The three of them followed Old Banks to the vault with plates of pancakes still in their hands. Gael in particular had been to the vault before, but the last time, he’d been slinking through the shadows like some skulking rat. Now he walked in plain sight, an esteemed guest—if such a noble thing even existed in Bharncair.

  The bodies inside the cut-open vault were still fresh enough to stink.

  Maeve recoiled the moment she saw them, nose scrunching behind her mask, gaze skittering away from the corpses piled like discarded puppets across the vault floor. Gael and Cara barely spared them a glance, though. It wouldn’t be a normal morning without seeing a few corpses a few blocks down from their clinic, so this much was nothing for them.

  But Old Banks caught the disgusted look on Maeve and let out a soft sight. “The Myrmur didn’t kill them,” he said. “I did.”

  Cara pursed her lips. Gael raised a brow. Maeve snapped her head toward him. “You—”

  “They were spies,” Old Banks said simply, inspecting the clawed edges of the vault like a man evaluating the weather. “Black Censors from the Church and watchdogs from the Mortifera Enforcers. The Blood Barons wanted to keep an eye on me though I’d been exiled, so I tolerated them for a while. Then my daughter passed away and… well. Even tolerance wears thin in the Vile.”

  Gael inhaled slightly, tasting the chemical traces still clinging to the air. His brow flicked even further up.

  “Poison gas?” he asked.

  Old Banks glanced at him, intrigued. “You are a doctor.”

  Gael made a vague gesture around him. “This one’s Banshee’s Mirth. A mix of vaporized grimgourd extract and twitchmoth spores. Real nasty stuff. It overloads the nervous system and turns the body into a runaway horse. It makes the blood pump too fast, sends the muscles into a frenzy before the heart just cracks, but… not the best choice, though.”

  Old Banks arched a brow. “You can tell just from a whiff of it?”

  “Banshee’s Mirth is unpredictable as a poison,” Gael continued, shifting to stand over one of the boiled and bubbled bodies in the center of the vault. “A low dosage of it just serves as an adrenaline booster that makes people faster and stronger. Good for berserkers. You use too much, sure, they’ll die, but not before they get a solid few minutes of absolute mayhem.” Then he tilted his head, nudging a particularly muscular corpse with his boot. “You got lucky none of ‘em were strong enough to punch through the vault walls. Enhanced by Banshee’s Mirth, they could’ve managed to escape, especially considering you didn’t use a high enough concentration to kill them quickly.”

  “I see. What should I use, then?”

  “If you just want them dead, whisperfog would’ve been cleaner. No mess, no struggle. It’d just seep into the lungs and turn them into soggy porridge,” Gael offered. “Hollow bloom crushed and boiled into a mist is also a valid option as well, if you want them bleeding out of every orifice like some grand tragic opera, but the deaths would still be relatively quick. Now, if you really want to do it slow, you could use something like the bonechewer. The name says it all: its a poison gas that rots the marrow and leaves them flopping like boneless fish. Then you can do whatever you want with them—”

  Thwack.

  Cara smacked him upside the head as Maeve stared at him with pure distaste in her eyes, but then again, when had the Exorcist ever not looked at him like he was the vilest man in the world?

  He just shrugged and grinned, unfazed as ever.

  “Just offering a bit of professional consult,” he said.

  While Maeve continued scowling at him and Cara hissed that he should’ve charged the old man for the information, Old Banks turned and strode toward the back of the vault. He reached for a section of the stone wall, fingers pressing into an unassuming crack before pulling a hidden lever. There was a click. There was a clack. With a low grinding of ancient gears, the wall rumbled and split open, revealing a dark stairway plunging even deeper underground.

  A second vault.

  As the secret door yawned open, the three of them stopped squabbling in the back and looked on in surprise. Bioarcanic lanterns flickered to life along the curved stone walls, their eerie blue glow casting deep shadows down the damp spiral staircase. The air smelled of old wealth: aged metal, faded parchment, and the tang of bioarcanic preservation. The stairs were also slick with moisture, the stone glistening under the dim light.

  Damn.

  How many more of these hidden vaults does he have scattered around the mansion?

  Without another word, Old Banks trudged down the stairs with his greatsword serving as a walking cane, so—not wanting to be left behind—the three of them quickly followed.

  They almost slipped a few times on the damp stairs, but eventually they reached the bottom where an underground vault stretched out before them, overflowing with wealth: gold and silver, gleaming trinkets, ancient relics humming with dormant power. Chests brimmed with coinage from forgotten eras stood stacked against the walls. Shelves lined with priceless artefacts, rare tomes, and vials of preserved alchemical wonders. Weapon racks held blades that drank the light. Displays glittered with highborn finery: jewels, silk-lined coats, and noble sigils of extinguished households.

