Evelyn disappeared from Sisyphus’s sight, her shoes barely making a sound as she stepped into the small office she could only assume Edwin Vale had claimed as his personal quarters. The cramped room lacked the clinical order of the morgue outside, with papers spread across the desk and several drawers showing signs of frequent use. A briefcase sat to one side, its leather-bound compartment filled with documents. Evelyn lifted the top folder and opened it.
A small sound of revulsion escaped her before she snapped the folder shut, shoved it back into the briefcase, and closed the case. Her fingers clicked both latches into place, then she lifted it from the table and set it beside the door. Whatever she had seen inside had been enough to convince her that the case itself was worth taking. She turned instead toward the desk and began working through the remaining drawers.
“Hmm.” The drawers offered little of interest, and an expression of displeasure slowly settled across her face. The final compartment contained nothing worth adding to what she had already collected. She closed it and turned toward the door.
The sounds of Sisyphus moving bodies were still audible beyond the office, accompanied now and then by muted grunts of pain. The wound in his left hand had reopened sometime during the work, blood beginning to soak through the palm of his glove. Using Coagulate again was tempting, but he had already spent enough spirituality that another unnecessary ability risked leaving him worse off. Instead, he unwound one of the bandages from his forearm and tied it tightly around his hand before returning to the remaining bodies.
Several of the cuts had closed badly enough that stretching the wrong muscle pulled them open again, while the injured thigh forced him to shift his weight whenever he lifted anything heavy. He continued working despite the burning that followed each movement, treating discomfort as a secondary problem compared with the evidence still scattered through the morgue. Metal scraped against metal whenever one of the long drawers opened or shut. The repeated noise carried farther than either of them would have preferred.
Evelyn ignored the sounds for a moment as she worked through several matters in her head. Despite her sharpened mental abilities, she was tired from the long day. That was no excuse to become careless. They still had to leave the hospital and reach the nearest carriage without drawing attention.
Her footsteps tapped lightly against the stone floor as she left the office. She shut the door behind herself, turned toward Sisyphus, and approached him. The briefcase remained in one hand while her gaze moved over the blood left from the fight and the drawers into which the bodies had disappeared.
“It is a good thing you wear those robes and keep to the shadows.” She spoke aloud, though not loudly enough for her voice to echo through the morgue. In her mind, she imagined what would happen if one of the nurses discovered the bodies. The proper authorities would certainly be alerted. If they were fortunate, the bodies might be wheeled away before anyone looked too closely, and the blood could perhaps be dismissed as an examination spill.
“I will have to discuss the messier details with Lucien later, the ones I briefly mentioned to you earlier.” She looked mildly inconvenienced as she lifted the briefcase in one hand. “Have you finished in here?” Her attention returned to Sisyphus, lingering on the stiffness in his stance before shifting toward the nearby cabinets.
“Yes... but...” Sisyphus turned toward her and straightened his posture. He feigned sturdiness, unaware of how easily Evelyn could read the strain behind it. His attention shifted toward the three morgue drawers into which he had placed the bodies. Blood had already darkened portions of his clothing enough that the effort was not especially convincing.
“If we have not already been detected, I believe we can wait a few more minutes.” He did not volunteer the reason immediately. The dead men had left more behind than blood and corpses, and what remained could easily be worth more than Evelyn's payment for the entire job. His eyes remained on the drawers while he calculated the opportunity against the risk of remaining beneath the hospital.
“What exactly are we waiting for? Will your injuries heal on their own in that time?” Evelyn asked, leaning against the nearest table. Her gaze wandered across the room for a moment as her thoughts drifted. The smell of chemicals still hung heavily in the colder basement air, now mixed with blood and the faint residue of whatever Sisyphus had used during the fight.
“My injuries will heal without scarring, but not today.” Sisyphus answered honestly, though he refrained from telling his employer that the mangled hand alone would take nearly a week to recover. That was still significantly faster than a normal human could manage, but not fast enough to restore him before the end of their current contract. He frowned beneath the hood, having assumed Evelyn already understood why he wanted to remain.
Has that demigod taught her nothing? The question lingered while he studied her, though nothing in his posture revealed the exact direction of his thoughts. Lucien possessed godhood, lived under the same roof as Evelyn, and had apparently seen fit to send her into danger, yet she seemed to lack pieces of knowledge Sisyphus considered fundamental. The contradiction had become increasingly difficult to ignore.
