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Chapter Text

The catacomb was silent. Too silent.

No choir. No Siblings. No ghouls.

Just the flickering of black candles, the scent of sulfur and clove clinging to the air, and the scrape of leather-gloved fingers arranging bone fragments into a perfect spiral across cracked stone. A forgotten ritual circle—one not approved by the Clergy.

Papa V Perpetua stood at the center of it all, face calm, but eyes burning beneath the mask.

"Veni de profundis..."

His voice echoed low and rhythmically, building with each chant. His bones buzzed with borrowed power—arcane, ancient, forbidden.

He did not need their permission.
Not Frater Imperator. Not the Ghouls.
He was the Anti-Pope, damn it. He deserved a ghoul of his own.

The summoning circle began to glow a soft purple as the candlelight dimmed with Perpetua’s chant, the old book held aloft in his hand as he spoke in low tones. Finishing the chant, the candlelight went back to normal as Perpetua looked towards the summoning circle expectantly, waiting for the signature smoke that signified the summoning of a ghoul. The old book trembled slightly in his grasp, its pages brittle with time and sin. As he finished the final syllable, the glow faded, the flame stilled.

Silence. Just the stale air. Just disappointment.

Perpetua sighed through clenched teeth. He hadn’t even managed to summon one under Copia’s watchful eye—and now, even alone, he had failed again.

With a frustrated snap, he closed the book and stepped forward to snuff out the flame and hide away from this failure.

A sharp, wet-sounding pop echoed beneath the floor. Then a low groan, like the ground itself exhaled.

The circle erupted, shattering upward in a spray of stone, dirt, and glowing ash. A candle went flying. The floor heaved like something alive was trying to crawl up from beneath it.

Then-

A hand.

No—a claw.

Thick, soot-smeared fingers ending in black, splintered talons burst from the circle’s center. They slammed into the stone like anchors. A second claw followed, dragging something up—something heavy, gasping, and furious.

Perpetua stumbled back, arms raised as debris rained down. His eyes went wide behind the mask, caught between horror and delight.
It had worked.

She clawed her way out of the cracked summoning circle like something the earth itself had tried to bury alive—and failed to contain.

Her body surged upward from the earth like a creature who wasn’t summoned, but had escaped.

She was covered in filth. Soot clung to the thick swell of her thighs and the soft curve of her belly, while dried blood painted the grooves of her collarbones like ceremonial markings. Her pale gray skin, marred by scrapes and smeared with blackened dust, still shimmered faintly beneath the grime—like moonlight dulled by storm clouds.
Her chest rose and fell in labored gasps, heavy and unbound, as if she were relearning how to breathe air that wasn’t filled with rot and stone.

Two dark brown ram horns curled from her skull, asymmetrical and fractured at the tips. Her hair, thick and wild, clung to her sweat-damp skin in tangled curls streaked with veins of molten orange, like lava still cooling through cracks in rock. A long, serpentine tail writhed behind her, the spade-shaped tip looked like it was bleeding, as her tail whipped around like it had a mind of its own. She crawled forward, nude, trembling, streaked with survival and madness.

Her amber eyes locked onto him—not with awe, not with submission, but with a predator’s stillness. They were wide and glassy like a deer’s, but there was nothing gentle in them.
She looked like she had been carved from the marrow of the world itself—too soft to be divine, too beautiful to be monstrous.

She growled.

Not loud. Not dramatic.

Low. Controlled. Promised.

She moved on all fours, her claws cracking against stone as she pulled herself from the last inch of the circle. Her pointed ears twitched, alert and sharp, reacting to every shift in breath and the slightest change in light. She flinched at the open air on her back, a creature unused to anything but darkness.

And when Papa V stepped forward, just slightly, she lunged.

No hesitation. No warning. Just a blur of muscle and dirt and sound.

Chapter Text

She came from deeper down.

Not the quiet dark where ghouls sleep before their names are whispered into flame, but the low, crushing dark, where names were forgotten before they ever existed. She didn’t remember being lowered into the Pit. Just the weight. The heat. The endless pressure that turned soft things into stone or dust.

She was never meant to be summoned.

She wasn’t blessed with an elegant form or gentle hands. She was shorter than the others, stockier, built from packed muscle and grit, broad through the hips and shoulders, sturdy in a way that made others dismiss her—but she lasted longer than all of them. Her belly was plush, yet solid; her chest was broad and scarred, her thighs thick as carved stone. She was small only in height, never in presence.

Her horns, curled and rammed back from her skull, were chipped at the tips from years of combat in cramped tunnels. Her tail, thick and serpentine, spoke when her mouth didn’t—lashing when angry, coiling when scared, flicking sharply to warn others to stay back. Its spade-shaped end struck stone like punctuation. Every movement she made said something, even if no one ever cared to understand it.

She had no name. No pack. No language beyond her claws and her tail and her voice—low, guttural, felt in the chest more than heard. Earth ghouls had their own ways. Growls meant more than words. Bites meant more than names. A gentle touch was rare and sacred.
And in all her time down there, no one had ever touched her gently.

So she learned to bite first.

She survived by keeping her back to the wall and her tail sharp. She worked. Dug. Hauled. She bore the bruises of labor like tattoos. The others left her alone, not out of respect, but out of assumption.
She wouldn’t make it long.
But she did.
She always did.

Then—a pulse.

A beat through the stone, too far and too faint to be meant for her. A summoning. She’d felt them before. They came and went, always distant. Always reaching for someone else. But this one... it leaked. It seeped down further than it should have. Careless. Flawed. Old.

Her ears twitched.
Her tail froze mid-flick.
It wasn’t her name being called.
But it reached her.

She lifted her hand, palm flat against the wall. It hummed beneath her skin. Her claws dug in. Her body vibrated with it. She could ignore it. Stay in the shadows. Keep enduring.
But she was done waiting.

With a snarl and her claws sinking deep, she climbed.

The walls scraped her skin raw. Her belly caught on stone teeth. Her horns smashed against the narrow ceiling. Her tail flailed behind her like a lash. But she climbed. Grunted. Bit into the rock itself to find holds where there were none. Blood dripped from her elbows. Sweat soaked her curls.

She wasn’t fast.
But she was inevitable.
The pressure tried to crush her.
She shoved back.
She wasn’t graceful.
She was coming.

And when she hit the edge of the circle, she punched through the earth like a heartbeat breaking open.

She didn’t emerge. She erupted.

Stone split. Candlelight bent. The summoning circle screamed as she broke through it with a thunderous growl, fists and horns first, dragging her body up from the Pit like something the earth had tried to forget.

She landed hard, crouched low, breath tearing from her chest. Her body was coated in ash and blood, her bare skin streaked with dirt, old scars glowing faintly beneath the soot. Her curls clung to her cheeks, orange streaks catching the candlelight like smoldering embers. Her tail whipped behind her, slamming down in fury, in fear, in a guttural language.
I’m here.
Don’t touch me.
I bite.
And then she saw him.
Thin. Clean. Covered in velvet and pride. He smelled of books, wine, and arrogance.
Her ears flattened. Her nostrils flared.
He stepped forward—wrong—as if he’d summoned something obedient.

She growls low in her throat.

And when he got too close, when he dared try to reach, her tail lashed forward in warning and—

She bit him.

Deep. Teeth sinking into his hand, his blood mixing with her breath, copper and incense thick on her tongue. He yelped, fell back, and clutched the wound like a fool.
She crouched over him, chest heaving, tail twitching like a rattlesnake about to strike again. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.
She had made it.
She had taken this summoning.

Chapter Text

Perpetua swore like a damned soul as he yanked his hand back, blood slick between his fingers.

“Unholy fucking pitspawn!” he hissed, stumbling over a half-burned candle. “You BIT me?!”

The ghoulette crouched low, tail lashing, breath ragged. She looked just as surprised as he was—wide eyes, chest heaving, body coiled like a spring—but no apology left her mouth. No bow of submission, no ritualistic kneel. Just a raw, low growl rumbling in her throat.

Perpetua stared at her. Then at his hand. Then back at her.

“Fucking Lucifer’s split hoof,” he muttered, pressing torn fabric to the wound. “The one time I try a proper solo summoning, and what do I get? Not a slick new ghoul. Not even a mid-tier pit brute. I get you. A rabid, feral chthonic runt with a bite reflex.”

She didn’t move. But her ears lowered, and her tail tucked just slightly around her thigh. A subtle shift, but he saw it.

“… You’re not supposed to bite the summoner,” he muttered, wanting to gesture with his hands like he was scolding a bad puppy but didn’t want to risk getting bit again. “That’s Summoning Rule Number fucking one. Do not sink your teeth into the hand that dragged your ass out of the void.”

The ghoulette inched forward. Cautious now. She sniffed at the blood-soaked air, tongue darting out once—then she licked his hand.

Perpetua jerked back with a hiss. “What now? Trying to finish the job? Gonna gnaw the bones for marrow too?”

But it didn’t hurt as much as it had. The bleeding stopped. The wound itched. Healing. Earth ghoul saliva. Naturally clotting. Old pit knowledge. Fucking miracle worker.

He stared down at her. She sat back on her heels, watching him with something between regret and curiosity. Her tail flicked. Her brow pinched. Like, even she wasn’t sure why she’d done it.

“You feel bad,” he said slowly, voice dripping with disbelief. “You feel bad.”
Her nostrils flared, and she gave a low, uncertain huff.

Perpetua looked around the ritual chamber. It was a mess—chalk smeared, candles knocked over, sulfur still lingering like an open sore. The large crack going through the summoning circle and stone cracked. The air stank of ozone and regret. There was no way she could stay here.

And absolutely no way he could smuggle her into the Ministry halls without every ghoul sniffing her out in under ten seconds. Phantom alone would give him that smug you messed up look. Dewdrop would whisper something snide in Infernal. Mountain would just glare.

And if Copia—damn his obliviousness—saw her? He’d banish her back to the Pits, then lecture Perpetua on everything he had done wrong.

No. She couldn’t be seen.

He cursed under his breath again. “Blood of Belial and bone of Cain, I’m gonna have to stash you.”

The ghoulette blinked. Her head tilted.

“I’m talking out loud, yes,” he growled. “You don’t get to judge me, you’re the one who bit me.”

She lowered her gaze. Embarrassed. Maybe even ashamed.

Perpetua exhaled through his nose like a bull preparing for Midnight Mass.
———

Perpetua cursed beneath his breath, the finely embroidered hem of Secondo’s era dragging through damp weeds as he pushed through the overgrown trail behind the east chapel. The old toolshed behind the east chapel had been abandoned since Secondo’s era.

No one ventured out there anymore—not unless they had a death wish or needed solitude to cry. Overgrown vines strangled the sides, and the door hung crooked, but it was hidden. His gold-threaded vestments caught on brambles like they were punishing him for his sins—and there were many—but this one was new. And possibly worse.

Trailing just behind him was the ghoulette.

She was quiet now. No more growling, no more snapping. Just silent and unnervingly gentle as she followed him like a stray. Her thick fingers clutched the back of his cassock, not tugging, not dragging, simply holding onto it like a lifeline. Every few steps, she’d shift closer, pressing her face against it to breathe in deep. She hadn’t said a word—didn’t seem capable of it—but her message was clear.

She trusted him.

Lucifer save him; she trusted him.

“You’re going to stretch the damn embroidery,” Perpetua muttered, glancing back at her. She blinked at him with wide, uncertain eyes, then lowered her head and kept walking. He sighed. “Of all the things I expected when summoning a new ghoul, this wasn’t it.”

The summoning should have gone perfectly. It had gone perfectly, by the old book. He had drawn every sigil with obsessive precision, timed each chant to the exact breath, offered incense blessed by the high clergy of the Black Chapel itself. He was the Anti-Pope, for Satan’s sake. His summoning was supposed to pull from the summoning area of the Pits—a ready ghoul, broken in, obedient.

Instead, he got her. Small, stocky, covered in soot and cuts, with a strong tail and eyes that burned like she hadn’t seen light in centuries. She had crawled out of the summoning circle like she was escaping a cage, not answering a call. And then she’d bit him. Hard.

Now she followed him like a baby duckling clinging to the hem of its high priest.

By the time the old shed came into view—hidden behind ivy-choked walls and forgotten sacrificial props—Perpetua had cycled through every curse he knew and invented three new ones. He kicked the door open with a grunt and gestured her in, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

“Here. Your grand cathedral of rot and mildew.”

She paused in the doorway. Her nose twitched. Then she padded in on bare feet, still holding the edge of his cassock like she wasn’t ready to give it up. Inside, the air was heavy with dust and old wax. Broken furniture lined the walls. An altar for storing props sagged in the corner.

The ghoulette stepped cautiously into the space, looking around like it was the Sistine Chapel. When she finally let go of his garment, she didn’t move far. She curled into a corner beside an old chest and, without prompting, tugged the hem of the cassock with her, folding it into her lap like a blanket.

Perpetua stared at her.

“You weren’t supposed to come up,” he said quietly. “I was summoning from the registry. You weren’t even in the margins.”

She didn’t respond. Just tucked the fabric higher, resting her cheek against the soft material, eyes fluttering half-closed. He exhaled slowly and stepped further into the room, drawing the heavy ivy curtain over the shed’s crooked window. Then, with a muttered curse, he unclasped his cassock and folded it carefully—leaving the end she had claimed draped over a nail near her side.

To his surprise, she made a soft noise—a low rumble deep in her chest. It wasn’t threatening. If anything, it was… content.

“…Fine,” he said, letting his head thunk softly against the wooden wall.

He sat across from her now, his back against the splintered wall, watching the way her tail curled around her feet, the slow rise and fall of her chest as she drifted somewhere between sleep and wariness. She looked so much smaller here. Still strong, still rough-hewn like a statue carved with a shovel instead of a chisel—but softer, somehow. Less wild.

“You know,” he murmured, picking a flake of dried wax off his sleeve, “you weren’t supposed to come.”

Her ear twitched, but she didn’t move.

“I didn’t tell Frater. Didn’t even write the invocation in the logbook. Just… tried it. Like an idiot.” He paused, then added, “Didn’t expect it to work.”

She slowly turned her face toward him. Her amber eyes were half-lidded, glowing faintly in the dimness, calm now. Waiting.

“You’re not from the normal summoning area, are you?” he asked, voice quieter now. “You weren’t trained. You weren’t bound. You came because you wanted to. Or because you had to.”
She didn’t answer, but the way her claws gripped the fabric of his cassock tighter was all the response he needed.

Chapter Text

The air above the circle was wrong. Not just unfamiliar—wrong. It was too thin, too clean, too loud in its silence. There was no iron burning in her lungs, no ash coating her tongue. No screams from the deeper chambers. No thunderous breathing of something larger, waiting to test her spine with its teeth. No sharp rock beneath her claws—only cold, smooth stone, etched with blood and chalk. A circle drawn too carefully, by hands that had never clawed their way out of anything. She hadn’t waited for a name. She didn’t have one. She saw the break, the crack in the veil—and took it.

The man staring at her smelled strange. Not like the ones below—those robed cowards reeking of fear and decay. He smelled like books, old and well-thumbed, like pages whispered to long after midnight, like wine, dark and sour, like something indulgent and undeserved. And layered beneath it all—arrogance. Heavy, like incense burned in excess. She didn’t know the word for it, but it rolled off of him like heat from stone. And she lunged.

It wasn’t hate. It wasn’t rage. It was reflex—panic wound so tightly in her chest it sprang forward before she knew it. Her teeth sank into his hand. Copper burst on her tongue. He shouted, stumbled, and cursed her, as if she were wrong. She was. She hadn’t meant to bite him. But instinct was louder than logic, and she’d spent too long surviving tests with only teeth and will.

But he didn’t send her back. He cursed—beautifully, creatively, blasphemously he didn’t banish her. Didn’t call the words. Didn’t mark the circle with salt or scream her down into the pit. He bled, and still stared at her like she was a puzzle, not a punishment. So she crept closer.

Just a little. And when her tongue darted out to taste what she’d done, something deep inside her remembered: Earth ghoul saliva. Old knowledge. Blood-mending. Repair what you break.

The bleeding slowed. Then stopped. He stared at his hand. Then at her. And when she didn’t lunge again, he muttered something about stashing her like contraband, and she… followed.

She didn’t know why she clutched the back of his robe. It was instinct again, maybe. She didn’t tug. Didn’t drag. Just held. The fabric was soft—some kind of rich, gold-threaded thing that shimmered even in low light—and it smelled like him. Books. Wine. Pride. She pressed her face against it when the wind howled or when the noise of birds became too much. He didn’t stop her.

He led her through overgrown weeds behind the chapel, where vines clawed at his robes and branches scraped her shoulders. The cassock snagged on brambles like it was being punished for his sins, and still she didn’t let go. Every few steps, she shifted closer, her body moving like it wanted to hide behind his shadow. He never once told her to stop. That mattered more than it should.

When they reached the shed, it appeared to be something left behind intentionally. Forgotten. Ivy-choked and crooked, like it had been waiting for someone desperate enough to need it. She paused at the door, sniffing, feeling the dust and silence settle in her lungs. He let her go in first. That mattered too.

Inside, it was small, broken, and perfect. Sagging furniture lined the walls, and the air was thick with the scent of old wax and dried rot. No holy things. No bright things. She crouched near an old chest and folded herself small, dragging the edge of his cassock with her like a blanket. Not stolen. Just… kept.

When he unclasped the rest of his robe and left it for her—draped over a nail like a gift—something inside her settled. A noise rose in her throat, low and deep. Not a growl. Not a threat. Just a hum of something that lived in the quiet between suffering and safety. She hadn’t made that sound since the last time the Pits slept.

She watched him as he leaned against the opposite wall. He looked tired now. His shoulders slumped, his mouth pressed into a thin, regretful line. He looked like someone who had meant to do something impressive and summoned her instead.

She curled tighter around the cassock, let the warmth of fabric and dust surround her. She’d bitten him. He hadn’t struck her. She’d followed him.
He hadn’t abandoned her. She’d held on—and he let her.

She didn’t know his name. He didn’t know hers. Maybe she didn’t have one. Perhaps he would give her one. But for now, she was here, in the world above, not below it. And the man across from her smelled like books, wine, and the strange kind of safety that pride sometimes gives away without meaning to.

Creeping closer on her belly, the ghoulette hesitantly lays her head down on his thigh. Pushing down all the instincts welling inside her—telling her to bite, to run, to brace for pain—she stayed still.

Chapter Text

It was subtle, the way her posture changed. Less predator, more something else. Something older. Her tail no longer twitched like a whip—it dragged softly behind her like it had forgotten how to threaten. Her ears flicked toward him, not in alarm, but in focus. She moved on all fours with care, crawling forward with a caution that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with intent. It was as if she was crossing a line not etched in chalk, but instinct. The same instinct that kept her head low and her movements slow as she moved.

He watched her without a word. Eyes sharp, breath shallow.

She reached his side and paused. For a second, he thought she might change her mind, that the fragile moment would snap under the weight of confusion. But then she leaned in—one careful motion—and laid her head on his lap.

No growl. No sound. Just her. Resting on him like it was the most natural thing in the world. His entire body went still.

She was warm. He could feel the heat of her chubby cheek through the folds of his cassock. Her horns curled gently away from his body, careful not to jab. One hand stayed curled at her side, claws half-tucked, like even she didn’t know what to do with them now. Her breathing slowed. Steadied.

And when her nose gave a tiny, involuntary scrunch—barely a twitch—Perpetua felt something profound and unwelcome bloom behind his ribs.
Surprise first. Then a sinking weight of understanding.

He’d seen this before.

Not from her but from the others. The trained ones. The ones who lounged in sunbeams and draped themselves over laps like sleepy cats. Perpetua had seen ghouls curl up beside Copia as if it were tradition. Nuzzle into Siblings of Sin with soft purrs and little possessive claws. He’d seen Mountain let Rain nap half on his chest and Swiss groom anyone who stood still long enough. Even Dewdrop—damn his attitude—shared tail flicks and shoulder touches like breath.

Affection wasn’t just a habit. It was instinct. Old. Deep. A magic older than the hymns they rewrote and the rituals they burned.
They were made to connect.

And somehow, despite the soot, the snarl, and the bite still fresh in his memory—she was doing it too.
Perpetua stared down at her.

Not just looked—stared. Eyes locked, breath caught somewhere between his ribs and his throat, heart beating a rhythm that didn’t belong in an unholy man’s chest.

She shouldn’t have been capable of this. Not after clawing her way up from whatever forgotten corner of the Pit she had come from. Not after the way she bit him, bloodied him, growled like a demon with nothing left to lose, not after following him like a ghost with no language, no bindings, no name.

But here she was.

Head in his lap, cheek warm and soft through his cassock, one ear flicking in idle rhythm as if keeping time with his breath. Her tail no longer curled in defense—it lay loose and quiet behind her. She hadn’t closed her eyes, not fully, but her lids drooped, lashes heavy with something gentler than exhaustion.

Trust, he realized.
And that was worse.

Because he didn’t deserve that. Not yet.
He lowered one hand carefully to her shoulder. She tensed for half a second, a twitch beneath her skin—and then melted beneath his palm like cooling stone. Still wary, still wild, but…
Still.

“I should leave you here and forget this happened,” he whispered. The words fell limp, weightless even to his own ears. “Pretend it was a misfire. That I botched the summoning and nothing came through. That there isn’t a feral, unregistered ghoulette curled up on my damn lap like she owns the place.”

She didn’t move. Just gave a tiny huff of breath against his thigh, nose wrinkling again in that twitchy, infuriatingly cute way.

“Bunny,” he murmured.

The name left him before he could catch it. Fell out of his mouth like a truth pulled from marrow.

Her ear flicked.

“Yeah,” he said, quieter now, thumb brushing her skin. “That’s you. Bunny. Not because you’re small or prey or soft—though you are, under all that soot and growls. But because you twitched.”

She shifted slightly. Not away. Just deeper into him. A sound rose in her throat—not quite a growl, not quite a sigh. Something like an answer.

