Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A collection of fractured memories belonging to Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower, as recalled by the Living Jars who found her. Though forged in clay and from a distant land, these quiet vessels held warmth enough to rouse something long buried beneath blood and shame.

The Nightmare, ever hungry, recoiled at such softness. But not all corpses lie still — and not all hunters forget how to love.

Chapter I - The Little Runaways

They were not meant to be there.

Not in this place of ash, screams, and skyless hours, where the sea ran dry and bells tolled in nightmares.

But the jars had run. Far and fast. Away from shattered lids and greedy hands. Away from Jarburg — their gentle hollow home, now scarred by poachers' boots and broken shards.

Jar-Bairn had led them. The smallest, but the bravest. Heart full of courage, limbs full of fear.

"We can't stay," he whispered to the others.

"The cruel folk keep coming. We'll be next."

So they fled. Through hidden paths, forgotten grace, a dozen narrow places the cruel ones didn't know. They passed beneath roots that whispered secrets, through graveyards no one tended, and into a dream that wasn't theirs.

They thought they had found safety.

Instead, they found the Hunter's Nightmare.

The sky with a sickly sun. Rivers filled with blood. The buildings bent inward, like ribs of something long dead.

But the jars stayed close. Huddled. Rolling in silence past moaning hunters and muttering beasts. Their clay bodies trembled — not from fear alone, but from remembering things that weren't theirs to remember.

It was Jar-Bairn who spotted the light — soft and golden, flickering from a cracked door in a twisted hall filled with shambling patients with enlarged heads.

They pushed it open. Slowly. Quietly.

And inside… they found her.

Lady Maria.

The Lady of the Astral Clocktower.

At first, she had been still — half-slumped over parchment, her ink dry, her tea colder. A woman made of sorrow and resignation.

But then they crept closer.

Jar-Bairn placed a small bloom from Jarburg beside her hand — blue, delicate, a flower that should not have grown here. A reminder of home.

Maria opened her eyes.

She didn't scream.

She didn't strike.

She simply looked.

And when she spoke, it was with a voice that sounded older than the bells above:

"You're far from where you belong."

Jar-Bairn looked up.

He didn't know the words.

But he felt the kindness in them.

And so, one by one, the jars gathered in her study — seeking warmth, safety, and the quiet hum of candlelight.

Lady Maria hadn't expected to become caretaker of wayward pots.

But now her room smelled faintly of wildflowers, and she found herself leaving a second cup of tea at her desk — just in case one of them got brave enough to try it.

The Nightmare was still outside.

But inside, for a while, there was peace.

And in the middle of it all sat Jar-Bairn, his little clay body nestled against her arm, breathing in the silence he had never known could feel so safe.

Days passed in ways Maria no longer counted.

There was no way of telling time in the Nightmare, only the slow shift of light through layers of fog and bloodstained clouds.

Jar-Bairn sat at the corner of her desk now, legs dangling over the side, stubby hands folded in his lap. The others scattered like quiet furniture — some perched atop shelves, others curled inside the empty hearth, as if remembering what warmth once felt like.

Maria had taken to reading aloud again.

She told herself it was to keep her voice steady. A way to stop it from rusting away into silence. But truly, it was for them. The jars.

Especially the small one with the flower tucked into his clay.

"This letter," she said, tapping the page gently, "is a B. See how it's shaped like a jar with two bellies?"

Jar-Bairn paused. Seemingly in thought.

He drew a crude, wobbly 'B' into the dust on her desk.

"Very good," Maria murmured. "Perhaps next you'll help me with patient notes. Save me the trouble."

Jar-Bairn tilted his body, as if unsure whether that was a joke. But his little clay body swelled with quiet pride anyway.

The jars listened more than they spoke — not because they couldn't, but because the Nightmare had taught them to be quiet to survive.

But one day, while Maria was leafing through an old anatomical sketchbook, Jar-Bairn spoke first.

"We had a pond."

Maria stopped turning the page.

"With lilies," Jar-Bairn added, softer now. "The big ones. Bigger than me."

A moment passed.

"Did it smell of rot?" Maria asked, thinking of the Hamlet. Of the blood beneath the sea.

"No," Jar-Bairn said. "It smelled like sweet mud. Like warm days."

Warm days.

She had almost forgotten what those felt like.

Jar-Bairn continued — in small bursts, like rain on stone: tales of frogs they befriended, mushrooms they wore like hats, his uncle Alexander the Iron Fist, who told them bedtime stories of heroic tales of his adventures.

Maria listened. Not with pity, but with reverence.

These were memories untouched by the Church, by blood, by the unbearable weight of knowledge.

"You must miss it," she said finally.

"I do."

A pause. Then:

"But I don't miss being afraid."

Maria didn't respond at first. She stared at the ink blot on the corner of her page — one that looked almost like a sun. Or a pond. Or a dream someone had once had, long ago.

"Then stay," she said.

And Jar-Bairn did.

That night, she left the study door open.

Chapter Text

Chapter II - Protection

The jars couldn't sleep, not really.

Not in the way other living things did.

But they had learned to sit still, to breathe in the hush of Lady Maria's study and nestle close as though sleep was something they might someday understand.

Tonight, they gathered closer than usual.

The fog beyond the tall windows was darker. Thicker.

Something was stirring in the Nightmare — distant and cold, like a gust of wind against a locked window.

Maria felt it too—a familiar thrum in the bones.

A prelude to bloodshed.

She didn't speak of it. Not tonight.

Instead, she closed her ledger, pushed aside the notes on vein patterns and brain fluid, and reached for a book she hadn't opened in years.

Its leather was cracked. The pages smelled of salt.

Jar-Bairn tilted their head, curious.

"Is it about beasts?" he asked.

"No," Maria said softly. "Not this one."

She opened to the middle. No title. Just a faded page with an old Cainhurst symbol pressed into the margin like a scar.

"Once upon a time," she began, "there was a hunter who fell in love with the sea."

The jars leaned in.

"But the sea did not love her back. It gave her whispers, insights and knowledge too heavy for her heart."

She turned the page.

"So she fled to a tall tower, and made herself a promise — never again to spill blood."

Jar-Bairn's voice was small.

"Did she keep it?"

Maria hesitated.

"She tried to."

The room was silent. No jars dared to move.

"The hunter lived alone," she continued, "until one day, strange little creatures wandered into her tower. They weren't beasts. They weren't men. They were something else."

She looked at them now — the jars gathered at her feet, on her desk, on the ledge of the window.

"They brought no blood. No hunger. No riddles of the cosmos. Only small, soft questions."

Jar-Bairn nestled closer to her arm, clay fingers tracing the hem of her sleeve.

"What happened to them?" he whispered.

Maria smiled. Just faintly.

"They stayed."

Outside, the Nightmare stirred again — a low groan, like wind through punctured lungs.

The study's candlelight flickered. But it did not go out.

One jar in the corner shuffled nervously. Another looked to the door.

Maria reached for the nearest one — her hand cool, careful — and drew it close to her lap.

"There's nothing out there for you," she murmured. "Stay here. Where the stories are."

The candle steadied.

The jars slept.

It began with a rattle.

Faint. Rhythmic. Like teeth chattering in a jaw not meant to move.

Maria sat up before the others even noticed. The candlelight swayed. Her ink trembled in its well.

Outside the study — just beyond the cracked door — the Nightmare pressed its face to the seams.

The jars turned their bodies slowly, all at once.

Even Jar-Bairn felt it. A dread too old for their small clay body.

They had known fear before.

But this… this was a hunger that did not want food.

It wanted them.

Maria stood.

She had not touched her Rakuyo in weeks. It lay on the mantle, twin blades resting in quiet dust, as though asleep.

Now she reached for it.

"Stay behind the desk," she said.

The jars hesitated. Jar-Bairn stepped forward.

"What is it?"

"Something that shouldn't exist," she answered.

"But then… neither should we. Not in the Hunter's Nightmare".

The sound beneath the door became scraping. Wet. Familiar. A dragging limb. A choking cough that used to be human.

Maria moved like water — slow at first, then sharp.

She placed herself between the door and the jars. Between memory and innocence.

"You do not belong here," she said to the dark.

No answer. Just a shape.

Something like a patient. But too long. Too hollow.

A failed experiment that slipped through the Research Halls.

Then, the door creaked open — only slightly.

It was enough.

The creature surged forward.

Maria met it.

There were no screams. Only steel.

The sound of old sins being repeated.

A dance she had sworn never to do again — but would, for them.

Blood sprayed across her desk. Across the notes.

Across the flower Jar-Bairn had given her.

Then, silence.

The thing crumpled into nothing. A memory undone.

Maria stood panting, soaked in blood not her own.

Her shoulders shook — not from pain, but from the weight of her guilt.

Jar-Bairn crept toward her.

"You're hurt," they said.

"No," she replied hoarsely. "Only remembering."

She dropped to her knees. The blades clattered beside her.

And then — warm, soft, absurd — Jar-Bairn reached up and gently placed his tiny clay hands on either side of her face.

"You protected us."

Maria closed her eyes.

A corpse should be left well alone.

But some things — small, strange, impossibly brave — were worth rising for.

Chapter Text

Chapter III - Aftermath

The room had gone still.

The door hung half-open, dark ichor seeping beneath it. The thing was gone — unmade by Maria's blade — but its presence lingered like smoke.

Maria leaned against the wall, sword discarded, breath thin.

She wasn't wounded badly. Not in flesh.

But the blood on her coat felt heavier than it should have.

Heavier than it had in years.

She did not move when the jars approached.

One by one, they crept from their hiding places.

The quiet desk guardians. The fireplace hiders. The watchers in the windowsill.