“This is an important secret. It involves fundamental rules of mysticism and the pathways. Do you have any secrets to trade?” Hopefully the demigod had given her something. It would be a shame to exchange knowledge like this for something merely physical. Sisyphus watched her reaction with more interest than his casual posture suggested.
Evelyn stared at Sisyphus for a long moment. Her expression shifted as though it could not decide whether to be confused or thoughtful. The indecision was almost comical before it finally settled into something pensive.
“Trading? What is the point of that now? Am I supposed to trade something so that you may gain something?” It was an educated guess. If she was going to look foolish, she could at least make an effort at understanding first. Her attention remained on him while she waited for the logic behind the offer.
“It is an opportunity for both of us to increase our knowledge of mysticism. Though you live with a demigod, there must be nothing I can teach you.” His tone was sly and deliberately provocative. Its intent was obvious to a Spectator. Sisyphus stepped away and leaned against the wall of drawers, allowing the metal at his back to carry some of his weight.
The position served more than one purpose. Refusing the trade would not become a confrontation, the cabinets provided a convenient surface from which he could enter shadow if necessary, and his injured thigh no longer had to support him fully. Evelyn could read the practical considerations in his posture without needing any explanation from him. The attempt to appear casual remained only partially successful.
“How bad are your injuries for you to be trying this, Mister Sisyphus? Have you already forgotten that I am your employer?” Her amusement was genuine. The smile reached her eyes, though she showed no teeth. “If you wish for secrets to trade, ask nicely.”
She tilted her head, then began walking toward the stairs as though giving him an unspoken time limit.
I cannot ask for secrets to trade if I do not know what you know, Sisyphus thought. How would anyone? Her response had turned what he considered an ordinary exchange of knowledge into something unnecessarily personal. He pushed himself away from the cabinets and followed, deciding that the distinction was not important enough to argue over.
If mutual gain proved impossible, then he would gain alone. The thought lacked resentment, carrying the simple practicality with which he seemed to approach most transactions. His slight limp followed him toward Vale despite his effort to keep his steps even.
“You want me to bring the living man, correct?” Sisyphus stepped away from the wall and followed Evelyn at a casual pace, though the slight limp remained. His robe brushed across the stone behind him as he approached the unconscious Vale. The man had not moved since being struck down.
“I do. Now tell me, Sisyphus... what would you like to know about me?” Evelyn left the conversation open for honesty. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, her gaze flicking toward Edwin Vale, who still lay slumped and entirely unconscious. The briefcase remained at her side.
“I care to know whether you have been taught any secrets of mysticism by that... child...” Sisyphus took several steps toward Vale and shrugged off his oversized cloak, keeping his back to Evelyn. His voice was caught between reverence for a man who possessed godhood and confusion over Lucien’s childish form. Achieving godhood in the body of a child suggested some strange history, and Sisyphus could not help wondering what secret lay behind it.
Give me a secret like that and I would happily trade the laws of conservation and convergence, assuming she does not already know them. The thought surfaced clearly enough for Evelyn to catch without effort. Sisyphus crouched beside Vale and spread the robe across the cold stone, apparently unaware that the exchange he wanted had already begun in one direction.
“He has taught me nothing. I know nothing. It has reached the point where I have wondered whether he wishes me dead, because I have had to rely almost entirely on my own instincts.” Evelyn answered plainly and without discomfort. Internally, she was almost disappointed that she could not offer any of Lucien’s secrets. He had given her none.
“We spend decades struggling with a single potion, yet the demigods would rather keep their knowledge to themselves and let the rest of us fall to corruption.” Sisyphus sighed without turning around as he crouched beside Vale. His words were heavy, and a detectable sorrow radiated from him. He laid the oversized, sleeveless robe across the cold floor, rolled the unconscious Vale onto it, then began wrapping him in the cloth.
The bitterness beneath his words was different from the irritation he usually showed toward inconvenience. His hands continued working while the emotion remained, securing Vale with the same practiced movements he used for everything else. Evelyn could feel the weight behind the statement without needing to know the history responsible for it. Whatever years Sisyphus had spent advancing had not been pleasant ones.
