In Bharncair, luck is a coin tossed between Saintess Severin and War God Graves. One side offers mercy, the other digs the grave. Most days, they both miss.

  – Old Saying Among the Gutter Rats

  As always, Miss Alba’s tiny noodle shop smelled of hot broth, garlic oil, and bad decisions. Gael stumbled in first— half-drugged, half-drunk, wholly exhausted—and he blinked unevenly through his new lenses. Maeve and Cara followed behind, less of a mess but equally hungry.

  Surprisingly, the shop was already packed. Not with the usual dead-eyed drunks and overworked pipe workers, but with hammered, ghoulish gangsters.

  Fergal, sitting stiff-backed and slurping on a bowl of noodles at a table near the counter, was accompanied by five Repossessors. Gael would like to see what they looked like, but his vision was too blurry. He knew, though, that on the other end of the shop, Juno lounged like a queen with her table of Rot Merchants, and they were the picture of polished politeness. She slurped her bowl of noodles alongside her bodyguards in perfect, eerie sync.

  Gael stopped in the doorway and frowned blearily.

  “... The fuck?”

  Juno raised her head as she noticed Gael entering, then dabbed her twisted mouth with a napkin, smiling like she had a secret.

  “I recommended this shop to Fergal,” she said pleasantly. “I heard the Repossessors have been hanging around your clinic, and I also heard you and your wife frequent this little hole-in-the-wall, so I was curious.” She raised a perfectly manicured hand, gesturing vaguely around her. “Now I understand. The noodles are good enough to be a man’s last meal.”

  She and her Rot Merchants lifted their bowls in unison. A synchronized final slurp. Then, they all sighed in identical satisfaction.

  Gael grimaced. “Great. You ruined the place.”

  Juno ignored him and nodded over the kitchen counter. “My regards to Miss Alba,” she said, all businesslike elegance. “This is good food. I’ll take seconds, and so will my boys.”

  Behind the counter, Miss Alba—tired-looking with stress lines carved deep into her face—gave a nervous nod.

  “O-okay.”

  Her two kids bustling behind her echoed the same affirmation, though they sounded much more uncertain than their mother. Gael, still standing awkwardly in the doorway, rubbed a hand down his face and sighed.

  “We’ll take our usual, noodle shop lady,” he mumbled, slipping into the shop.

  “Okay!” the Alba family chorused.

  Maeve and Cara had already squeezed into their usual cramped window seat, dodging a pair of half-broken stools, and Gael flopped down beside them. The moment his back hit the seat, he kicked his legs up onto the chair opposite him and started fiddling with his lenses.

  A slow turn of the metal rim—the world flickered into night vision.

  Another turn—it flickered out.

  Sick.

  They work perfectly.

  Now I just gotta line the rest of my clothes with chitin to make them tougher.

  Maeve, already happily shoveling noodles into her mouth with her mask stripped off, paid him no mind. Cara watched with mild disinterest. Fergal, from the next table over, did not bother hiding his interest.

  The six-armed Repossessor leaned to the side to stare at Gael, frowning heavily. “What’s with those glowing lenses?” he murmured. “Bioarcanic equipment?”

  Gael flicked off the night vision for a moment and grinned at the man. “Yep. Had it made out of one of the Myrmurs we killed recently.”

  Fergal furrowed his brow. “You can make bioarcanic equipment, too?”

  And Gael was about to answer when he immediately paused, his drug-addled brain suddenly catching up to his mouth. His gaze flickered between Fergal, Juno, and the entire room full of gangsters, all of them now watching him way too closely.

  … Whoops.

  This was not the crowd to casually admit he’d just successfully crafted a working piece of bioarcanic equipment. People lost limbs for much less.

  He was about to backtrack when Cara leaned back smoothly, swirling her chopsticks in her bowl.

  “Gael didn’t make it,” she said casually. “We sent the parts to Ironwych, the eastern ward, and had a proper craftsman there turn it into a pair of lenses.”