“You twitched like a rabbit too stubborn to die in a cage. You came through my circle. You chose this.”

Perpetua swallowed thickly and leaned his head back against the wall, staring up at the beams of the sagging roof.

What the fuck am I doing?

He didn’t know if the name would hold, if she’d understand it, wear it, want it—but he repeated it anyway.

“Bunny.”

No objection. No lunge. No teeth. Just wide amber eyes blinking slowly up at him with a soft, pleased rumble that he felt more than heard.
And that was when he realized he was going to have to leave her.

The air turned colder in his lungs.

He couldn’t stay in the shed forever. The Ministry would notice his absence. Sodo would sniff out the blood on his gloves. Rain would side-eye him into oblivion. Mountain would probably smell Bunny on him before sunrise. And Copia—Lucifer bless his naïve heart—would ask questions.
He couldn’t bring her in. Not yet. Not when she still startled at wind and flinched at him moving too fast. She was too raw. Too new to the world above. She didn’t even know her own name until five seconds ago.

Perpetua’s hand lingered on her horn for one last stroke, then slid away.
He began to shift.

The moment she felt him move, she stirred. A soft, low sound bubbled in her chest, something uncertain. Her claws twitched, not aggressive, but searching—brushing lightly against his boot as if to check he was still there.

He paused, every ounce of him aching.
“I have to go,” he said quietly. “Just for now.”

She didn’t lift her head. But her body stilled. Breath tight again. Like she’d been told those words before.

He reached over to the nail where he’d draped his cassock and pulled the remaining length of it down—not the whole garment, but enough.

Kneeling beside her, he folded it in his hands, then gently tucked the cloth over her shoulders. It draped like a shroud, a prayer. She blinked up at him. Her eyes glowed faintly in the dim.

“You’re not alone,” he said. “Not anymore.”

She blinked once. Then closed her eyes.

He hesitated—then, impulsively, pressed two fingers to the top of her head in a mock blessing.

“My Bunny,” he whispered.

Chapter Text

She didn’t know the meaning of the sound, not really. But the way he said it—low, careful, almost reverent—made something in her bones go still. “Bunny.” It wasn’t a command. It wasn’t a warning. It was… something else. It carried no weight of control, no expectation of obedience—just warmth. Just breathe. The kind of sound that didn’t bruise when it landed. And it landed in her.

She blinked slowly up at him, ears twitching in tiny, involuntary shifts. Her nose scrunched again, a small, fragile motion that made him murmur her name once more. “Yeah. That’s you.” The sound was quiet, but the truth behind it pressed heavy against her ribs. It was hers. A name. Her name.

Given—not torn, not screamed. Not taunted. Not stolen.

She didn’t mean to press closer, but her body moved like it knew better than her mind. His lap was warm. Safe in a way she didn’t have words for. She wanted to stay. But then—he moved. His weight shifted, his breath changed, and she felt it before he even spoke.

“I have to go. Just for now.”

No claws. No growl. Just the sound of something inside her shutting. She brushed his boot with her fingers—checking. Seeking. He didn’t pull away from the touch. Not violently. But he still left.

The wood creaked beneath him as he stood. She hated that sound—how final it felt. But then he paused. She watched through lowered lashes as he pulled something from a crooked nail on the wall—his cassock—and returned. She didn’t understand the gesture until he knelt, until he folded the fabric and laid it across her shoulders like a shroud or a second skin. Her claws clutched at it as soon as he let go.

“You’re not alone,” he said.
But then he was gone.

The shed was quiet, with all its creaks, dust, and cold drafts slipping through the gaps between the old boards. Bunny didn’t cry. She didn’t know how. But the hollow ache in her chest sat heavy. She dragged the cassock tighter around herself, pulling it up over her belly, tucking it behind her knees like a den. It smelled like him—metal and musk, incense and old blood. She curled into it and began to gather.

Bits of shed straw. Old rags. Shavings of wood and curls of bark. Her claws worked carefully, instinctively, and she made a nest. Lumpy, fragile, and clumsy—but hers. She curled into it like she had something to protect. Maybe she did.

And the floor responded.

Where her fingers touched the cracks between the boards, moisture began to seep up—just a little—enough for moss to press timidly between the slats. Tiny green shoots curled toward the warmth of her body. A single bud bloomed near the edge of her tail, pale and white and trembling like it wasn’t sure it belonged there.

She stared at it, confused. She hadn’t done that on purpose. But it felt right. Like the earth still recognized her, even here. Even on dry wood and in unusual places, and even after being given a name.

“Bunny,” she whispered to herself, the shape of the sound clumsy on her tongue.

She wasn’t sure if it was who she was meant to be. But it was what he had seen in her. And she wanted—desperately—to understand why.

So she curled tighter, tail wrapped around her legs, cheek pressed into the folds of cloth that smelled like a man who hadn’t struck her. The shed creaked again, a soft moan from the beams above, but it didn’t feel threatening.

Not anymore.

And as the tiny flower at her side opened fully, she let her eyes slip closed. Not sleep. Not yet. But something close.

The cassock draped over her shoulders didn’t weigh much, but it felt heavy. Heavy with his scent. Heavy with warmth he’d left behind. She clutched it tighter, pulling the fabric over herself like a second skin. Her claws hooked gently into the hem, careful not to tear it. She’d never had anything soft before. Not that she could remember. Not like this.

The nest she’d made was pitiful. A scattering of straw, old rags, bits of broken leaves from her claws dragging across the floor. But it was hers. It was shaped by her body and her breath, padded with what little she could gather from the dim corners of the shed. It smelled like dust, rot, and him. The wood beneath her groaned as it adjusted to her weight, but it didn’t feel hostile. It creaked like an old creature settling beside her. Watching. Waiting.

She curled in tighter, nose pressed into the thick fold of fabric at her chest. Her tail coiled around her legs, protective, like she could trap the warmth in before it escaped. Her ears stayed low, half-pinned but alert, twitching at every gust of wind that whistled through the warped wooden slats. Her breathing slowed, softened, but never evened out. It never quite dropped into sleep.

Every time her muscles tried to loosen, something would shift—a draft brushing too cold along her back, a distant scrape of a branch outside—and she’d jolt, just slightly. Her claws would flex, just once. Her eyes would crack open.

Then close again.
Not all the way.
Not for long.

The cassock smelled like his lap. Like his breath when he’d said her name. Like the faint copper tang of blood, not cruel but earned. It surrounded her, grounding her in a way she couldn’t explain. She buried her face deeper in the folds, nose scrunching, a soft huff of air leaving her lungs as her body tried, again, to rest.

The flower near her tail had bloomed fully now. A second one unfurled from a split in the floorboard beside her hip, a pale vine crawling silently over the edge of the nest. She didn’t notice. Not consciously. But the magic responded to her—the warmth of her body, the quiet wish in her heart not to be left behind. The shed was still old. Still cold. Still ugly. But where she lay? It was softer now.

She blinked slowly, lashes heavy. Bunny clutched the corner of the cassock in both hands, pulled up beneath her chin like a child clutching a blanket.

Her breath hitched when the wind pushed hard against the side of the shed. Her ears jerked, heart hammering in her ribs for a beat too long. But when nothing followed—no shout, no footfall, no scent of danger—her shoulders dropped again. Not all the way. But enough.
Sleep never came.
Not fully.

She drifted somewhere in between. A twilight state of half-dreams and scent-memory. Her body ached to be still, but her mind refused to release its grip. She’d spent too long learning that stillness could be fatal.
Still, her eyes stayed closed more often than not.
And each time she twitched her nose or adjusted the fold of cloth at her side, the cassock shifted like a weightless promise across her skin.

She didn’t know how long it had been since he left. Minutes? Hours? She didn’t understand time up here. The shed didn’t change. The light had gone dark but was slowly returning. But she stayed tucked in the nest she had made with her own trembling hands, surrounded by the scent of the only person who hadn’t tried to punish her or drag her back underground.
She didn’t sleep.

But she stopped listening for footsteps.

Chapter Text

Perpetua shut his chamber door with the softest click, then leaned against it, head thunking back with a muffled groan. The air inside was warm, still, safe—but his pulse didn’t slow. His body ached from tension, from crouching in garden shadows and ducking past Siblings of Sin and ghouls like a damn common thief.

But he’d done it. He’d made it back without being seen. The ghoulette was still in the shed, still alive, still curled around a stolen bundle of robes like they meant something sacred. And now she was his. His problem. His secret. His responsibility. That thought hit harder than the fear.

Because this wasn’t like the others—not like the modern ghouls, summoned under ceremony, supervised by clergy, taught by older ghouls how to walk the halls, wear their little vestments, play nice in the spotlight. No, this one had clawed her way out of the Pit, alone and feral, all sharp teeth and wild eyes.

There was no mentor to hand her off to. No training schedule. No socialized ghoul to ease her into the rhythms of Ministry life. The other ghouls would smell her on him eventually—Mountain probably already had. She needed guidance. Bonding. A pack.

But Bunny only had him. And Perpetua, for all his fire and bravado, had no clue how to tame a ghoul. So he’d have to do it slowly. Soft things. Consistent visits. Let her choose to approach. Let her scent him, know him, see that he wasn’t just another hand that would chain her to labor. He’d need to earn her trust—not command it. The same way you’d coax a feral dog, but smarter. Ghouls remembered.

And this one, he had the terrible feeling she remembered everything. He ran a hand through his hair, found dried moss in it, and swore under his breath. Tomorrow, he’d bring her clean water. Maybe a sweet fruit. Not too close. Just… near the nest. No eye contact. No sudden moves. No expectations.

He was the Anti-Pope. Voice of Satan incarnate. And, now, full-time handler to one very dirty, very sharp, very small earth ghoulette with a cinnamon-scorched scent and too-big eyes that watched him like she was still deciding whether to follow or bite again. Hell help him—he hoped she would follow.

------

The scent of ink, candle wax, and old parchment hung heavy in Copia’s office. Sunlight slanted through the curtains, cutting gold across the cluttered desk where he sat hunched, scribbling something onto a worn sheet of paper. The soft creak of the door barely earned him a glance—until Perpetua slipped in and closed it behind him with the quiet caution of someone not entirely sure why he was there.

“You summoned Phantom and Aurora, didn’t you?” Perpetua asked, hovering just past the threshold before easing into the chair across from the desk.

Copia didn’t look up. “Yes. Why?”

Perpetua shrugged, fingers twitching at the edge of his sleeve. “Just thinking. They’re... close to you. Not just obedient. Comfortable.”
That got the faintest lift of a brow. “It took time. Phantom tore through a set of curtains. Aurora hid in the furnace room for two days. She only came out because Cumulus sat there humming until she did.”

“So... the others helped?”

Copia finally set his pen down, nodding. “Always. Ghouls trust each other before they trust us—Cumulus and Aether are good with the new ones. Rain has a gentle way about him. Even Swiss helped—he’d leave offerings. Fruit. Polished stones. Anything shiny.”

Perpetua hesitated, then asked a little too lightly, “Did they ever get aggressive? Like... bite?”

Copia’s eyes narrowed, but not in suspicion—just surprise. “No. Scared, yes. But they don’t bite without reason.”

“I didn’t mean me,” Perpetua said quickly. “Just… hypothetically.”

Copia leaned back, arms crossing loosely. “Hypothetically? If a ghoul bites you, they’re telling you something. Doesn’t mean hate. Could mean fear. Could mean you startled them. Could mean you weren’t ready, and they felt it.”

Perpetua nodded slowly, standing as if the chair had become too small. “Right. That’s… helpful.”

He was nearly at the door when Copia spoke again, quieter this time.
“They don’t need control. They need safety. That’s what earns their loyalty.”

Perpetua didn’t turn around—just dipped his head and left, the scent of ash and fresh soil trailing faintly in his wake, unnoticed by the brother who still hadn’t begun to wonder.

Chapter Text

The shed was dim, cast in the pale gray light of early morning that filtered through crooked slats in the walls. Dust clung to the air, thick and slow-moving, disturbed only by the occasional breath or twitch of a muscle. The floorboards creaked with age beneath her, but Bunny had stopped reacting to every noise. Mostly. Her tail still flicked now and then. Her ears still rotated at every groan of wood. But she was quieter now. Settled.

If only on the outside.

She was curled tightly around a crumpled bundle of cloth, its smoke-scorched edges wrapped snug against her chest like a shield. The cassock smelled like him, like the one with the voice made of command and fire. Like ash, wax, sweat, and something bitter and alive. Not brimstone. Not sulfur. Human. And something deeper. She didn’t have words for it. She only knew it settled in her chest like a thorn pressed into soft earth. Strange. Important. Dangerous.

She hadn’t slept. Not fully. Her eyes would close and open again every few minutes, her body trapped in that fogged place between instinct and exhaustion. Her limbs were sore from the cold floor, her stomach cramped with hunger, her throat dry. But none of it mattered more than the scent she clung to. His scent. His absence made it worse. The silence was heavier now, like the shed was holding its breath.

She didn’t understand this place. Not the complex world above the Pit, where the sky yawned wide and merciless and the air didn’t burn but felt hollow in her lungs. Not the way things moved here—too fast, too loud, too watched. She’d been pulled into this world like a weed from soil, and now she was left in the sun to wither or root herself again.
But she didn’t want to root. Not yet.

The humans were strange. The ghouls she could scent here smelled different—sweeter, cleaner, like ritual and routine. Not like her. Not like dirt, moss, and stone. They smelled trained. Domesticated. The other ghouls had been summoned with a purpose. Ceremony. She could feel it like bells ringing in a different key.

But she had clawed her way up alone. She didn’t even know if she was meant to be here, but she was here to stay.

A sharp creak from outside drew her upright like a spring-loaded trap, breath stalling. Her shoulders tensed. Ears flat. Claws curled into the fabric beneath her.

Footsteps.

Not the same as his. Heavier. Slower. No fire in the scent, but something older. Deep. Like pine bark and wet rock.
She froze. The door didn’t swing open. It shifted—barely. A sliver. Just enough to let in the breeze.

And then he appeared. Large. Still. Shadowed in the doorway.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Just stood there, filling the frame with sheer presence. His antlered horns scraped the top of the doorway, and his eyes—ancient, gold, watchful—met hers without demand. Not a challenge. Not a warning. A recognition.

He knew what she was. Not the whole of it, but enough.
She didn’t growl, but her muscles tensed, eyes narrowing as she sank lower to the floor, oversized teeth bared in a silent snarl. A warning, not a threat. She wouldn’t run. She wouldn’t yield. Not again. But he didn’t move.

Instead, after a long, still moment, he crouched. Slow. Unthreatening. One hand came into view, cupped and careful.
He placed something just inside the threshold. A pear. Small. Green. Unbitten.

Then, without a word, without any shift in expression, the massive ghoul rose and left. The door eased shut with a soft groan of old hinges. His scent lingered for only a few seconds—pine, soil, stone—and then faded.
Bunny stared at the fruit for a long while.

She didn’t approach right away. She stayed hunched, unmoving, watching like it might explode or vanish. But it didn’t. It sat there. Round. Glossy. Bright against the dust. Eventually, hunger won.

She moved in small crawls, claws dragging lightly along the boards, tail sweeping behind her like a whisper of warning. When she reached the fruit, she didn’t bite it. She sniffed. Nuzzled it once. Then dragged it back to her nest and set it next to the cassock.
It was an offering. Not a meal. A sign.

Her breath finally eased from her lungs. Not sleep. Not peace. But something like safety. A flicker of it. Just enough to let her curl up again, her cheek pressing against the folded fabric. Her claws rested lightly against the fruit.

She didn’t know what came next. But someone, no, a ghoul had seen her and didn’t strike. And maybe, that meant she wasn’t alone.
Not entirely.

Chapter Text

Earth had felt it before he ever scented her.
Something on the ground was off.
Not broken. Not wrong. Just… different.

A shift. A pressure. Like something had moved through the old stone under the Ministry, dragging heat and wildness behind it. He’d noticed it yesterday, while tending to the creeping vines along the garden wall—nothing immediate, just a tension in the roots beneath his boots. They hummed low with it. Unsettled. Curious. And today, that hum had bloomed into something sharper. Something alive.

It wasn’t pain. Not the kind he usually felt when something was disturbed. It was birth.

The kind that didn’t come with ceremony or candlelight.
The kind that tore through stone and shadow, teeth bared and fists clenched, forcing itself into the world with nothing but stubborn will and raw instinct.

He didn’t follow the scent right away. That would’ve been disrespectful. Too forward. He let it drift, let the wind carry it to him as he moved through the garden paths like always. His movements were quiet, thoughtful, each step measured like a heartbeat. It wasn’t until he passed the neglected toolshed near the edge of the outer grounds—a place no one had entered for months—that he felt the pull.

There.

The scent hit him harder then. Smoke, soot, scorched cinnamon bark, and beneath it all, rich, warm flesh. Not the cold, dry scent of hunger or decay. No. This was lush. Fertile. Feminine. Full-bodied in a way most ghouls didn’t come into the world anymore. There was no sharpness in her figure, no hollow signs of a poorly contained summoning. She was built of Earth and shadow and the kind of softness that meant she’d thrived down there in the dark. That’s what stopped him.

The world above expected ghouls to be trained. Contained. Lean and clean and ceremonial. Acting like a human. But Earth had always known better. The Pit gave gifts in unexpected ways.

He stood outside the shed for a moment, his antlered silhouette cast long in the light of the late morning sun. He didn’t announce himself. Didn’t knock. Just listened.

There—beneath the rot of old wood and the stale breath of forgotten tools—he heard it—a heartbeat. Fast, fluttering like a trapped bird but thumping familiarly, like a drum. Not weak. Just waiting. He opened the door slowly, just enough to see inside. And there she was.

The ghoulette.

She was curled low to the floor in the far corner, the warm shafts of light barely touching her form. Her body was wrapped around a scorched cassock, blackened by fire, worn soft by ash and sweat. She clutched it like prey, like comfort, her broad chest rising in shallow, alert breaths.
And she was soft.

It wasn’t just her figure—it was the way she held herself. There was no gauntness, no frantic pacing. She was still, heavy with caution and coiled tension. Her breasts were full and pressed against the folded cloth, her arms thick and plush as they cradled it. Her soft belly peeked from under one edge of the fabric, streaked with soot and dust. Her thighs, broad and strong, curled beneath her like she was made to stay grounded, low to the Earth, shaped by it. Not a thing to be displayed or dressed in unholy clothes, but grown. Rooted.

He didn’t move further.

She bares her teeth. A warning. Not aggressive. Just clear. Her tail flicked against the floorboards, her ears pinned low, her molten amber eyes glowing faintly in the shadows. She was ready to fight. But more than that, she was prepared to decide.

Earth lowered himself into a crouch by the door. Slowly. One knee bent, arms resting loosely over his legs. A passive posture. He tilted his head toward her, not meeting her eyes directly, but watching. Studying.
This wasn’t a fearful one. She wasn’t trembling. She wasn’t sobbing, but a silent snarl that showed off large fangs.

She was waiting to see what kind of ghoul he was.

She’d met someone already. That much was obvious. The cassock bore his scent—Perpetua—the newest Anti-Pope. Earth knew the smell of smoke and incense and ambition, and that cloth reeked of it. But there was no blood on it. No force. Just ashes. Just heat.

That was something.

Still, she hadn’t left the shed. She hadn’t trusted enough to follow. She’d stayed behind, alone, and clung to what little she had.

Earth exhaled slowly through his nose. Then reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a small fruit—a pear. Not perfect. A little lopsided. But ripe. Sweet. Cool from the morning air. He didn’t speak.

Earth placed it gently across the threshold. Not inside her circle. Not close enough to provoke. Just there.
An offering. A sign. Then he rose with the same slow grace, turned, and left. No words. No need.

But he didn’t go far.

He never meant to.

Earth didn’t return to the gardens or melt back into the shadowed treelines like some fleeting spirit. Instead, he moved just far enough to lean against the outer wall of the shed—out of sight, but not out of reach. Close enough to feel the tension still coiling within the planks of the walls. Close enough to listen.

He slid down to a seat, his back to the sun-warmed wood, elbows on his knees, tail curling loosely beside him like a felled branch. From this side, the world was bright and unbothered. Bees droned lazily through dry lavender. Somewhere beyond the hedge, a Sibling coughed, sandals scuffing faintly against the stone walk. The Ministry went on.

But inside that shed?
Something ancient, instinctual was unfolding.

He closed his eyes, head resting lightly against the wall behind him. He didn’t need to see her to know what she was doing. He could feel it in the hush of the soil beneath him, in the way the birds didn’t sing too close. The roots below his spine curled upward slightly, curious. Reaching.

She hadn’t moved right away—not truly. But her heartbeat shifted. Less frantic now. Still cautious. Still high and light. But no longer pounding against her ribs like a warning drum. She was watching the pear.

He could sense her body coiled tighter, not in fear, but in focus. Measuring distance. Risk. Reward. Her tail had likely stilled. Her claws curled tighter into the cloth she held, the one still steeped in Perpetua’s scent. That alone made Earth’s jaw tighten just slightly, the slow grind of molars beneath skin. He didn’t mistrust Perpetua, exactly—but fire rarely understood what it meant to stay. To settle like the earth.

And that one—she deserved patience.
She was already rooted.

The weight of her was not a burden. It was intentional. A body built to endure. Soft, yes—but not weak. Never that. Her plushness spoke of stubborn survival. Of thriving despite hunger, despite fear, despite darkness. He could feel it. In the way she breathed. In the way she refused to look away. Eventually, she moved.

The barest scuffle of claw against wood reached his ears. He didn’t open his eyes. Didn’t learn to listen harder. He just breathed with her, slow and deep and steady. There was the sound of her crawling, not with panic, but with slow, careful force, like shifting boulders or branches being tested in spring. He could hear the faint click of her claws on the floorboards, the sweep of her tail dragging through dust. She was heavy with caution, but not fear. Then came the pause.

