Revy went quiet.
It lasted only a moment — but it was the wrong kind of quiet for her. Not measured. Not performing. Just a woman staring at the middle distance with something working behind her eyes that she hadn't invited in.
"Hm." She ruffled the front of her jacket. "First the wolf girls. Now the two here." Her voice was flat. Unrhymed. Just words. "What are you plotting, wolf god, this time."
Then she caught herself.
Her jaw set. She straightened. When she spoke again the cadence was back — slow, sing-song, each word placed with deliberate weight.
"If I find out we left our home behind to follow something false — a hollow shrine — I'll eat him myself, I'll have him for my dinner. No false prophet makes Revy a believer."
The shadow moved.
Not a ripple this time — a rise. Lenora's shadow split along the surface and Mia came up through it like something surfacing from still water, pink dress catching the light, each fold of fabric trembling — not from cold, not from movement, but from something that lived in the chest and didn't have another word for itself besides offended.
Sphinx followed a breath behind her. No sound. No warning. Just there, where he hadn't been before, both of them standing between the party and Revy.
The air changed.
It was the same air. Same room. Same amber lights. But something in the quality of it had shifted the way a room shifts when something very old and very patient decides it has heard enough.
Mia and Sphinx looked at Revy.
They didn't growl. They didn't hiss. They simply looked — and the looking had the particular weight of things that had already decided what came next and were simply waiting to see if it became necessary.
Lenora moved first. She stepped forward and gathered Sphinx against her — both arms, firmly, the way you hold something that could level a room if you let go. Lewd did the same with Mia, one hand smoothing the trembling fabric of her dress, the other holding her close.
The shadows beneath them rippled still. Whatever had come up hadn't fully left.
"You should watch what you say," Lenora said quietly. Her voice didn't rise. "These two are Derpy's pets."
Revy looked at them. Then at the shadows. Something shifted in her expression — not quite retreat, but recalibration.
Lenora's grip on Sphinx didn't loosen.
"The wolf girls," she said. "When you said that — were you talking about Vemi and Vambasta?"
Lewd looked up from Mia. "Because if you were—"
"Those two are connected to Derpy," Lenora finished. "Directly. If you know something about them that we don't, now would be the time."
The three sheep looked at each other.
Revy's red eyes moved back to the shadows still shifting beneath Lenora's feet. Back to Mia, still trembling in Lewd's arms. Back to Lenora.
"Sharp ears on the little hare, quick to name what's in the air."
She leaned back.
"We'll get to that — in time, I swear. But first — tell me how much you care."
Lewd kept her face still and her hands folded and her mouth shut. But her paws had curled inward, tight, the way they did when something had gotten under her skin far enough that being polite about it cost actual effort.
Revy looked at them across the table — arms folded, red eyes level, the smug curve of her mouth suggesting she had already weighed them and found the number disappointing.
"You girls are soft and still untried, perhaps it's best you step aside. Go home, go rest, go tend your wounds — leave wolf gods to their better rooms."
The frustration moved through Lenora fast — up from the chest, into the jaw, out toward her mouth before she could stop it.
"Remember," Crysha said, without looking up, "you're being monitored."
Lenora took a breath.
Let it out.
"They are Derpy's friends," she said. Even. Measured. "They are getting stronger. Both of them." She looked at Revy. "So if you know something — about the wolf girls, about any of it — I'm asking you to tell us. Plainly."
Slurry shifted in his seat.
"Elder sister." He looked at Revy with the particular expression he used when he had already decided something and was now informing her of it. "We took the magic orb from him the grand elder . We used the magic orb that built this place. We traveled a very long distance to be here." A pause. "I was dragged along because the grand elder didn't trust me to guard her at the summit." He let that sit for one second. "Maybe we could extend the same trust to them. If we find him — if we actually bring the wolf god home — think about what the others would say."
Revy said nothing.
Lenora looked at Slurry. "Don't assume Derpy would go easily to a place he's never been. He doesn't follow people just because they ask."
"He can be remarkably gullible," Celica said.
Her voice came through the bracelets — warm, unbothered, and very slightly amused.
"He went with you the first time he met you. After you chased him down."
The blush arrived before Lenora could do anything about it.
Derrpy's eyes went wide.
"You're flustered —" she started, leaning forward—
"I was deep in thought," Lenora said.
"That is not what that looks like—"
The emporium shook.
Not an earthquake. Not an explosion. Something more specific than that — a single focused shudder that moved through the building the way a sound moves through water. Every shelf trembled. The weapons in their cases swayed.
And then they came.
Sphere-like objects — smooth, glowing faintly at their edges, moving with too much purpose to be falling — sailed through the room in a cluster and flew past Revy without touching her, past the desk, past all of them, and buried themselves into the wolf dragon painting on the wall.
The painting absorbed them.
"That," Derrpy said, staring at it, "has never happened before."
She was already moving — crossing the room in her particular way that skipped several steps — and landed at the reception desk, bouncing, one hand on the surface, the other waving frantically.
"Sister. Sister come quick. The screen — the floating screen — it's showing something — it's blurry it's—"
She pressed both hands to her cheeks.
"—it's getting clearer—"
Two circles of light appeared.
They came from nowhere and settled — one in front of Lenora, one in front of Lewd. Soft. Glowing. Waiting.
Lenora looked at hers.
Then she reached out and touched it.
The image came slowly — distance first, then detail. Derpy. Dragon form. Far away from wherever he was, or far inside himself, singing quiet and low in a voice that sounded like someone choosing words carefully in the dark.
Hush now, hush now—don't you cry, I'm stitched together, I don't know why. Lenora found me, hand in hand, Dropped me softly in this land. Kiss on paper, contract tight, Promise made in candlelight— Sorry, love, I tried my best… But broken vows don't let you rest.