Now, they gathered around her, silent as always — but not without meaning.

Jar-Bairn was the first to act.

He disappeared for a moment, then returned with a half-used roll of bandage tape. Where he'd found it, Maria didn't ask.

She opened her mouth to speak — to tell them she didn't need tending — but stopped when the smallest jar clambered gently into her lap and placed a clean handkerchief (or perhaps a table scrap?) over a shallow cut on her cheek.

The fabric was too small. The touch too soft.

But it worked.

Another jar patted her knee with a leaf. One offered what looked like a mushroom cap, as if it might help somehow.

Maria did not laugh.

She did not cry.

She simply let it happen.

Because for once, someone had stayed.

Later, after the room had been gently righted and the door pushed firmly closed, Maria sat back in her chair. Rakuyo had been re-sheathed, and her notes lay forgotten beside her tea.

The jars rested around her like stones in a gentle river.

And slowly, without intention… she drifted to sleep.

Her head tilted, her breath even. One hand still loosely curled over Jar-Bairn's tiny arm.

She dreamed.

But not of the sea.

Not of blood.

Not of screaming faces or the moon turning red.

She dreamed of a garden.

A muddy pond.

Lilies floating in bloom.

Small voices laughing.

The sound of clay tapping gently on stone, like wind chimes in a place no nightmare could reach.

And a little jar — flower tucked in his lid — watching over her while she slept.

Chapter Text

Chapter IV - A Harrowed Visit

Simon the Harrowed had returned to the Research Hall only out of caution.

The Hunter's Nightmare was restless again — whimpering like a wounded beast, shivering through the fog. He felt it in his bones, the way a man might feel a coming storm in an old wound.

He did not expect to see candlelight through the study door.

Nor did he expect it to be open.

He hesitated in the hall, fingers twitching near the hilt of his bowblade.

Lady Maria did not suffer visitors.

Not since before.

He stepped quietly over the threshold, boots silent against old wood.

And then he stopped.

The room smelled… different.

Not of antiseptic and blood.

But of dried flowers and tea.

Lady Maria sat in her usual place — upright, alert, but not armed. Her coat was still stained, her eyes still sharp, but there was a softness around her now, something nearly impossible.

And around her…

Jars.

Living ones.

One was curled on her desk, snoring softly through its lid. Another peeked at Simon from behind a stack of books, trying (and failing) to stay hidden.

Jar-Bairn, smaller and bolder, walked right up to him.

He looked up, unafraid and held out a small crumpled lumenflower.

Simon blinked.

"…What in the name of Kos?"

Maria looked up from her book — her expression unreadable.

"They're not yours to worry about," she said simply.

Simon stared at the little one.

"They… followed you?"

"They ran," she said. "From something worse."

"And you kept them?"

Maria set her quill down. Stood.

"Would you have cast them back into the Nightmare?"

Simon hesitated.

He looked at her. Truly looked.

There was blood beneath her fingernails, yes. Shadows under her eyes.

But also… warmth.

A kind of strange, flickering peace.

The kind that doesn't come from killing.

The kind that comes from letting go.

"No," he said at last. "I suppose I wouldn't."

Jar-Bairn tugged at his sleeve.

He looked down.

Jar-Bairn pressed the flower into his hand and patted his glove with a small nod of approval.

Maria nearly smiled.

"If you breathe a word of this to anyone," she added, "I'll slit your throat with your own bowstring."

"Understood," Simon muttered, carefully tucking the flower into his coat.

He turned to leave — but paused at the door.

"They're not what I expected of you," he said.

"Nor I of them."

"…You're different."

"No," she said, eyes softening as she glanced toward the jars curled at her feet.

"I'm only remembering who I might have been."

Chapter Text

Chapter V - To Mend

The study had been unusually still that morning.

Even the dust seemed to settle slower.

Maria had awoken from a sleep she didn't remember falling into — her coat half-draped over Jar-Bairn, her head tilted just enough to ache.

"You make a strange mother," she muttered to herself.

Jar-Bairn stirred beside her, then stretched his tiny clay arms and blinked.

"What is a mother?" he asked.

She froze.

The question was simple. Innocent. But it struck a place she'd long since boarded up.

She turned away.

"Something I never was," she said.

"But maybe could've been. If the world were… less cruel."

Jar-Bairn tilted his head.

"Did you have a mother?"

Maria didn't answer right away.

Instead, she reached across the desk, fingers brushing a dusty photograph — a faded Cainhurst image she never showed anyone. A girl in white. A face too close to hers.

"Not in the way you mean," she finally said.

"I had teachers. Lords. Mentors. None of them taught me how to hold something without breaking it."

The jars gathered quietly around her. Listening.

And so, for the first time, she told them.

She told them of Byrgenwerth — of how knowledge became hunger, how hunger became blood, and how blood became death. She spoke of the patients, the ones who cried out in voices soaked in moonlight and guilt.

Of Kos.

Of Gehrman.

Of herself.

She did not dramatize. She did not flinch.

But her voice wavered on the names.

Jar-Bairn leaned against her arm.

"And now?" he asked.

She looked down at him — his flower tucked gently behind cracked rim, his countenance full of knowing.

"Now I do what I can," she said.

"Even if it's small."

That afternoon, the peace shattered — but only briefly.

One of the younger jars, playful and clumsy, had toppled from a low shelf while trying to reach an old telescope. It landed with a hard crack across the floor.

Maria was there in an instant.

She dropped to her knees, hands trembling as she gathered the jar into her arms. A long fracture ran across its side — not fatal, but deep. Fragile.

Her breath came shallow.

"No, no, no—" she whispered, clutching it too tightly.

"Not again."

The others watched in stunned silence. They had never seen her afraid like this.

Not in battle.

Not in blood.

Only now, holding something that could still be saved.

"I let too many die," she whispered to no one.

Then, Jar-Bairn gently touched her arm.

"But you didn't let this one."

Maria looked at Jar-Bairn, and her grip loosened.

She stood, carefully, cradling the injured jar, and carried it to the workbench.

Not the surgical one.

The one she'd cleared weeks ago, just in case.

That night, the little jar rested safely beside her, seams mended with a careful blend of wax and resin.

She lit a candle.

And for the first time since the Healing Church had taught her to take things apart, Maria had put something back together.

Chapter Text

Chapter VI - Desperation

The rumors had spread like plague.

Whispers carried between broken pews and ash-laden halls:

Living jars, made of cursed remains...

Abominations sheltered by a traitorous Vileblood…

Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower walks again — and she guards them and their secrets.

And so the Executioners came.

Clad in rusted brass and righteous hatred, they moved through the Nightmare like vultures — blades blessed in fire, chanting prayers that had long since lost their meaning.

They were not hunters.

They were purifiers.

And to them, the living jars were filth.

The first blow shattered the study's door.

Maria had seen the signs.

The trembling of the fog. The tightening silence.

She had ushered the jars behind the bookshelf, beneath the desk, tucked Jar-Bairn behind her cloak protectively.

But she hadn't expected them. The executioners were supposed to be allies of the Healing Church. Unless they had decided that she was no longer of use to the Healing Church and finally decided to eradicate any remaining Vilebloods.

"Lady Maria," the first said, stepping through.

"What secrets do you hide here?"

She did not respond.

Her blades were already in hand.

"Step aside," another snarled. "We only want the Living Jars."

She stepped forward.

"You'll have them over my corpse."

The Executioners obliged.

The first blow shattered her desk.

The second broke her ribs.

But she rose.

Again. And again.

Each swing of her blade tore through memory — of patients begging, of the hamlet, of Kos.

Still, they overwhelmed her.

Five men in sacred metal, calling themselves justice.

She was bleeding.

Cornered.

Too slow to protect them all.

In the chaos, the jars fled to the Clocktower. Jar-Bairn stepped forward from behind the bookshelf.

"Stop! Please!"

The Executioner raised his hammer above the youngest jar trying to get away.

Maria saw it.

And made a choice she had sworn never to make again.

She turned Rakuyo inward.

Both split blades plunged into her own abdomen.

The Executioners paused. One scoffed, lowering his blunderbuss.

"You'll stay dead this time, Vileblood filth!"

They thought her hunting days were long gone.

Forgotten.

Rotting beneath the Hamlet — buried in shame.

They were wrong.

The blood still remembered.

And tonight, it answered.

Her scream was not human.

It howled like raging wind through tombs.

Blood poured from her wound — thick, glowing, alive. It spread across the floor in an arc of crimson light, flames writhing in its wake.

From the blood rose something terrible and beautiful.

A power she had once buried beneath vows of shame and silence.

Now risen.

Her eyes burned red. Her body glowed with crimson moonlight.

She rose from the blood as Lady Maria of the Vilebloods, blade in hand, mouth stained with the curse of her lineage.

"A corpse...should be left well alone."

She steps from the blood, eyes glowing red.

"But you wouldn't let me rest."

"And now, you'll join the dead you revere."

She vanished between heartbeats — a blur of blood and ash, wielding the Art of Quickening masterfully.

Steel sang.

The Executioners fell — not cleanly. Not quickly.

Their prayers turned to screams as her blades ripped through sanctified mail, Rakuyo flashing like vengeance unchained.

She bled freely — not from their blades,

but from her own.

The pain was summoned.

The blood, commanded.

She fed it with every breath.

And in return, it devoured them.

When it ended, she collapsed to her knees in the Clocktower — slick with blood, breath shallow.

Jar-Bairn ran to her side.

"You're hurt again," he whispered, voice breaking.

"I chose to," she rasped. "For you little ones."

The runes around her faded.

The blood stilled.