“I have not been struggling at all with mine,” Evelyn said in a measured tone. She yawned and leaned against the wall behind her, the cold stone seeping through her clothing and sending a chill over her skin. “I am not trying to brag. I am simply being honest, since you seem to be the only person I have met so far who is not trying to wring more personal secrets out of me.”
She smiled lightly at her own joke, insensitive as it might have been.
Sisyphus stopped. His hands remained against the cloth wrapped around Vale, but the motion that had been steady until then simply ceased. The shift in his demeanor made it immediately clear to Evelyn that something she had said had shocked him. Even his breathing changed by a small degree.
Nearly every interaction with Eve forced him to revise his estimate of her Sequence and pathway. He possessed only scraps of information to work with, most of which seemed to contradict something she revealed later. Perhaps Nox would know more if asked, though involving another person in the question presented problems of its own. The immediate contradiction required no outside help to recognize.
Evelyn had just implied that she was above Sequence 9, possessed no notable combat skills, and had still managed to digest her potion at a respectable pace. Nothing about that matched Sisyphus's own experience. His hands remained resting against the rough cloth wrapped around Vale while he reconsidered everything she had said. The familiar certainty in his posture was gone.
Something was wrong with that picture. He looked toward Evelyn rather than the unconscious man beneath him. Curiosity remained, but it had been overtaken by something closer to apprehension.
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“If you do not mind me asking... how long did it take you to master Sequence 9?” Sisyphus spoke carefully. There was no slyness left in the question. He sounded like a man who had suddenly become afraid of the answer.
“Good question... A little under a year? Though I did not have much experience or many opportunities to gain it. I was mostly confined to a room studying.” She offered the information intentionally. There was knowledge to be gained from his reaction, and the shock she perceived from him was already reward enough. For a moment she considered giving him another piece, but instead waited to see what he would say.
Sisyphus swallowed. The small movement was visible beneath the edge of his hood, accompanied by a subtle tightening across his shoulders. Whatever answer he had expected, it had not been one measured in months. The difference between their experiences was too large to dismiss as talent alone.
The answer was obscene. Five years had never seemed impossible when he had nothing better against which to measure them. Now the number had changed meaning without changing at all. His gaze dropped toward the wrapped body as though Vale offered somewhere easier to look.
“It took me half a decade...” The whisper was nearly inaudible. Only Evelyn’s enhanced hearing allowed her to catch it. He remained crouched beside Vale, his posture losing some of the sharpness it normally carried. The admission seemed to cost more than any of the secrets he had offered to trade.
For a moment, the realization of how many years of his life might have been wasted subdued even his curiosity about how she had done it. Five years had seemed unfortunate but ordinary when everyone around him treated slow advancement as a fact of life. Hearing that someone else had accomplished the same step in less than one changed the comparison entirely. His injured hand rested uselessly against the robe while his thoughts moved elsewhere.
Evelyn approached him, still carrying the briefcase. She noticed the minute changes in his movements and the softness of his voice. Now that she focused entirely upon him, she gained a clearer picture of how badly he had been injured. The physical strain and the quieter emotional one sat awkwardly beside each other.
She cleared her throat, deliberately drawing him out of his thoughts and warning him that she was almost directly behind him.
“I see. Is this what you meant by a trade?” Her tone remained calm and collected. “If so, I would consider trading something else that I think might help you, though it will cost you.” She stepped around to his left side and looked down at the unconscious man.
“If that secret can cut the time it takes to master a potion to a fifth, I will trade one secret for it. No, two secrets.” Sisyphus nodded slowly. His face remained hidden beneath the hood of the layered coat he wore under his robe. His words carried subdued desperation as he kept his gaze lowered toward Vale, who now lay before him wrapped tightly in rough cloth.
“One secret and one promise.” Evelyn placed the briefcase beside herself and removed her hat, patting down several loose strands of hair that had escaped. The demand carried no hesitation. Her attention remained on Sisyphus rather than the payment he might offer.
“Reasonable? Besides, I have an odd feeling that what I teach you may change quite a bit about your future.” She did not know whether the claim was true, but her voice carried no such uncertainty. The morgue remained quiet around them except for the distant sounds of the hospital above.
“Are you familiar with the Law of Beyonder Conservation and the Law of Beyonder Convergence?” Sisyphus rose and turned toward her. His dark hood did little to conceal his anticipation. The layered coat beneath it had been cut in several places and stained crimson. Those were the secrets he had to trade, and he silently prayed that he had not misread her.