Lenora did not move.
She stood with her hand still touching the circle and did not say anything. The words stayed in the air longer than sound usually stayed.
Lewd touched her circle.
Lewd, oh Lewd, my careful flame, I helped you quiet—never named. I hid my hands, I hid my care, Like kindness is a snare. Wish I had a little time, Just one more breath between the lines— Because "I'm fine" is what I say When what I mean is "please don't go away."
Lewd's eyes went bright at the edges.
She knew this moment. She knew exactly which moment this was — the alleyway, the flowers, Whisperfen in the rain. She recognized it the way you recognize a room you've stood in before in the dark.
She didn't say anything either.
The screen drifted closer.
And then they saw it.
Two of them.
Not a reflection. Not an echo. Two.
The first was in harpy form — wings glowing at the edges, something ancient and sealed moving underneath the surface of him, taking on two figures who moved like wardens — armored, disciplined, built for containing things. He used the spears. Beams of light cutting across the space between them, not enough to stop them, but enough to keep them from finishing it.
The second was dragon wolf — the form they knew, the shape they recognized — and he was not fighting the wardens. He stood in front of something else entirely. A panda princess. A rabbit girl. Between them and whatever was coming from the other direction. Five small figures in maid outfits flickered at the edges of the image, moving fast, moving together.
He was protecting all of them.
Both of him. Stretched between two fights at once.
Lenora's bracelets moved before she did.
The sand stirred. The letters along the band blazed yellow and Celica's Embers lunged — not at Lenora, not through her — at the painting, the same place the sphere objects had gone through, pressing toward the other side of whatever was between here and there.
"Derpy." Celica's voice came raw through the bracelets. Raw in a way Lenora had never heard from her. "Derpy let me come back. Please. I know you're struggling — let me come back—"
The bracelets pushed through.
But the book stayed behind. The physical form of Celica's Embers remained on this side of the painting, anchored, and only the dragon authority threaded through — trailing like a ribbon, reaching — and it found him.
It found dragon wolf Derpy.
And it attached to his tail.
He went still.
Not calm — fractured. His head turned, frantic, searching for the source of the pull, the familiar magic arriving at the worst possible moment in the worst possible place. The wardens facing harpy Derpy saw the opening.
They took it.
Harpy Derpy lurched. The wings flickered. The glow went unsteady —
And then the screen went black.
The room was very quiet.
Revy looked at Lenora.
"Your book reached through and pulled the thread — and now your dragon fights half-dead. But tell me, dear, before we're through — how does one god come as two?"
"That wasn't me," Lenora said. "That was the book. I didn't tell it to do that — it moved on its own."
She crossed the room and picked up Celica's Embers.
It opened in her hands.
The pages were there — all of them, every single one — and then they weren't. The paper didn't tear. Didn't burn. It simply faded, slow and deliberate, the way a voice fades when the person speaking it has finally said everything they needed to say and walked away. The letters went first. Then the texture. Then the weight.
Lenora stood holding a cover with nothing inside it.
She didn't put it down immediately.
She stood there with the empty book open in both hands and looked at the blank space where something had lived and thought about all the times Celica had spoken through it — through her — and the way her voice had always sounded like someone who was choosing to stay even when staying cost her something.
Celica had chosen.
She had gone back.
Lenora closed the cover. Held it for one more moment. Then set it down on the desk, gently, the way you set down something that deserves the care even after it's gone.
"I need to think about something," she said quietly. "The only times I ever saw him use a calamity book — actually use it — was when we fought together. And that doppelganger effect." She looked at the empty cover. "Was that him? Was it always him and she was just—"
Piggybacking, Celica had said. Months ago. Through the bracelets she no longer had.
Those were his powers. All of them. I was piggybacking off him.
Lenora said nothing else.
Across the room, Revy stood up.
It wasn't a gradual thing. One moment she was seated, the next she wasn't, like the decision had already been made somewhere before the body caught up with it.
"Brother, sister — lend me your ear, I'm taking what I need from here."
She moved to the wall behind the desk — the one lined with things that had no business being in this world — and reached past all of it for two cleavers hanging side by side, dark-handled, well-used. She took them without ceremony and tucked them under her arm. Then a small bag from the shelf below. She didn't check what was in it.
She turned to face Derrpy and Slurry.
"Mind the shop and mind it well, don't let the service slip or fell. Feed our guests and let them rest — and see them safely on their quest. Every need they have — you meet. Every mile ahead — you greet."
Derrpy opened her mouth.
Revy looked at her.
Derrpy closed it.
"As for me — I've seen enough. Time to find him in the rough. One way in and one way through — I'll reach the wolf god. That's what I'll do."
She reached into her jacket and pulled out a piece of chalk.
It was ordinary looking. Small. The kind of thing that should have no weight to it.
She crouched at the center of the floor and began to draw — symbols, curved and angular in equal measure, arranged in a pattern that didn't follow any logic that any of them recognized. Her lips moved. Not loud. Just present — a low, rhythmic chant that seemed to come from somewhere further back than her throat.
The lines began to glow.
A door formed where there had been floor — upright, solid, filled with something that wasn't darkness and wasn't light but sat between the two.
Revy stood. Tucked the cleavers properly. Glanced back at Lenora once — just once — and her expression carried something that wasn't quite reassurance and wasn't quite a promise but sat in the space between them.
Then she stepped through.
The door closed behind her.
The chalk marks faded.
The floor was just floor again.
Derrpy looked at the spot where Revy had been standing.
Then she looked at Lenora.
Then at Slurry.
Slurry put his hands in his hoodie pocket.
"Well," he said. "Who's hungry."