But her hand remained firm on the blade.

Behind her, the Astral Clocktower ticked again for the first time, since the start of the Nightmare.

And in its shadow, the jars gathered around her.

Not in fear.

But in awe.

Because they had seen her now.

Not as a corpse.

Not as a sinner.

But as a guardian — of small things, strange things, and all things left behind.

Chapter Text

Chapter VII - Recovery

The battle was over.

The Executioners lay broken beneath the Astral Clocktower, their righteousness drowned in red.

But Maria had not risen.

Her blade rested at her side, her coat torn and heavy with blood. The Vileblood power had quieted — no longer burning, but cooling into a hollow ache that spread through her bones like frost.

She had fought for them.

And now, she could barely breathe.

Jar-Bairn sat beside her, small clay hands gently brushing her sleeve, trying not to cry — though he did not know how.

"You said you wouldn't leave," he whispered.

Maria's eyelids fluttered.

A thin breath passed her lips.

"I'm… not."

Her voice was like mist. Like parchment crumbling.

The other jars huddled close, forming a protective circle around her.

One brought a cracked teacup of water. Another awkwardly held up a torn cloth like a banner of peace.

They didn't know how to heal.

But they knew how to stay.

Jar-Bairn made a decision.

They had heard stories of the Doll — a gentle woman in black, beloved by hunters, who stood beneath the moon in places far away.

If anyone could help Maria now, it would be her.

So they went.

Not with a portal or a glyph. Not by grace or incantation.

But with the determination of something small that loves greatly.

They disappeared into the fog of the Nightmare, clutching Maria's torn cloak like a beacon, calling silently for someone — anyone — who still remembered the woman.

And far away, in a field of withered flowers, the Doll paused.

She turned her head toward the moon.

"Lady Maria…" she whispered, clutching her chest.

"What pain calls me now?"

She stepped forward, unhurried and serene — and the dream shifted to meet her.

When she arrived at the Clocktower, the living jars parted without fear.

Lady Maria laid still. Pale. Her hand twitched as though reaching for something no longer there.

The Doll knelt beside her, placing a hand over her heart.

"Oh, dear hunter," she murmured. "You have bled for something precious. I see it now."

Jar-Bairn clutched the Doll's sleeve.

"Don't let her go."

"I will not."

The Doll sang then — not words, but hums, like the wind through long grass, like the lullabies spoken in dreams before names are learned.

Her hand glowed faintly.

The blood slowed.

The breathing deepened.

Maria did not wake. Not yet.

But the pain no longer bothered her.

And for the first time in years, something like peace settled in her chest.

Jar-Bairn curled up beside her, clay hand resting lightly over Maria's.

"You'll be okay now," he whispered.

And somewhere between sleep and silence,

Maria smiled.

Chapter Text

Chapter VIII - Reconciliation

The first thing she felt was the ache.

Heavy, leaden. Buried deep in her ribs and deeper in her mind.

Then warmth — not heat, but presence. Soft pressure at her hand. A hum that vibrated faintly through the cold floor beneath her spine.

Lady Maria's eyes opened slowly.

The tall ceiling above was cracked in some places, blurred with candlelight.

Familiar. The Clocktower.

Still here.

Still alive (somewhat).

She tried to sit up, winced.

And then she saw her.

The Doll sat quietly at her side, hands folded, eyes watching with infinite patience. Like moonlight trapped in a dream.

Maria froze.

"No," she whispered. "This isn't… You're not…"

Her voice cracked. Not from pain. From recognition.

From disbelief.

"I must be dreaming."

The Doll tilted her head gently.

"You are...but not in the way you think."

Maria turned her face away.

"They made you in my image."

"Yes."

"I never asked to be remembered."

"And yet… you were."

Silence settled like dust.

The study of echoes. Of innocence lives stolen.

Maria's heartbeat thudded in her ears — too mortal, too loud.

She had seen the Doll before.

From afar - perhaps in a dream?

A memory sculpted into servitude, smiling forever in someone else's shadow.

She had hated her for it.

And yet…

This one looked at her not with reverence.

Not with pity.

But with understanding.

"Why are you here?" Maria rasped.

"You bled for others," the Doll said.

"And they called to me."

She looked to the jars now, still asleep, nestled around Maria like scattered offerings. Jar-Bairn leaned lightly against her shoulder, unbothered by the tension.

"They have great love for you."

Maria's gaze softened.

"They shouldn't."

"But they do."

"I'm not like you," Maria said, turning her face back. "I don't bring comfort. I bring suffering."

The Doll smiled.

"You give what you have left. That is enough."

For a long moment, Maria said nothing.

The ache in her bones remained, but something bittersweet stirred beneath it now.

Grief, maybe.

Or the beginnings of hope.

"Do they know what I've done?" she asked.

"They know what you do. That is all that matters."

A pause.

Then, gently:

"Rest now, Maria. You are not finished. But you are not alone."

Maria closed her eyes, just for a moment.

Not in surrender.

But in trust.

And though her body still bled beneath the bandages, and her hands still shook from what she'd unleashed, she allowed herself one thing she had not dared in years:

Peace.

Chapter Text

Chapter IX - Celebration

Lady Maria awoke to an odd silence.

Not the still, aching kind that wrapped the Clocktower in grief — but a busy silence. The kind filled with shuffling, clinking, and the occasional muffled crash.

She sat up slowly. Her ribs ached, but her strength had returned.

The Doll had gone — not vanished, but faded back into the mist of dreams, her absence marked only by a single folded handkerchief left at Maria's bedside.

And the jars were nowhere to be seen.

Which, frankly, worried her.

Then came the sound of a wine bottle falling.

A sharp, startled "oh no."

Maria followed the noise through the hall and found herself at the entrance to the study — what little of it remained.

But now… it looked different.

Someone — several someones — had decorated.

There were torn paper garlands (likely from her old research notes), flower petals scattered across the floor, and a centerpiece made entirely out of stacked research journals and broken quills.

At the center of it all stood Jar-Bairn, holding a crooked sign painted in what was very obviously wine:

YOU DIDN'T DIE!

Maria stared.

Then blinked.

"What… is this?"

Jar-Bairn beamed.

"A party!"

One of the smaller jars trotted forward carrying a teacup filled with warm water and what looked like a single sugar cube floating inside.

Another had fashioned a crown out of lumenflowers and tried, with stubby hands, to lift it high enough to place on her head.

"It's a survival celebration," Jar-Bairn explained. "Because you bled a lot, and you screamed a little, but you didn't go away like the others."

Maria stood very still.

She looked at the garlands. The broken ink bottles.

The teacup offerings.

The joy.

She let out a single breath — halfway between a laugh and something dangerously close to crying.

"You little beasts," she whispered.

"You're welcome!" said one jar proudly, misunderstanding entirely.

Maria knelt, slowly, carefully — wincing as her joints protested.

Jar-Bairn walked up to her and placed something in her palm.

A small, heart-shaped stone.

Polished. Warm. Useless. Perfect.

"For you," he said. "Because you're our… you're our…"

He hesitated. Looked down.

Then up.

"…Mother."

Maria froze.

The word cracked something ancient inside her.

Older than Cainhurst.

Older than blood.

"Say that again," she whispered.

Jar-Bairn held his flower close to his chest.

"You're our mother. That's what it feels like."

Maria lowered her head, hand closing gently around the stone.

She had no reply.

Only a quiet, trembling breath.

And her arms — now steady — opening at last.

Jar-Bairn walked into the embrace without hesitation, lanky arms curling around her neck.

The other jars joined in, gently bumping against her coat, her boots, the hem of her tattered cape — not in battle, but in belonging.

And there, in the ruined study of a woman who once fled the waking world, they held their strange, quiet feast.

No prayers. No chants. No sermons.

Only the sound of laughter, spilled tea, and a hunter finally held.

- End of Arc I -

Chapter Text

Chapter X - A Hunter's Mercy

The great doors of the Astral Clocktower groaned open.

Dust curled in the stale air like breath from an unseen maw. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in giant clockface, casting fractured sigils across the floorboards. The Clocktower's silence was not passive — it watched.

Bootsteps echoed, hesitant at first. A woman entered, cloaked in black leather, her threaded cane still dripping ichor. She had climbed the spires of the Hunter's Nightmare, left broken beasts in her wake, and faced the screaming madness behind men's eyes. But nothing prepared her for this.

There — seated upon a grand, weathered chair — was a woman frozen in repose.

She was clothed in hunter's garb, with a mix of Cainhurst finery, though dust clung to every seam. Silver hair spilled like moonlight over one shoulder, motionless. Her gloved hands rested on her lap, limp but elegant. The bloodstains on her chest had long since dried to rust. And though her eyes were shut, the Hunter felt the weight of a gaze not yet opened.

Lady Maria.

She had heard the name whispered in secret, from Simon, from the patients below, and hidden in notes long burned by the Healing Church. A Hunter of Old. A traitor. A gatekeeper of horrors. A woman who walked away from bloodshed… and sealed herself inside the Astral Clocktower with the sins she could not burn.

The Hunter took another step, and a floorboard creaked.

Maria stirred.

It was a slow thing — a curl of the fingers, a tilt of the head. Her eyes opened: cold, glacial silver, etched with exhaustion and something like mourning.

"A corpse… should be left well alone."

Her voice was soft. Weary. As if she had repeated that line across a thousand years of sleep.

The Hunter stilled at the familiar voice.

Is that...the Doll?

Or was the Doll made to resemble the supposed dead woman in front of her?

The hunter bowed her head slightly. Out of respect. Or caution.

"I seek the truth," she said.

