Her hand was still at her throat.

Finn watched the shine in her eyes and the way her fingers had pressed down, as if she were physically trying to hold the words inside so they couldn’t hurt her on the way out. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

Whatever had caught on the hook in her throat was something deep and old, and very clearly not his to pull on.

He looked away.

Not dramatically. Just away. He tipped his head back against the brick and let his gaze drift up along the pale blue curve of the Safe Zone dome, as though the question had been idle and he’d already lost interest in the answer.

"I just realised," he went on in the same tired tone, "we’ve still got sixteen stat points sitting in my menu doing absolutely nothing. And if I level up again before we spend them, they start judging me."

"...Pardon?"

"That’s a joke."

"Ah." She breathed out, quietly. "A Bearer joke. I shall catalogue it."

Silence settled between them.

...Thank you.

It came a second later — a quieter voice in his head, not her usual crystalline one with the smile sewn into it.

When he glanced over, the teasing mask was back. Her eyes were closed under the hood, her fingers folded neatly in her lap, as though the moment had never existed. But a sliver of her shoulder had relaxed against his. He hadn’t noticed it was tense until it wasn’t.

He didn’t say anything about it.

He opened his interface instead.

[8 Stat points available for allocation — Finn Morrow Level 5]

[8 Stat points available for allocation — Nyx Sanguina Level 5]

[NOTE: Covenant Bearers do not receive direct stat allocations of the bonds. All invested stats must be placed in the bonded entity, who will confer 50% to the Bearer.]

He read it through, then opened the panel properly. Nyx’s sheet unfolded beside his own.

[Nyx Sanguina — Level 5]

[Stats]

Strength: 8

Agility: 11

Endurance: 9

Perception: 12

Intelligence: 19

Willpower: 19

[Available to invest: 8]

He pulled up her sheet beside his and compared them.

[Stats]

Strength: 13

Agility: 14

Endurance: 14

Perception: 14

Intelligence: 13

Willpower: 14

[Available to invest: 8]

Her Strength was eight now, thanks to the achievement. Before that it had been three, She’d gone at a Hollow Knight with a piece of rebar and come away alive on intelligence, timing, and whatever that vampire regeneration was doing under her dress.

If she ever got cornered in open ground with no shadow to step through, a three in Strength was a death sentence tied up with a ribbon.

Her Endurance was now nine but it had been four. That was how she’d ended up embedded in a wall.

Her Agility was six and now eleven, which was one of the only numbers on the sheet that wasn’t actively trying to kill her.

He considered Intelligence. Willpower. Both already sitting at nineteen. Her class was unique, so he didn’t know what it scaled on — it hadn’t appeared in the beta — but he’d bet her shadow magic played by roughly the same rules as a mage.

More Intelligence, more Willpower meant stronger attacks, longer reach, maybe whole abilities unlocking.

It seemed tempting.

Then he thought about the next time they might find themselves in a difficult situation, and made his call.

[+3 Endurance]

[+3 Intelligence]

[+2 Agility]

He hit confirm.

The numbers on her sheet shifted. His own sheet shifted in sympathy.

[Nyx Sanguina — Level 5(Stats Updated)]

[Stats]

Strength: 8

Agility: 13

Endurance: 12

Perception: 12

Intelligence: 22

Willpower: 19

[Finn Morrow — Level 5(Derived Stats Updated)]

[Stats]

Strength: 13

Agility: 15

Endurance: 15.5

Perception: 14

Intelligence: 15.5

Willpower: 14

[Stat Points Available: 8]

Something inside his chest, not his heart, not his lungs, something threaded between the two — pulled tighter.

The ache in his ribs got quieter. Not gone. Just turned down a notch or two, as though someone had found the dial.

Beside him, Nyx opened her eyes.

She rolled her shoulders once, slowly. Flexed her fingers. Looked down at her own hand as though she was meeting it for the first time.

"Well," she murmured. "That is considerably better."

