wear someone else’s.
And now he was here. Not as a thief or a ghost. But as something far worse. I didn’t just break into a manor, he thought. I seized it. No flag. No law. Just force.
He closed his eyes, letting the thought settle deep. If there was still justice in these walls, it had rotted long before he ever crossed the threshold.
The Judge had seen to that. Turning rooms like this into graves for mercy. And Septimus had no illusions about the kind of blood he'd spilled tonight. Some of it had begged for it. Some of it had simply been too loyal, too blind. But the weight was the same. No matter how clean the strike. No matter how righteous the cause. Blood never washed out.
He pressed the heel of his hand against his ribs, feeling the slow thud of his heart against battered bone. Once, a lifetime ago, he would’ve fled after a night like this. Would’ve slipped back into the forests, found another forgotten road to haunt.
But not now. There were people depending on him now. And he had promised, without speaking it, that this time, he would stand.
Even if the whole damn city turned against them. Even if the Church sent its full weight crashing down. He would not run again.
Septimus straightened slowly, forcing breath back into lungs that did not want it. He retrieved his hammer with numb fingers, shouldering the weight without complaint. Then he turned and made his way back down the splintered hall, every step slower than the last.
Past the dead. Past the broken. Past the ghosts already gathering at the edges of the manor’s blood-soaked memory.
He found the guest room by the low flicker of firelight spilling into the hallway. And for a brief moment the weight in his chest eased.
Lottie had made a den of it. An old couch dragged into place near the bed, the fire coaxed back to stubborn life in the cracked hearth, a basin of water drawn and set beside her.
Silas slept fitfully, a line of sweat slicking his brow, but breathing easier now under her care.
The woman herself sat hunched forward, elbows braced on her knees, head low between her shoulders. She didn't look up when Septimus entered. Just shifted slightly, making space beside her on the couch without a word. He crossed the room in slow, measured steps. Lowered himself into the space she’d left him. The fire crackled softly. Wind sighed against the sealed windows.
Septimus sat there in silence. Not a wall between them, not a fortress.
Just a man emptied out and stitched back together again by stubborn hands and fiercer promises.
He reached down without thinking, pulled the couch blanket loose, and tucked it over Lottie’s legs with slow, calloused hands. Lottie shifted under the blanket, bumping her knee lightly against his.
Her voice, warm and a little rough, broke the hush. "Most girls would lose their mind, not knowing what's goin' on behind those eyes."
Septimus’s mouth twitched slightly. Not quite a smile, not quite a wince. "Mostly just old ghosts.” He sat there a moment longer, then muttered low. “Not much worth diggin' for."
Lottie looked at him with those same glittering eyes. She leaned in slow, tucking herself against his side, her arm threading through his with quiet certainty.
Her head found his shoulder, fire-warm and real. Just the weight of being chosen, and choosing in return. Her hand found his, squeezing once. No need for anything more. For the first time since they claimed the manor, they let themselves breathe.