  “Yep,” Gael said immediately, tapping the rim of his right lens. “You think I’ve got the time to tinker between stitching guts and dodging knives? Paid a fair bit for these beauties. No, you can’t have them. Pay for them yourselves.”

  Fergal stared them down, heavy suspicion darkening his already dark face. “I see.”

  Juno, meanwhile, was smiling again, too entertained by the whole exchange. She leaned her cheek against her palm, elbow propped on the table. “If you did know how to make bioarcanic equipment,” she mused airily, “that would make you a very valuable asset, wouldn’t it?”

  Gael grinned lazily, masking the very real urge to shut up and leave before someone shoved him into a burlap sack and carted him off to a gang lab. “Maybe.”

  Juno’s smile deepened. “Who knows. I might even be tempted to add you into my gang.”

  Fergal grunted as well. “Lorcawn would probably want you in the Repossessors, too.”

  To all of their indirect offers, Gael slurped his noodles loudly and thumped his chopsticks down with finality. “Sorry, boys and girls. All I know how to do is cut people up. Myrmurs and Nightspawn… are a bit outta my depth.”

  And that was that. No more talking about his lenses. He slouched back, a bit of 68% drunken haze still weighing on his limbs as he slurped down noodles with lazy satisfaction. Maeve was hunched over her own bowl, chewing with an almost religious focus, while Cara picked at hers like she was above the whole experience.

  Across the cramped noodle shop, though, Fergal was still intent on conversing.

  “Any progress on finding the Flighty, Raven?”

  Gael leaned to one side, elbow propped on the table. “Not yet.” He leaned to the other side, considering. “Suppose I could start by asking Blightmarch’s foremost information broker?”

  Juno didn’t pause in her eating. She swallowed another bite, dabbing at her lips before offering him a polite, measured shrug. “I know nothing I’d tell for free.”

  Gael sighed through his teeth. “Of course. How much?”

  But before she could answer, his voice trailed off. His eyes weren’t on her anymore.

  The darkness outside had caught his attention.

  He squinted at the street. At the distant rooftops. Something wasn’t sitting right. Slowly, steadily he reached up and twisted the rims of his lenses. Night vision flickered into place, the world brightening with a garishly green hue.

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  Maeve nudged him under the table with a foot. “What are you doing?”

  Gael shushed her. His gaze locked onto something on a rooftop far ahead: a jagged silhouette framed against the murky night sky. It was… a small figure perched at its peak, hunch-backed, a satchel slung over one shoulder. Crow-like. Gargoyle-like.

  For a second, he almost thought he was looking at a gargoyle, but then—in a flick of movement—a pair of massive, buzzing wings snapped outward.

  The figure crouched, then launched into the air, wings blurring in his vision as it cut through the night.

  He watched it disappear into the distance, only snapping out of his trance when his bowl nearly slipped from his fingers.

  “... Hey, Fergal,” he said idly, eyes still trained upward. “The Flighty’s supposed to have wings, right?”

  Fergal raised a brow. “That’s the running rumor.”

  “Carries a satchel, too?”

  Juno snorted at that. “It’s supposed to be a Nightbeast, not some pickpocket. Why would a monster carry a satchel?”

  Fergal exhaled, considering. “Don’t tell me the Rot Merchants believe it’s actually a Nightspawn. It’s just another Afflicted, nothing more.”

  While Juno snorted again, Gael lifted his hand, gesturing a height about half a head shorter than him. “And this Flighty is about this high?”

  Looking back over, Fergal gave a slow nod. “Roughly.”

  “Good to know.”

  Then he downed the rest of his broth in one long slurp and stretched like a man waking from a nap.

  “Alright, Exorcist. Let’s go.”

  Maeve blinked. “Where?”

  “That general direction,” he said, already standing and pointing vaguely out the window. “I told you there was a chance we’d spot the Flighty with these lenses.”

  The reaction was instant.