Lady Maria exhaled a breath that might have been a laugh. Or a sigh.

"Oh, I know very well how the secrets beckon so sweetly."

Her hands moved — slow as falling snow — to the silver hilt beside her throne.

Rakuyo whispered from its sheath.

"Only an honest death will cure you now."

Lady Maria rose.

"Liberate you from your wild curiosity."

Lady Maria's grip on Rakuyo tightened.

Steel whispered from its sheath like a spirit being roused. The twin blades shimmered under the Clocktower's cold light, bloodstained and reverent. The Hunter—still, poised, with her blunderbuss in hand—did not raise her weapon. Not yet. She had come seeking the truth, not conflict. But Maria had never trusted those who seek to expose the secrets of the Healing Church.

"Liberate you from your wild curiosity," she had said.

The first step was a blur. The second, faster.

Lady Maria vanished in a burst of shadow and scarlet, the Art of Quickening alive beneath her skin.

But before the blades could find purchase—

The Hunter took aim—

Before blood could spill—

A voice broke the air.

"Lady Maria, please—don't!"

It was small. Fragile. Frightened.

The voice of something not meant for this place.

Jar-Bairn.

Maria stopped mid-lunge, her cloak billowing behind her, blade inches away from the Hunter's throat. The Hunter, with her ingrained reflexes (from dying countless times) squeezed the trigger before she could stop herself.

The quicksilver bullets hit Lady Maria squarely in her mid-section. She collapsed to one knee, blood streaming from her abdomen, staining the broken floorboards beneath her boots. The twin blades of Rakuyo clattered beside her—no less deadly for their stillness.

The Hunter did not move. Breathless. Trembling. Her finger still hovered near the trigger, heart pounding louder than the clocktower bells overhead.

Jar-Bairn's voice echoed again—barely a whisper, now hidden behind the candelabra.

"Please… don't kill Mother…"

Maria coughed, wet and ugly, crimson liquid staining her jabot. Her gloved hand clenched around her weeping wound, defiant. But even now, there was no hatred in her eyes. Only sadness. A bitter ache from the past.

"Foolish girl…" she rasped, looking up at the Hunter. "You should have pulled the trigger sooner."

The Hunter lowered her blunderbuss at last, inching closer.

"You tried to kill me."

"I've killed many Hunters." A crooked smile bled through Lady Maria's lips. "You wouldn't be the first to fall in this accursed tower."

"But I'm not like the others."

The pause that followed was long and heavy.

Maria's breath slowed. Her blood pooled. Still, she forced herself upright with the grace of a wounded noble, hand wrapped tightly around Rakuyo's hilt once more.

"Then show me. Prove you're different."

The Hunter blinked—confused.

Lady Maria did not attack.

Instead, she staggered forward, blade horizontal, and offered the hilt to the Hunter.

"A Hunter who can wound, but also withhold the final blow," she murmured. "That… that is a rarity. Perhaps enough to free this place."

The Hunter stared at the weapon—tentative, unsure.

She glanced over to Jar-Bairn, who looked at her pleadingly.

But another voice interrupted the moment.

"No, no, no… This is all wrong!"

From the entrace, footsteps echoed across the wooden floor. A figure emerged from the gloom, gaunt and twitching.

Simon the Harrowed.

On the outer walkway of the Astral Clocktower, beneath the pale sway of the moon, Simon the Harrowed stood with his transformed bowblade in hand, bandaged fingers clenched around a nocked arrow. His ragged cloak fluttered in the wind like a banner of accusation.

Lady Maria leaned lightly against Rakuyo, blood still crusted on the torn edges of her vest. The Hunter stood between them — motionless, unreadable, threaded cane still sheathed.

"So this is it, then," Simon muttered, voice laced with disgust. "You let her live."

"I did," the Hunter replied simply.

"Even after everything she's done? The Hamlet. The Hall. The experiments."

"And what would killing her fix?" the Hunter snapped. "The Nightmare still exist. The past still screams. Will her death unmake it?"

Simon stepped forward, bow raised, eyes flicking between the two women.

"You're soft. This thing—" he jabbed the weapon toward Maria, "—was the Healing Church's butcher. She doesn't get to play house with her pet jars and pretend it's all forgiven. She hides the real secret!"

From behind the door, Jar-Bairn peered out.

"She's not pretending," the little jar squeaked, trembling. "She takes care of us. She's kind."

Simon didn't even look at him.

"And you," he growled to the Hunter, "are a fool. I should've left you bleeding when you arrived in the Nightmare."

That did it.

Maria's hand drifted to Rakuyo.

"You mistake mercy for weakness, Harrowed," she said quietly. "And I am very tired of ghosts who bark like dogs, who pretended that he had no part in the massacre."

"You gonna kill me too?" Simon barked, raising his bow.

"No," said the Hunter, transforming her threaded cane with a snap. "But I'll shut you up."

He fired.

But the arrow never reached her. Maria was already moving — the Art of Quickening igniting around her like a cloak of crimson ash. She appeared beside Simon in a blur, her split blades singing as they clashed against his guard. The Hunter followed, threaded whip arcing with brutal grace.

Steel clanged, sparks flew. Blood hit the floor in hot lashes.

Simon fought like a cornered wolf, fierce and dirty — but he was alone.

And they were not.

He barely deflected a blow from the Hunter before Maria's blade sank deep into his shoulder. He howled, staggering, and turned to flee — but Jar-Bairn had rolled into the tower entrance and slammed the door shut with a brave little grunt.

"Go back to the dark, Mister," he squeaked, trembling. "We don't want your hate here."

Simon snarled, bleeding heavily, and vanished into the Research hallway with a cursed vow and a trail of blood.

Silence returned.

Maria leaned on her blades, panting. The Hunter sheathed her cane slowly.

Jar-Bairn rolled to Maria's side, nestling against her boot.

"Are you alright, Mother?"

Maria blinked.

"…Yes," she whispered.

"He'll come back," the Hunter murmured.

"Let him," Maria said, standing tall again. "I've survived worse."

She looked to the Hunter.

"Thank you."

The Hunter only nodded.

And behind them, the clock ticked on — louder now, not with threat, but with promise.

Chapter Text

Chapter XI - Interlude

The battle was over. But the smell of blood and iron lingered in the air.

Inside the Research Hall, the once-forgotten infirmary was lit by the muted glow of lamp oil. It smelled of dust and alcohol, old gauze and dried lavender — herbs from the Hunter's satchel.

Lady Maria sat on a cot, back against the wall, a long gash stitched shut along her ribs. The Hunter knelt beside her, sleeves rolled, tending to the bullet wounds with careful hands.

"You didn't have to fight," the Hunter said softly.

"You didn't have to stay," Maria replied, not looking at her.

There was a pause. Then:

"I didn't mean to shoot you."

"I know."

Silence again, broken only by the careful threading of needle through skin. Then, suddenly, a chuckle — small, breathless, tired.

"It's strange," Maria murmured. "I used to wonder if I'd die alone in this place, slain by another Hunter seeking to uncover secrets of the Nightmare. I never once thought… I'd survive with company."

The Hunter dabbed the last of the blood away.

"Well. You're terribly bad at dying."

"And you're terribly good at this," Maria retorted. "A dangerous combination."

A soft clink — Jar-Bairn had teetered in with two chipped cups of warm herbal tea, held aloft on a wooden tray.

"Mother," he chirped, "you forgot your tonic."

Maria looked down at him, took one and offered the other to the Hunter.

"Thank you, little one."

They drank in silence, watching the moon cast shadows across the ancient walls.

Journal entry dropped from Simon the Harrowed's satchel, discovered after his retreat.

"They call me mad for what I see. But they forget — I was there when the Hamlet burned. I watched them violate the Great One and butchered its offspring. The Choir turned upward. The School turned inward. But the Healing Church?

The Healing Church reared its ugly head outward."

"Maria was the worst of them. She tried to fix the damage with mercy, but mercy does not heal wounds — it hides them. She houses abominations in her Research Hall now, as if kindness can drown out her guilt."

"But guilt doesn't die. It festers. And when it bursts, I will be the one who pulls the trigger."

"They think me a ghost."

"Good."

"Ghosts linger to finish what others will not."

The sea stank of blood.

Not just the coppery scent of fresh kill — but the thick, cloying rot of something old. Something dredged up that should have stayed buried.

Maria stood at the water's edge, boots sinking into wet sand, cloak whipping around her in the salty wind. The sky above the Fishing Hamlet was obscured with thick clouds, moonlight glinting off the scattered tidepools like watchful eyes.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept.

Behind her, the cries of the villagers still echoed — hoarse and inhuman — as they were dragged into the market plaza by Church Hunters. Each scream frayed something in her spine. Something she had once called honor.

"Maria," Simon had said that morning, blade half-cleaned in his lap, "you've got to stop looking at them in the eyes."

But she had looked. And they had looked back.

Their eyes weren't beastly, not yet. Just frightened. Confused. Human.

She pressed a hand to her chest now, standing alone by the coast. Beneath her fingers, her heart beat furiously — not from fear, but from something worse.

Regret.

"They believe they are cursed…"

"Because we told them they are."

She hated herself for thinking it.

Even more for believing it.

Somewhere deeper in the Hamlet, the men of the Choir were chanting. Extracting. Peeling truth from flesh. Seeking insights from eyes while gouging out the ones that stared back too long.

Maria tasted bile.

"We were supposed to cure this ailing world," she whispered to no one. "Not break it open and feed on its marrow."

A shape shifted in the water.

For one harrowing moment, Maria thought it was one of them — the villagers, or worse. A malformed Great One. A shadow of Kos. But no. It was just her reflection.

