Cecilia closed her eyes, reached out with her mind, and lifted.

The dirt rose in a great column, like a reverse waterfall of soil and the occasional startled worm. Telekinesis in this body felt almost natural to her now, like flexing a muscle.

Still, it was unnerving to pull earth from a grave, to feel the weight of it suspended in the air, and to know that beneath it lay something that was supposed to stay buried.

She moved the dirt to the side in a neat, tidy pile, because if she was going to be an accessory to grave robbing, she was at least going to be organized about it.

"There," she said, lowering her hands. "The casket."

The three of them gathered at the edge of the hole. The flashlight beams converged on a dark wooden coffin, its surface dulled by decades of subterranean silence.

It was simpler than Cecilia had expected. No ornate carvings, no gilded handles, just a man-sized box sealed tight against the world.

Bunny dropped into the hole with a crowbar in hand. The impact of his boots on the casket lid made a hollow thud that echoed across the empty cemetery. Cecilia winced. It felt like the kind of sound that should wake something up.

She and Momo angled their flashlights down, two columns of white light crisscrossing over Bunny’s shoulders as he wedged the crowbar beneath the lid.

Cecilia had seen dead bodies before, but this was different. Perhaps the existentiality of it. How wrong it was in a way that had nothing to do with ghosts. Like... the sanctity of resting places.

The nails groaned as Bunny pried them free, one by one. Each screech of protesting metal sent a fresh wave of goosebumps down Cecilia’s arms.

Momo, beside her, was perfectly still, her beautiful face unreadable in the half-dark.

Then the lid came open.

Cecilia leaned forward, her flashlight steady.

The man inside looked... fine. More than fine, actually. He was handsome, with neat black hair swept back from a smooth forehead, and he wore a black suit that seemed untouched by time.

His hands were folded over his chest, his eyes were closed, and his expression was peaceful. If someone had told her this man had lain down for a nap ten minutes ago, she would have believed them.

Aroche Leodegrance. He looked like he was just asleep.

Cecilia didn’t think much of it. Her brain, still adjusting to the surreal reality of digging up graves with gods, simply filed the information away under "weird but probably magical."

Then her gaze drifted to the headstone again and her brain did the automatic math.

Died... almost sixty years ago.

Sixty years.

She yanked out her phone and started typing before she could stop herself. How long does it take for a body in a casket to decompose after 60—

Her thumbs froze mid-typing.

Two pairs of eyes were staring at her. Bunny, still crouched beside the open casket, and Momo, still serene as a painting, had both turned their heads toward her with identical expressions. As if they were saying, ah... kids.

Momo smiled a gentle smile.

"Yes, this is not natural," she said. "You don’t have to look it up."

Cecilia lowered her phone, her cheeks burning. Right. Of course. She was standing with two gods over the impossibly preserved body of a man who had died six decades ago. Google was not going to help her here. It was apparently weird and magical.

She tucked her phone away and leaned closer, peering down at the man in the casket.

Aroche Leodegrance.

Bunny stared down at the body for a long moment. Then he scoffed. "Lazy fucker."

It was harsh, but the voice was wrong. It cracked on the second syllable.

Cecilia’s spine stiffened. With the way this man talked to the body, she held her breath, half-convinced that the body would react.

She felt like the eyes would snap open and the folded hands would unclasp. Aroche Leodegrance might sit up and deliver some kind of witty retort from beyond the grave at any moment now.

But nothing moved. The body remained still.

Bunny rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand roughly, before bending over the casket and began to search, his hands moving with a mixture of reverence and irritation through the folds of the dead man’s suit.

"Where did you hide the gem, dumbass?" he muttered. His voice was trembling now.

"Try his back pocket," Momo said warmly.

Bunny let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sniffle. "Dead for years and still forcing me to wipe his ass."

Cecilia saw it then, the drops falling from his face, catching the light as they descended onto the immaculate black suit. She stood frozen on the grass above, one flashlight gripped in her hand, watching the All-Oblivion blink back tears over the body of a man she had never heard of.

Was this man... someone important to them? Or at least, to the All-Oblivion?

"Scoot over," Bunny said, his voice thick, as he reached around to the back of the body. "Bastard, you didn’t actually shove it up your ass, right? Ah, where—"

He stopped. His hand emerged from beneath the body.

"Hm. He actually told whoever buried him to put it in his back pocket." Bunny shook his head, a wet laugh escaping his throat. "Why is he so ridiculous? This is why you shouldn’t give him ideas, Momo."

Momo giggled. "He actually made the great Caledfwlch grope his dead ass. What a legend..."

Cecilia watched, transfixed, as Bunny pulled something from the casket. It was a gem, red as arterial blood, roughly the size of a baby’s fist.

It pulsed faintly in the darkness, or maybe that was just the flashlight playing tricks on her eyes.

Bunny didn’t look at it for more than a second. He tossed it upward, a casual underhand lob, and Momo caught it with one hand without even glancing away from the grave. Then she held it tight.

Cecilia followed the gem’s arc, but her attention was already being pulled back down.

Because Bunny leaned over the casket and pressed his lips to the forehead of the dead man.

"Sleep well, brother." He whispered. "See you after an eternity."

He pulled back.

And the body began to change.

A hairline crack spread across the forehead where the kiss had landed. Then another. Then the pristine skin began to sink, to darken and crumble inward like old paper caught in a slow flame.

The black suit sagged as the form beneath it collapsed into itself. Flesh became dust, and dust became nothing.

Within seconds, the perfect, sleeping man was gone, and what remained was a skeleton in a suit, the faint outline of a body still visible in the way the bones lay, in the way the fabric still held the shape of someone who had once existed.

Somehow, Cecilia couldn’t look away.

Bunny closed the casket. He did it gently, his large hands pressing the lid back into place with the same deliberation one might use to tuck a child into bed.

Then he took a hammer passed from Momo and sealed the nails back down, one by one.

A few minutes later, Bunny hauled himself out of the hole. His face was a mess. tears and snot and dirt all competing for real estate on his cheeks. He wiped at it with his shoulder inelegantly, then rolled away from the edge and grabbed his shovel from where it lay in the grass.

"I’ll put the dirt back in myself. You don’t have to use telekinesis," he said. "Thanks."

In the way he said it, it felt like he was saying I need to do this myself because this matters, and this part is mine.

Cecilia just nodded in silence since she didn’t trust herself to speak.

Beside her, Momo was still holding the red gem. She hadn’t looked at it yet.

She was still looking down at the casket. Her smile had faded, but not into sadness. Perhaps... it was longing?

Bunny began to shovel.

That was when Momo turned to her and smiled.

"Child, let’s walk with me back to our car first. He’ll finish this up alone."

Cecilia glanced at Bunny, still shoveling, his back to them. She understood. Some grief was not meant for audiences.

She fell into step beside Momo, the grass crunching softly under their feet as they wound through the headstones. The red gem was still clutched in Momo’s hand, catching faint glints of moonlight. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Momo said, quietly, almost to herself, "It’s nice to have a body that can cry. He’s been waiting a long time to do that properly."

Behind them, the steady rhythm of the shovel continued—JAB, ssshhh, JAB, ssshhh—filling the silence of the cemetery like a heartbeat slowly returning to rest.