She was near the fruit now. Probably nose to it, brow furrowed, ears twitching. He imagined her scenting it, nudging it once, maybe twice. Testing whether it had been tampered with. Whether he’d meant it as bait. She didn’t trust yet. She shouldn’t.

Good.

It meant she was smart.

Then—just barely audible—she took it. No crunch. No bite. Just the drag of the pear across the wooden floor as she crawled like the demon she was. Back to her sad little nest. To the cloth. To safety.
Earth exhaled again, a sound like shifting dirt. Not consumed. Kept.

He let a faint and brief smile form. Not pride. Not relief. Something deeper. Something true. The way a gardener might smile when the first green tip pushes through winter soil. The beginning of something slow. Something sacred. He didn’t go back in. That wasn’t his place—not yet.
But he stayed a while longer. Just sitting. Just listening.

He could feel her shifting again after a time. Settling. Curling around the fruit like a child around a keepsake. Her body would be warmer now, he thought. Breathing deeper. Still watchful, but less alone.
And that mattered.

Because she wasn’t just another ghoul who needed training. She wasn’t meant to walk in line with vestments and smiles and stage cues. She was born of something wilder. She had fought her way up through hell without invitation—and had the gall to live.
That made her interesting.

And Earth… Earth was nothing if not patient, like the stone and soil.
Tomorrow, he’d return. With water. With moss. With time.
And maybe—when she was ready—with his name.

Chapter Text

The Abbey walls sighed around him like they were sleeping.
That was the only time he could move freely—when the Abbey slept.

Not when it was quiet. Quiet could be shattered in an instant by the clatter of a dropped censer or the stomp of boots on stone. But this—this was different. This was the sacred lull that came only after Black Mass, when the last candle had guttered out and the air hung thick with incense and wine and weariness. When the robes had been folded away and the gilded masks rested on their velvet hooks. When even the ghouls curled into their dens like tired dogs.

Papa V moved like a shadow through the corridors, soft-soled and silent, his cloak drawn tight around him.
He shouldn’t have been there.

Not at that hour. Not outside his chambers. Not with the small cloth-wrapped bundle tucked under his arm, heavy with linen and warmth. And certainly not with the stolen key tucked into his glove.
But he had made a promise.

Not out loud. Not in any sanctified vow or ritual-bound declaration. But in the way he had looked at her that morning, still curled in the corner of the toolshed, half-wrapped in soot and the charred remains of his cassock. She hadn’t growled when he arrived. Hadn’t bared her teeth. She had just blinked at him slowly and tugged the old fabric tighter to her chest, like a child with a threadbare keepsake.
It broke something in him. Or maybe it revealed something he hadn’t let himself feel until now.

She deserved more. Not just survival. Not just secrecy.
But comfort.

So now, with the stars high overhead and the world gone still, Perpetua crept out through the side door of the west hallway and crossed the dew-damp grass to the edge of the outer grounds. The chill in the air kissed his cheeks and settled in his hair. He didn’t rush.
She was always waiting.

The toolshed was hunched and crooked beneath the ivy, and it groaned like an old man when he pushed the door open. Inside, the scent hit him first—earth, ash, and something warm beneath it all. Something unmistakably hers.

She looked up immediately.

Golden eyes reflected the sliver of moonlight behind him. Bunny didn’t rise. But she watched him closely as he entered, her ears twitching forward. There was no hostility in her gaze. Just that quiet, coiled awareness she always carried—like a flame deciding whether or not to catch. He knelt beside her, slow and steady. Opened the bundle in his lap.

“I drew a bath,” he said softly, unwrapping a folded blanket first. “It’s late. No one will see. It’s warm. Yours.”

She didn’t answer, but she leaned forward slightly, sniffing the blanket. The scent of Perpetua clung to it—soap, candle smoke, crushed myrrh. Familiar.

He pulled out the rest: a clean shirt he’d stolen from his own drawer, the scent of lavender and honey clinging to the fabric. Gentle. Nothing ceremonial.

“I thought…” He hesitated, eyes still lowered. “I thought it might help.”
A long silence followed.

Then—movement. Bunny shifted her weight forward and rose to her feet, slow and heavy with muscle. He stood as well, giving her space, watching with held breath as she stepped forward out of the corner she’d claimed. She didn’t growl. Didn’t hesitate. She followed him.

The only sounds were the distant groan of old wood and the whisper of wind through narrow windows. The Abbey was at rest.

He didn’t knock. He didn’t pray. He opened the back entrance with a stolen key and led the ghoulette through the dark like a smuggled miracle.

Bunny moved behind him, quiet and barefoot, wrapped in the same black cassock he gave her the night she was summoned. She didn’t speak. She hadn’t made a sound since he offered her the choice. Her hand clutching his cloak as she moved with him, her tail coiled around her own leg.

"Come with me", he’d whispered hours ago, crouched low in her shed, hands open in his lap. Not for a cell. Not for a collar. Just… for a bath. If you want one.

She’d tilted her head at the word like she didn’t know it. Like it was foreign. And he realized, with a slow, gut-deep ache—she didn’t.
She had never had a bath.

She had been born in soot, hellfire, and silence. Crawled up from the Pit into wood rot and darkness. She had cleaned her claws with spit and a fierce snarl. Nestled into burned cloth and old dust, that was what warmth meant.

He had no words for what that did to him. So he brought Bunny home. Not to parade her. Not to claim her. Just… to care for her.

The corridor leading to his room felt different than the rest of the Abbey.

Quieter. Cooler. Older.

As if even the stones down here had forgotten they were part of a holy place.

Perpetua didn’t speak as he led her, just kept his pace slow, listening to the echo of their footsteps fade the deeper they walked. The lanterns here were infrequent, their light dim and flickering. No tapestries lined the walls. No stained glass caught the moon. Just exposed stone, ivy breaking through in places, and the soft, constant hush of the wind through cracks in the tower foundation.

This wing hadn’t been used in years. Not by the clergy. Not by the ghouls. It was too far from the chapel, too far from the reliquaries and their relics, too far from the places where Papa should be seen.

And that was precisely why Perpetua had chosen it.

The door opened with a heavy click, the old wood groaning softly on its hinges as Perpetua ushered her inside. The moment the threshold was crossed, the world changed.

His room didn’t feel like the rest of the Abbey.
It didn’t smell like incense or oil. It didn’t echo like the marble chambers above. It was quiet, thick with the kind of silence that came from long hours alone. No footsteps. No sermons. Just breathe and stone, and the weight of thought pressed into the air like dust on an old book.

The chamber was low-ceilinged and long, the walls uneven and unfinished, left as they had been a century ago when this wing was first carved out from the old foundation. No one else came down here anymore. Not the ghouls. Not the clergy. Not even his brother.

Which was precisely the point.

Heavy velvet curtains draped across arched recesses in the walls, hiding shelves lined with forgotten texts and strange relics—some too old to name, others deliberately stripped of their labels. The stone floor was cold beneath their feet, but worn smooth from pacing, from ritual, from time.
Candles lit the space in clusters, some low on the floor, others resting in tarnished holders built into the walls. Their flames danced like secrets being whispered to no one.

The bed was tucked into a wide stone alcove, more a built-in hollow than a frame, and piled with furs and heavy wool blankets in deep crimson and coal gray. It didn’t look papal. It didn’t look holy. It looked like a den.

A writing desk sat to one side, half-buried in parchment and wax seals, its surface cluttered with inkpots and open books. A broken rosary lay in a dish beside a half-eaten pear. The whole room smelled of dried herbs and scorched pages and a hint of the garden where Perpetua liked to sit when he wasn’t supposed to be seen.

And beyond a sheer black curtain—barely visible in the flickering light—the bath.

Set into the stone floor, deep and still, the water already steaming faintly from the pipes he’d rigged earlier that evening. No glamour. No marble. Just a clean basin surrounded by smooth river stones and candlelight, like it had been carved into the world to offer quiet rather than cleansing.

Perpetua set the bundle in his arms gently onto the bed. The shift. The towel. The soap. All wrapped carefully in soft cloth like a gift, not meant to be unwrapped too quickly.

Then he turned to her.

“You don’t have to rush,” he said quietly. “You don’t even have to stay. But this room is safe. No one comes here. Not without me.”

He didn’t move closer. Didn’t reach for Bunny. He just stood beside the bath and waited—his coat still damp from the mist outside, his candlelit silhouette casting long shadows across the stone behind him.

She looked small near the door.
But not fragile.
And he would not ask her to be.

Chapter Text

The bath steamed in its stone cradle, a quiet breathing thing in the dark. The surface trembled with the faintest ripples from the pipe’s last sigh, candlelight caught and broken on each small wave. Warmth rose in breaths that fogged the edges of the air. The room held it, cupped it, like a secret.

Bunny stood at the threshold and did not move. She wasn’t afraid. Fear was sharp, frantic, fast; this was none of those. This was an assessment. Her golden eyes—bright as struck coin—took everything in and gave nothing away. Bare feet on cold flagstone. Ears angled forward, then back, then forward again as if taking the measure of silence. Tail uncoiled, then settled, then made a slow, thoughtful loop around one calf before slipping free again. The cassock clung in a few places where mist had landed and cooled. She didn’t cross her arms or hide her body; she simply occupied it, fully, without apology.

Pale gray skin, soot-dulled but luminous where the candlelight caught the ridge of a shoulder, the curve of a hip. Strong, thick thighs braced slightly apart for balance. Soft belly rising and falling, steady. The breadth of her chest, unbothered by modesty because shame had never been a law she obeyed.

Perpetua kept his distance. Not distant, but careful. He let her watch him move. He let her see where his hands went. He knelt by the basin and set the linen-wrapped soap on a smooth river stone. Unwound the towel. Rolled his sleeves to his elbows, exposing forearms lined with old nicks from ink knives and garden thorns, not weapons. The candle nearest him had guttered, and he pinched the char from its wick and coaxed it to steadiness. Every motion was slow enough for her to read, gentle enough to be refused.

“It’s ready,” he said, and his voice was quiet enough to pass for part of the draft. “Warm. Nothing bites.”

She tipped her chin. No answer. The good kind of silence.

He reached, with deliberate slowness, and dipped his hand to the water. He stirred it once, twice. Lifted his palm and let the warmth slip back through his fingers. “See how it moves?” he murmured. “It holds. It doesn’t pull.”

She approached one pace, then another, until steam brushed her shins and then her knees. The scent of the bath touched her nose: chamomile, rosemary, a touch of crushed lavender. Under it, the mineral truth of the water itself. Her nostrils flared. No flinch. No growl. Her gaze dropped to her reflection—ghostly gray, eyes twin lanterns under a raveled crown of matted curls. She tracked one ripple as it warped the shape of her mouth and then smoothed again.

He offered the washcloth, saturated and heavy with warmth. A small thing. A first bridge.

Bunny took it. The water beaded and ran down her fingers, and she watched, curious, at how it clung to the curve of her claw before it slipped free. She pressed the cloth to her cheek. Her ears eased half a degree.

“Warm,” she said, voice low and hoarse with disuse, as if the room had to earn each word.

He nodded. “Yes.”

She set the cloth back on his palm without looking away from the bath. The room waited with them—curtains shivering barely in the draft, the hush of the tower like a slow heartbeat in the stone. He did not touch her. He did not fill the silence with reasons. He stood and moved to the far side of the basin so she could choose the path in.

She undid the single knot at her shoulder. The cassock fell away in a tired whisper. No coyness, no hesitation. The candlelight found the pale gray of her skin where the soot thinned, the soft fullness of belly and breasts, and the powerful mass of her thighs, the muscle and plush living together, unapologetic. Water vapor kissed her and clung. Her curly hair, orange beneath the ash, sat like a storm of coiled wire around her head and down her neck, dense and stubborn. She stepped onto the smooth lip of stone and tested her center of gravity against warmth.

“Slow,” he offered, the single word more like a path laid out than an instruction.

She bent her knees and lowered one foot until her toes broke the surface. The heat startled a breath from her—sharp, not pained—and she held still, calibrating. The toes flexed. The water took her ankle, then her calf. Her ears tipped back, not in warning this time but in concentration. She drew that foot up, watched it drip, watched the droplets fall back, then extended the other.

The second descent was easier. Bunny sat. The bath welcomed her in increments: shins, knees, thighs. The heat slipped into the places the cold stone had kept wary. When the water reached her waist, she paused, palms braced flat on the lip behind her, tail floating uncertainly. She looked at her tail—surprised by the weightlessness—then at him.

“It’ll drift,” he said. “You can let it.”

She loosened her tail and it unfurled on the surface like a pale banner, fur darkening, every strand a fine line of shine. She made a soft, considering sound in her throat and leaned back another inch. Water climbed her ribs.

“Breathe,” he said. “Let it carry you.”

She did. In. Out. The steam softened the edges of the room, blurred candle halos, dampened the cold stone smell until only the herbs and a faint new sweetness lingered—the warmth of skin without ash.

He knelt beside her with the cloth again. “I’ll touch your shoulder,” he said, naming the thing before doing it. “Here.” He set the fabric with the gentlest weight on the curve of bone. Heat bled through. He drew the cloth along the line of her collarbone—slow, steady—and the gray turned cleaner in the pass, soot lifting in faint oils that clouded and vanished into the water. He rinsed the cloth on the stones and brought it back, a rhythm born of patience rather than urgency.

He worked down her arm in careful spans, never closing on her wrist too quickly, never making her choose between trust and reflex. The cloth slid over bicep to elbow, around the knob of bone, down the forearm, and then her hand—broad palm, strong fingers, claws held neutral. He paused there and lifted the hand with both of his like a promise. “I’ll go between,” he said, and guided the cloth along the webs, around each finger. He kept his forearms loose, his shoulders down. No trap. She watched his hands, and the corner of her mouth softened in a way that wasn’t quite a smile but was kin to the same species.

He did the other arm. The cadence steadied them both: rinse, wring, place, draw, breathe. Each pass left a cleaner wake. Pale gray emerged from the city of soot like stone shown water for the first time.

Her chest rose and fell. The towel and the clean shirt waited folded on the bed, and neither called to her. She remained as she was—unhidden, unguilty. Perpetua kept his attention honest. He saw what was there to be seen and did not take more. He washed above the breastbone with the back of the cloth the way one might brush dust from a relic. He circled the armpit and shoulder, found the work-hardened grit at the base of the neck, and lifted it away.

Her belly—the soft place—he approached after a breath, as if asking the room if it was time. He set the cloth at the lowest rib and stroked downward, letting the warmth and the pressure do the cleaning, not the force. The curve yielded to heat. Water lapped and purred at the caress of movement. She watched him do it and did not tense. He continued, never brisk, never proprietary. He rinsed. He returned. He smoothed the cloth along the side of her waist, where muscle tucked into plush, along the swell of her hip, across the terrain of her. He washed, that was all, and the room agreed: this was care, not claim.

He reached the thighs and paused. Bunny shifted, not to flee but to give him an angle. “Here?” he asked. The single word contained all the caution in the world.

“Here,” she answered, and the permission settled between them like a mantle.

He set to work. Her thighs held strength like a coiled rope under a layer of gentler flesh. He drew the cloth in long paths from knee to mid-thigh, from outer thigh to inner, never straying where soap wasn’t meant to go, never making the water a pretext for something else. Heat rose from the bath and from skin, and he let both be simply what they were.

He rinsed. He returned. He watched, without staring, for any sign of withdrawal and saw none. If anything, he saw the long lines of tension slacken the way rope loosens off a winch at last.

When he came to her knees, he circled them at the edge of the water, then lifted each foot and cupped the heel in his palm. “Weight,” he said. “I’ll hold it.” She allowed him to take it. The soles were toughened as if she’d run on rock and rust—minor nicks, old calcifications. He laid the cloth to them, pressed and released, pressed and released, coaxing the grime without scraping. Each toe is cleaned. Each claw—wiped at its base, carefully, almost ceremonially. “You keep them sharp,” he said as a simple observation.

Her ears flicked in what might have been pride. “Yes.”

He nodded, a smile small and private to the air. “Good.”

Hair came next. He shifted to kneel behind her, and she tipped her head just enough that he could reach the crown without invading her breath. Up close, the truth of her hair spoke: a dense marvel of curls, orange under the soot, sprung and stubborn as wire, an ember field waiting for air.

The curls framed the dark curve of her horns—ramlike and curling low and close to her skull before spiraling outward in smooth arcs. The ridges caught the candlelight in pale crescents, each groove dusted with a faint memory of ash. He cupped water and poured it slowly over both hair and horn, letting the heat run in rivulets along their spiral. Steam curled from where water met the cooler keratin, carrying the smell of soot and rosemary into the quiet.

Ash loosened first from the hair, swirling down in a dark wash past her shoulder like old smoke leaving a chimney for the last time. Then he took the cloth and gently traced the ridges of each horn, following the natural spiral from base to tip. Not scrubbing—never rough—but coaxing away the dust caught in the grooves, rinsing each section clean before moving to the next. The horns gleamed faintly as the grime lifted, their actual color—a deep, mottled ivory—emerging beneath his hands.

When the horns were clean, he turned his focus back to the hair. He rubbed the soap between his palms until it bloomed into a gentle lather, then worked it through the curls—not raking, not tearing. He divided the hair with his fingers, mindful of where the spirals rooted near the horn’s base, coaxing suds into roots, under, over, crown to nape, a gardener easing water along roots instead of flooding a bed.

Her eyes shut—not in surrender but in narrow focus, listening to the slight sound of bubbles collapsing, to the trickle running along scalp, horn, and into the pool. A low rumbling purr began to swell in her chest, rough and unused. Her shoulders dropped another notch. He tipped a pitcher and let clean warmth rinse the soap away in a low, steady pour that never shocked, that never stole breath. The orange returned in bands and coils, alive beneath his hands. He gathered the curls to one side and squeezed, never tugging, mindful of the horns’ curve; water streamed off in clear ropes.

“Ears,” he said next, naming it so she could pivot if she wished. “May I?”
She opened her eyes and turned her head to show him the line where skin met cartilage. “Yes.”

He cleaned the outer curves, the secret swirls, the place where soot liked to hide in tiny caves. He did not put his finger where it didn’t belong. He did not make it intimate; he made it thorough. Bunny shivered once, more from a sensation new to her map than from cold, and he went slower. “Tell me if it aches.”

“It doesn’t.”
“Good.”

Her tail had floated like a pale river the whole time, but the fur at the end had knotted by the shed’s long days. Perpetua set fresh water over it with the pitcher, then worked the cloth along the length in smooth strokes. When he found a tangle, he worked it with his fingers and water until it sighed free, never yanking. The tail, initially alert and vigilant, slowly learned the temperature of the room and lay more easily on the surface.

“Back,” he said, after they had returned to silence and found it patient. He held the cloth above Bunny’s shoulder so she could see where it would land, then laid it between her shoulder blades. The muscles under his hand told a long story of holding and bracing. He listened to them with his palm, with the water. He drew the cloth down the spine in lines that aligned with breath. Suds clung to the hollows, then slid away.

He avoided the sensitive dip just above the tail until the last, then passed there with the softest of touches. Bunny’s lungs let something out she didn’t need to keep anymore. He felt it more than heard it.

He refreshed the water with another pitcher when the heat began to soften, testing the temperature on his wrist like one checks milk for an infant. Not too hot. Not a shock. He poured along the edge, letting warmth bloom into the pool without turning it into a boil. Steam lifted again, carrying rosemary like a reminder that this was not penance but care.

“How does it feel?” he asked, not because he needed praise for the act, but because language builds bridges too.

She considered. She looked at her arm where the water slicked against skin now pale and true. She watched a bead weight at her elbow, swell, and release. “It feels like… quiet,” she said at last. “Not the Abbey’s quiet. Mine.”

He bowed his head as if to an altar he hadn’t known how to name. “Good.”

They stayed like that a while. Perpetua refreshed the cloth when it cooled. He pressed it to the back of her neck, and the heat that lived under her hair nodded gratefully. He traced soap along a shallow scar at her shoulder and watched it soften to a memory. He left untouched what should remain unquestioned. The bath spoke in small languages: the tiny lap against the stone; the air’s damp hush; the flick and settle of candleflame when steam nudged it.

When he finally rose, it was not an ending so much as a turn in the liturgy. He fetched the towel, heavy and warm, from where it had lain close to the brazier. He held it up in both hands where she could see it for what it was: a covering that was not a muzzle, not a collar, not an order.

“When you’re ready.”

She stood. Water slid from her in honest sheets. He wrapped the towel around her shoulders and down her back, letting it stay open in front so she could decide its shape. He pressed another towel into her hands for the parts she wanted to dry herself. She did, without shyness, without performance—just the practical attention of a creature who knew her terrain and its needs. He stepped in only to lift her hair so she could reach behind her neck, or to blot the spine where rivulets insisted on length.

He brought a broader cloth and set it on the stones, then nodded to her tail. She placed it there, and he patted it dry along its length with a patience that would have embarrassed him in other company. Here, it made perfect sense. When he finished, the fur lifted in clean, faint waves instead of clinging in knots. She touched the tip experimentally, then flicked it once and watched the new motion with interest, as if she were testing a repaired hinge. A tiny sound—contentment, very nearly a purr—thrummed low in her chest and rolled the air between them like a secret shared.

He looked at the bed. The clean shirt waited, soft and wide and unadorned. He didn’t offer it like a demand. He didn’t pretend it wasn’t clothing. He simply set it within reach, then turned to adjust the candles, which didn’t need adjusting, until he heard fabric move. Bunny pulled it over her head and let it fall. It skimmed her shoulders, her chest, the gentle slope of her belly, the powerful curve of her thighs, and found its new home. She did not check how she looked in it; she tested how it felt, lifting an arm, bending a knee, then letting the hem rest.

He shook his sleeves down and wiped his hands. The world’s edges returned—less humid now, herbs thinner, the scent of her clean skin edged with a sweetness he could not name and did not dare attempt to.

“Hungry?” he asked, quietly, as if not to break the spell.