  Fergal’s chair scraped back with a violent screech. The Repossessors shot up, their boots heavy against the floor. Juno and the Rot Merchants merely watched with quiet interest, however, as Gael rushed out of the shop, Maeve stumbling after him in confusion.

  As soon as he was outside, he snapped his head up. Night vision back on. He scanned the rooftops, searching for movement, for the flash of wings cutting through the misty night sky.

  He spotted a buzzing figure skipping and hopping across the roofs in the distance, and quickly took off running.

  Behind him, the noodle shop erupted as Fergal and his men burst out the door.

  “Move!” Fergal shouted. “Follow them! Don’t let the Flighty get away!”

  Blightmarch’s slums weren’t made for running.

  Gael knew this in theory, but it really started to sink in as he leaped over a half-collapsed railing, nearly rolled his ankle on a stray chunk of brick, and caught himself just in time to skid past a pile of refuse that may or may not have been breathing. Maeve was a few paces ahead, boots pounding against the cobblestones, her briefcase clutched tight in one hand.

  Above them, the Flighty scrambled across the rooftops, a vague black shape darting between shoddy buildings and jagged spires. Behind them, Fergal and the Repossessors were less about finesse and more about volume.

  “After them!” Fergal’s voice was a gunshot in the night. “Keep on them, lads!”

  Boots pounded. Metal clanked. A few crates shattered as some poor bastard misjudged a jump. Gael panted, pushing harder. His lenses were flickering. His night vision was barely able to keep up with the chase.

  … Damned Myrmur.

  Cheap lenses. Low quality parts meant low clarity on his end. He could see the Flighty’s shape, but that was about it. There was a maximum range to the night vision, and it seemed to be about fifty or sixty meters. Not nearly far enough. At the rate the Flighty was going, it was going to shake him off eventually.

  Even still, he couldn’t help but notice something as he ran with his head held high.

  The Flighty was clumsy.

  Its movements were frantic, its landings uneven. It’d leap between rooftops, miscalculate the distance, slam into the wall, and scrabble back up to two feet with sheer stubbornness. It’d skid on the edges, barely catching itself before slipping off again. It had two pairs of giant buzzing wings, but it wasn’t using them to fly. It was more just flapping them wildly to throw itself further across the roofs. And even then, the flapping wasn't in sync. Its wings stuttered in uneven bursts, buzzing like a broken machine.

  Either the Flighty was new to its wings, or—more likely—it was sick as hell and could barely see ten feet in front of them.

  “Why can’t you just fly after them?” he grumbled at Maeve, dodging a broken cart. She shot him a scowl in return.

  “I don’t have my wing mutation unlocked yet.”

  “And when do you get that?”

  Maeve huffed. “Tier one to three mutations are called ‘Standard Mutations’, which are good baseline mutations all Nightspawn Hunters should have. Tier four and five mutations are called ‘Advanced Mutations’, which are specific to the Advanced Class we pick after unlocking all our tier threes, but all Wasp Classes get a wing mutation in tier four one way or the other, so we’ll both get wings in tier four.”

  Gael raised a brow. “So we won’t be flying for a while.”

  “Not unless you give me all your points.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what most Hosts do. They give all their points to their Hunters so they get stronger faster. Hosts don’t typically fight alongside their Hunters, anyways.”

  Gael barked a laugh. “No can do. This is a professional relationship where you get what you get. No favoritism.”

  Maeve grumbled something under her breath, but Gael wasn’t listening anymore.

  He’d lost sight of the Flighty.

  His head snapped up. He twisted the rims of his lenses again and scanned the rooftops. Nothing. Maeve slowed beside him, realization dawning in her eyes.

  She’d lost the Flighty too.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  Behind them, Cara, Fergal, and the Repossessors skidded to a halt. Boots clattered against the stone, breaths heavy.

  The alley was too deep. The buildings were too high. No vantage points. No angles. They were stuck looking up instead of down, so Gael readjusted his top hat, squinting up at the roofs.