’Was the distribution acceptable?’

’You gave the fragile pale girl more durability instead of more magic, Bearer. I shall allow it, this once, on account of the fact that I rather enjoy not being at death’s door from a single hit.’

He huffed a small laugh.

Then he saw the lieutenant coming.

Marcus was across the car park, bent over a paper map someone had produced from a glovebox, gesturing with the confidence of a man who had never once, in his own opinion, been wrong.

The rest of the Marshals were busy around him. A couple were hauling crates. One was trying, and failing, to look in charge of the trolley wall.

The lieutenant was not busy.

He was walking, alone, at an angle calculated to suggest he was only passing through, drifting toward the slice of wall where Finn and Nyx were sat.

Finn clocked him at fifteen metres, and his stomach settled into the exact sick, tight knot he’d last felt at fourteen — watching a certain kind of older boy drift across a certain kind of park toward a certain kind of girl.

’Nyx.’

’Yes. I see him.’

’Don’t do anything.’

’Bearer.’

’’If he tries anything, I’ll handle it.’

’Mm.’

The lieutenant was short, wiry, with a broken nose that had healed crooked and a jaw working steadily on nothing. He had the dagger on his hip and one hand resting on the pommel in the way people do when they want you to notice it. His eyes were already on Nyx.

He stopped a step closer than he needed to. Then half a step closer than that.

"You alright, love?"

Finn shifted the kitchen knife from beside his thigh into his lap. Slowly. Across the back of his hand, where the lieutenant could see it. He didn’t look up.

Nyx did not move. She did not lift her head. She did not look at him. Her hands stayed folded, her eyes stayed half-closed beneath the hood, and she did not so much as acknowledge that a shape had entered her line of sight.

"Oi," the lieutenant tried again, softer this time, leaning in. "Didn’t catch your name earlier. Marcus is a bit, you know. Formal. I’m not. Name’s Dale. What’s yours, eh?"

She didn’t respond..

He crouched. He actually crouched, to bring his face down to the level of her hood, close enough that Finn could smell the sour-milk edge of his breath from two feet away.

"That’s far enough, Dale."

Finn said it without raising his voice. Without moving. The knife was still resting across his thigh, the flat of the blade catching the blue dome-light.

The lieutenant’s eyes flicked sideways, and for a half-second the smile thinned. "Mate. Wasn’t talking to you."

"I know." Finn finally looked at him.

Whatever Dale had expected to find in the face of a skinny lad in a hoodie, an apology forming, a nervous swallow, the small permanent wince of someone working out how to defuse this, none of it was there.

The self-deprecating tilt at the corner of Finn’s mouth was gone. So was the apologetic angle of the head. What was looking at him instead was flat, quiet, and hollow.

The knife was halfway off his thigh when the temperature dropped.

It wasn’t a breeze. It wasn’t a draught. It was as though someone, somewhere behind the physical world, had turned a dial one careful click to the left.

The pale blue light of the Safe Zone, on the patch of tarmac between Nyx and the lieutenant, seemed to thicken. Not darken, exactly. Just go still, the way a pond goes still the second before a fish takes the surface.

The hair on the back of Finn’s neck stood up in one clean wave.

The lieutenant didn’t seem to notice at first. He was still smiling, still leaning in, still opening his mouth to say something clever.

Then his nose started bleeding.

Not a trickle. A single fat drop, sudden and bright, falling from his right nostril onto the knee of his jeans. He blinked down at it. Touched his upper lip. Brought his fingers away red.

"The fu—"

A second drop followed the first. Then a third.

He rocked back out of the crouch — fast, too fast, almost going over. His face had gone a chalky grey under the blood. His left hand was up at his nose, his right planted on the tarmac to stop him going arse-first onto the ground, and for one long, silent beat he just stared at Nyx.

At the hood. At the two red points beneath it that had not once turned toward him. With the expression of a man who had just realised he’d been standing, very casually, on a monster’s tail.