She considered the word like she would a knife offered handle-first. “Not now,” she said. She blinked slowly. “Warm.”

He nodded. “Good.” The bed—in its stone alcove under the shadow of velvet—looked like a den. He had made it that way long before he’d known why. He folded back the top blanket and set the extra pillows farther to the edges so the center would belong to her if she wanted it. He didn’t pat the mattress. He didn’t beckon. He simply made space that could be stepped into.

Bunny walked there on bare feet, the clean shift whispering at her knees. She sat first, testing springs that didn’t exist, then curving down onto her side as if the stone might trick her. It didn’t. The furs and wool lifted their warmth like many hands offering, but never grabbing. She exhaled. Her ears eased. Her tail found a place along her shins and lay like a length of moonlit river.

Perpetua dimmed the nearest cluster of candles and left only three burning—one by the bath, one by the desk, one set low near the door like a guard. He cleaned the few tools used tonight, not with the severity of penance but with the careful completion of a rite done correctly. The soap returned to its linen, the washcloth hung to dry, the pitcher emptied and set mouth-down so no dust would creep in while they slept. He crept, not out of fear of being caught but so the quiet she had named as hers would not be broken by his clumsiness.

When he finally sat, it was not in his chair behind the desk but on the low step by the bath, hands resting lightly between his knees, posture open. He watched the steam thin and the water settle back into the mirror. He did not watch her, not openly, but he knew where she was in the way a room knows where its hearth is.

Her voice reached him without her opening her eyes. “You will stay?”

He looked up then. “Yes.” There was no performance in it. No vow dressed in ceremony. Just the truth. “I’ll be here. If you wake. If you don’t.”

She made that slight sound again, more breath than word, and dropped a measure deeper into the den’s hold. He didn’t ask if she wanted the door barred. He rose and put the heavy iron latch down anyway, quiet as a hand closing a lullaby. The room shifted under the locked weight, not trapped—kept.

He took a blanket and sat on the floor beside the bed’s stone lip. The stones were not kind to his hip, but they were clean and familiar, and he had slept in worse places for worse reasons. He arranged himself so that if she reached out, her claws would find his sleeve and not air. He rested his head against the alcove’s edge and let his gaze unfocused on the bath’s cooling circle.

Time moved oddly in that wing. The Abbey’s great lungs breathed in its upper nave, but down here the seconds came as the soft crack of a candle finishing a vein of wax, the slight shift of fur as a tail resettled, the quiet sigh of wind finding a hairline in old mortar. He did not pray; he simply kept watch. It felt more faithful than any prayer he’d spoken in years.

At some hour that was not counted by bells, Bunny’s hand slid from the bed to the edge of the stone, searching without urgency. He didn’t move. He simply shifted his arm so her fingers found cloth. She left them there, not gripping, not needing, simply announcing their existence as if to say I am here; you are here. He answered in the same language—no squeeze, no startle—just the consistency of staying. After a time, her hand stilled and grew heavier with sleep.

The candles burned down to stubs. Perpetua trimmed wicks blind with two fingernails and a memory of where flame ought to be. The bath cooled to a dark plate. Rosemary and chamomile scribbled themselves into the stone until morning would lift them like chalk dust. The night chose its end slowly.

When he finally allowed his head to tip against the stone and his eyelids to lower, he did not tell himself that he had saved her. He did not let himself claim the act as absolution. He let the room be what it now was: safe, warm, claimed only by the quiet of two breathing bodies and the small proof of water doing what water was made to do.

Bunny slept, clean and heavy, her orange curls drying into a halo of softened coils against the pillow, her pale gray skin free of ash, her tail relaxed into a gentle bend. Perpetua kept the last watch with the stubbornness of a man who had spent years guarding the wrong things and had finally, finally, found something worthy of his vigilance.

The Abbey’s stones, which had forgotten for decades that they could be anything but cold, softened a fraction and remembered. And the bath, cooling in the corner like a moon set into earth, held on to a seam of warmth until morning came to open it again.

Chapter Text

The first thing she felt was the weight.

Not of chains, not of cold stone pressing into her spine—this was heavier in a softer way. Wool and fur settled over her like a second skin, trapping the warmth she’d built through the night. The air that touched her cheek wasn’t sharp with damp or smoke; it was mild, dry, tinged faintly with the spent breath of candles and the herbs he’d put in the bath.

She stayed very still, letting her ears turn without moving her head.
The Abbey was awake above them—she could feel it in the distant tremor of boots on the higher floors—but here, the walls didn’t care. Here, it was still.

Bunny cracked one eye open. The stone alcove cradled her like a den, edges close enough that she could have touched three sides without stretching far. Beyond it, the chamber was shadowed except where the curtains at the far end allowed a spill of muted daylight. It pooled on the desk, on the open book there, on the folded coat over the chair.
And on him.

Perpetua had moved from where she remembered seeing him last, one arm resting across the desk, head bowed just enough to suggest he hadn’t moved in hours. His hair was slightly mussed, the black falling forward in pieces that caught the light. His eyes were closed—but not in the deep slack of sleep. She could tell by the way his breathing shifted the moment she moved her tail.

She made a slight, accidental sound as she stretched—half squeak, half exhale—and her own ears swiveled at it. She blinked again, slowly, and pushed herself up onto one elbow. The blanket slid from her shoulder with the loose collar of the shirt.

“You’re awake,” he said without lifting his head all the way.

She didn’t answer right away. She tested the air again—warm, clean, faint with Perpetua’s scent over hers. Her muscles loosened by degrees. “Mm.”

He straightened then, turning in his chair so he could see her more fully. “How do you feel?”

Her brow furrowed faintly as she searched for the word. “Light,” she said finally, the roughness of her voice still edged from disuse. Then, after a beat, “Clean.”

A hint of satisfaction crossed his face, but he didn’t make it into a performance. “Good.”

Bunny drew her legs up beneath her, letting the blanket pool in her lap. The shirt he’d given her last night clung softly to her skin, still carrying the faint lavender-and-honey scent. Her tail slipped out from under the covers, curling and uncurling once before coming to rest against her shin.

The quiet between them deepened—no rush, no intrusion. And then it happened: a vibration, low and uncertain, rising from deep in her chest. Not a growl. Not quite. It caught twice before finding a rhythm, a rough, gravelly purr like stone under a stream.

Perpetua tilted his head slightly, but didn’t speak. If she noticed his reaction, she didn’t acknowledge it. Her eyes were half-lidded, and the purr grew stronger when she shifted the blanket aside and slid forward to sit on the edge of the bed.

He rose from the desk and approached slowly, as if she might vanish if the floor creaked too loudly. She didn’t move away—only watched him from under the shadow of her curls.

Her hand came up without ceremony, claws curved in so as not to catch, and landed on his thigh. Not a grip. Just an anchor. The purr rattled on, uneven but persistent.

“No one comes down here in the morning,” he murmured.

Her ears flicked once at the reassurance, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she leaned her shoulder into his hip, the weight of her as solid as if she meant to stay there all day. He rested a hand lightly on the side of her head, mindful of the curve of her horns, and felt the faint warmth still trapped in her curls from the night before.

For a moment, they stayed like that: her purr weaving through the silence, his hand steady but not holding, the curtain’s pale light touching only the edges of them.

When she pulled back, it wasn’t to leave—only to look up at him, golden eyes clear. “Food?”

Something like a smile brushed the corner of his mouth. “Stay here. I’ll bring it.”

She made a slight approving hum and slid back into the furs, tail curling loosely along her legs again. And as Perpetua crossed the room, she lowered her head to the pillow once more, the purr still faintly rolling in her chest like a fire not yet ready to go out.

Perpetua returned not long after, the scent reaching her before the sound of his steps. Warm bread, faintly sweet. Something savory, richer, with a note of smoke and fat. She lifted her head from the pillow, ears angling toward the door like a cat who’d caught the thread of a distant bell.

He came in with a wooden tray, the kind used in the kitchens for quiet service. No polished silver, no ceremony—just a clay bowl of stew still steaming, thick with root vegetables and shredded meat, and a smaller plate with a torn loaf, crust crackling from the bake. A crock of butter, pale and soft, sat beside it.

Her eyes tracked it the whole way as he crossed to the bed alcove. He stopped just outside the curve of furs and lowered the tray to the stone lip, making sure it sat level before letting it go.

“Yours,” he said simply.

She didn’t reach right away. Instead, she sat up on her knees, tail curling forward over one thigh as if to form a loose shield. Her nostrils flared, testing the steam, cataloging it: salt, meat, root, bread. Her gaze flicked to his hands as he stepped back, then back to the bowl.

He waited.

Bunny leaned forward slowly, claws clicking faintly on the rim of the tray as she pulled it closer. She sniffed again, lower this time, until her nose nearly touched the stew. Then she sat back abruptly, pupils narrowing, and glanced at him.

“It’s not poisoned,” he said, but without mockery—just fact.

Her ears tipped back briefly in thought. “You’d eat it?”

“Yes.”

That seemed enough. Bunny tore a piece of bread free, holding it in both hands like it might try to escape, and dipped it into the stew. The crust softened, soaking up the broth. She bit into it and chewed once, twice, then stopped. Her tail twitched, loosening from its guard.

She dipped the bread again.

Perpetua didn’t sit at the desk this time. He eased himself down on the far edge of the bed, close enough that the heat from the tray touched both of them, but far enough that she could keep her space. He watched without staring as she worked her way through the bread, alternating between tearing off hunks to dunk and spooning the stew in short, decisive movements.

Once, when he reached for the butter to set it nearer her, she froze mid-bite, eyes locking on his hand. But when the crock landed beside the bread and nothing else happened, she resumed eating—this time slathering a piece with the pale spread before dipping it into the broth.

Her chewing slowed as the bowl emptied. Not from weariness, but from some instinct to stretch the last of a thing. She licked the back of one claw clean, then swiped it along the rim of the bowl to catch the dregs. The rough purr from earlier returned, vibrating faintly between bites.

“Enough?” he asked when she set the spoon down.

She considered the question, tail curling around her own ankle now instead of guarding the tray. “For now.”

He nodded and rose, taking the tray without comment. Bunny watched him go, eyes following the easy way he carried it—not like a servant, not like a guard, just… someone making sure a thing got where it needed to be.

When he returned, she’d already settled back into the furs, tail coiled loose, the faintest trace of a satisfied hum in her chest. Her eyes were half-lidded, but she was still watching him.

“Still warm,” she said.

“I said no one comes here in the morning,” he replied.

Chapter Text

The latch clicked into place behind him.

Perpetua rested his palm there a moment longer than necessary, feeling the iron’s cool bite against his skin, as if the weight of it might press the day into stillness and keep her safe until he returned. He knew it wouldn’t. Locks didn’t hold the Abbey’s most actual threats at bay; only secrecy did.

He looked back one last time.

Bunny was in the bed, a quiet heap of furs and pale limbs, her ears angled forward in that way that wasn’t quite alert but wasn’t unguarded either. Her tail was looped loosely over her knees, a lazy coil that still looked capable of spring. The shirt he’d given her had twisted at one shoulder in sleep, showing the smooth gray of skin beneath. She hadn’t bothered to fix it or pull it down to cover her lower half.

“I’ll be gone most of the day,” he told her, voice low.

Her ears twitched.

“No one comes down here. Not unless I bring them.”

She made a sound—soft, almost a hum—and turned her face slightly into the pillow. The sunlight leaking through the curtain caught on her horns, tracing the curve of them.

He set the second loaf of bread on the desk with a small clay jug of water. Not a display, not a gift—just something that meant she wouldn’t be left wanting.

“If anyone does find their way here…”

She didn’t move.

“…you don’t have to stay. Take the west stair. It empties into the garden wall.”

Another hum. Maybe agreement, maybe dismissal.

He left before the air between them could grow heavy with things neither of them was ready to say.

The Abbey breathed differently in the morning.

Perpetua could feel it in the top halls, where the incense from dawn mass still clung to the pillars, where shafts of pale light cut clean lines across the marble, and dust hung suspended like faint gold. The priests and ghouls moved in slow patterns now—measured steps toward kitchens, corridors, storerooms—before the noise of the day swallowed the calm.

In the lesser hall that led toward the gardens, one ghoul’s boots slowed to a halt.

Big Earth had been carrying a crate of kitchen stores, its wood damp from the cellar’s chill, when something brushed against the edge of his senses—bright, sweet, and warm all at once. Citrus. Cinnamon.

His nostrils flared.

The crate dipped slightly in his grip as the scent settled in.

Not incense. Not perfume.

Her.

Memory was fast.

He was back in the shadowed garden path, weeks ago, headed toward the compost sheds when a flicker of movement under the ivy caught his eye. A shape in the toolshed’s gloom, golden eyes tracking him without a sound. He’d set the fruit down inside the threshold without a word—pale orange skin glowing faintly in the half-light. She’d come forward enough to take it, claws closing around it, lifting it to her nose: a single sniff, a cautious bite. No thanks, no greeting. But she hadn’t run.

That had been enough.

Now her scent was here, inside the Abbey’s stone ribs.
Earth’s pace slowed until it stopped entirely. The crate hung at his side, his other hand curling loose at his hip. He listened—nothing above the usual footfalls. But the smell was no ghost from his memory—it was fresh.

He set the crate down on a bench with a muted thud and straightened, rolling his shoulders back until the low rumble in his chest settled into something steadier. His tail, however, betrayed the thought running under his stillness, flicking once behind him before lowering again.
Her scent was threaded through the corridor, not drifting in wild swirls like it had outside in the garden. Here, it clung to the stone, to the iron hinges of doors, as though she’d passed this way and been carried further inward.

Someone had brought her in.

Not just in. Deep.

Earth’s claws flexed as he began to walk, slow and deliberate, following the trail.

It led him through the narrower veins of the Abbey, where the torches burned lower and the air cooled against the skin. The deeper he went, the more her scent anchored itself—no longer just a bright thread, but a warm ribbon weaving through the cold.

It wasn’t alone. Beneath it ran another layer: soap, lavender, and a faint trace of myrrh. Earth knew that one. Not from Secondo, not from any of the others he’d served beside, but from the rare occasions he’d crossed paths with the youngest of the Papas—Perpetua’s.
His brows knit.

The youngest had never been the type to bring strays into the Abbey without cause—and he’d never been the type to leave them where anyone might stumble across them.

Earth’s tail swayed once behind him, his mind pulling at the thread of the memory: her eyes, her claws, the way she’d weighed him in the shed before deciding he wasn’t worth lunging at.

The scent curved down.

He followed it to the lesser staircases, where dust had settled thick in the corners and the air thinned in a way that told him this part of the Abbey had long stopped pretending to matter to anyone but the ones who knew its worth.

Here, her scent thickened.

His claws brushed the wall as he descended the last few steps, testing the coolness of the stone. The weight of the place pressed in—not oppressive, but insulated, like the bottom of a deep den. And here, at the turn of the last landing, was the door.

Heavy oak, iron latch. The faint, almost imperceptible humidity of a room where steam had not been for some time.

He stood there for a long breath, ears angled toward the silence beyond.

Her scent was more pungent here than anywhere else. Not layered and muddied by corridors, but clean, direct—rising from skin and breath, from the wool of blankets, from the furs she must have been curled into.

It clung faintly to the doorframe, as if she’d brushed it with a shoulder.

And beneath it, just faint enough to be a shadow, was the scent of the bath—chamomile, rosemary.

He could leave.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d caught a scent and walked away, tucking it back into memory until it faded. He could return to his crates, his work, the quiet understanding that not every trail needed to be followed.

But the memory of her in the shed—soot-streaked, bright-eyed, crouched over the fruit like it was the first real thing she’d been given in weeks—pressed against his ribs.

And the fact that she was here now, behind this door, in the youngest Papa’s private wing? That was a weight in his claws.

His fingers closed lightly around the latch.

He didn’t throw it open. Earth was many things, but careless wasn’t one of them. He eased it just enough to test the give, to listen for the scrape of a lock or the hitch of a chain.

It was barred from the inside.

He huffed softly, not quite a laugh. Perpetua wasn’t stupid.

But bars and latches worked both ways, and Earth had lived long enough in the Abbey to know which hinges could be persuaded with patience and which locks could be coaxed if you didn’t mind the risk of noise. He ran his thumb along the latch, gauging the tension, then stepped back.

Noise would bring questions.

Better to wait.

He sat on the lower stair, tail curling loosely beside him, and let his ears focus on the muted sounds within. The Abbey’s stone liked to carry certain noises—footsteps, drawers opening, the faint shuffle of movement. But here, the silence was profound, broken only once by the faintest shift of fabric against stone.

Her.

She was awake.

The scent slipped through the cracks each time the air shifted, brushing against him like it had in the garden—bright citrus first, then the slow, warm pull of cinnamon underneath. And now it was tempered with something new: the softness of clean skin, the faint trace of herbs still clinging to hair.

She smelled… different. Not wild. Not entirely.
And that—more than anything—made his claws flex against the stone.
Because it meant she had let someone close.

Chapter Text

He felt her before he found her.

Not in the air—though the air carried her: citrus bright as a cut, cinnamon warm as a palm. Earth felt her in the floor. In the way the Abbey’s old bones stole a breath and held it, like soil when a new root presses into it. That pause told him more than scent ever did. Scent made promises. Stone said the truth.

Big Earth slowed, a crate hanging at one hip, his tail a quiet line behind him. Up in the top halls, incense from dawn mass still clung to pillars and soaked velvet and human throats. Down here, the Abbey’s breath was cooler, honest with water and lime and the sleepy metal tang of hinges that hadn’t moved since last winter. The lesser hall toward the garden bent left, then right, and her ribbon of smell stitched both turns together.

He’d learned every seam of this place through three Papas—Primo’s careful patience, Secondo’s sharp counting, and a chaos of years between. He knew what belonged to old stone and what was newly pressed on it. This didn’t belong to Stone. Not yet. But it wanted to. That wanting was a pressure you noticed if you’d ever slept with your cheek to the ground.

Citrus. Cinnamon.

He breathed once more, slow as sap, and let memory do what it does when scent is this clean.

The shed weeks ago: ivy draped like a curtain, dust soft as flour, soot kissing her cheekbones like someone had touched her face with burned fingers. Those horns—small then, not baby-small but still new to the world—took the light and curved it. Golden eyes inside the gloom, steady as a metronome. He had set the pear just to the shadow side of the threshold. She had tested the air with one opening of the mouth, the way earth ghouls do when they need more scent than breaths will give, and then taken it. Not a bite. Then tucked it into her nest like a secret. He had not felt disrespected. You don’t eat rain the first time it falls; you cache it in the soil.

Now she was being carried by the Abbey’s own lungs.

He set the crate on a bench, palms still damp from the cellar wood, and followed.

The narrower veins of Perpetua’s wing ran the way old water runs: practical, unadorned, with turns that were once there to confuse someone who didn’t belong. He belonged. The torches here were kept low. The dust in corners had a shape you only get when feet pass twice a moon, not daily. Her ribbon grew into a band. The band into a sheet. And layered under cinnamon-citrus—rosemary, chamomile, soap. That last smell sat in his throat like two truths fighting: wild bright, washed soft.

Perpetua’s doing. He recognized the rosemary he put on his wrists when he dared walk a hall without questions.

The stairs took him down to a landing where colder air pooled like water in a basin. At the bottom: heavy oak, iron set like ribs, and faint humidity that said steam had been here and gone. Behind the door, fabric shifted.

He didn’t touch the latch.

“You moved the pear,” he said, and pitched the words so they fell into the wood instead of climbing it. “Didn’t eat it.”

Silence. Not a hard one. A space-making one. There was listening on both sides.

He lowered himself onto the step, bulk easing into old stone. The Abbey learned your weight and either complained or welcomed. Today, it made no complaint. His arms found his knees; his ears did that slight forward angle young handlers had once rapped with a baton. Those handlers are gone, he thought, and the ear angle stayed.

“I was summoned when the pit still breathed Primo’s time,” he went on in the steady voice he used for frightened animals and stubborn pipes.
“Drums. Back when the Ghost Project carried its weight without counting it out loud. Secondo came, and the counting got louder. Beats. Measures. Ghouls. Who is onstage? Who is in the kennel? Who is in the ground?”

A slight shift inside. Linen on fur.

“They keep ledgers,” he said. “You’re not on any of them.”

Her scent drew closer to the seam at the floor, cinnamon rounding, citrus sharpening. Curiosity. Suspicion. The old duet.

“I’m not writing you in,” he said. “Ledger isn’t my job. And some things grow better off the page.”

From his satchel, he coaxed a sprig of thyme, still wet from the wall that leaked last season’s sun. He laid it on the stone and nudged it forward. The leaves made a noise like the softest kind of broom.

Shadow took it. Breath drew in. Thyme does a bright thing in the head before it settles into green. He heard that.

“Keep it,” he murmured. “Doesn’t go bad. Just turns quieter.”

The door made a tiny sound he loved: wood relaxing one fraction of a breath because something on both sides agreed to be there.

He left with nothing louder than that.

The door became a place he visited on errands that didn’t need him to hurry. If anyone had asked—no one did—he could have said truthfully that he hated empty corridors and old hinges and that this stair had both, and those things called to him like radios call to electricity. But no one asked. Humans counted what they could see and named it tidy.

The next morning, he came with a pear warmed by the patch of sun that slid through a crack in the garden wall around the third hour. He didn’t introduce it. He set it down. Claws curled under and drew it in like a tide takes a leaf. Not snatched. Claimed. He listened for teeth breaking skin. Didn’t hear them.

“You’ll bruise it if you keep it,” he said, because telling the truth out loud stops it from becoming a secret later. “But I think you already know that.”

No words.

“I kept a stick once,” he said. “Primo carved it for me—wrong weight, wrong length. Slowed a song down just enough to make the handler look at me like I’d split a seam in his robe. I liked it because it was wrong in a way that was mine. Kept it tucked in the den until it forgot how to be a drumstick and remembered how to be a piece of tree.”

A hum inside, small and unpracticed. Agreement, he thought, with the idea of keeping. Not with drums.