  Gael's breath hitched. Then his grin widened, eyes glinting with the feral glee of a street rat stumbling into a god’s secret treasure hoard. Maeve’s brows shot up, momentarily stunned as well, while Cara audibly gasped.

  “... This is a fraction of the fortune I had set aside for my daughter,” Old Banks said, stepping forward. “On the left, you will see—”

  Nothing. Gael wasn’t listening anymore, Neither were the two ladies beside him. They scattered instantly, each drawn to their own particular vice.

  Maeve all but materialized next to a rack of exquisite weaponry, fingers hovering over the fine-forged daggers, inspecting the segmented plates of a light combat cuirass lined with bioarcanic etchings. Cara, meanwhile, had gravitated towards the noble garb and jewelry, brushing reverent fingers over silk embroidery and admiring the craftsmanship of a crimson high-collared coat lined with blackened silver buttons. She plucked up a delicate trinket—a gold pin set with a pearl the size of her thumb—and let out a low, appreciative whistle.

  And Gael was cackling. He lunged toward a surgical display, arms wrapping around a limited-edition bonesaw like a long-lost lover. His fingers ghosted over the shining instruments: scalpels with obsidian edges, forceps forged from black iron, and a mechanized suturing device that practically purred at the touch. His voice cracked with sheer delight as he lifted a wickedly curved amputation blade, twirling it between his fingers.

  Old Banks sighed.

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  Shaking his head, the old man ignored their antics and strode toward a reinforced chest tucked against the back wall. He flipped open the heavy lid, dug past a bag of ancient coinage, and unearthed a thick ledger with a leather cover cracked with age.

  “Gather around, children,” he mumbled half-heartedly. “Time for grandfather’s wakeday gifts.”

  Maeve and Cara—realizing they’d just completely humiliated themselves in front of each other—immediately coughed into their fists and straightened up, forcibly composing themselves. Gael, however, remained entirely unashamed, still grinning like a lunatic as he inspected a particularly nasty-looking surgical drill.

  Cara sighed, marched over, and whacked him upside the head again.

  “Stop being a weirdo,” she grumbled.

  “You’re one to talk.” Gael rubbed the spot, still leering at the surgical tools as Old Banks flipped open the ledger, scanning its contents.

  It took a moment, but eventually, Old Banks lifted his eyes from the ledger, one hand resting on its tattered cover as if weighing the worth of his words.

  “I’ve got about a million Marks in this vault alone,” he said matter-of-factly. “Might have more bags stashed around the mansion. I just don’t remember where.”

  Cara exhaled sharply, blinking at the sheer number. “A million?”

  “And considering we were just aiming for ten thousand…” Maeve muttered.

  Unbothered, Old Banks leaned back on his golden stool, the ledger balanced on his knee as he clicked a pen open. “I’m feeling a bit better now,” he said, scrawling in neat, sharp strokes. “And if that medicine of yours works, I won’t be sickly for long, either. So… I guess I’ll start living again.” His hand stilled, as he glanced at Gael. “I won’t ignore my own health just because she’s gone.”

  Maeve gave him a soft, warm smile.

  Gael, however, leaned in, eyes gleaming. “So, about the sponsorship…”

  Old Banks made a few more calculations—a few more scribbles in his ledger, a few more calculations Gael couldn’t keep up with—before nodding to himself. “I’ll need to keep a bit of this wealth for myself. And to restore this place. This mansion’s all I’ve got left, so I won’t give up on it.” He closed his ledger, pocketed his pen, and looked at him sternly. “But I can give you ten thousand Marks a month, every month for five years. That’ll be fifty percent of everything that’s in this vault over the duration. That should be enough of an investment to jumpstart your clinic, correct?”

  Silence.

  Then Cara clapped her hands together, beaming from ear to ear. “That’s wonderful! The Heartcord Clinic will be forever in your debt for this act of generosity!”

  “But couldn’t you just give us half the million right away?” Gael mumbled. “I mean, there’s tons of things I wanna buy now instead of—”

  Cara backhanded him without looking. “Be grateful for what we’re getting, you greedy little—”

  “—shut the fuck up, bitch, I’m asking a perfectly normal question—”

  And Maeve sighed and looked away as if she didn’t know them.

  Old Banks, amused, turned to her instead. He seemed to note the way she kept sneaking glances at the relics around them and chuckled, reaching out to ruffle her hair.

  “It’s because it’ll take me about a month for me to pawn off twenty thousand Marks’ worth of items in this vault, and I must keep at least ten thousand for my own survival. Therefore, I can only give you ten thousand every month,” he said. “In addition, I suppose you can each take one thing from this vault. A parting gift, if you will.”

  Cara released Gael from her stranglehold just long enough to whip around. “Really?”

