Severance was stunned.

This was Ervante? The text over his head proclaimed it so, as did the tattered maroon coat that the man always liked to wear. Even that manic glee was the same. But the rest of him was all wrong.

Severance was staring at a skeletal face, yellowish skin paper thin and drawn taut over a sharp skull. Gray hair fell in ragged strings around Ervante's face. His slight stoop had deepened, appearing as if he tried to bow and got stuck on the way up. He looked feeble, like he'd aged fifty years in the short time since Severance had seen him last.

What had happened?

No, actually, forget that. Questions could come later. Staying anywhere near this freak was dangerous and Severance had no intentions of hanging around. He immediately began to back away.

"Stop," Ervante croaked. His voice was as fragile as a dying breeze.

And just like that, Severance's entire body froze mid-step. Each limb locked into place. Every muscle, every bone, turned into deadweight.

He couldn't move. He couldn't talk. He couldn't blink. Everything had simply... stopped.

Inwardly, he panicked. It hadn't been like this last time. Ervante's horrid skill was even stronger now; it went far beyond uncanny persuasion now. It was more like outright control.

Ervante came closer. He placed cold boney fingers on the side of Severance's jaw, before gently tracing the curve of it, as if admiring a piece of art.

Severance couldn't even shudder, although his skin wanted to crawl right off his body. Even more urgently, he wanted to vomit in the nearest corner.

"How fortuitous... that we meet again." Ervante slid his fingers down and curled them around Severance's neck. He didn't squeeze. Instead, he simply held his hand there and let Severance feel it.

"Severance," he rasped. And he smiled. "Tell me. Tell me... about your clan."

A fuzz settled over Severance's mind like a comfortable blanket.

Dimly, he thought it was strange. Ervante was using simple language now, absent from the fancy words that he was prone to using. But that was good, wasn't it? It was easy to understand. Easy to follow.

Tell me.

The fuzz warmed pleasantly, and even as Severance felt himself relax, a distant part of him began to scream in desperate terror.

His mouth opened of its own accord. "What do you want to know?"

It was the right thing to say. Ervante had asked, and so Ervante must be given an answer. This acceptance burrowed itself into his mind so thoroughly that there was no room for any other thought.

"Everything," Ervante cackled. "Tell me... everything. I want-" he suddenly gasped, his eyes bulging.

Severance staggered, suddenly free from whatever hold the creep had on him. Like a wet rag, Ervante dropped limply to the floor. Behind him stood Awesome Dude, his claw blade still raised. Its curved metal tips glistened with fresh blood.

"Got 'im," the Shade proudly proclaimed. "Thanks for keeping him busy, Sev."

Severance lifted a hand to his neck. His fingers shook slightly. "Yeah."

Violet motes of light began to appear over Ervante's body. They casually winked into being, one at a time. That meant he wasn't dead. Not truly dead.

For one dark second, Severance considered Reviving the man, just so he could kill him again. And again. However many times it took to get that final supernova of true death, instead of this gradual returning.

Hadn't Olen said that Ervante was a target to be eliminated? Severance would be doing them a favour. He would be... killing a man with his own hands. Face to face. In cold blood.

It wouldn't be the first time he'd done so.

"Sev! Come look at this!"

Awesome Dude's urgent cry yanked him from his stupor. He left Ervante's body where it lay, ignoring the nauseating lurch of his stomach, and hurried through the shelves to the other side of the room. The amount of relief he felt at his friend's call was mingled with shame.

But that was all shoved into the background when he saw what Awesome Dude did. All across the one wall were chains. They hung in pairs and ended in manacles. Beneath them lay a pool of dark, foul fluid that had already started to dry.

His heart went cold.

There were no bodies. There wouldn't be, not with how the strange System worked in Eliona. Death, no matter how it came, always swept away the evidence in a shimmering of violet light.

He approached a set of chains, touching the cold metal even as the scent of iron reached him.

"There's chains, Sev. You see them?"

It was a silly question. Severance was holding a set in his hands. Of course he could see them. But he didn't say anything. The horror in his friend's voice matched his own feelings.

He let the chains go. They fell against the wall in a rattle of noise. "We should get out here. Ervante's going to Revive soon."

"Right. Okay. Tomorrow's Edge?"

Severance shook his head. He didn't want to stay in Eliona anymore. Maybe it had a little too much to do with the fear lingering from Ervante's unnatural touch, or perhaps it was the chains and the stains and the unnerving absence of the Valkyrie. Either way, he'd had enough.

It had been a long, long day and he was so very tired.

There was also the small fact that he couldn't return to the House right now. If did, he'd appear in the courtyard and the Veiled would know that he went somewhere without informing them.

That was the last thing he needed.

"I'm almost out of time," he lied. "I'm going to log off. But we can meet up tomorrow."

"Aw," Awesome Dude looked disappointed, but only for a second. "Well, we did find a clue, right? And we got to kill that bad guy, so we did good!"

Severance tried to smile at the Shade's innocent optimism. If only he knew.

His eyes fell on a rolled up piece of cloth on the ground. He stooped and picked it up. When he unrolled it, strange handwritten squiggles greeted him. It wasn't something he could read, so he tossed it into Inventory. If he could find someone to read it for him, maybe it'd reveal another clue.

Though what good would it do if there was nothing left of the Valkyrie?

"Make sure you leave right away, okay?" He waited for his friend's nod before murmuring, "System, Log off."

***

It was Sunday, Seth's day off.

He spent the first half of it in bed. It was the nicest refuge he could have ever asked for, but once his eyes opened, any further sleep eluded him. It sucked.

Story of my life, he grumbled internally.

He dragged himself into the shower, then threw on some clothes. It was the last thing he felt like doing, but he needed some groceries and he couldn't rely solely on Mrs Beakor to feed him all the time.