He left a stone that day—a river thing with a white quartz vein like a scar. It was gone by evening.

On the third day, he found rosemary laid across his side of the threshold, bruised where claw and wood had pinned it—scent turning from sharp to warm. Not a mistake. A conversation. He slid it back in and added a mint leaf, then took the mint back before it vanished.

“Careful,” he said, soft as a hand on a foal’s neck. “Mint runs to a gallop if you don’t mean to gallop. Good when you can afford a run. Not good when you need to listen.”

Silence that wasn’t offense or shame followed. Then a single tap with a knuckle on the floor—a drummer’s answer to a beat he recognizes and will not play yet. He tapped once back, not in rhythm, just in recognition.

He began to lay a veil over the corridor as he came and went. Not for her nose. For other noses. If another ghoul wandered this way—and some did, because solitude clatters at ghouls until they go looking for its source—he wanted them to smell kitchens and cellars and a wrongly-stored sack of vinegar long before they smelled cinnamon and citrus.

He started with vinegar. A bucket left “carelessly” open two turns up brought the sharp up and down the stairs. Siblings of Sin cursed him for the bite in their noses and closed the lid; he opened it again later. He smudged rosemary and juniper where the seam let air out, so that green-smoke would be the first thing a passing nose found. He rubbed tiny amounts of beeswax on the nearest hinge to catch and hold any scent the iron wanted to carry. A bit of flour near the top step: a human would blame clumsy ghouls, a ghoul would blame clumsy humans, and neither would keep sniffing.

He felt foolish once for crushing a garlic clove into the crack between two stones with the heel of his hand like a cook grinding spices into a mortar. The hall smelled of kitchens for two hours and then settled to the honest earth-and-oil flavor of labor. When a water ghoul with tidy hands and disapproving nostrils paused at the turn, his ears were already canted to innocence. “Cellar’s been damp,” he said aloud to no one, which is how you speak truth in a hallway. The water ghoul shook his head as if that had always been the explanation and moved on.

He dropped a shaving from a drum rim—raw wood dust, the color of old bread—into the door’s seam. Claw tips lifted it in and let it sit on the other side. He kept hearing a change in her breath around the smell of resin. The Pits taught earth ghouls to mark time with heart and heel. The Pits taught you to respect wood that stayed whole.

He had not seen an earth ghoulette since the Pits.

The thought arrived one afternoon unasked and sat down inside him, heavy as a second heart. He had known what she was, nose to bone, from the first cold hour in the shed. But he had not let his mind touch the word for it. You name a thing, and it starts to stand up.

Earth ghouls came out of the ground when people who belonged to stage and stone and seasons asked for them without quite knowing how to ask. They came masculine often enough because that was how stages wanted weight; people thought drums and stone and ships’ keels and crop furrows were male work. They weren’t. Stone doesn’t care who keeps it company. But human imaginations do a lot of work for summoners.

In the Pits, there had been one like her. Not small, not then—grown and long—horns like river curves, tail like a lash of blackberry cane. She had mapped his shoulders with a palm once and said nothing, which meant she had noticed a knot of scar hidden amongst the flexing muscles and did not need to talk about it. She had left early, not by choice. After, the handlers drifted the story across the pit like smoke: she had been too willful for the stage, too quiet for service, too visible to keep. He remembered the drumline that night—the empty space where her body had eaten a beat whole. He had played a fraction wider to make the missing beat sound like a choice.

He touched the old drumstick in his satchel now, rubbing his thumb along its chewed end. Not the one Primo had carved years ago—this one was a pit spare, dense with sweat and resin and a ding in the side where a cymbal had been poorly aimed once. He turned it until the dent found the old scar on his finger that the cymbal had left, and he let the two places know each other again.

Behind the door, her breath deepened. A new shade came to the citrus—not fear, not readiness—soil after rain. Decision.

“I know what you are,” he said, finally letting the word stand up. “Earth.”

On the other side, a sound the Abbey did not usually get to keep: a small exhale that isn’t pleased or frightened, but relieved to stop pretending.

“Ghoulette,” he added, because precision is a kindness.

“Mm,” she said.

The sound wasn’t a word and wasn’t not a word. It was yes in the language of stone.

“I haven’t seen one like you since the Pits,” he said. He set the drumstick gently through the seam, enough of it offered that she could feel the grain, not enough to feel obligated to take. “I would like you to have this.”

Claws did not grab. They approached. They read. She took the stick and turned it slowly. He listened to the rhythm of that, turning the way he had once listened to the drummer two bodies down to know what kind of night he’d be given.

She slid it back.

“Yours,” she said, the word rough where disuse catches. “You keep.”
His tail made a brief, undignified move behind him and then remembered it belonged to a stoic body. He took the stick and let it sit across his knees.

“Then you keep this,” he said, and placed the river stone with the quartz scar under the door again, this time wrapped in a knot of cloth from the inside hem of his work wrap. He tied the knot the way he tied a sprain, which is to say three-true, easily imitated badly, and difficult to imitate well.

Claws drew stone and cloth inside. The knot was worried and then left intact.

“We will say this knot means me,” he told the door. “If a ghoul shows you this knot, it is me. If a human shows you this knot, it is not.”

A small growl-laugh braided with approval answered him. Earth humor tends to sound like a warning to the wrong ears. To him, it sounded like wind through an empty barrel—music if you know what holds it.

Covering a scent is not the same as removing it. Ghouls know this. Humans try to erase; earth ghouls compost. He kept building layers in the corridor that made the place smell like places no one noticed: the wet-black cellar stones, the linen closet with lavender sacks hung too close to the wall, the iron hinge that loved oil more than prayers.

He looked at drafts. Drafts are how secrets escape. The seam under the door breathed when the Abbey breathed. When the kitchens opened their ovens, warm air climbed and cold air fell, carrying secrets with it. He walked the corridor at different hours, did the thing with his hand, which his handlers hated—opening his fingers like a fan and feeling for pressure. He found a hairline crack in the mortar near the third riser that turned out to be a short chimney for the stair’s air, and he packed it with beeswax and cloth. The Abbey sighed differently afterwards, as if it had been given a blanket.

He learned her wakes and sleeps without needing to see her. The cadence of sound inside the door told him: furs pulled in tight make a hush-hush that wool doesn’t; claws tapping absently make a clock of their own. Her naps were listening naps. A creature who has learned to live uncounted sleeps with one ear on the seam and wakes without the little panic humans indulge in to feel alive.

When he had to mask her scent quickly, he used baker’s tricks. A bowl of rye flour “accidentally” spilled two flights up, making a snowfall that swallowed everything delicate for hours. He’d strip a stalk of celery down the hallway with his thumb—humans laugh at celery until they have to smell like it—and then crush a thyme leaf to set the record right for anyone who could actually read. He snuffed one torch for a week and oiled another so it smoked slightly; smoke writes its own history over other people’s diaries.

Once, he set down his satchel and picked up a mop.

The mop was an old thing with a head like seaweed and a handle rubbed shiny where four different kinds of hands had argued with it. He ran it wet along the corridor stones, a small swaying rhythm that put his shoulders into a song he could have played without drums. Water brought up cellar smell and lime and an iron tang that said this place remembered nails. When he was done, the hall smelled like work so deeply that you could not separate it to find a single creature in it. A novice with too many opinions on her face passed him and frowned as if cleanliness had offended her. He made his face blank enough to absorb the frown and keep walking.

He was not bragging to himself about cleverness. He was making the rut he wanted a future cart to find. If they detected her weeks from now—and he assumed “they” was a machine that wore different faces as needed—he wanted that detection to follow specific lines: Yes, there was a smell here. No, it did not resolve into a shape they could act upon without exposing their own ignorance.

Perpetua’s scent came and went on some mornings: lavender, myrrh, that rosemary again, and the very particular stale-metal smell of keys that have been heated by a human’s blood more than by air. The youngest Papa did not linger long. Guilt-and-tenderness smells never do. Earth was not unkind about this in his heart; he recognized the way a person who has power and shouldn’t use it, carefully, until the carefulness tires them.
He never let Perpetua see him on the stairs. That was respect and also survival. If they met, Big Earth would look at him with the look that has saved him under three Papas: a face like a hillside and the patience of someone who will go where water goes if you don’t argue too long.

The first week ended with a test.

He had been sitting with his back to the riser, the drumstick across his knees, letting rosemary smoke write an old word into the air—root—when the bar lifted a finger’s width on the other side of the door.

Not enough to open. Just sufficient for light to do a thin thing at the edge of the wood.

He did not look at the gap. Looking at an almost-open makes it expect performance. He breathed once through his nose and set a small knife on the floor. The blade was dull and rounded, good for apples and bad for harm. He pushed it partway in and stopped.

“First, mine,” he said. “Harmless. You can keep it and throw it at me if I fail later. Second, yours. Something not worth much to a human, worth the world to a den.”

Claws took the knife. The silence that followed climbed and then held. He knew that silence from the Pits: it was the one where a drummer decides whether to catch a stick that has been dropped or let it hit and admit to the night that something human has happened.

Something slid out onto the stone: a horn-scrape no larger than a thumbnail crescent, bright at the torn edge where growth had been interrupted. Earth smelled of chamomile there, and underneath it, the quieted wildness he had first scented in the shed.

He cupped the scrap in his palm and closed his hand, not to hide it, but to complete its circuit with his blood.

“Done,” he said. “This will go above my sleeping place, where only something that knows me will find it.”

He gave the knife back. It wasn’t needed. It was a shape to be returned.

The bar lowered to its work again. The light that had been permitted went back to being a rumor.

The second week, he took to walking an extra loop around the outer beds of the gardens before coming down. The wall there hoarded heat the way old stones hoard stories, and tomatoes near it refused to give up when nights turned early. He pressed his palm there sometimes and let the stubbornness travel into him. He thought about the drummer two bodies down in the Pits whose patience had been a weather front; she had never lifted her voice, and you would have torn your throat learning to match her control. He wondered if the ghoulette behind the door would ever stand on stone and teach the Abbey a new weather.

He matched her breathing from time to time, not in some human’s trick, but in the way a pack does when it decides a hunt will be done without speech. Breathe in, steady. Out, steadier. He listened for the place where her breath refused to lengthen and memorized it so he could stay short with her there. Sometimes being trusted meant refusing to calm down together.

He taught her the knock he’d learned under a stage: three taps, then one, the last spaced just enough after the third that a human ear forgets to expect it. He told her what it meant with the care of someone passing a flint in winter. If you wake in the wrong quiet and need me, he said, three and one.

Two nights later, the wall under his own sleeping shelf clicked with that small rhythm—three, then one—brought along stone from her stair to his. He was on his feet before a second edge of fear could rise into his throat.

He found the corridor already masked with laundry soap and the faint sting of vinegar he had set earlier. Far down the passage, boot leather tried to remember how to be soft and failed. He smelled the water ghoul again—the tidy one with disapproving nostrils—accompanied by a novice practicing what she thought was authority. Her voice tipped up at the ends of statements like she expected the Abbey to argue back. Earth let his shadow be huge and his smile be tiny. He carried a crate he did not need to take and scratched a hinge in loud conversation with an oiled rag until the pair of them found another purpose two turns away.

Back at the door, he left nothing that admitted panic. He slid a basil leaf inside and let it lie there like a green ear. Inside, a slight sound that was not a whimper and not a growl but the place between—a noise creatures make when they have decided not to run—found his own ears.

He touched the wood, palm flat, at the level her shoulder would be if she had been standing there like a person. She leaned her weight into the other side, and the door learned both of them again.

“Good,” he told the door. “Good.”

No names, still. He did not reach for those. Names moved these hallways onto pages they did not need. Instead, they built a library of objects, smells, and sounds.

A strip of burlap that had held onions, tied into a loop: me. A thread of gray fur braided with two hairs the color of polymer drumsticks: her.

A sprig of rue he never slid in, because rue and grief are cousins, and he refused to invite the first one. A thread of rosemary he left because rosemary is for memory, and memory does not always wound.

Once, a sliver of chalk. Earth dragged it along the stairs’ lowest riser on his side in a line as thin as a whisker. When he came back next, her claws had pulled the line into a curve, and next to it a second curve, like horns drawn by a child who has only ever seen them from the inside. He smudged his thumb under both and left a third curve, lower—a tail in a lazy coil. The chalk wore down to nothing in a week, but the place on the stone where the lines had been stayed a shade lighter than the rest, as if the Abbey itself had decided to remember the shapes’ existence.

He made a small charm from the thyme stem’s stiff core and two rosemary leaves. He bound them with a hair thread and pressed them into a ring the size of a coin. He slid it under and did not explain. She slid it back once the scent had climbed into her hair for good. “Yours,” she said, learning how to choose where possession lives. He wore it looped around the drumstick’s chewed end like a green whisper that knew how to dry gracefully.

He never told her to trust him. He trusted the hours. Hours are older than promises and almost as hard to break.

The third week drew the first word out of her that wasn’t used to weigh the air or name ownership. It came in the shape of a question small enough to hide in a seam.

“Why?” she asked, as if the two consonants were a tool that might cut her if she handled it wrong. Not why he came. Not why he hid her. Why… this, he thought. Why any of it?

He did not answer immediately. Habit. Respect. He sat with the drumstick across his knees and let the stick’s dent find his scar again.

“Because stone keeps what we teach it,” he said at last. “If I teach it that I keep quiet when a little one needs quiet, later the stone will keep quiet on its own without me. Maybe for you. Maybe for someone I will never meet. If I teach it that doors open when they should stay shut, it will learn that too. I am training in a hallway.”

The silence after wasn’t empty. It had weight. He imagined her ear pressed to wood, the way earth ghouls listen with the part of their skulls that knows rain coming.

“Because I haven’t seen an earth ghoulette since the Pits,” he added, softer. “And because someone should have done this for her and didn’t.”

On the other side, something like a sound caught in a creature’s chest and turned into a different sound before it could become weakness made a brief, private life. She pushed her palm to the seam where his was. Their warmth bled through oak and settled somewhere mortar knows.

He made no more of it than there was to make. He brought a pear that day, and this time she ate it while he sat, the wet sound of juice catching breath punctuating the slow thud of his own heart against the stairs. He shut his eyes. The song of it was precise as a metronome: bite, chew, breath, swallow, pause to smell the green that rises just under the sugar.

He set a scrap of drumhead leather under for her to worry like a child worries about cloth. He heard the claws and teeth fuss at it until the leather softened further. It came back the next day, softened in a way his hands alone could not have taught it. He wrapped the drumstick grip with it and felt how it changed the way his palm carried weight. He imagined playing a Black Mass with it and smiled in a way that was more animalistic than human; he pretended to be. He did not play. The corridor didn’t need a performance; it needed a memory of one somewhere in it so the stones would look back on this day and think: music lived here, but we don’t remember faces.

There were almost-discoveries. There always are. One evening, an air ghoul who had once fought him for closet space tore down the passage looking for the draft that had ruined a rack of incense cones. Earth pointed with his chin and a bored expression toward the far stair and learned instantly that the other ghoul’s laugh had gotten meaner since he was younger. He filed that away, back in the days when he performed for large audiences. The air ghoul carried the draft elsewhere, and Earth re-waxed the crack he had packed a week earlier.

A human lifted the vinegar lid, made a face, and set it down harder than necessary. Earth let himself enjoy the slam. He liked his disguises to argue back enough to look unplanned.

Secondo’s old assistant—now someone else’s problem—wandered through smelling of powdered cloves and iron keys and made a note on a slate about “odor retention.” Earth cleaned a hinge loudly enough to make the assistant think the note had been answered. It had.

He waited two days after that before he came back to the door. Waiting is part of keeping.

When he returned, the seam sighed his name in rosemary and cinnamon. He didn’t correct the seam. Stone is allowed to name you.

“Tomorrow,” he said at the end of that sitting. It wasn’t a promise. It was direction.

“Tomorrow,” she echoed—softer now, but the softness of fur on a strong body, not the softness of something thin.

He left a sprig of rue on the stair, looked at it until its grief-metal scent reached up to touch his nose, and pocketed it again. Not here, he thought, not for her.

On the way up, he put his palm to the garden wall that kept tomatoes stubborn, and it gave him back the only blessing he’d ever really trust: a slow leak of heat into the bone.

Below, the hallway he had trained held a secret like soil holds rain, not by strangling it, but by letting it remain unseen until roots decide to drink.

He went to his den and tucked the horn-scrape into the seam above his sleeping shelf. If someone discovered it years from now, they would read only that an earth thing had once lived here and kept a crescent of itself safe. They would not know whose. That would be enough.

The drumstick slept under his palm. In the morning, when he rose before bells, his hands still smelled faintly of thyme and rosemary and mint-that-had-been-restrained. He smiled with fangs again, not lips, and set out to walk a corridor that now knew a little more about mercy than it had the week before.

Stone keeps what you teach it.

He meant to keep teaching until the Abbey forgot how to unlearn.

Chapter Text

The Abbey’s underhalls were awake in the particular way old stone wakes when heat begins to pool in one place. Earth felt it first in the floor—an ache in the lime, a restless yawn in the mortar—then in the air, where rosemary and juniper thinned, and something warmer spread like spilled light.

Citrus. Cinnamon. And under that, the unarguable truth of skin.
He took the last turn without hurry, his tail a slow black line behind him, ears forward. The hallway obliged his size the way a river obliges a boulder: not by moving the stone, but by learning its rhythm. Two turns back, his vinegar jar breathed its distraction; one turn back, a hinge wore a film of beeswax that caged scent. Here, now, the seam beneath her door tried to be discreet and failed. Warmth leaked.

He didn’t smile. Earth ghouls save smiles in exchange for wondrous teeth. But the corner of his mouth remembered how.

The latch was already lifted a finger’s width. Not casual—chosen. The door had been taught to part just enough for breath to pass, light to do a thin, holy thing along the step. He set his crate down on silent feet and crouched, letting his weight settle slowly so the stair could brace.

The stone braced, pleased with itself.

She stood just inside the threshold, framed by wood and shadow. Pale gray skin. A white shirt that had no interest in restraint tonight; it hung loose, collar untidy, slipping down her left shoulder to expose the long curve of bone and the gentle weight of muscle beneath. No trousers. No skirt. Bare thighs thick and patient, pudge soft at her belly, the hem of fabric teasing the space between what covered and what did not. Her golden eyes cut through the dim like coals banked under ash.
The scent of her was not an invitation so much as gravity. Things fell toward it.

He didn’t reach. He let his voice go first—no words, just the subterranean note of a chest allowed to sing its element. The purr started lower than most throats can carry, the kind of sound that remembers caves. It moved forward and found her. That is how earth ghouls do it: not pushing, not taking—offering mass, letting it travel.

Her answer came shaped like a chirr that tipped into a growl and then dropped into purr, as if she’d meant to feint and chose instead to commit. Earth has the loudest purr—every ghoulish kind knows it—but hers carried something else: the edge of heat, the bare-skin bite of a body that had been waiting too long for its own weight to be matched. The sound hit wood, bounced to stone, and swelled. The seam thrummed.

His bones joined.

He leaned until his forearm, all knotted muscle and blunt claws, met the bare line of her exposed shoulder. Not stroking. Weight. An oath in his language. I am here; I will hold.

She pressed back. The shirt slid another inch, as if agreeing with physics. Her horn—short, sharp, still new enough to gleam—scraped his jaw in a pass that could have been a warning. It wasn’t. It was the demonic
equivalent of a kiss through unfamiliar liturgy: a touch that said you are allowed to be close—if you know how.

He knew.

His face dipped to the soft shelf where neck turned to shoulder, heat to heat. He breathed Bunny’s deeply, citrus blooming sweet for a second before cinnamon settled and the salt of skin flooded his mouth. He didn’t lick. He didn’t bite. He inhaled like a furnace, let the scent hit his head the way thyme hits early morning. Her purr shook under his teeth. The old wood learned the frequency.

She came out of the doorcrack then—not far, not past the hinge’s grace, but enough that the hallway could not pretend they weren’t happening.

Bare thighs crossed the threshold, the soft sway of her belly brushing the drape of his shirt as she stepped into his space. Smaller than him by half and then half again. All the more reason to carry her weight like something he’d always meant to do.

He shifted one knee down onto the stone and made a cradle of his body. The air between them compressed on a sigh none of the human minds could read. He offered his chest. Bunny took it.

She fit there with an inevitability that felt preordained by geology rather than choice: collarbone to sternum, soft belly flattening slowly against his midline with each breath, breasts settling into the broad plane of him in a way that had nothing to do with human modesty and everything to do with mass meeting mass. She found the center of his chest and pushed her brow to it. The purr between them redoubled, a resonance that turned the close space into a chapel built for one note only.

He answered with his body instead of his mouth. One arm came around the low of the ghoulette’s back, claws tucked inward, palm spread wide to carry the heat. The other slid higher, cupping the slope where throat became shoulder, a steady, claiming brace that asked for no movement and permitted all of it. His tail unspooled like a length of river, skimming the floor, then curled—careful, confident—around the backs of her thick thighs. Weight enough to tell the truth: you’re held. Slack is sufficient to honor the equal truth: you can leave.

She did not leave. Her purr climbed until it went through Earth, not around him. The stone purred back.

A lesser being would have rushed. A human would have mistaken the heat for a bell you answer or a fuse you light. He merely let.

He let the white shirt slip where it meant to slip, not tugging it, not prizing it back into place, honoring the down-slope as a law. He let his palm be a constant over the bare curve of her shoulder, not kneading, only insisting on reality. He let his breath write along her jaw, a huff and a rumble: mine to stand beside.

Her hands moved from his chest to his ribs, then to the small of his back. They were smaller hands, yes, but they knew how to belong on him. Not grasping—centering. Mapping the width and finding the edges. She pushed once, testing his balance. He yielded a degree, then gave it back.

She huffed—not quite a laugh, not quite a laugh—and purred louder, as if pleased to discover he would not topple like an altar.