“Hmm? No, I cannot say I have heard of either.” Evelyn gave him exactly the answer he hoped for, and it was entirely honest. “So I assume you accept my terms?” Her head tilted slightly to the left as she held his gaze.
“Gladly. I accept your terms.” His shoulders shifted as he let out a quick laugh. The first word carried a hidden smile. The rest was more serious. For the first time since she had mentioned her digestion speed, some of the heaviness left his posture.
Evelyn shared his smile.
“I do not wish to be extravagant about this, but... every Sequence has a name, yes?” Her tone shifted subtly into something more akin to a teacher patiently guiding a student. The change was gentle rather than authoritative, as though she expected him to arrive at the conclusion himself.
“Each Sequence has a name, sometimes matching an obvious theme within the pathway and sometimes not.” Sisyphus nodded, uncertain why she had begun with something so basic. The statement seemed so obvious that he briefly wondered whether he had misunderstood what she intended to teach him. His impatience did not quite reach his voice.
“Why do you think each Sequence has a name to begin with? Surely they were not assigned at random.” She led him slowly toward the conclusion, testing how quickly he would grasp her point and whether she would need to guide him the entire way. Either outcome was acceptable. Evelyn watched the first signs of thought settle into his posture.
“Each Sequence was named after the abilities its potion grants. It summarizes them well enough.” Sisyphus replied immediately, not because anyone had taught him this, but because it seemed obvious. His answer carried the confidence of something he had never previously thought necessary to question. He waited for her response with the expectation that the lesson would move on.
“And by performing those abilities, you progress. So how would the name be relevant?” For some reason, teaching him through questions felt correct for this particular lesson. Evelyn gave him no immediate hint beyond the question itself.
“The name is a name. Why does it...” Sisyphus frowned before the thought finished leaving his mouth. The simplicity of his own answer suddenly sounded wrong. His attention drifted away from Evelyn as he began turning the question over properly. The pause stretched without becoming uncomfortable.
Names were important. Those who possessed godhood took extraordinary care in curating their names and meanings, and Sisyphus knew enough ritualistic magic to understand that the words were not ornamental. Honorific names could identify, invoke, restrict, and connect beings across impossible distances. Treating Sequence names as meaningless labels now felt increasingly difficult.
Did that same significance apply to Sequences? Using one’s abilities to master a potion made intuitive sense because it resembled developing any other skill. If the title itself mattered, however, then simple practice could not be the entirety of the process. His fingers shifted against the cloth covering Vale while he thought.
How do I use shadow and blood magic and also become a Shadow Ascetic? What does that even mean? He remained deep in thought, but gave no sign that he had surrendered the question. The morgue around them fell temporarily irrelevant while he searched through everything he associated with his own Sequence. Evelyn allowed the silence rather than interrupting it too quickly.
“What was the name of the Sequence you think the man who ambushed you possessed?” Evelyn prompted. Her attention remained on Sisyphus as she waited for the easier example to give him something concrete. The body hidden in one of the nearby drawers made the question particularly immediate.
“Assassin. Skilled with blades and stealth. I am familiar with several Sequence 9s, the sort that would appear on a job like this.” Sisyphus answered immediately. Another thought crossed his mind as soon as the words left him. Evelyn had noticed him inside the carriage when he first appeared, yet had failed to notice the Assassin hidden in the morgue.
“When you think about someone who is an assassin, you think about their traits, yes?” Evelyn paused, studying him. “Every name creates an immediate expectation of what will happen when that person appears, assuming you know what the name means.” She described it as though the name determined the traits rather than the other way around.
Was the name more important than the traits themselves? The possibility settled differently now that Assassin had given him something uncomplicated to examine. A person who merely owned knives and knew how to hide was not necessarily living as an Assassin. The distinction had become difficult to ignore.
“Is being the name more important than merely using the traits?” Sisyphus muttered. He continued before she could answer. “No. The names are often occupations. The traits are what allow you to perform the occupation.” His gaze lowered as he tested the idea against what he knew of other pathways.
But it had to be more spiritual than that. Simply performing a job did not mean understanding it. A person could hold a knife without becoming an Assassin, just as hiding in darkness did not necessarily make someone a Shadow Ascetic. The distinction sat somewhere between action and identity.