Or what remained of it.

The woman who stared back at her in the tidepool wore blood soaked leathers. Her silver ponytail was unraveling, her sleeves soaked through. And her eyes—

They no longer looked like hers.

Maria turned away.

She drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders, as if it could block out the truth. The guilt. The ghost of every life unmade by her hand.

"Forgive me," she said to the sea. To the sky. To something deeper.

But nothing answered.

Only the waves.

Only the clockwork of her own unraveling.

A storm had passed.

The giant lumenflower shifted in the wind, its giant head swaying slowly — not with menace, but rhythm. In the infirmary, soft yellow candlelight glowed against the glass, casting long patterns across the stone floor.

Maria lounged in an old chaise, now wrapped in a thick woollen blanket, with Jar-Bairn nestled in her lap, sound asleep. One of the tiny Jars had planted a small flower pot beside her boot — a single white lily blooming, impossibly, in the Nightmare.

The Hunter joined her without a word, carrying a thick journal and two steaming mugs. She handed one to Maria.

"You were holding back."

Maria exhaled through her nose, not quite a laugh.

"Perhaps I was hoping you'd do me the mercy I once denied others."

The Hunter shook her head slowly. "I wasn't here to kill you."

Maria's fingers idly brushed the rim of Jar-Bairn's back.

"Then why come?"

"To understand."

A pause.

"The ones they called abominations. The blood. The silence. You."

Maria tilted her head, the candlelight accentuating the eyebags beneath her eyes.

"Understanding is the last thing most Hunters seek. Easier to name things monstrous and be done with it."

The Hunter rebutted, "I've done enough killing to know that monsters bleed the same."

Maria looked up at her, gaze unreadable. Then she nodded — a small, solemn motion.

"Then you are wiser than I was, at your age."

They lapsed into silence again. The clocktower bells chimed overhead like an old, tired heart.

Then the Hunter inched forward, her tone quieter now.

"Will you leave the tower?"

Lady Maria looked down at Jar-Bairn, softly snoring.

"And go where?"

"Anywhere. The Nightmare has taken so much already."

Maria looked out through the window, where faint moonlight spilled over the crumbling ruin of the Astral Clocktower.

"I cannot leave, not when my patients need me to allay their suffering I had wrought upon them."

She reached up and placed her hand over Jar-Bairn's round back, fingers gentle.

"If I cannot undo what I've done… perhaps I can keep something safe for once."

"Return to the hunt if you must, good hunter. Lest the Nightmare consumes you. This is not your burden to carry."

The Hunter gave a slow nod.

"Then I'll return. From time to time."

Maria blinked.

"To hunt?"

The Hunter, smiling faintly, replied, "To visit."

The Hunter paused, considering her next words.

"You know… there's something about you that's always reminded me of the Doll."

Lady Maria, glanced up, brows slightly raised, amused.

"Oh? Do elaborate. Is it the stillness? The pallor? Or the way I sleep through most of the trouble you bring?"

The younger woman scofffed.

"No, no. Not that. Well—maybe the sleeping part."

She grins and pulls up a chair.

"It's the kindness, I think. Gentle, quiet. Like… the world doesn't deserve it, but you offer it anyway."

Lady Maria softly chuckled, gaze turning distant.

"She was made in my image, you know. Perhaps the only part of me worth preserving."

"Don't say that."

The Hunter leaned forward slightly.

"You still fight to protect the helpless. Even after being trapped in the Nightmare. You listened when others didn't."

Lady Maria smiled faintly.

"You're far too sentimental for a Hunter."

"Only for one Hunter, really."

"Will he return?" the Hunter asked after a while.

"Simon?" Maria shook her head. "The Harrowed one always return. But next time, we'll be ready."

She looked down at Jar-Bairn, who stirred and whispered half-asleep:

"Mother… don't let the bad man in again."

Maria brushed a hand over his cracked lid.

"I won't, little one. I promise."

Above them, the moon hung pale and tired, but no longer cruel.

The two women sat together, shoulder to shoulder, sipping tea beneath the broken heavens. And for a while — just a little while — the Nightmare dared not intrude.

Chapter Text

Chapter XII - The Road Back Home

The winds of Jar burg carried the scent of wild flora and memories.

Jar-Bairn stood at the edge of the broken path, the gentle waves lapping below, where once voices echoed with simple joys. The jars had left with him—fled —to escape poachers and predators, to find safety in the arms of a long-dead Hunter in a realm not quite living.

But now, Jar-Bairn had returned. Alone.

He had expected emptiness. Silence. The aftermath of something lost.

But instead, he found a forlon young man kneeling in the middle of the village square, surrounded by shattered jars and the splintered remains of collapsed wooden shacks. The man looked older—eyes sunken, body slouched, voice gravelled. He was whispering apologies to no one, clutching a broken jar like a grieving father holding a child too late.

Jar-Bairn watched from the shadows, unsure, then stepped closer, his voice soft.

“…You… you’re the one who killed all those poachers, ain’t you?”

His clay arms fidgeted behind his back. “We heard the noise when we fled. Thought maybe… maybe you were a poacher too at first.”

Diallos finally looked up. His eyes were wet, bloodshot. He looked at Jar-Bairn like one stares at a memory they wish they could change.

“I’m no poacher,” he rasped. “Just a failure with a sword and a name that doesn’t matter anymore.”

Jar-Bairn blinked. “What name’s that?”

A pause.

“Diallos Hoslow,” he muttered, bitterly. “But that name’s done nothing but bring pain.”

Jar-Bairn tilted his body. “Then leave it behind.”

That startled him. Diallos blinked, stunned by the simplicity. “Just… leave it?”

“Aye,” the little jar nodded, stepping beside him now. “We jars don’t care ‘bout names. Only whats in your heart. You tried to protect us, didn’t you?”

“…I did.” Diallos’s voice broke. “And I failed. I came back too late.” He glanced down at the broken jar in his arms. “They were gone. All of them.”

Jar-Bairn touched the edge of the shattered vessel.

“Not all. A few of us got away...that means you didn’t fail at all.”

Diallos said nothing for a long time. Then, quietly—

“…What’s your name, little one?”

“Jar-Bairn,” he beamed. “I’m the new Potentate… sort of.”

Diallos let out the smallest laugh, a breath more than a sound.

“Well then, Potentate Jar-Bairn… would you let a failed knight stay awhile?”

Jar-Bairn thought of an idea.

“Me and the others went lookin’, y’know,” he said softly. “Found a place past the edge of the world. Past dreams. A place where folk like us — broken things — are safe. There’s a lady there… kind, but fierce. She hurts too. But she don’t turn away.”

Diallos finally looked up.

“You found what I never could.”

Jar-Bairn nodded. “Then come. Maybe you’re not too late.”

They crossed the veil that night, slipping into the Hunter’s Nightmare like flickers in a dream. Diallos gasped at the sky — always shrouded, always wrong. The fog here moved like mourning breath. The rivers bled.

And still, Jar-Bairn led on.

Up the spiraling stairs of the Research Hall. Past the weeping patients and wailing beasts. Until, at last, they reached the study—her study.

Lady Maria looked up from her desk as the door creaked open.

For a moment, Diallos couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t just beautiful—she was sorrow carved into flesh, steel tempered in loss. Her piercing grey eyes found him not as a foe, but a fragment—one more ghost stumbling through the ruins of the Nightmare.

Jar-Bairn nudged Diallos forward.

“This one’s lost,” he said softly. “Like we were.”

Lady Maria rose slowly, her cape dragging behind like a curtain of dusk. She studied Diallos the way she studied cadavers and wounds — not to judge, but to understand.

“You look like a man who’s tried to die in more ways than one,” she said.

“I am,” Diallos rasped. “And still, I don’t know what I’ve become.”

Maria’s expression softened, the candlelight catching the ghost of a smile.

“Then you’ve come to the right place.”

That night, Diallos sat with the jars beneath the cracked ceiling of the Clocktower. He listened to the soft ticking of the clock gears above. Watched Jar-Bairn play with pebbles and coins. Felt the silence between the bells.

And for the first time, he didn’t feel like a failure.

He felt… accepted.

The great doors of the Research Hall groaned as they closed behind them, sealing out the howling winds of the Nightmare.

Diallos stared.

Books. Tomes. Maps. Vials of blood. Surgical tools sharpened to a glinting edge. The scent of dried roses, alcohol, and old ink hung in the air — the scent of faded memory.

Lady Maria stood in the center of it all like a statue come to life, her cloak dusted with blood not quite her own. Her eyes, sharp but tired, studied him in silence.

“You came for them,” she said at last, glancing toward Jar-Bairn, who stood protectively by Diallos’ leg. “But now you’re here for yourself.”

Diallos bowed, unsure if he should kneel. “My name is Diallos, milady. I have no master. No oath left to serve. No House to honor.”

Maria approached, twin blades at her hip, every step quiet but iron-heavy. “Then you may learn from me. If you have the courage.”

He met her gaze. “I do.”

She looked away before he could see what passed through her eyes. Memories, perhaps. Pity. Or something quieter: hope.

The following days bled into one another like ink into parchment. Lady Maria was relentless.

“Again,” she said, after disarming him for the third time before the bells chimed noon.

“You’re fighting with guilt, not instinct,” she snapped another morning. “Sorrow does not parry a blade.”

Diallos bled. Bruised. Learned.

He studied the way she moved — the flash of the Rakuyo cleaving air, the haunting grace of the Art of Quickening, how she turned pain into purpose and blood into fire.

She taught him not just how to fight, but why to fight.

From the rafters and shelves, Jar-Bairn and the smaller jars watched.