The demonic current made itself known in their restraint, which is the most sinful thing of all: not hunger without control, but hunger wielded with appetite. Earth showed a sliver of claws against her shoulder, the barest press of points. Not breaking skin. Just the promise of what a sharper world could be. Her growl found a higher pitch for a heartbeat, then broke into purr again. Willing. A yes in weight.

He nosed down her throat an inch, then another, letting sharp breath burn the path his teeth did not take. A graze of a fang without breach. She offered more column, chin tipping, horn angle shifting until it carved a small arc against his jaw, a demon’s version of baring—nothing to do with surrender, everything to do with trust.

“Good,” he rumbled into skin—a vibration wordless and clear.

Her thighs pressed together under his tail, the heft of them meeting the loop he made. He tightened one degree, weight accurate, not trapping—carving a circle in which the purr could be louder. She made a sound with no human surname, something between a chirp and a moan, and leaned, fully now, into the loop, into the arm at her spine, into the steady, bracing palm that kept shoulder and throat in his keeping. The hallway dimmed around them like a beast closing its eyes to listen better.

There are kinds of touch that are possession, and kinds that are territory, and types that simply mean you have a body and I have a body, and I know what to do with this knowledge. They practiced the third with the certainty of a rite.

Weight shift. He tipped her a fraction to the right. She answered by pushing left, testing his center. He held. Purrs rose, collided, harmonized, moved into a beat that felt like drumming underwater—impact without air.

He pressed his brow to hers and let the horns kiss, the click gentle, ancient. Bunny nuzzled his chest with the side of her mouth, the corner where fang would show if mouths were involved. Mouths were not involved. Not yet. The ritual had a sequence: stone first, skin second, teeth only when the walls themselves asked to be marked.

They breathed together until breath had less to do with oxygen and more to do with timing. The larger ghoul broke rhythm once, on purpose, and she found him again with a slight, annoyed growl that told him she liked the sameness of the note. He obliged. The note returned, louder.

She moved then—not away, but up. Her hands slid from the ghoul’s back to his shoulders and pressed down to climb. He permitted it by leaning forward and widening his stance, offering more of his chest and neck. She rubbed her cheek along the path of his collarbone. He turned just enough to give her access to the place beneath his ear where skin is thinner, heat more immediate. She took it, purring hard enough to make his vision thrum at the edges. The purr was not clean; it carried a rasp at the bottom, the demonic grit that says I could bite the way a threat says I could pray.

He answered by opening his claws—slowly, obviously—and letting them skate across the top of her shoulder in a scrape that left white rising to the skin, no blood. A promise scratched into a page you don’t own. She shuddered once, entire body speaking at once: thighs tense against his tail, belly pressing harder through the flimsy cloth, breasts flattening into him with a new insistence that had nothing to do with making oneself small and everything to do with making room for me.

He made room.

Down. Earth shifted her weight into his lap, a controlled descent that asked nothing of her except willingness. She gave it, knees spreading to straddle the heavy muscle of his thigh, the hem of the shirt caught for a moment and then giving, falling around them like a consent that didn’t need a pen. The press of her was less a line and more a field now—soft where soft was meant to be, anchored where her weight met his. His tail uncoiled from behind and came forward to make a second loop at her lower back, beneath the shirt, a ring of muscle claiming that territory for warmth. She arched, not to escape, but to lengthen the line of her throat where his breath had staked a claim. He took one more inch with his nose.

His mouth stayed closed. His purr deepened so far it became a tremor under them, startling the dust in the cracks.

She answered with a chirp so bright it shaved sweetness into the air, and then she made the noise he had been waiting to hear—the one earth ghouls only make when the weight they’ve been offered fits exactly. It was not a word. It was a vibration that meant they were there. He felt it in his teeth.

He set his palm to her lower belly, not pressing her down, not lifting her, merely informing her body that his was under it, that the ground had changed and would be steady as long as she liked. Her hand came down to cover his, smaller, warmer, the pads of her fingers catching on the callus where drumstick met the base of his middle finger. She rubbed that spot once, a private joke—I know what you hit the world with—and then took his wrist and placed his hand higher, over the sternum, over the thundering place. Her eyes said, “Do you read this?” His palm said yes.

They stayed there—him reading, her being read—long enough for the torch down the hall to flicker and right itself twice. Somewhere else in the Abbey, a Sibling of Sin scolds a careless ghoul. Somewhere closer, a drop of condensed steam fell and fractured itself in the cold basin air. Here, two demons built a church out of sound.

He let the sinful edge move without speaking it. His claws returned to the round of Bunny’s shoulder, skated lower along the arm. They found the bare outside of her thigh and rested, blunt and confident, claiming that sweep of skin for now. She gave him back a drag of horn along his jaw, not sharp enough to cut, precise enough to etch. He tipped his head to allow the line. She left a mark that would fade by morning. It felt like a script.

He could have pinned. He did not. He could have pushed her harder into the cradle of his lap. He chose a different hunger: endurance. Let it last. Let the purrs climb and break and climb again without the precipice of ending.

They rocked, barely. Not a rhythm a human would recognize as motion, more like a pressure change. The note they made together found overtones that belonged to neither throat. He closed his eyes. The sound entered the bone.

Her hand rose from his chest to his face. Fingertips along the cheek, the kind of touch that catalogues, not tests. She tapped his brow once with a knuckle, an earth ghoul’s language. He rumbled a chuckle, a canyon sound, and bared large fangs without threat. She bared her own back, demons acknowledging the joke in the cruelty of their looks. The air grew warm enough to carry the smell of stone dust, dampening.

“Tomorrow,” he murmured, because they had taught the corridor to expect that promise. His voice, when he allowed it to be a voice, was a boulder rolling three feet and stopping exactly where it meant to.

She did not say it back yet. Instead, she pressed her mouth to the ghoul’s jaw in a push that wasn’t a kiss and still set his skin alight like friction. Her oversized fangs nipped the skin, akin to a farewell.

Then she placed her forehead to his again and held him there, purring at maximum—no tact, no decent volume, the reckless loudness of a creature safe enough to announce itself to the walls.

“Tomorrow,” she said at last, her voice threaded rough from purring, a blade wrapped in velvet.

He eased the tail loop around her soft middle. He removed the weight of his hand from her shoulder last, so that when he let go there, too, she knew the ritual had ended. She climbed down from him as she had climbed up—hands on his shoulders, purpose in her slowness. When her feet kissed the stone, he felt the floor say ah.

The shirt had slipped indecently low. He let it be. The sin was not the cloth; the sin was the patience with which he had not taken anything that was not being given. He stood—as quiet as a creature that large can stand—and gave her the shape of his size as a silhouette to return to. Her eyes tracked upward, horns tilting. For a second, the air between them glazed with heat again, the kind that would happily be coaxed to flame.

They both chose to keep it for later with a slight, shared growl. Later was a form of worship.

She backed into the threshold just enough to be framed again, then, without stagecraft or coyness, turned and vanished into her den. The latch did not slam. It simply returned to work, settling with a note that had learned new overtones.

He did not leave at once. He sat back onto the stair, spine to riser, and closed his eyes. The purr in his body took a full minute to fade to a hum, another to settle to a vibration the stone could keep without him. He breathed in rosemary and cinnamon and the electric mineral tang of bodies held at length without breaking.

The corridor accepted the after. Even the vinegar two turns back seemed chastened. Earth told the hinge one last truth with the cloth, a swipe that polished away the inscription of their heat from iron. Not to erase—stone keeps what you teach it—but to teach the hinge that secrecy had also been maintained.

On his way up, he put his palm to the warm garden wall that guarded the day. The wall gave back what it always gives him: stored sun, stored stubbornness. Tonight, under the familiar heat, he felt something else. As if the Abbey itself had purred and did not know where to set the sound down. He smiled with fangs, which is what a demon calls gratitude.

His den received him without comment. He did not wash. He did not want to ask rosemary or lime to argue with what his skin had learned. He set his drumstick across his knees and looped the little thyme-and-rosemary charm through the chewed end, a green ring hanging like a secret almost told. Then he lay down on the shelf that fit his length and let the stone pull the last of the resonance from his ribs like a tide drawing music from a harbor.

Above his sleeping shelf, the horn-scrape he kept tucked in the seam felt warmer to his palm. He didn’t need to touch it to know. The hallway had taught it something: not a name—names move through paper—but a pressure. He closed his eyes around that pressure and let it hold him the way he had held her: constant palm at the shoulder, weight where it mattered, purr not done yet.

Tomorrow would have its own sin. Tonight had been about teaching the Abbey a frequency. Stone keeps what you teach it.

He meant to keep teaching until the building itself could lie for them like an altar that will not remember names—only heat, only sound, only the incontrovertible fact that two bodies had shared weight here and made a chapel out of breath.

He slept with a smile that was mostly teeth, head full of citrus and cinnamon and the bass of his own ribs, and the ground beneath him obligingly purred back.

Chapter Text

The roar of the congregation always lingered.

Even when the candles guttered out and the incense burned itself into smoke, the echoes of devotion clung to Perpetua’s bones like damp velvet. He carried it with him down the winding halls—the applause, the chant of names not meant for Heaven, the crash of drums from the Ghost Project. He walked like a man half-haunted, each footstep still tethered to the stage.

But the door to his chambers had its own magic.

The lock slid shut, and the Abbey’s noise muted as though it had been commanded to silence. Behind cedar and stone, behind velvet tapestries and relics, the grandeur of Papa Emeritus fell away like ash in the rain. The mask came off first, and the silver gleam dimmed to cold metal. Then the gloves, then the cloak, heavy with embroidery. One by one, he shed the symbols of the Church.

And in their place came a sound that no congregation had ever been allowed to hear.

A purr.

Low, subterranean, stitched into the walls like a second foundation. The sound met him every night, as reliable as the toll of bells. It resonated through the cedar panels of his wardrobe, through the floorboards, through his ribs until his sternum thrummed in sympathy.
His secret.

His first summoned.

Bunny.
_________________________________________________________________

The den she had made of his closet had grown more elaborate in the weeks since she became his ghoulette.

At first, she had only dragged a few shirts from their hangers and burrowed beneath them, a wild animal seeking the smallest enclosure.

But instinct sharpened to habit, and habit became ritual. Now the nest had walls and structure. His cassocks had been stacked into makeshift bedding, layers of silk and cotton pressed flat under her weight. A cloak lined with silver thread had become a blanket. Sprigs of rosemary and thyme had been tucked into seams like charms. His ceremonial gloves were hidden like trophies, dragged under her body when she slept. A belt, once part of his vestments, had been knotted into the corner to form a little barrier, a threshold only she could decide to cross.

Her nest grew by the night.

What began as a pile of shirts had transformed into a den that looked almost intentional. She stole things with the persistence of a magpie—strips of velvet, stray sashes, one of his ceremonial gloves she refused to give back. She dragged the boots into the corner to make walls. She tore the lining from a cloak and layered it as bedding. Sometimes he caught her pawing at the folds as if testing them, her tail swishing as she rearranged her hoard.

He never reclaimed what she took. He allowed the thefts, amused by the seriousness with which she curated her space. Once, when he offered her a blanket outright, she sniffed at it suspiciously, then ignored it entirely.

It was not disorder. It belonged.

And Perpetua, kneeling at the half-open door each night, found more reverence in that chaos than in any altar.
Their rituals wrote themselves.

He always knelt first. The Pope of the Satanic Church, knees pressed to the cedar floorboards, mask discarded. His hands—so often raised in blasphemous benediction on stage—were empty, open. He waited until her golden eyes caught the lamplight. Waited until the rumble of her purr grew stronger, vibrating through the wood into him.

Then she came forward.

A horn scraped along his jaw, a cheek pressed into his collar, and claws tugged his shirt until he leaned closer. She disliked the scents he brought from the stage—smoke, blood, sweat of ritual—but she tolerated them only long enough to overwrite them. Her nose pressed against his throat, her face rubbing into the velvet, until incense and iron gave way to cinnamon and citrus. Her scent claimed him back, erasing the crowd’s touch.

He let her. He always let her.
“Little one,” he murmured, voice softened to something no congregation had ever heard.

Her answer was always weight. A head against his chest, a purr swelling into his ribs, a growl disguised as a kiss from her horn across his jawline. Language enough.
____________________________________________________________________

The oranges had become liturgy.

Every evening, he placed them on the mantel as though they had been forgotten there. Bunny waited until he turned away, then padded to the fruit with all the stealth of a predator undone by delight. The sounds she made while eating—squeaks, chirps, the occasional pleased growl—were a music of their own. Her tail thumped against the stone like a drumbeat.

He never watched her directly. He sat by the fire, comb in hand, pretending to occupy himself with old papers. But the sound of her purr afterward told him she knew he was listening. That she wanted him to.
When she finished, she padded to him, juice still slick on her chin, and rubbed her cheek along his jaw. Marking him again. Replacing sweetness with her own.

He smiled—genuine smiles, the kind he did not wear for the world.
There were other rituals, quieter still.
___________________________________________________________
Hair.

The combing had begun as a necessity; her curls snarled easily. But it had become a sacrament of its own. Perpetua sat cross-legged on the floor, comb in hand, while she crouched with wary defiance.

She pretended to resist at first. Every time he produced the wooden comb, she narrowed her golden eyes and made a little growl. But she always sat, always turned her back to him, always allowed it. The comb tugged through curls with patience, loosening snarls, softening the wild tangles until her hair gleamed like embers under lamplight.

Her noises changed as he worked. A squeak at the first pull. A warning huff at the second. Then, slowly, the rhythm settled her. By the tenth stroke, her eyes would close. By the twentieth, she leaned fully against his chest, her purr swelling until it shook the floorboards.

He combed her as carefully as if he were preparing for Midnight Mass or a performance. Each curl undone was a knot lifted from her shoulders, a weight eased from her. And by the time he set the comb aside, she was always softer, pliant, sometimes asleep, head heavy against his knee.

He combed with patience only an anti-Pope could have—slow, steady, untangling knots as if absolving sins. By the time he set the comb aside, she was soft and heavy, sometimes asleep against his chest, her tail curled like punctuation around his arm.

He never hurried. His ghoul trusted weight, not speed. Bunny wouldn’t hesitate to bite him again. And she trusted him enough to fall asleep in his lap.

____________________________________________________________________
Sometimes, she left the closet, her little nest.
Some nights, she grew bolder.

When the fire burned low and Perpetua lay already half-asleep in his vast bed, she would creep from the closet. Soft-footed, quiet, barely breathing, as though testing whether he slept. Then, slipping beneath the covers, she pressed herself to his side.

Her body was warm against him. Smaller than his by half and twice the softness, but insistent in its presence. She curled into him like she had always belonged there, nose pressing into the hollow of his throat, purr shaking his chest until it belonged to her rhythm.

He never moved to stop her. He only shifted to make more space, one arm falling around her instinctively. He let her sleep there as long as she liked.

By dawn, she always returned to the closet, pretending nothing had happened. He never asked. He let her fiction stand.
Because what they had was trust, and trust did not need to be spoken.

____________________________________________________________________________
But secrecy weighed as much as any vestment.

No Sibling of Sin could glimpse her. No ghoul could scent her. He oiled the hinges, whispered charms into the wood, and taught the latch to settle without sound. He spread his own cloaks across the closet as though to shield her with symbols of his office.

Knocks came, as they always did. The anti-Pope is never left alone for long.

When Siblings came, he opened the door only as far as the chain allowed, body filling the gap. His voice carried enough weight to end questions.

When ghouls prowled too close, he spoke through the door, voice lowered until the corridor itself carried his word:
“Later.”
Always later.
And they left.

Bunny had her own secrecy. She flattened when footsteps neared, tail curled tight. She pressed her forehead to the seam of the door, purring so the wood would remember which body it guarded. When danger came nearer—voices lingering, laughter prowling—she slipped deeper into velvet folds, wrapping herself in purple.

Still, sometimes he smelled it on her.

Stone dust. Limestone. Pine. A resonance beneath her cinnamon sweetness. Another ghoul.

He said nothing.

Because confession is a blade, and he would not hand it to her.
One night, long after the bells had stilled and the fire had burned low, she left the closet entirely.

No caution. No hesitation. Bunny climbed into his lap as he sat cross-legged on the floor, mask discarded, hair falling loose around his shoulders. Her shirt slipped low, curls tumbled, eyes glowing bright as banked coals. She pressed her forehead to his, horns clicking in a kiss that belonged to their kind.

The purr that followed shook the chamber. The Abbey itself seemed to hum back.

Perpetua closed his arms around her, steady and unyielding, holding her the way a cathedral holds its relics. His voice rumbled low, reverent, into her hair:

“Tomorrow.”

Her purr climbed higher, reckless in its loudness. At last, she whispered it back, rough with vibration, a vow threaded in warmth:

“Tomorrow.”

The grandeur, the stage, the mask—all of that belonged to the Church.
But this—this secret den, this feral ghoulette curled against him, the weight of her purr teaching the Abbey new hymns—this belonged only to them.

And for the first time since he had been given the mask of Papa, Perpetua thought perhaps he belonged to someone, too.
The nights belonged to them.

By day, Perpetua’s world was noise: drums, ritual fire, the endless theater of blasphemy. He moved like a figure sculpted in smoke, an anti-Pope who could summon storms with his voice alone. But the nights, the hours after the Abbey quieted and the last Sibling shut their prayer books, were claimed by something quieter. Something smaller. Something truer.

Bunny.

She had made herself a permanent presence in his chambers. Not bold, never loud—always in the corner, in the closet, in her den of stolen vestments—but there all the same, constant as heartbeat.
And over the weeks, Perpetua learned what it meant to live beside her.

Chapter Text

The summons arrived with dawn, though dawn in the Abbey was a matter of bells, not sunlight. The paper was thick, sealed with crimson wax that glistened like spilled blood in the candle’s gutter. Perpetua broke it with a fingernail, read once, and let the sigh slip out between his teeth like smoke from an extinguished censer.

A festival mass to draw new Siblings of Sin in. Three nights, perhaps four. The city demanded spectacle, and the Church obliged. His absence was not a matter of choice.

Bunny didn’t need to read the letter. She had scented it already. The faint iron tang of travel oil clung to his gloves, the brittle, papery note of ink hung on his sleeves. Even before he folded the summons closed, her tail had begun to lash.

She crouched in her nest within the closet, molten amber eyes narrowed at him. Her growl had been a constant since her summoner began gathering his vestments. Not loud, not theatrical, but steady: the sound of her displeasure being made known. She didn’t understand the letter’s words, but she knew change. She knew absence as it crept closer

Perpetua pretended not to notice the glare. He laid each robe carefully into his case, smoothing the folds as though precision might tame the consequence. But when he lifted the mask — silver, heavy with its grim perfection — Bunny hissed outright, low and sharp. Her claws scrabbled briefly against the cedar of the closet’s frame, leaving a pale mark in the wood.

He turned then, mask in hand, and found her pupils blown wide, breath hard enough to stir the loose collar of her shirt. He set the mask down. Crossed the chamber. Knelt.

At once, she launched forward. Her brow slammed into his chest, curled horns scraping his jaw in a strike that might have been a warning if her body weren’t trembling. She buried her face against him, purring so violently it came apart into growls, into a noise that made the Perpetua’s teeth rattle.

“I will return,” he promised, voice pitched low to steady her. “Tomorrow, and the day after, until I am here again.”

She did not believe in tomorrow. Tomorrow was a human invention, an Anti-Pope’s promise, a word for people who trusted the world to keep its bargains. Bunny pressed harder into him, claws catching his sleeve, as if to stitch him there with thread only she could weave. Her shirt slipped further, baring the line of her collarbone, but she ignored it. The language was body, not cloth.

Perpetua held her as long as the stone would allow. He pressed his palm over her shoulder, not stroking but bracing, anchoring her into the floor so it would remember the weight even when he was gone. He let her purr shake his ribs, let it fill him until his own chest rumbled back in sympathy.

The Abbey listened — the old wood at the door, the stone beneath their knees — and learned their frequency.

But even an Anti-Pope has limits. At last, he eased her back, kissed the crown of her curls, and stood. The latch clicked behind him with the solemnity of a prayer shutting its own book.

The chamber exhaled emptiness.

At first, she prowled.

The room still smelled of him: incense woven into velvet, rosemary clinging to the comb on the mantel, the faint sweat of skin pressed into pillows. But the scent was wrong without the source. Stale. Hollow. It taunted her nose instead of comforting it.

She paced from closet to desk, tail lashing. Climbed onto his chair, crouched there a moment, and abandoned it. Dug her claws into the edge of the bed, then dropped back down to the floor with a frustrated chirp.

The silence of the Abbey pressed against her ears until it roared.

Finally, she tore one of his gloves from the desk and dragged it into the closet. She buried her face in it, inhaling leather and incense until her nose stung. For a moment, her purr returned, low and rough, vibrating through the glove into her palms. But then it faltered. She snarled, flung it aside, then scrambled after it with a guilty squeak. She pressed it back under her cheek, cradling it as if she hadn’t betrayed it seconds earlier.

Sleep wouldn’t come.

She dragged his pillow next, hauling it from the bed with both claws hooked into the case. It landed crooked in her nest of stolen robes and velvet scraps. She flopped onto it immediately, tail thumping, purr rising as rosemary and sweat wrapped around her. For a while, she rolled in it like a pup in clover, rubbing her cheek, chin, even her bare thighs into the cloth until his scent clung to her.

When she finally curled around it, the purr shook her nest so hard the cedar seemed to hum back. The floor beneath her claws vibrated in sympathy. For a heartbeat, it felt like enough.

But the resonance was incomplete.

Perpetua’s chest didn’t answer her frequency. He had no tail to curl around her waist. His steady hand wasn’t on her shoulder, saying, “Stay,” or “go / both are allowed, I will hold either.

The pillow sagged under her claws. Her purr cracked, went hoarse, broke into silence. She pressed her forehead to the cedar floor, growling low, as if the wood itself might bring him back.

The Abbey was alive with sounds that night.

