The next time I saw Helanin, she was holding a wine bottle in one hand and hanging upside down from a roofbeam.

  She spotted me, grinned, and shouted, "Grave boy! You came back! Misaka, this is the one with the feather fetish I told you about!"

  I blinked. "Feathered what?"

  “Fetish,” came a second voice — deep, gravelly, and terrifyingly casual.

  A small figure stepped out of the tavern shadows — Lalafellin, scarred and bandaged, armor dented and stained with something dark and long-dried. She was almost half Helanin’s height and ten times more terrifying. A battle axe rested over one shoulder like it weighed nothing.

  Misaka.

  “I heard you laugh at her joke,” she said. “You’ve suffered enough.”

  Before I could reply, she gave a nod and added, “You’re alright.”

  That was apparently the full extent of my initiation.

  We shared a table that evening — me, the bard, and the berserker. Helanin fed the conversation. Misaka watched me like a hawk that was trying very hard to look disinterested.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  Helanin recited bad poetry with dramatic flair. Misaka snorted with disapproval after each line, yet never once left. It became quickly apparent that her grumbling was ritual — her way of saying she cared.

  I didn’t tell them much.

  But Helanin didn’t mind. She said I was like a crypt in winter — pretty to look at, better with wine.

  It wasn’t until much later that night, after the fire died down and Misaka fell asleep upright in her chair, that Helanin said something quiet.

  “You’ve lost a lot of names, haven’t you?”

  I nodded.

  She didn’t ask more.

  Just handed me another sketch.

  This one had three figures: a crow perched atop a mug, a bard mid-laugh, and a tiny warrior napping under the table.

  “Some people,” she said, “you don’t need to write down. You just remember them anyway.”

  And that was the first night in years I didn’t dream of the Reaper.

  But elsewhere, the wind stirred with something stranger.

  Far across the woods, in the place where the stars came closest to the earth, another figure stirred.

  She moved like wind caught between buildings. Her coat smelled of lavender and lightning. She crouched at the edge of a cliff and stared into the forest below.

  “Did you feel that, Patch?” she whispered.

  The ragdoll on her shoulder didn’t reply, not aloud — but something about its head tilt suggested amusement.

  “There’s a thread out there,” she muttered. “One older than me. Something sharp. Something... feathered.”

  Her eyes narrowed. The cliff sighed beneath her boots.

  She didn’t smile.

  But she ran.