“She’s like a storm, right coz?” Jar-Bairn murmured one evening, nestled beside Diallos by the fire’s dim glow.

“Not the bad sort, though. The kind that moves with purpose. That knows where to strike.”

Diallos gave a low chuckle, wincing slightly as he shifted under his bandages.

“Terrifying, more like.”

Jar-Bairn nodded, utterly serious.

“That’s how you know she’s a proper master o’ the Hunt.”

One evening, Maria sat across from Diallos at the broken sundial on the observatory floor.

“Do you regret leaving Jarburg?”

He paused. “No… but I regret not protecting it better.”

Maria’s voice lowered, almost tender. “Then protect what you’ve found now.”

She rose, offering him her hand — not as a master to a pupil, but as one soul to another.

Wounded. Weary. Yet unbroken.

As the Nightmare's moon waxed high above the Clocktower, two silhouettes trained under the light: one shadow once noble, fallen and rebuilt — the other, a Vileblood bound in penance, guiding him toward purpose.

From the corner, Jar-Bairn watched with pride swelling in his heart.

“A family,” he murmured to no one.

“A right good one.”

Chapter Text

Chapter XIII - Stand-off

The Hunter’s Nightmare was rarely still. Even in lulls, the air crackled with latent memory — and vengeance. Diallos tread carefully, his boots echoing through the ruined stone corridors of the Research Hall. Jar-Bairn toddled beside him, excitedly explaining how kind Lady Maria was, and how she had taken in the jars, protected them, understood them.

Diallos didn’t understand everything, not yet — but he trusted Jar-Bairn. Perhaps more than he trusted himself.

And so, when the great doors of the Astral Clocktower opened and he stepped through, his voice was soft.

“Lady Maria?”

But his greeting was drowned by the sharp whistle of a blade.

The Hunter had returned from a nightmarish hunt, her coat still slick with gore and her hands tight around her transformed weapon. She caught sight of the stranger in the hall — a tall man in noble armor, unfamiliar, unannounced, too close to Maria’s sanctuary.

And worse: too close to the jars.

With no time for pleasantries, she charged.

Her whip-like blade sang through the stale air. Diallos barely deflected the strike, his rapier shuddering under her force. “Wait—!”

“You’ll not harm them,” she growled, hazel eyes wide with fury, “Not her. Not the jars.”

He parried again, barely. “I came here seeking purpose, not blood!”

But she didn’t hear him — or wouldn’t. Not until—

“Enough.”

The voice cracked like thunder.

Lady Maria stood beside her chair, one hand resting against the crest rail, the other bracing her wounded ribs beneath her cloak. She looked tired. She looked proud.

But her eyes were fierce.

“Stand down, both of you.”

The Hunter froze. Her threaded cane dropped a fraction. “He’s—”

“He is under my watch,” Maria said, stepping forward slowly, each footfall deliberate, measured. “Like yourself.”

Diallos lowered his weapon, chest heaving. “I meant no harm. I swear it.”

The Hunter’s eyes shifted between them — and at last, sheathed her cane.

Maria reached the doors of the clocktower, and offered the smallest smile. “This place has seen too many duels already. Let it see something else, for once.”

Jar-Bairn emerged from behind a pillar, visibly trembling. “Please… don’t fight. He’s my friend.”

Maria placed a hand on his lid. “No more fighting today.”

There was silence, save for the ticking of the clocktower gears.

The Hunter stepped forward, extending a gloved hand toward Diallos.

“…Welcome to the Nightmare,” she said, quietly.

He took it, warily.

Maria watched them both, and for a moment, thought she saw her own younger self — blade in hand, full of purpose — mirrored in each of them.

“Come,” she said at last. “If you’re to learn from me, Diallos… you’ll need some Yharnam Brandy. And the patience of the damned.”

Jar-Bairn perked up. “I’ll fetch the cups!”

And just like that, the fight dissolved — not into peace, perhaps, but into something warmer. Familiar.

Bonds forged between blades.

The lanterns in the infirmary had dimmed to a golden glow. Only shadows stirred now, shifting slowly in the corners. The hall was quiet—save for the creaking of rafters and the faint blubbering of a dreaming patient.

Lady Maria sat at the edge of a long-abandoned cot, her posture weary but proud, shoulders framed by moonlight slanting through high stained glass. She was dressed down to her slacks and inner shirt.

She was folding bandages with the instinctive grace of someone who had done it too many times—first as a Cainhurst Knight, then as a Healing Church hunter, and now as a caretaker of the broken.

Across from her, the Hunter leaned against a stone pillar. Her raven hair hung from one shoulder, still damp from a recent wash. Her presence was a quiet anchor—one of tension held tightly in the chest, of words unsaid.

Maria noticed.

“You’ve been quiet tonight,” she said gently, her voice low, threading between flickering candlelight and dust.

The Hunter didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze was turned outward, toward the window where fog rolled over the twisted landscape of the Nightmare like an old wound reopening.

Then, almost reluctantly, she spoke.

“I wasn’t always a hunter.”

Maria tilted her head, a knowing smile faint on her lips. “None of us were.”

“I was a doctor. Or… a student of medicine, back in my homeland. A scholar. From the Far East. I came to Yharnam chasing rumors.” She turned back toward Maria. “Rumors of blood… healing… a miracle that could mend what others called incurable.”

Maria’s eyes softened. “You were drawn by hope.”

“I wanted to believe it,” the Hunter whispered. “That the blood could restore what was lost. That it could help the dying… the broken… the forgotten. I thought I could've help heal the sick. Save lives.” She looked down, voice hardening. “But Yharnam doesn’t reward idealists.”

“No,” Maria agreed, her voice barely audible. “It devours them.”

“The Nightmare certainly doesn’t have room for doctors,” the Hunter continued. “And yet… here I am. A killer, more familiar with dissection than diagnosis.”

“You still heal,” Maria said. “With your hands. With your presence. You protect, even when it hurts.”

The Hunter glanced away, but her fingers clenched at her side. Then she stepped forward—and something in her gaze changed.

“You’re bleeding again.”

Maria blinked, startled. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not,” the Hunter said, crossing the room swiftly. She knelt before her, lifting the edge of Maria’s blouse to reveal seeping crimson, slick against gauze. “These wounds aren’t healing properly. They’re slower than last time.”

Maria winced as the gauze pulled away. “It’s just the strain. I’ve been moving too much from training Diallos.”

“No, it’s more than that.” The Hunter’s voice lowered, shifting into clinical cadence.

“The clotting is irregular. Skin around the site is cooler than expected. Faint signs of necrosis at the edges. The bleeding’s… unrooted. Like your body can’t decide whether to repair itself or not.”

Maria sighed. She loosened her jabot, revealing the coagulated wound across her throat.

“I no longer exist in the waking world. You know this.”

“You’re not alive,” the Hunter murmured, inspecting her wounds “but you’re not dead either. You’ve bound yourself to the Nightmare… and it’s keeping you in this half-state. Stagnant. Every wound is an battle between time and decay.”

Maria gave a faint chuckle, dry and low. “You speak like a physician.”

“I am one,” she said sharply. “Even now. Especially now.”

She began re-wrapping the wounds, her fingers deft and precise. Maria watched her in silence for a time, until—

“Promise me you’ll rest.”

Maria arched a brow. “A bold demand.”

“I’ve earned it,” the Hunter smirked. “You’re my most belligerent patient.”

Maria laughed—genuinely, this time. The sound was strange and rare, like a bell in a town long forgotten.

“All right,” she relented, quietly. “For tonight.”

The Hunter tied off the bandage, but didn’t stand yet. Instead, she rested one hand against Maria’s chest, over her heartbeat—faint and irregular, like a memory refusing to die.

“Thank you,” Maria whispered.

“For what?”

“For reminding me that I’m still… human. In some way.”

The Hunter’s gaze met hers in the low light. “That’s what you do for all of us, Maria.”

Their eyes lingered.

“I mean it,” the Hunter said, voice nearly breaking. “You gave Jar-Bairn a home. You gave Diallos a cause. You gave me someone to fight beside… someone to believe in.”

Maria’s gloved hand lifted and brushed a strand of hair from the Hunter’s cheek. “You’ve done the same, you know.”

Silence passed between them—one charged and unspoken, trembling like a coiled thread pulled too tight.

Then the sound of footsteps down the hallway.

Diallos.

He slowed just outside the infirmary door, hearing voices. Laughter. And something more fragile between them.

He didn’t enter.

But he stayed for a moment longer than he should have, one hand resting against the stone archway, fingers curled.

Then, quietly, he turned away.

Chapter Text

Chapter XIV - Rivalry

It began with a compliment.

Diallos had praised Lady Maria's sword form — something about the graceful arc of Rakuyo's reach, the elegance of a killing stroke. The Hunter, still nursing a bruise from training the day before, had narrowed her eyes and muttered something unflattering about simpering nobles with too much hair and too little sense.

The next morning, she polished Maria's tea cup before he could.

He retaliated by sweeping the stairs before their morning patrol.

By noon, they were in a full-blown contest of devotion — racing to open doors, fetching Maria's favorite books, and sparring not-so-subtly in the courtyard like two oversized crows fighting over a shiny trinket.

Jar-Bairn and the other Living Jars watched it unfold like a play. He placed a tiny flower at Maria's tea saucer each day, uncertain which suitor it was from.

Maria endured it.

For a time.

She ignored the petty one-upmanship. The loud grunts during target practice. The way the Hunter "accidentally" knocked over Diallos's sword rack. The way Diallos "helpfully" blocked her path in a narrow staircase, purely to offer her his hand.