Far off, a Sibling of Sin coughed in the underhalls, the echo ringing through the pipes. Closer, a hinge squealed like a tattletale before the beeswax charm persuaded it into quiet again. The torches in the corridor hissed as they burned low, their smoke creeping beneath the door in tendrils Bunny could smell but not chase.

Each sound sent her ears twitching, claws flexing. More than once, she bolted upright, convinced the latch would turn, that he was back already.

Each time, the silence after was louder than before.

She paced again. Climbed onto the bed, then into the chair, then back to the nest. Her tail struck the cedar wall in loud, steady thumps. Her horns gorging the doorframe, leaving another pale line beside the one she had carved earlier. She pressed her cheek against it, chirping softly, rubbing until her scent layered over the wood.

The wood remembered, but it wasn’t him.

By the time dawn pressed faintly through the high window, her nest was chaos. The glove was damp with her breath, crumpled beneath her belly. The pillow was shoved crooked against the wall, streaked with rosemary sprigs she had chewed to pulp. The purple velvet of his cloak was tangled around her legs like a serpent.

She lay there, wide-eyed, purr finally dwindled to silence. Her chest rose and fell, but the rhythm was wrong without her summoner’s.

When sleep finally found her, it was clumsy. She slumped into it mid-growl, claws twitching in dreams that carried the scent of incense and iron away from her.

The Abbey, patient as always, kept the record: one ghoulette, curled in the hollow left by her summoner, teaching the cedar walls what loneliness sounded like.

Chapter Text

Earth had not gone searching for her. At least, that was what he told himself. He moved through the Abbey as he always did when any of the acting Papas were away, steadying walls with his presence, bracing the seams of mortar with his weight. Stone needed attention in its absence; it grew restless without ritual.

That was his excuse. It was a good one, too—simple, believable, clean. But excuses crumble, and Earth had felt something else humming in the corridors for a day now. Loneliness. Small, sharp, and stubborn, echoing in a pitch too high for the older ghouls, but one the stone carried faithfully to him.

When he turned the final corner near Perpetua’s chambers, he stopped short. The air was thick with burnt cinnamon and citrus instead of rosemary and incense, the walls already marked with the absence of their master. And there, sitting outside the closed door, was the ghoulette.

She was waiting.

Barefoot, bare-skinned, with her oversized shirt gone entirely—discarded somewhere, maybe abandoned on purpose. Her pale gray body was unhidden now, glowing faintly in the torchlight. She was smaller than he by halves, softer by every measure, but no less sturdy. Her belly curved with weight, her thighs thick where they pressed together, her breasts heavy on her chest. A figure of soft stone, moss-wrapped and rounded, but as enduring as any bedrock. Her curled horns gleamed sharp as firelight kissed their curls, and her golden eyes burned with something he recognized immediately: certainty.

She chirped when she saw him. Not shy, not hesitant, but bright and direct, a sound that carried weight. Her tail flicked once, then she rose, disappearing into Perpetua’s room. The open door revealed her as she pressed her claws to the closet door beside her, the one that hid her secret nest. The latch lifted beneath her hand, and she pushed it open just far enough for warmth to spill out.

Then she looked back at him, eyes steady, body unapologetically bare, and flicked her claw once. Inside.

Earth froze. His instinct was to refuse, not in words—he rarely used them—but with silence, with stillness, with weight that meant no. He was not meant to intrude, not meant to be here. But then she chirped again, sharper this time, followed by a low growl that trembled through the seam of the door. It was not a plea. It was language. I choose this. Do you?

The sound broke him. His chest answered before his mind did, purr unspooling from deep in his ribs, heavy enough to make the stones beneath their feet hum. It was not words, but it was the answer she had been waiting for.

Her grin split wide, too large for such a small face, oversized fangs flashing bright. She bared them with pride, not menace. Then she slipped into the closet, vanishing into her hidden den without waiting to see if he would follow.

The seam glowed with warmth.

He followed.

The space was small, too small for him. A hovel, a den, a place cobbled from blankets and offerings. A few pears, uneaten but treasured, nestled in the corner. A sprig of dried rosemary was tucked beside them. A tarnished charm glimmered faintly in the dim. But more than any of that, the air was thick with her scent—citrus sharp, cinnamon warm, and beneath it, the salt-sweet truth of skin.

She crouched at the center of it, waiting. No shirt, no cloth, nothing between her body and the ghoul’s gaze but the truth of her form. Her amber eyes flicked up to meet his, unblinking, then dropped to the floor in front of her.

She tapped it with her claws once, sharp and confident. Invitation.

Earth lowered himself slowly, folding into the small den with care. His antlers brushed the closest’s sides, his tail curled along the wall to make space, his knees braced into the blankets until the nest had no choice but to learn his size. He filled it. He filled her secret space until there was room for nothing else.

She wasted no time. Bunny crawled forward, bare thighs brushing over his lap, belly pressing soft against the hard wall of his ribs. She climbed onto him like a cliff she’d always known how to scale, her breasts flattening warmly against his chest, her horns clinking bluntly against the tines of his antlers. The gesture was not gentle. It was a headbutt, an announcement: I am here, and so are you.

Earth answered in kind, lowering his massive head until antler scraped horn in deliberate response. The sound filled the small space, blunt and resonant, as old as their kind.

Then came the touch.

Her hands were the first to roam. Small compared to him, but greedy, curious, insistent. She pressed her palms flat against his chest, claws dragging faint lines across the heavy slabs of muscle there. She chirped once in surprise at the sheer density of him, then pushed harder, testing.

He did not yield. She growled, frustrated, and tried harder still.

He gave her an inch. Then he gave it back.

Her golden eyes gleamed, pleased with the game. She chirped again, sharper, and bit him—quick and shallow, her oversized fangs sinking into the thick muscle of his shoulder just enough to leave dents.

Earth’s rumble shook the den. His claws flexed against her waist, not punishing, only acknowledging. He lowered his head and pressed one blunt fang against the edge of her horn, dragging it down the curl in a scrape that meant I feel you.

She purred louder, chest vibrating against his, and retaliated by biting him again, this time at the line of his jaw. The pressure left another dent, but no blood. His rare grin spread in answer, fangs flashing, and he headbutted her back—heavier this time, enough to rock her small body.

She chirped in delight and shoved forward again, ramming her horns against his antlers with a growl that was as much laughter as challenge.

The Abbey learned the rhythm: bite, brace, push, return. Horn and antler. Fang and fang. Weight answering weight.

He explored her in return. His hands, huge and blunt-clawed, spread wide across her back, pressing into her shoulder blades. She was soft where he was hard, yielding under his palm, but not weak. Beneath the plushness of her belly, the thickness of her thighs, the heavy curve of her chest, he felt the same bedrock as himself. She was no fragile thing. She was sturdy, simply shaped differently. A boulder softened by moss, but a boulder nonetheless.

He cupped her waist, thumb pressing into the plush swell of her stomach.

She did not flinch. She arched into his touch, purring so loudly the shelves trembled, and bit him again for daring to touch what she had clearly decided belonged to him. Her oversized fangs left marks on his chest this time, small half-moons that would fade by morning but felt like scripture being written.

Earth marked her back. His claws dragged down the outside of her thigh, blunt points leaving pale lines in her gray skin. She shuddered, thighs pressing tighter around his lap, and then clawed his chest in return, scratching faint white tracks down his ribs. Neither broke skin. Neither needed to. The language was already clear: I could. I won’t. Not unless you ask.

Hours passed like this, indulgent and patient. They did not rush. They mapped. Bunny traced his scars with her lips and claws, pressing her mouth to old ridges as if memorizing each one. He traced her softness with hands and tail, pressing palms into her belly, her thighs, her breasts, until he had claimed every curve as steady ground.

When she pressed her oversized fangs into his throat, chin tipped high, trusting him with the sharpest part of herself, he did not flinch. He let her.

He braced for it. His purr thundered through her jaw, telling her without words that he was not afraid.

He answered by pressing his own fangs against her shoulder, just enough to promise, not enough to pierce. Her growl hitched and broke into a purr that nearly shook the walls apart.

The Abbey hummed with them, storing the frequency in its stone.

By the time she finally sagged against him, bare chest warm against his, belly pressed soft into his ribs, horns resting against his jaw, she was marked in pale lines and shallow dents, and he was buzzing with the pressure of her fangs.

They were not wounds. They were scripted.

When she dozed, he tilted his head and set one fang gently against the base of her horn, signing her in silence. She chirped even in half-sleep, answering him instinctively, before settling again with her oversized fangs resting harmlessly against his chest.

Earth braced himself against the floor, against the den, against the world itself, and let her weight pin him. He had not expected her tonight. He had not expected to be invited into her nest. But stone does not refuse an altar once it has been built.

And tonight, the little ghoulette had built one out of blankets, breath, and sin.

The nest had gone quiet except for their purring.

Bunny lay across him, her body sprawled soft over his chest, breasts flattened into his sternum, belly spread warmly against the ridges of his ribs. Her thighs hugged the breadth of his waist, tail curling lazily against his side. She had fallen into that half-dream state where purrs taper into hums, then flare again when her body remembers weight and answers with sound.

Earth stayed awake.

He braced her with both arms, one palm wide against the slope of her back, the other cradling her hip. His claws pressed shallow grooves into the blanket beneath them, carving absentmindedly as his thoughts churned. He was not a creature given to thinking too far ahead. Earth preferred the present: touch, sound, pressure, stone. But tonight was different. Tonight, she had invited him, bared herself without cloth or coyness, and trusted him to read her body and answer with his. Tonight, she had claimed him as much as he had claimed her.

And that meant she was no longer just Perpetua’s secret. Not to him.
His purr deepened, reverberating through her cheek where it rested against his chest. She stirred at the change in rhythm, chirped once in complaint, and pressed her oversized fangs more firmly against his skin.

Earth rumbled an apology, amused. Even in half-sleep, she insisted on language.

He bent his head and brushed an antler tine along the curl of her horn, gentle, soothing. She settled again, purrs steadying.

Earth closed his eyes, let the resonance of her body mingle with his, and thought of the others.

Thought of Mountain.

Mountain was like him—large, steady, patient—but younger in years. The current drummer, summoned by Papa Terzo and bound to Perpetua’s pack, his rhythm a constant heartbeat for the Ghost Project. Where Earth carried the weight of stone gone ancient, Mountain carried it fresh, a cliff face still shedding rubble, a landslide held in waiting. His frame was as broad, his antlers as wide, his purr as cavernous.

And he had no idea Bunny existed.

The thought made Earth’s claws flex against her hip. Her secret was safe with him—stone keeps what is trusted to it—but secrecy is not the same as safety. She was small, soft-bodied, too easy to mistake for fragile. He could brace her, yes. But he was not always in her nest. He was not always in her reach.

The pack is what braces. Not just one, but many.

His chest rumbled again, low, conflicted. Bunny stirred and chirped in her sleep, shifting her horns against his chest. He brushed them gently in reassurance.

He imagined her with Mountain.

The little ghoulette, soft-bellied and amber-eyed, was climbing the younger ghoul’s lap as she had climbed his. Mountain’s massive hands would spread across her back, claws tucked in, hesitant at first but learning her sturdiness in moments. Her oversized fangs would graze his jaw, leave marks the same way she had left them on Earth. Her horns would click against his antlers, testing weight, demanding an answer.

Mountain would brace her. Of that, Earth had no doubt. Mountain’s purr would rattle her the same way his did. Mountain would not break her. He would understand the truth: that softness is not fragility, that plushness is only another shape of strength.

The vision soothed something restless in Earth’s chest. If Bunny belonged to more than him, if she belonged to a pack, then she could not be unbraced when he was gone. She would have another altar to return to, another lap that spoke her language.

She deserved that.

But there was a risk. Always risk.

Perpetua’s secrecy was not a whim. He had hidden her for a reason. Perhaps to protect her from the eyes of the Ministry, or from disapproval, or from the chaos of being known. If Earth introduced her to Mountain, he risked that secrecy shattering.

Would Mountain keep the secret? Would he understand the weight of it, or would he tell his former Papa, now Frater Imperator Copia, outright? Would Copia banish this little ghoulette back to the Pits?

Earth’s tail tightened around Bunny’s waist unconsciously. She murmured in her sleep, shifted closer, pressed her bare belly harder into him as if to reassure. He loosened his tail, soothed by her instinctive trust.

He could not rush this. Earth ghouls endure because they wait. They press the weight only when the stone beneath them is ready.
But the thought remained: one day, he would bring her to Mountain.

Hours passed.

Bunny woke briefly, hazy eyes slitting open, oversized fangs catching faint light. She chirped softly and nuzzled into his jaw, horns scraping skin in a sleepy kiss. He rumbled low in answer, pressing his palm more firmly to her back, holding her steady. She purred again, louder.

Earth studied her. Small but sturdy, soft but wouldn’t crumble. Her body bore the pale marks of his claws, the imprints of his teeth, the faint bruises where his fingers pressed a touch too hard. Marks that would fade by morning. She had indulged him fully tonight, and he her.

He thought again of Mountain, of the way the younger ghoul’s resonance would blend with hers, how the three of them together could shake the underhalls into song. Pack meant more sound, more weight, more bracing.
Pack meant no ghoulette left alone in silence.

Yes. Bunny should know Mountain.

Not yet.

But soon.

When dawn crept through the seams of the Abbey, Earth still had not slept. His arms were full of her, his chest buzzing with the memory of her oversized fangs, his antlers carrying the scrape of her horns. He was braced, and so was she.

Tomorrow, he thought. He would keep her steady until tomorrow. And then—when the time was right—he would teach her the other half of what it meant to be earth. Not just sturdiness in solitude. Sturdiness in the pack.

Mountain would know her.

And she would know she was not alone.

The Abbey purred around them, already learning the frequency of what was coming.

Chapter Text

Perpetua came home the way sinners return to favored sins: with relief dressed up as ritual.

The Festival Mass had been chaos.

Not incense and bells — those were for funerals and funerals alone. No, this had been a proper celebration the way the Church of Sin intended it: a pop-up concert that shook the city to its marrow. The stage rose like a black altar in the middle of the square, ringed in flames and smoke, with the Ghost Project roaring loud enough to crack glass.

Perpetua had stood at the center, silver mask gleaming, voice riding the amps as he preached and cursed and blessed the crowd in one breath. His role was part preacher, part frontman, part devil’s herald. Every step rehearsed, every note commanded. It was exhausting.

So when he trudged through the corridors after three nights of it, all he wanted was quiet. His bones hurt, his throat burned, and his jaw ached from smiling through every camera flash. He wanted his bed, the steady dark of his chamber, maybe the familiar growl of his little summoned ghoulette from her closet nest.

Now he only wanted two things: to peel himself out of vestments and to check on the minor disaster he had summoned out of a book he’d absolutely had permission to read.

He pictured her: Bunny, curled in her little closet nest the way a pearl hides in a shell, salty with sleep and cinnamon-sweet in temperament when she wasn’t biting. He’d left her reluctantly for the festival, whispering promises into the curve of her horn as she growled and pretended not to listen. She didn’t mark time by bells or calendars; she counted absence by scent and the pressure of a palm at the doorjamb.

He had been gone too long. He would be chirped at. He would deserve it.

He reached his chamber door, key warm against his fingers. “Home,” he said to himself, and unlocked it.

He pushed his door open and stepped inside.
What greeted him was not silence.

It was a vibration.

A low, bone-shaking thunder rolled through the chamber the moment the latch clicked open. The sound rattled the windowpanes and coaxed the little brass bell on his nightstand into a nervous dance. It was not one purr but two, woven together, so deep and resonant it made the cedar beams hum in sympathy.

Perpetua stopped dead in the doorway.

His gaze swung toward the closet, expecting perhaps the usual — the faint glow of amber eyes, the sweet-smoky scent of Bunny thick in the air, the slight sound of her breath as she stirred in her nest. What he found instead made his mind come to a halt. He blinked once. Then again. Then slowly a third time, as if each blink might reset his vision.

The closet door was open. Wide open.

And inside, impossibly, sat Earth.

Earth. The great hulking beast of a ghoul from Papa Secondo’s days. The drummer who had once rattled entire stages with the pound of his hands.

The stone-steady behemoth who could outlast any other in patience and endurance. His antlers scraped the top shelves, his massive shoulders bowed the cedar outward, and his long hair hung loose and heavy around his face like a curtain of dark waves. His tail spilled out onto the floor like an anchor’s chain. He looked, absurdly, like someone had attempted to store a cathedral pillar in a cupboard and had decided to simply leave it there.

And on top of him, sprawled in smug possession, was Bunny.

She was bare, as she so often insisted on being when left to her own devices. Thick thighs braced firmly around his waist, belly pressed plush and warm into his ribs, her chest flattened greedily against the wide span of his. One small hand was tangled into his hair as though she meant to steer him like a horse, the other resting lazily against his jaw. Her horns pushed up into the angle of his chin, scratching with every purr. And her oversized fangs — Satan help him — rested right at the thick line of his throat, not biting, but there with all the certainty of ownership.

She looked utterly delighted with herself.

Perpetua’s mind went blank. Then it began to race. Of all the ghouls in the Abbey. Of all the demons that could have stumbled across his hidden treasure. Not some newer summon, not a flighty quintessence, not one of the flame-wielding egotists. No. It had to be him.

It had to be Earth.

Perpetua staggered back against the doorframe, clutching it as if it were the only thing keeping him upright. His jaw worked, but words fled. At last, all he managed was a strangled, “Not you. Anyone but you.”

Earth blinked at him. Slowly. Patiently. As though to say: yes, me.

“You—” Perpetua jabbed a finger toward the closet, voice pitching high with disbelief. “You found her? You? The great bloody cathedral of a ghoul? The walking monument from Era II? The drummer?” His voice cracked into near hysterics. “Out of every ghoul in this unholy place, it had to be the biggest one?!”

Bunny chirped then, smug and sharp, and pressed her fangs more firmly into Earth’s throat, her tail flicking in triumph.

“Oh, don’t you start with me,” Perpetua snapped, pointing at her now. “You look like the cat that stole the cream — no, worse, like the cat that stole the stone quarry. You planned this, didn’t you? You waited until my back was turned, until I was out there nearly catching fire for the glory of the Church, and you—” He flung both hands out, speechless. “—you dragged the drummer of Era II into my closet!”

Earth rumbled low, the sound so deep it set the cedar dust trembling down from the shelves. His hand shifted, significant and steady, flexing once over Bunny’s hip with a casualness that made the gesture all the more damning. Not just protecting. Possessing. Anchoring.

Perpetua’s knees nearly buckled. He stumbled to his bed and collapsed onto it, laughter spilling from his chest in broken, disbelieving waves.

“Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I am the Anti-Pope of the Satanic Church, and I’ve been outmaneuvered by my own closet.”

He pressed a hand to his mask as laughter shook him. “Of all the ghouls, it had to be him. The drummer. The stone wall. The bloody mountain from Era II. My little secret is perched on him like he’s her throne, and I—I am supposed to be okay with this?” He barked another laugh, half hysterical.

“Satan damn me, I’ve lost to a drummer.”

The purring grew louder, like an encore.

Bunny chirped again, sharp and triumphant, and tugged at Earth’s hair with greedy claws as if to punctuate her victory. Earth only lowered his head further, his cheek pressing to the ghoulette’s fiery curls. His long hair spilled over her shoulders and across the swell of her chest, framing her like an icon in a blasphemous altar painting.

Perpetua groaned into his hands. “If the Ministry ever finds out, I’ll never hear the end of it. Copia will laugh me into an early grave. ‘Oh, Perpetua, you kept a ghoulette hidden in your chamber? And she was discovered by whom? The drummer? The drummer who hasn’t spoken to anyone in years? The enormous one?” He pitched his voice in mocking imitation, then collapsed again into laughter that bordered on tears.

He rolled onto his side, glaring at the closet as if his stare could move mountains. But mountains do not move for human wills, and Earth sat as he always had — steady, immovable, patient. Bunny curled tighter against him, bare and smug, fangs gleaming as she pressed them once more against his throat.

The closet purred, and the walls hummed in sympathy.

Perpetua flung his arm over his face with a groan. “Fine! Stay there. Stay there and make a mockery of me. But if you break my shelves, Earth, I swear by all the unholy relics in this Abbey, you are fixing them.”

Neither ghoul moved. The purring only deepened, thunder rolling in his bones.

The longer Perpetua lay on his bed, the worse it became.

At first, he thought his eyes might play tricks on him, that if he blinked enough, the vision would dissolve. But no — every time his gaze flicked toward the closet, the image remained intact. Earth was still there, colossal body folded into cedar like someone had tried to wedge a cathedral into a broom cupboard. Antlers scraping the walls of Perpetua’s closet, long hair spilling forward in dark waves, shoulders bowing the walls until the carpentry whimpered.

And Bunny was still sprawled over him like a lazy cat in a sunbeam.

The absurdity of it nearly broke him. The Abbey’s largest ghoul. The drummer who could rattle an arena with his drums alone. The mountain summoned in Era II, patient as stone, steady as bedrock. Reduced to a closet ornament because his little ghoulette had chirped twice and flicked her tail.

And she — Satan save him — she was one of the smallest. Barely half Earth’s size, soft-bellied, thick-thighed, curls of horn still more decorative than dangerous. She looked like moss draped over a boulder, round and warm and utterly unashamed. Together, they looked like a parody — the largest and the smallest, stuffed into cedar and blanket until the whole closet trembled around them.

Perpetua groaned into his pillow. “This is ridiculous.”

But when he peeked again, his breath caught. Because they weren’t just lying there.

They were speaking their own language.

Bunny’s claws dragged idly through Earth’s hair, tugging at the heavy strands like reins. He allowed it, lowering his head a fraction so she could guide him, eyes half-lidded with patience. She squeaked once — soft, demanding — and he answered with a low rumble that shook dust down from the shelf. She bared her fangs, pressing them against the thick line of his throat, and for one tense second, Perpetua thought she might bite.