  “We need more height,” he murmured. “Throw me, Exorcist.”

  There was no hesitation. With an aggrieved sigh, she whipped out her umbrella and stabbed it straight into the ground.

  “Fine. Grab my waist.”

  And Gael was just about to do so when she suddenly slapped his hand away. Her brows twitched as though remembering what had happened the last time he grabbed onto her waist.

  “…Actually, just hold my hand.”

  Gael snickered. “What, embarrassed about a littl—”

  That did it. She grabbed his wrist and thumbed the ‘fire’ button on Mistrender’s handle. A blast of poisonous mist immediately shot downwards, and the propelling force rocketed them up, launching them onto a lower rooftop three meters above ground. She fired again. They shot higher. Another burst. Higher still.

  The world tilted. The slums of Blightmarch spread out beneath them, mist-cloaked and shifting, sickly light burning from broken windows. Gael’s stomach flipped. They landed hard on the highest slanted roof, boots skidding on loose tiles.

  Maeve, with zero hesitation again, threw him forward. He hit the roof with a grunt, stumbled, and immediately recovered with his hands cupped around his lenses.

  Blightmarch after dark may be a jagged sea of crooked towers and rust-bitten gutters, and faint bioarcanic lanterns may sway and flicker through the smog, but there—just beyond the broken skyline—a shadow moved.

  He pointed. “Got the Flighty.”

  Maeve squinted in the same direction. “You sure?”

  “Keep up, Exorcist.”

  They ran. Boots slammed against tile. They hopped gaps, skidded down slanted spires, leaped across battered roofs. Below them, Fergal’s voice cracked through the night.

  “Move it, lads! After them!”

  The rooftops blurred past. The Flighty was fast, but now that it’d stopped fumbling like a drunkard, it had rhythm. Gael pressed harder, and Maeve was right behind him the entire time as they raced through the dark.

  A solid ten minutes of chasing later, the rooftops ended. The Flighty disappeared below, so they vaulted, climbed, and slid down to follow. Once his boots were on the ground, he noted their general location: north of the clinic. They were at the end of a street. A tall fence loomed ahead, black iron and half-rusted through, and behind it, a familiar slope rose steeply towards the treeline.

  Maeve’s eyes flickered with recognition. “This is…”

  She didn’t finish her sentence, and Gael didn’t give her the opportunity to. He vaulted over the fence—his enhanced strength coming into play—and forced her to follow.

  As they climbed the slope, damp earth and rotting leaves gradually replaced the hard bite of cobblestone beneath them. Tree trunks slashed through the mist, stretching upward like skeletal fingers. The incline was steep. Gael’s legs burned. Maeve’s breaths came fast. Hell if either of them had expected to do so much jogging with their bellies full of sloshing noodle, but neither of them stopped until they reached the top—

  And halted.

  The land ended.

  Below them, a vast crater yawned open, filled with weathered gravestones, crumbling crypts, and paths swallowed by vines. The Fellstar Cemetery stretched deep as ever, its heart sunken into the bones of the old crater, and at its center was Old Bank’s manor.

  Gael scowled.

  Golden light flickered behind dust-cloaked windows. The sprawling estate stood in eerie contrast to the graveyard of the forgotten. Time had certainly tried to claim it, but a revitalized old man and money—mostly lots of money—had held it at bay.

  That meant the Flighty was motivated enough to actually start using its wings.

  The Flighty was finally using its wings.

  It swooped down, its dark silhouette cutting over the cemetery like a blade. Its flight was still a bit crooked, but it wasn’t struggling nearly as hard anymore. Maybe it'd finally gotten out of its drunken stupor?

  Whatever the case, it managed to angle itself sharply and land on the manor’s roof.

  Maeve sucked in a breath. “What now?”

  “We pay the old man a visit.”

  “And the Flighty?”

  “If they're trying to hurt him, we stop them.” Gael rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “Nobody hurts a patient of the clinic, and—more importantly—nobody hurts a sponsor of the clinic.”

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