Until someone — no one confessed — upset an entire cabinet of forbidden tinctures, mixing unknown blood mixtures with brain fluid samples from the upper floor.

Half the Research Hall patients began screaming in a cacophony of choir harmonies.

Two began levitating.

One of the jars developed a second lid.

Lady Maria's appeared in the corridor like a thunderclap.

"Enough."

The single word rang colder than steel, steeped in the authority of her royal bloodline. Diallos and the Hunter froze where they stood—one clutching a broom, the other a splintered beaker, both caught in the act like errant children.

She did not yell. She didn't have to.

"You have made yourselves children," she said, utterly done. "Very well. Be treated as such."

The Punishment:

1. Clean every corner and surface of the Research Hall — including the latrines and stables!

2. Tend to every patient for a month, including the detached head blobs that speaks in gurgling dreams.

3. Rearrange the entire library of Cainhurst and Byrgenwerth tomes in strict alphabetical order.

4. Prepare and serve tea for every jar and every patient, with proper etiquette — cups warmed, leaves steeped to precision, and no complaints of "too bitter" from even the blobs.

5. Read bedtime stories every night to the Jars for a month.

6. Polish every single surgical tool in the Research Hall.

Jar-Bairn was promoted to "supervisor."

The Hunter wept. Diallos nearly resigned his post.

Later that night, Maria sipped her tea in peace, watching them bicker over how best to scrub eldritch ichor from a ceiling.

She glanced at Jar-Bairn. "Children."

Jar-Bairn nodded sagely. "Motherhood is hard."

The Research Hall had grown unusually still since the Hunter's arrival, the air thick with the mingled scent of lavender tinctures and old blood.

In the upper laboratory, Lady Maria stood by a cracked lancet window, her silhouette framed in grey daylight. Below, the wilted stalks of lumenflowers bowed in the windless air, their glow dimmed.

Behind her, the Hunter entered silently. Boots damp, cloak trailing dust.

Maria didn't turn. Instead, she exhaled a slow breath, pressing fingers to her temple as she surveyed the near-empty shelves.

"It appears our reserves are depleted once more," she murmured, tone touched with wearied irony. "A regrettable consequence of entrusting two spirited fools with the sorting of volatile tinctures."

The Hunter coloured slightly. "Diallos was convinced the blue vials were sedatives."

"They were," Maria replied, glancing over her shoulder with a faint smirk, "until he poured cerebral fluid into the batch, and you—seeking to salvage it—drowned the lot in laudanum."

"I had hoped to stabilise the reaction," the Hunter said, quietly.

Maria gave a low chuckle, not unkind, as she turned from the cabinet.

"Ah yes, your noble attempt at alchemy — paired with Diallos' blundering hands — gave us a shelf of spoiled tinctures and a ceiling still stained with ichor. A night well spent, was it not?"

The Hunter flushed, eyes darting away in quiet embarrassment.

Maria stepped away from the shelf, retrieving a narrow roll of parchment from the writing desk. With measured grace, she unrolled it—an itemised prescription penned in her precise, looping hand. Vials, tinctures, bloodletting tools, and cloth dressings were listed alongside rare stabilising agents.

"I had intended to dispatch one of the messengers," she said, placing the list atop the desk, "but I fear they return with little more than lint and bones these days. Supplies no longer… replenish as they once did."

Maria continued, her tone lowering. "Your presence, Diallos' too, has brought echoes of the Waking World into this place. The Nightmare… adapts."

The Hunter, brushing a knuckle against her jaw thoughtfully, offered, "There is a clinic. Iosefka's. North of the Cathedral Ward, just past the bridge. When I arrived in Yharnam, I passed through there. The physician within is skilled—clinical, precise. She might have what we need."

Maria raised an eyebrow. "Iosefka… the name stirs no memory. I suppose much time has passed in the waking world. If she yet lives, and her stores are ample—then so be it."

From a drawer, Maria produced a pouch of blood echoes—the bloodied currency of the Hunt—and pressed it into the Hunter's palm alongside the list.

"Offer this as payment. And caution, if you would. I place more trust in your instincts than I do in the charity of Yharnam."

The Hunter tucked the prescription and pouch into her satchel, then inclined her head. "I'll be swift."

The Hunter had one hand on the doorframe, just about to slip away into the cold corridors, but Maria's voice called her back—cool and composed, yet edged with authority.

"Take Diallos with you."

The Hunter froze. "Surely… that's not necessary."

Maria raised a brow. "You may be able to tell valerian from veratrine, but he is passable at hauling weight and worse at staying still. Consider it a lesson—in collaboration. Without reducing my hall to ruin."

As if summoned, Diallos entered from the adjoining hall, cradling a crate of broken glass and wilted lumenflowers.

"Did someone call for me?" he asked, too cheerfully.

The Hunter groaned. Maria, without turning from the window, spoke with regal finality.

"Enough. Go. Fetch what we need, and return swiftly. I trust you both know how to be… discreet."

The two exchanged glances—shared humiliation and reluctant alliance in equal measure.

Then, wordlessly, they left the Research Hall side by side. Somewhere behind them, Maria allowed herself the faintest smirk as the hall fell quiet once more.

The Road to Iosefka's Clinic

The path to Iosefka's Clinic was littered with fallen beasts and the echoes of forgotten screams. The Hunter moved like a shadow, silent and surgical. Diallos, by contrast, fought like a man determined to prove something—to her, perhaps. Or to himself.

"You're swinging too wide," she muttered after his third overcommitment.

"And you're joyless," he snapped back. "Do you ever not look like you're about to stab someone?"

They fought through the winding streets of Yharnam, through blood-drunk hunters, rabid dogs and all manner of beasts, bickering with the same cadence as crows disputing over carrion, until they reached the Clinic gates — tired, bruised, but alive.

"You didn't do too badly," she admitted begrudgingly.

"And you didn't stab me. Progress," he smirked.

Meanwhile, far from the scuffed blades and reluctant camaraderie, Lady Maria stood before the barred doors of the patient ward.

She fished out a rusted key from her inner coat pocket and unlocked the door. She stepped through quietly, her boots echoing on stone, until she found her — Saint Adeline, pale as ever, her face hidden behind the grotesque layers of her enlarged head.

"Is that you, Lady Maria?"

Maria sat beside her, removing her tricone hat. "If you still possess the patience to hear a weary soul's burden, Saint Adeline… I have words to confess."

"Speak your heart, Lady Maria, I have naught but time." Adeline's voice was distant yet laced with gentleness.

Maria's voice was soft. "It is a strange thing—to feel one's heart stir again in a Nightmare such as this. I, who once swore off any hopes of redemption, to find myself… drawn to my new companions. To their laughter. Their sorrows. Their hopes."

She breathes deeply, hands folded over her lap.

"There is a hunter now—clever, stubborn, defiant in ways I had long forgotten. A man of broken pride seeks honour in our halls. Living Jars who calls me mother without scorn. I—I do not understand what this feeling is, only that I dread its absence."

Adeline tilted her head, liquid sloshing about. "These souls you have gathered—they are your recompense, Maria. The blood took much, but perhaps not all.

Maria looked away. "But I am no longer whole, Adeline. Neither ghost nor woman. What right have I to such warmth? To such… company? Especially after what I did to you, the patients, and the Hamlet?"

Adeline sighed. "The choice was mine alone—to offer myself to the Church's work. You mustn't bear the burden of my condition, my Lady." She reached out, her misshapen fingers wrapping around Maria's gloved hand with startling gentleness.

"We are none of us whole. Yet even shards may reflect the light. And if you have found aught that stirs your soul… do not turn from it. Hold fast. That is the true cure."

Maria knelt then, beside Adeline's chair, her gloved hand gently cradling what remained of the saint's own.

"...Would you like to step out, Adeline?" Maria asked quietly. "The Lumenflowers are in bloom again. I thought… perhaps it would please you. As it once did."

Adeline nodded slowly, brain fluids in her enlarged head sloshing about.

The gate to the Research Hall creaked open with a groan, the dying sunlight painting long, golden streaks across the floor. Dust motes danced like tiny phantasms in the amber glow.

They had returned.

The Hunter trudged in first, boots caked in dried blood and ash, her coat singed at the edges. She held a battered satchel filled with tinctures, syringes, and odd vials that shimmered faintly in the dark. Behind her came Diallos, his armor dulled from the road, but his expression brighter than it had been in weeks — his usual aloof pride softened into something closer to camaraderie.

They paused at the threshold, catching their breath. The Research Hall was quiet, save for the faint gurgling of distant patients and the slow, comforting tick of the Clocktower above.

"Remind me never to barter with a Yharnam chemist again," Diallos muttered, limping slightly. "They haggled like madmen. And one of them tried to trade me a… rat tail."

The Hunter snorted. "You nearly accepted it."

"It was a very convincing tail."

Laughter echoed gently off the stone walls — soft, brief, human.

From the upper mezzanine, Lady Maria stepped into view.

She looked down upon them, arms crossed, the light from the skylight catching the silver lining of her coat. Her expression was unreadable at first… until her lips curved ever so slightly.

"You made it back in one piece," she said. "And with all your limbs, no less. I'm impressed."

"We only nearly died six times," the Hunter replied dryly.

"Seven," Diallos corrected.

Maria descended the stairs with her usual quiet grace. The smell of moonflowers and dried herbs clung to her cloak. She met them at the landing, eyes flicking between the two.

"Well done," she said simply. Then, after a pause, she added more softly, "I am… proud of you both."

The Hunter blinked — caught off guard. Diallos looked like he'd just been knighted.

Maria glanced down at the satchel, then gently took it from the Hunter's arms. "Iosefka's handwriting is dreadful," she murmured, examining a note tied to one of the vials. "But this will help."