But no — she only held them there, oversized teeth gleaming, a threat and a promise in one.

Earth’s hand flexed over her hip, steadying her, answering without words: I feel you. You are braced.

Bunny purred, smug, and retaliated with a bite to his jaw instead, shallow enough to dent but not break. Earth only rumbled louder, amused, and dragged one blunt claw down her thigh, tracing pale lines in her gray skin.

She shivered, growled back, and bit him again with a cooing laughter.

Perpetua buried his face in his hands. “Unbelievable. Utterly unbelievable.”

He peeked again through his fingers. They had shifted — the ghoulette’s curled horns pressed to his jaw, his antlers scraping the closet wall as he angled lower to meet Bunny. She shoved her forehead into him in a blunt headbutt, the sound of their horns meeting dull but resonant, as old as their kind. He answered in kind, a deliberate scrape of antler against horn that made her chirp in delight.

They kept at it — petting, biting, headbutting — a rhythm older than language, weight answering weight, touch answering touch. It was half play, half scripture. And it all happened in his closet.

Perpetua let his arm flop dramatically over his face. “I am the Anti-Pope of the Satanic Church,” he muttered to the ceiling, “and I am being held hostage by the world’s strangest cuddle pile. The largest ghoul in the Abbey, squished into a closet nest, letting the smallest ghoul bite him like he’s her favorite toy. This is my life now.”

A loud chitter rang from the closet, followed by another resonant rumble. Perpetua peeked just in time to see Bunny sink her fangs into Earth’s shoulder with a smug growl, and Earth, impossibly, smiled. A rare grin, massive fangs flashing, before he lowered his head to press his teeth against her cheek in deliberate response.

The purring deepened, rattling his nightstand.

Perpetua collapsed back onto his bed with a laugh that bordered on despair. “Absurd. Absolutely absurd.”

He could not stop watching.

Chapter Text

The first day had been a shock.
The second was an insult.
By the third day, Perpetua began to suspect that he was being mocked by stone itself.

He had gone to bed that night muttering vows of vengeance, swearing that he would not wake again to find his closet occupied. He was, after all, the Anti-Pope of the Satanic Church, master of spectacle, shepherd of the Siblings of Sin, heir to the Devil’s own chaos. If he could command an arena of thousands, surely he could command one oversized ghoul and one tiny menace.

And yet—when dawn bled through the cracks of the Abbey, he rose, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and turned his head toward the closet.

There they were.

Bunny perched sweetly on Earth’s chest like a triumphant gargoyle, her curls spilling wild across his strong chest, her fangs sunk lightly into his collarbone like a dog chewing a bone. Earth did not move. He only blinked at Perpetua once, golden eyes patient, then lowered his chin again to rest it atop Bunny’s curls. The purring thundered on.

Perpetua slammed the door and shouted at the ceiling. “This is my life now!”

On the fourth day, he thought he had them beat. He woke earlier than usual, padded softly into the chamber, and flung the closet door open with all the force of a man possessed. For one glorious instant, the nest appeared empty.

Then the blankets moved.

And two sets of eyes, one the color of amber and the other a rich honey gold, opened at once, blinking at him with sleepy synchronization. Bunny squeaked. Earth rumbled. The purring began anew.

Perpetua clutched his head. “You’re multiplying!”

By the fifth day, the sight had evolved. Bunny, who had previously only sprawled across Earth, had now claimed him entirely. She was sprawled belly-down over his torso like a blanket herself, her claws tangled in his hair, tail flicking smugly as she nipped idly at his jaw, neck, shoulders, wherever she could reach. Earth’s massive hand braced her lower back, keeping her anchored. He looked like a cathedral pillar accepting ivy.

Perpetua stood in the doorway, speechless. He had no words left. He simply turned around, shut the door, and muttered, “If anyone asks, I do not have a closet.”

The sixth day nearly broke him. He had gone to fetch fresh vestments, only to find Earth’s antlers snagged on the purple stole he needed for Mass. Bunny sat perched proudly in his lap, purring smugly as though she had orchestrated the theft.

“Give it back,” Perpetua hissed.

Bunny chirped, head tilting with a waterfall of orange curls.

Earth rumbled, shifting fractionally deeper into the nest, and the stolen goods only tugged tighter against the cedar shelf.

Perpetua slumped against the wall, laughing bitterly. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous this looks? The largest ghoul in the Abbey, jammed into a closet nest with the smallest, barest one. If anyone ever finds out, I’ll be the laughingstock of the Ministry.” He pressed his palm to his mask.

“No—worse. Copia will write songs about it.”

On the seventh day, he stopped pretending.

He opened the door, sighed when he saw them still there, and collapsed onto his bed. “Fine. Stay. Stay until the end of time. Transform my closet into your personal haven of comfort and chaos. I’ll just move my vestments into the spare chamber and tell the Siblings I’m practicing asceticism.”

From the nest came a bright laugh, smug as sin. Earth rumbled low in answer.

The closet purred.

Perpetua dragged a pillow over his face and shouted into it. “Absurd! Completely absurd!”

And yet, when he peeked again, he couldn’t stop watching.

__________________________________________________________________

Perpetua had begun to dread opening the closet.

Not because of the shock anymore — that had burned itself out on the first day — but because of what he saw there now, and the way it tugged at something he could not name.

Earth remained. Always, impossibly, unmovable. Wedged into cedar, antlers scraping the shelves, long hair falling forward in dark waves until it brushed Bunny’s soft shoulders. And Bunny… she had changed.

She no longer sprawled in smug victory the way she had at first. There was no triumph in her now. She lay across him with a stillness Perpetua had rarely seen, her small body draped along his massive chest as though she had always belonged there. Her horns fit neatly into the curve of his jaw, and her oversized fangs rested harmlessly against his throat. She did not appear to be a conqueror. She looked at peace.

Sometimes, she even spoke.

Not much — a word here, a phrase there — but it was more than she gave Perpetua most days. And always, the words came after Earth rumbled encouragement in her ear, or after his claw traced soothing circles down her spine.

“Stay,” she murmured once, when Perpetua tried to order Earth back to his den. The word was hoarse but sure, golden eyes flicking open just long enough to meet his.

Earth’s purr deepened until the little dying plant on Perpetua’s desk hummed with life.

Perpetua had frozen in the doorway, mask skewed, utterly undone.
He had summoned her. She was his. And yet here she was, giving her voice — her authentic voice — to another.

And not just another. A ghoul.

That was the difference. That was what gnawed at him each time Perpetua saw them together. Earth was not human. Earth was of her kind — earth-born, horned, clawed, purring. Where Perpetua could only offer hands and ritual and comfort, Earth could offer her what she had been born for: pack.

It was in the way they touched. Not sensual, not even playful most of the time. It was steady, relentless contact. Her claws in his hair. His palm was steady on her back. The clink of horn against antler, over and over, a rhythm older than words. Little bites at the jaw and shoulder, not to wound but to speak: I feel you. I choose you. You are mine.

Perpetua watched it and felt like an intruder in his own chamber.
He sat on the edge of his bed one night, head in his hands. When he lifted his gaze again, Bunny was awake, her glittering eyes soft and unfocused, filled with drowsy trust. Earth bent his head, antlers tilting, and she pressed her forehead to his jaw with a tiny sound. He rumbled back, steady as bedrock, and tucked his hair around her like a curtain.

Perpetua’s throat tightened.

Bunny was not smug. Not now. She was simply content. Her small body went slack against Earth’s chest, every ounce of her weight given over, every breath syncing to his. She looked braced. Whole. Not like the feral little she-demon that bit him when they first met.

And Perpetua understood, against his will, that Earth was giving her something he never could.

Pack.

The one thing a human could never provide, no matter how many promises he whispered into her horns.

He lay back on his bed with a groan, staring at the ceiling. “Absurd,” he muttered. “Absolutely absurd. My ghoulette is in love with a mountain in my closet.”

From the nest came a gentle chirp. Then a rumble. Then silence, thick and steady as stone.

Perpetua shut his eyes. He had lost the closet. He might even have lost the ghoulette. But when he looked again, he could not bring himself to be angry.

Because she was smiling.
_______________________________________________________________

The closet was never meant for one, let alone three.

Earth filled it in a way that defied sense. He did not look like he had crawled inside so much as the space had been forced to grow around him, cedar groaning as it bent to accommodate. His antlers pressed against the upper shelves, long points scraping faint grooves into the wood. His shoulders hunched forward to free space, still wide enough that the blankets and pears Bunny had collected were crushed beneath the sheer span of him. His long hair spilled down like dark curtains, framing his patient, honey-gold gaze. He looked less like a ghoul tucked into a hiding place and more like a boulder that had rolled downhill and decided to stay where it landed, immovable and absolute.

Perpetua, squeezed in beside him, almost in the large ghoul’s lap, could not fathom how Earth tolerated it. Every inch of space was spoken for.

Every line of stolen clothes trembled under his weight. It was absurd—one of the largest ghouls in the Abbey, a creature built for stages and thunder, folded into a closet nest that barely contained him. And yet Earth bore it with silence, the steady rumble of his purr filling the wood like stone humming to itself.

And in the middle of all that size, all that pressure and patience, was Bunny. Small, soft, amber-eyed. She nestled between them with the ease of someone who had never considered space to be an obstacle. Where

Perpetua felt every inch of the ghouls pressing in on him, but Bunny seemed to feel only the warmth, the closeness, the steady weight of her chosen anchors. To her, this was not ridiculous. It was perfect.

Chapter Text

The closet was small, but for Bunny it was the first space in her long life that felt truly hers. The walls pressed in, the blankets still smelled faintly of pears and incense, and the purring rattled through her bones like a lullaby. She belonged here. And both of them belonged here with her.

Her summoner was pressed to her back, warm and human and trembling like he always did when she bit him. She didn’t mind the trembling — it reminded her that he was alive, fragile in ways she wasn’t, but steady in others. He had pulled her from the Pits, from smoke and claws and endless dark, and given her a way out. He had been the first hand she trusted, the first voice that made promises and kept them. He was hers.

Soft, bewildered, stubborn — but hers. Bunny had no words big enough for what he was to her, so she said only what mattered: mine. And he stayed.

On her other side was Earth. A different kind of anchor. Heavy where her summoner was delicate, patient where he was frantic. He didn’t need to speak to be understood; his purrs and rumbles filled the space between words. He answered her chirps with steadiness, her nips with a rumble that told her she was braced. He was hers too, not because she demanded it, but because he chose to let her climb, bite, and burrow into him without ever flinching. Where her summoner gave her freedom from the Pits, Earth gave her what she had been missing since before she was summoned: pack.

She tilted her amber eyes upward, catching the faint glow of his honey-gold gaze in the dark. He blinked slowly and lowered his antlers until they clinked gently against her horns. She purred at once, the sound spilling from her chest as naturally as breathing. Yes. Pack.

She shifted then, wriggling until both of them were pressed close, rearranging her summoner’s hand across her belly and tugging Earth’s hair down until it brushed her shoulders. She didn’t need words to tell them what she wanted — but she used them anyway, because both of them deserved to hear.

“Stay,” she whispered.
Her summoner stiffened, scandalized as always, but his arm held fast.

Earth rumbled in reply, steady as stone. Bunny closed her eyes, soft and content, and let herself sink into the warmth of both.
She was theirs. And more importantly, they were hers.

_______________________________________________________________

She had bitten him the first time they met.

Called from the Pits by a circle that wasn’t strong enough to hold her, she had clawed her way up through shrieking dark, half-mad with the knowledge that if she didn’t climb, she would be torn apart. She remembered the stone beneath her hands, slick with ash, her tail lashing like a weapon behind her. She had burst into the open air and seen him standing there, mask gleaming, candles guttering. A human.

Her amber eyes had locked onto him, wide and glassy like a deer’s, but with no gentleness. Predator stillness. Her breath shook in her chest, her ears twitched at every sound, and her hair clung to her damp skin in wild tangles streaked with molten orange. She had growled low, promised without words that she would not be prey again.

When he stepped forward, she lunged.

No hesitation. No warning. She sank her oversized fangs into his hand, deep and certain. Blood filled her mouth, thick with incense smoke. He cursed, staggered, called her pitspawn — but he didn’t let go.

That was the moment she had claimed him.

Now, her fangs pressed against him again — not in frenzy, but in choice.
His arm curled awkwardly around her waist, her back resting against his chest. She bit him softer this time, just enough to leave marks, and felt his breath hitch against her curls. He groaned, muttered protests, but his hand stayed where she had placed it on her belly. Just as before, he had not let go.

Mine, she thought, purring.

She remembered crouching over him that first night, chest heaving, tail lashing like a rattlesnake. He had pressed torn cloth to his bleeding hand, glaring at her with outrage instead of fear. “You’re not supposed to bite the summoner,” he’d hissed at her like she was a disobedient hound. And she had only growled again, low and steady, daring him to try and send her back.

She hadn’t expected him to stay.

But he had.

Now, in the nest, she turned from him to Earth. Honey-gold eyes met her amber ones. Patient. Certain. He did not glare or curse. He only lowered his head when she tugged his long hair, letting his antlers scrape against her horns. When she bit him, he rumbled, steady as bedrock, claws flexing on her hip to tell her she was braced.

Pack, her body whispered as she purred louder, sound vibrating through them both.

She remembered licking her summoner’s blood from his hand. Not out of apology. Out of instinct. Something inside her knew that her saliva could clot it, could keep him from bleeding out. She hadn’t known why she’d done it. She still didn’t. But when the wound closed beneath her tongue, when his breathing eased, she had felt something like belonging bloom in her chest.

It had been the first time in her life that she wasn’t punished for biting.

It had been the first time she realized she could stay.

Now she pressed herself between them both, her claws tangled in Earth’s long hair, her horns nudging against her summoner’s jaw. Amber eyes softened as she whispered, rough but sure:

“Stay.”

They did.

Her summoner, who gave her a way out of the Pits and never dropped her even when her teeth drew blood.

Her packmate, who let her climb and bite and claim him without ever flinching.

She had bitten her way into this life. She had clawed her way out of the dark. And now, here in her nest, pressed between human warmth and ghoul weight, she knew the truth as surely as her fangs had known his blood.

She was theirs.

And they were hers.

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Chapter Text

It has been days since Bunny’s nest has been fully stretched like a taut string.
Sometimes her summoner returned, shoulders hunched, eyes shadowed, slipping into her blankets like a man half-afraid he had lost permission. Sometimes Earth rumbled his way inside, the ghoul’s heavy warmth grounding her with little more than a glance. And sometimes — rarely — both had pressed against her at once, cocooning her so fully that Bunny had purred until her throat ached, body vibrating with something she had never known in the Pits: safety.

But those nights had passed.

Most nights now, she was alone. The closet still smelled of pears and incense, of stone-dust and sandalwood caught on Earth’s skin, but it was emptier. She curled herself smaller, tail coiled around her thighs, claws clutching at fabric still warm with their scents. Her purr dwindled to a fragile hum until sleep dragged her under.

So when Earth crouched low in the doorway that night, his antlers nearly scraping the sides of the door, his honey-gold eyes glowing faintly in the dark, Bunny’s ears perked at once. “Come,” he said.

She blinked down at herself — bare as always — and chirped in protest when he shook out a shirt. It smelled like incense and smoke, like her summoner’s sweat. She hissed when Earth tugged it over her curls, the collar sliding down until it bared her shoulder, tail snapping in sulky defiance.

“Itchy,” she muttered.

“Settle,” Earth rumbled, smoothing it into place anyway, patient as stone. His large hand extended, expectant. She took it because he had offered.

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The Abbey’s halls stretched wide and cold. Their footsteps were silent against the stone, torchlight flickering in drafts that made shadows lurk like watchers. Bunny chirped softly, and Earth’s chest vibrated with a rumble steady enough to carry her feet forward.

The garden door groaned as he shouldered into it. Rust peeled, ivy strained, and damp night air spilled out like a long-held breath.

The ruin stretched beyond.

Beds that had once held roses sagged under weeds. Fountains lay cracked and dry. Statues leaned sideways, their faces broken. Moss crept over everything. Yet beneath it all, the soil pulsed — not dead, not silent.

Alive. Waiting.

Bunny dropped to her knees. Her claws dug deep, and the ground answered.

Violets and daisies burst through the grass beneath her hands. Bluebells tangled with her fingers, climbing across moss. Their scent filled the air heavy and sweet, filling her chest until she gasped. Her tail lashed in wild, happy arcs. She pawed at the soil again, frantic with delight, and blossoms spread further, curling up the cracked fountains, spilling across the stone.

Her laughter was raw and sharp, littered with squeaks. Her curls stuck to her damp cheeks, petals clung to her thighs, and still she pressed her hands into the dirt until the garden bloomed around her like a riot, bright and fragrant.

Earth crouched beside her. His antlers lowered until they clicked against her horns. The rumble in his chest shook the soil. Approval. Belonging.
Bunny chirped and shoved her head harder, horns scraping his antlers with a louder clatter. Earth growled low, tail flicking. Not rejection. Challenge. She grinned.

Her ears pinned back, tail whipping, she lunged with a squeal of delight. Horn struck antler with a crack that echoed in the night. Earth braced, unyielding, pressing her back an inch. Bunny dug in her claws, shoving harder, purring wild and fierce.

For once, she wasn’t biting to survive. No punishment. No fear. Just the thrill of pressure and push, pack testing pack.

They broke apart when their horns slid free, breath steaming in the night air. Bunny panted, curls running wild around her face, petals and grass stuck to her shirt. Earth lowered his head again, this time tapping her horns gently in truce.

“Pack,” he rumbled.

Her purr spilled loud and confident in reply.

They prowled the ruins together, Bunny on all fours, claws tracing furrows in the cracked paths as she crawled low across moss and stone. Everywhere her hands touched, blossoms pushed through the soil, wild and eager—violets clung to the feet of broken statues, daisies spilled across fractured fountains, and bluebells painted the moss in bright curls. The garden, long smothered in silence and rot, breathed again under her hands. The air thickened with the potent perfume of flowers, sweet and heady, causing Bunny to rumble lowly.

She pressed her cheek to the soil and let a rough purr tumble out, claws flexing as flowers pushed up to meet her touch. She pawed at them eagerly, stroking their soft heads, rubbing her face against their petals until the scent clung to her curls. She chirped sweetly, tail flicking in crooked arcs, lost in the simple delight of petting every fragile bloom that came from her hands.

Earth shadowed her every move, steady as a boulder, golden eyes watching with quiet pride. He rumbled low and constant, a vibration that settles her wild sounds, as if reminding her that she was not alone in her joy. His approval was unspoken but clear, carved into every patient step and lingering glance.

Bunny pressed harder, frantic now to see more bloom. She pats the soil, laughter tearing from her chest, curls wild and damp with sweat and dirt. Flowers surged upward in a frenzy, spilling across statues and paths, climbing even the dry lip of an old pond that sagged under moss and shadow. Water lilies, blue flag iris, and flowering moss skated across its dark surface as if testing its stillness.

And then the pond rippled.

Bunny froze, ears jerking upright, tail snapping stiff. The flowers under her hands sagged, their growth slowing. The surface of the pond broke with a soft splash. Water rippled outward in concentric rings, and something stirred beneath the sheen of moonlight.

Slowly, a figure rose from the black water.

First pale shoulders broke the surface, droplets sliding down skin that gleamed like wet glass, catching the moonlight as if he’d been carved from it. His body bore the marks of the sea—patches of scales shimmered faintly along his neck and collarbone, flashing with silvery blue as he moved. Long black hair streamed in damp waves, clinging to the curve of his jaw, curling heavy around horns that curved upward like darkened coral ridged with pale markings. Water spiraled lazily off his arms as though it lingered to obey him, and thin fins flared faintly from the sides of his head, quivering with each ripple of night air.

Then his eyes opened. Pale, glassy, and alive with shifting light, they fixed on her with an intensity that made the garden seem to hollow out, leaving only the sound of dripping water.

Bunny crouched low, claws sinking into the dirt. She didn’t know him. Didn’t know what kind of ghoul could drag himself from a forgotten pond as if he belonged there. Her ears pressed flat, amber eyes wide, confusion prickling into unease and curiosity.

Earth knew.

He did not lunge forward, did not bristle. He rose at his own pace, a great bulk uncoiling like something that had been sleeping and could sleep again just as easily. His rumble was low, slow, rolling out of him like distant thunder, not warning so much as a reminder: he was here. His antlers tipped toward the moonlight, shadows catching on their jagged tines, but his movements were unhurried, heavy with the weight of someone who had no need to posture. He planted himself behind Bunny and the figure, not tense but certain, a predator who knew if he needed to take Rain down, he could—and that was enough. His form towering over the curvy ghoulette, his little packmate.

The figure—Rain—stilled at the pond’s edge. Droplets traced down his horns, sliding along his light blue skin before pooling at his feet. His gaze swept the garden, the sudden riot of flowers spilling wild across the once bare garden, before fixing on her. His expression shifted as his glass-bright eyes lingered on the dirt under her nails, the petals tangled at her fingertips, the tremor of her purr still humming in her chest.

Awe flickered across his features. Not suspicion. Not anger. Something softer, rarer.

“…an earth ghoulette?” The words left him like a prayer, reverent and quiet, something that didn’t belong to a demon from Hell, the sound of a stream curling around stone. Behind him, the pond grew still again, ripples smoothing, surface reflecting the moon in perfect glass. Even the mist seemed to pause, hanging heavy in the air as though waiting for her response.

Bunny’s ears twitched. The word meant nothing to her. She chirped softly, bewildered, crouching closer to Earth, her tail coiling around his leg. But Earth only exhaled a long, steady rumble, lazy and deep, not riled or tense—simply reminding Rain whose company she kept.

The pond glistened black, moon rising higher in the sky. The multitude of flowers danced gently back and forth in the soft breeze. Their fragrance brushes by the ghouls’ noses, filling their senses with the potent smell.

Rain stepped onto the moss, droplets clinging to his skin, his eyes never leaving Bunny.