At least he didn't have to go far, since the mall was across the street from his apartment. It was one of the reasons his uncle Fenn had chosen this apartment for him. Everything he needed was just a short distance away.

Seth went to the small grocery store first, filling his basket with instant noodles, cans of soup, and a bag of apples. After he paid, he walked down the mall's main corridor.

There was some traffic, perhaps a dozen people wandering about, but compared to the crowds he regularly saw in Eliona, this wasn't very much at all. In fact, he could easily ignore them, and that's what he did.

Noise and people drifted past him. It was both familiar and strange, because he could still remember a time where he'd been terrified of crowds. Now it was just a thing in the background.

Seth felt somewhat odd at this revelation. When had that changed? Somehow, he was getting better at doing things on his own. Fenn would have been proud.

Wouldn't he?

I thought about killing someone last night.

The guilt still sat heavily in his belly. He tried to ignore it like he did the people around him.

There was one other store he wanted to visit. It wasn't hard to miss, as there was a glowing sign above the entrance: IVAN'S

Seth walked in, grimacing as the stench of cigarettes grew thick enough to taste. Shelves flanked him, each full of various items, from women's shoes to children's toys to electronic equipment. There wasn't any particular order to how the shelves were arranged. It was like the owner dumped new items in the first available space.

That was why Seth didn't even bother looking. He went straight to the back of the store where he found a small bald man behind the counter. A cloud of smoke hung around him in a haze.

Seth tried and failed to suppress a cough. His eyes watered. The air quality was even worse than the first time he'd come here.

The shopkeeper, Ivan himself, took notice of him. A broad, welcoming smile spread across his face. "It's Hel's boy! Hello!"

"...Hi."

That was the first time in his life that someone had referred to him as Hel's boy, and wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or sputter. If he'd grown up with Mrs Helen Beakor as his parent instead of-

"So, how is toaster?" Ivan put a cigarette between his lips and took a deep puff. He exhaled it in one long stream.

Seth leaned back, resisting the urge to wave the new cloud of pollution away.

"It's working good."

"Good," Ivan was satisfied. "What are you needing today?"

"A laptop. Nothing fancy. Just something I can get on the internet with." After a few weeks of working at the Grubbery, Seth figured he should be able to afford that much.

"I can do that. Wait here."

The shopkeeper set his cigarette down in a glass ashtray, and disappeared through a door behind the counter.

In his absence, Seth backed up from the haze of smoke, and tried to find a small patch of clean air. It was futile. He turned towards the shelves, and since Ivan seemed to be taking his sweet time, Seth browsed a collection of random items.

There was a bag of unopened candy, a set of gold bracelets, and a little figurine of a cat in boots. Seth's brows raised. How did Ivan find all this stuff?

On a lower shelf, something caught his eye. He crouched and picked up a folded fan. Its two outer guards were metal, and when he carefully pulled them open, he found cream-colored paper inside. It was wrinkled and torn a little at one of the pleats, but had a watercolor painting of a bird sitting on a branch. He smiled. This was no war fan, not by any means.

Ivan came out of the back. "Come! I have perfect laptop for you."

Seth immediately rose. With a bit of a fumble, he managed to close the fan into its original position. He went to put it back where he found it, but hesitated. It was silly, but he rather liked the thing. It probably wouldn't cost much, either.

He took it to the counter with him.

True to his word, Ivan had placed a slender laptop on the counter. "Has battery, Windows, and power cord. Works good. Two hundred, but for you, one-fifty."

Seth eyed the laptop. That was a lot cheaper than he'd been expecting, and he wondered if there was something wrong with it. Then again, he couldn't afford to be picky. He mentally shrugged. The toaster had worked, hadn't it? Surely Ivan wouldn't sell him a dud.

"I'll take it," Seth decided. He put the fan on the counter. "And this too."

Ivan beamed. "Good! That's two dollars, so one fifty-two, ya?"

"Okay."

Seth dug out the cash. While he did so, Ivan wrote up a receipt on an old piece of yellowed paper. It wasn't even a receipt book, but entirely blank. He dutifully wrote out the items, cost, and date, before tucking it inside the laptop's lid.

"So you don't lose," he explained. "Any problems, you bring back. Ya?"

"Sure. Thanks."

"And-" Ivan paused. Then he did something strange. He looked intently at Seth for a long moment, before running a finger along his pencil-thin mustache. "You in trouble?"

The question completely blindsided Seth. He could only stare back in complete shock. Where on earth had this guy gotten that wild idea?

"I—no, but—why are you asking?"

Ivan tapped the corner of his own eye. "You got the look. Trouble."

Seth shook his head. He had no idea what the shopkeeper was talking about. "I'm fine. There's nothing going on."

"Hm." Ivan peered at him for a moment longer, before picking up his cigarette from the tray. There was almost nothing left after he tapped the ash off, but he still stuck it between his lips. Then he reached beneath the counter and pulled out a small box. He put it on top of the laptop.

"For Hel. You take to her, ya?"

There was what looked like Chinese writing on it, along with some plants. Tea, Seth guessed. This was where she got that weird stuff from? He smiled. Made sense.

"Sure, I can bring it to her."

He gathered up his goods. The fan he slipped into a pocket, but the laptop and tea he carried in his arms.

When he turned to go, Ivan cleared his throat.

"You need help, go to Hel. Ya?"

Seth coughed. Violently. It was the smoke in the air. That was all. It had nothing to do with what Ivan had just said, or that it had sounded like an insult. It probably wasn't what the man meant, but even so, Seth managed a tremulous smile before he fled out of the store.

Trouble. Ha. There wasn't anyone on Earth that could help him.