From the shadows, the pattering of footsteps echoed. Jar-Bairn peeked out, waving excitedly with his lanky arm. "Did you bring back sweets for the patients?"

"No," the Hunter sighed. "We brought bitter herbs and foul-smelling tonics."

"Better than nothing!" the tiny jar chirped and waddled away.

Maria gave a short, amused breath. "Go wash up," she said, turning. "And meet me in my study. I'd like to hear everything."

As she walked ahead, Diallos leaned in to whisper to the Hunter, "Did she just say she's proud of us?"

"Yes," the Hunter said.

"We might be hallucinating."

"Let's hope not."

They followed her up the spiral stairs, tired but lighter, soot on their coats and the faint scent of medicine trailing behind — the smell of work done, and of...

Home.

Chapter Text

Chapter XV - Inheritance

The Astral Clocktower was quiet.

Not the uneasy silence of nightmares, nor the hushed reverence of prayers — but a rare stillness, heavy as snow.

Maria leaned back in her chair, eyes narrowing in faint amusement as the Hunter fidgeted before her. With deliberate care, she drew a small bundle from her coat— black cloth, bound with twine, the fabric worn at the edges.

She unwrapped it slowly, almost ceremoniously. Inside rested a shard of ivory, pale as moonlight, etched with faint grooves where marrow once ran. It hummed faintly with a pale moonlit glow.

The Hunter stiffened. "…Is that—"

"A bone," Maria said simply. Then, with the faintest flicker of a smirk: "Mine."

The Hunter's nose wrinkled, and she stepped back half a pace. "You're handing me… part of your own remains?"

Maria tilted her head, clearly enjoying her discomfort. "You've plunged elbow-deep into beast entrails, yet one little bone unsettles you? How curious."

"That's different," the Hunter muttered. "This is… personal."

Maria chuckled under her breath. "Indeed. It is. Quickening is not a technique you can copy with your eyes. It lies in the marrow, in the echoes left behind by Gerhman's first students."

The Hunter frowned, glancing again at the relic. "And how, precisely, do you even have this?"

Maria's expression shifted, wry and just a touch grim."The Nightmare is strange, good Hunter. It remembers what it should not, and barters in fragments best left buried. I once asked the Messengers — in jest, perhaps — to bring me what was left of my remains. They scuttled into the lamp and returned with this. Dug me up from the Workshop, no doubt. Loyal little creatures."

She set the bone in her palm, weighing it lightly, then extended it outward.

"I could have destroyed it. Should have. But… no. If there is any good to be wrung from what I was, let it be through you. Take it."

The Hunter hesitated, grimacing as though Maria had offered her a severed rat's tail. "There wasn't a less grotesque method of teaching?"

Maria's smirk curved sharper, not saying a word.

With a reluctant breath, the Hunter reached out and touched the fragment. At once the world fractured — candlelight splintering into echoes, shadows pulling at her veins, heartbeats quickening beyond her skin. She staggered, nearly tumbling into the standing cabinets of candlelabras.

Maria's laughter was low and dry, not unkind. "Mm. Already clumsy. You'll need practice."

The Hunter scowled, clutching the relic. "It feels wrong. Like I'm moving too fast for myself."

"Then catch up," Maria murmured, Rakuyo sliding into her hand with a whisper of steel. "Now show me before you crack your skull on the floorboards. Or worse, on mine."

The Hunter muttered a curse, squared her shoulders, and tried again. She vanished for a heartbeat, then reappeared two steps too far, skidding against the wood. Maria's blade was there at once, tracing her collar with teasing precision.

"Too slow," Maria drawled.

"I was faster than you expected," the Hunter argued, breathless.

"Faster into my steel, perhaps."

Another attempt. The Hunter blurred, nearly striking true with her threaded cane — but Maria flowed aside, Rakuyo poised against her ribs.

"Predictable," Maria chided. "Do not think. Thinking hinders you. The blood moves first — you follow."

Again. Again. The Hunter blurred and stumbled, flickering between moments, growing sharper with each pass. Sweat traced her brow. Her breath rasped. Maria's strikes were merciless but measured — always close enough to sting her pride, never close enough to wound flesh.

At last, the Hunter slipped past her guard, Rakuyo caught just between her cane's teeth. For one heartbeat, she had Maria.

Maria smirked, silver eyes glinting. "Better." She disengaged with a sharp flick, steel singing. "Not good. But better."

The Hunter straightened, panting, cheeks flushed with both exertion and frustration. "You're insufferable."

Maria sheathed Rakuyo with a crisp motion, tilting her head with mock grace. "And you're alive. My methods must hold some merit."

The Hunter muttered something unflattering under her breath, earning another faint laugh from Maria.

"Good," Maria said finally, tone softening. "Let the blood carry you. Let it sharpen you. But never let it own you. I already gave it enough."

The Hunter lowered her gaze to the bone in her palm, its pallor stark against her skin. It no longer seemed merely grotesque, but heavy — not just with morbidity, but with trust.

Maria turned away, her shoulders tense beneath her cloak. "Do not waste what I gave you," she murmured. "I have no more bones left to offer."

Chapter Text

Chapter XVI - Mischief Afoot

The Research Hall had grown quieter in recent nights — or at least, quieter until the Hunter learned how to properly wield the Art of Quickening.

At first, Maria had been satisfied. The Hunter blurred through candlelight like a streak of shadow, slipping from one point to another with sharp precision. It was the skill of an Old Hunter reborn — swift, elegant, deadly.

But as Jar-Bairn would later complain in his piping voice: "Mother, she uses it for mischief!"

It began subtly.

Maria reached for her quill, only to find it gone — replaced with a spoon.

Diallos set his rapier carefully against the wall, only to discover his scabbard tied in a clumsy knot with ribbon scraps from Jar-Bairn's flower garlands.

One jar tried to sip tea, only to find her cup swapped for a thimble.

The Hunter blurred from shadow to shadow, grinning to herself, the faint shimmer of the bone's gift still humming in her blood. She slipped behind shelves, appeared at rafters, vanished beneath tables, crashing through Maria's stacked books — leaving pranks in her wake.

Jar-Bairn squeaked each time something vanished from his lid. "Oi! Where's me flower gone?"

"Here," the Hunter whispered from behind him, tucking it back before darting away again.

"Stop that!" he flailed his lanky arms, but laughed all the same.

Diallos was less amused. He drew his rose petal whip with exasperation when his boots went missing for the third time that morning. "This is unbecoming! Utterly juvenile!"

"You sound like an old tutor," the Hunter teased, flickering to perch on a windowsill with his boots dangling from her hand. "Maybe I should call you 'Old Man Hoslow'".

Diallos flushed red, torn between fury and embarrassment. "Give those back at once!"

"Catch me first."

He lunged — and she was gone, boots dropped onto the rafters overhead.

Maria tolerated it longer than she ought to. She carried herself with the patience of a Blood Saint, though the faint twitch of her lips betrayed that she was not wholly unamused. Still, her belongings began to vanish one by one: her quill, her reading glasses, even Rakuyo's scabbard.

When she finally found her teacup resting precariously atop a patient's enlarged head, she exhaled through her nose, long and sharp.

"That," she murmured, "is quite enough."

The next evening, the Hunter was at it again — slipping from corner to corner, appearing just long enough to tug Maria's braid loose before vanishing with a laugh.

But this time, Maria was waiting.

The Hunter blinked back into view only to find herself caught — Rakuyo's twin blades crossed delicately at her throat. Maria leaned in close, silver eyes glinting like frost.

"Enjoying yourself, good hunter?"

The Hunter grinned despite herself, breathless. "Immensely."

Maria tilted her head. "Then perhaps you'll enjoy this more."

Before the Hunter could move, Maria shifted the blades aside, grasped her by the collar, and tugged her down — not harshly, but firmly — until their faces hovered far too close for comfort.

The Hunter froze, her smirk faltering. "Wait—"

Maria's voice was velvet and steel. "If you insist on tormenting me, I see no reason not to return the favour."

The living jars gasped in unison. Diallos sputtered from the grand stairwell, face crimson. Jar-Bairn squeaked, "Mother, what're you doing?"

Maria smirked, not breaking eye contact with her captive. "Disciplining a troublesome pupil. Embarrassment can be quite effective."

The Hunter's ears burned scarlet. "This is cruel."

"Cruel?" Maria's tone softened, almost teasing. "Cruel would be letting you continue unchecked. This…" She let the words linger, her breath brushing the Hunter's cheek. "…is mercy."

The Hunter squirmed, trying to vanish, but Maria held fast until she flushed scarlet and dropped her gaze.

At last, Maria released her, stepping back with regal composure. "Now. Return my quill, my glasses, and my teacup before I make the punishment… less merciful."

The Hunter muttered curses under her breath, face still warm, as she flickered around the room putting everything back in place.

Jar-Bairn toddled over, peering up with wide innocence. "Mother, I think she's blushing."

Maria allowed herself the faintest smile. "Good. Perhaps the lesson took."

Later that night, when the jars were asleep and Diallos had retired to his cot, the Hunter lingered by the window. Maria's voice carried softly from the desk.

"You are quick, yes. But not subtle."

The Hunter turned, half-amused, half-sheepish. "I suppose you'll keep punishing me if I try again?"

Maria's quill scratched over parchment. She did not look up. "I expect you to try again. Mischief is in your blood. But know this — every prank you play, I will return in kind."

The Hunter smirked, leaning against the sill. "Then it's a game."

Maria's lips curved faintly. "A dangerous one."

And for once, both of them smiled.