  “Of course.” Old Banks gestured at the vast collection of treasures. “They have financial value, but if they’re down here, I don’t have a real sentimental value for them. Before I sell most of them off for Marks, I might as well let a few items go to someone who would care about them.”

  Gael wheezed.

  Maeve blinked.

  And then the three of them whirled around like children in a confectionery, darting between artefacts, relics, and treasures with completely renewed energy.

  Free shit!

  Cara found her prize first: a dress of deep emerald green, woven so finely that it shimmered under the vault’s dim light.

  Old Banks hummed at her choice. “That’s highborn craftsmanship woven by the Spiders of Vharnveil. Light, flexible, and resistant to fire. It’d look good on you.”

  Cara’s face shifted into a deadpan stare. “Fire-resistant, huh.” She side-eyed Gael. “Considering how many of his experiments have set me on fire, I’ll take it.”

  Gael ignored the snide comment and continued pacing between racks of high-grade surgical tools, each set gleaming like a dream. “Gods,” he breathed. “How the hell am I supposed to pick just one?”

  But one thing in particular caught his eye, and it was no surgical tool.

  Shoved between stacks of gold bars and ornamental trinkets—half-forgotten in the shadows—sat a dark tome, its cover barely legible under layers of dust. Gael snatched it up, wiping it down with his sleeve. The title was faded but just barely readable: A Layman’s Introduction to Bioarcanic Constructs.

  His heart stuttered.

  He flipped through the pages, half-torn and crumbling at the edges. The ink was faded, but the diagrams—the diagrams were there. Anatomical breakdowns, sketches of equipment, and glyphs for bioarcanic refinement.

  Old Banks glanced over and huffed a laugh. “I picked that shoddy thing up from a bioarcanic engineer years ago. It details—rather vaguely—how to use the carcasses of Nightspawn species like Myrmurs to create equipment. Bioarcanic equipment.”

  Gael’s breath caught.

  Bioarcanic equipment. The eastern ward—the smiths in Ironwych—kept their secrets locked up tight. The people in the southern ward where he lived knew how to use bioarcanic lanterns and pistols and switch weapons, but not how to make them. And here, right in his hands, was a piece of that puzzle.

  His mind raced. He had two Myrmur carcasses waiting to be broken down. If this book held even a fraction of what he needed to make something useful out of their flesh and blood…

  “Mine,” he said, grinning wildly.

  Old Banks shrugged. “Be my guest.”

  Gael held it tight like a child clutching their favorite toy, but as he went off to his own little corner to start perusing its contents, he noticed Maeve standing still as a scarecrow in her own corner of the vault as well.

  She was staring at something.

  A plush toy of an ashveil cat. Small. Gilded in delicate silks, far too fine for the slums of Bharncair.

  Gael watched as she hesitated and caught herself staring. Quick as a blink, she turned away, pretending she hadn’t been looking at all, and strode straight for the weapons section. Without further hesitation, she went for a small, sleek barrel marked with the sigil of a two-headed wasp and pushed the lid aside a little, revealing a tub of gray-black oil inside. It smelled of dust and lavender.

  She cleared her throat, making a show of morphing her briefcase into her umbrella, then back into her briefcase with a creaky sound. “The Vile will damage Mistrender’s morphing capabilities if I don’t lubricate it every so often. Blightgrease is the specific Vharnveil-sourced oil all Exorcists use for their weapons, so… this’ll do for Mistrender’s maintenance.”

  Gael studied her for a moment, then let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “Lame.”

  That was all it took. Maeve whipped around, already bristling, and the two of them immediately launched into another squabble. The Exorcist jabbed a wrench in his direction while he smirked and dodged, but before it could escalate too far, Old Banks thumped his greatsword against the ground, sending a sharp clang reverberating through the vault.

  “I’ll have this month’s first payment sent to your clinic by nightfall,” he said curtly. “And once again—thank you. For healing me. For putting my daughter to rest.” His voice was quieter now, but firm. “You’re welcome here anytime. Just… knock on the front door next time. There aren’t any traps left out in the cemetery anyway.”

  Cara smiled apologetically, grabbing both Gael and Maeve’s heads and forcing them into a bow. “Thank you for the patronage, good sir,” she said warmly. “Feel free to visit the clinic anytime as well. We’ll always be open to a man with a flower cord around his wrist.”

  Old Banks was about to return another nicety when Gael suddenly felt doozy. It could be the alcohol, but it was most likely the overwhelming fatigue—and the exhaustion hit him and Maeve at the same time. One second they were bowing, and in the next, they were falling flat on their faces, their bodies finally surrendering after a full night of fighting, bleeding, and breaking into places they shouldn’t.

  As the world blurred and darkened, the last thing Gael heard was a synchronized sigh from both Cara and Old Banks, followed by Cara’s dry, unimpressed voice.

  “Kids.”

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