Perhaps understanding and embodying the essence of the role, the Sequence’s name, was the key. His posture stiffened as the thought settled properly, not with fear this time but with the sudden stillness of someone who had found the edge of an answer. Evelyn noticed it immediately.
“The name is the most important part of a Sequence. I understood that on my first day as a Beyonder. At least, it made sense to me.” She watched him carefully as she spoke, taking in his reactions and the fragments of thought that continued slipping from him. Nothing in her expression suggested that his own mind was supplying more information than he intended to give.
“I understand. I shall try to be more of a...” Sisyphus stopped before saying Shadow Ascetic aloud. The unfinished words remained hanging between them while he examined the title in a way he never had before. His mouth closed again beneath the hood.
Ascetic. Something like a monk, perhaps. Someone who wanted little and lived simply. The meaning had always existed inside the title, but he had focused almost entirely on shadow because that was the part made obvious by his abilities.
Combined with shadow, the idea suggested that shadow itself should be enough. Everything else could be discarded. Possessions, ordinary weapons, unnecessary comforts, perhaps even habits that pulled him away from the role began to look different when placed against that interpretation.
He suddenly understood why blades shaped from condensed darkness felt more natural in his hand than real steel. The thought reached farther than weapon choice, touching clothing, possessions, habits, and the way he used his abilities. For the first time, the title Shadow Ascetic sounded less like a label and more like an instruction. His excitement sat plainly enough near the surface that Evelyn did not need to search for it.
Evelyn smiled, amused that he had nearly revealed his Sequence. It hardly mattered. She already knew it from his thoughts.
“I am sure you will do wonderfully now that you know.” Her expression remained kind and offered no hint of what else she had learned. “Now, for the promise, because that is more important to me than anything else at the moment.” The lesson ended as naturally as it had begun, leaving Sisyphus to work out the rest himself.
Sisyphus was inwardly elated, though he continued listening in silence. The revelation about digestion had already justified almost any reasonable promise she could ask for. He had assumed they would exchange information back and forth, but he was eager to hear what she wanted next. Buying another few minutes also meant he could explain his own secrets without rushing.
“The promise is quite simple.” Evelyn allowed the air between them to settle before continuing. “Why do we not become friends? Not the paid friendship you offered earlier as a service.” The final words carried a tired displeasure, as though the very notion of friendship being tied to money offended her.
Sisyphus resisted the urge to answer, Deal. The word arrived automatically because agreements, payments, and clearly defined exchanges were familiar territory. This was not. Saying it aloud would reduce the request to precisely the sort of arrangement Evelyn had just rejected.
It would sound insincere, and at that moment he felt anything but. For once, the language of transactions and employment seemed like exactly the wrong way to answer her. His hand moved toward the hood instead.
He allowed the shadow magic obscuring his face to fade. Darkness retreated from beneath the cloth instead of swallowing his features, revealing skin where Evelyn had only ever seen an empty black hollow. For the first time since meeting him, there was nothing supernatural between his expression and her eyes.
For the first time, Evelyn saw his face. He looked young, far younger than the harsh voice, oversized robes, and familiarity with violence had led her to expect. The contrast was strong enough that her initial surprise arrived before any more deliberate observation.
Sisyphus extended a hand toward her.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, friend.” His voice sounded subtly different without the unnatural darkness beneath the hood. The offered hand remained steady despite the injuries elsewhere along his body, and the expression accompanying it lacked the slyness of their earlier bargaining.
Another bolt of genuine surprise passed through Evelyn. He looked young, much younger than she had expected, and also much more handsome. He wasn't the type of attractive that screamed manly, instead he had a subtlety about him that made his more angular face soft around the edges. His eyes were dark, along with his hair and brows. Sisyphus was certainly around Evelyn's age as well and the way he glanced away had her watching him curiously.
She did not let her gaze linger longer than felt appropriate. Her eyes dropped to the offered hand, and she placed her own neatly into his before shaking it.
“I thought it would be nice to finally have a friend. I value friends more than any secrets they can give me.” She beamed. Her hand remained in his only as long as the ordinary greeting required before she released it.
“Friends are best when they are limited in number. I have only two.” His own face brightened with a smile that seemed almost absurd against the bloodstained clothing. The answer came easily enough that Sisyphus nearly corrected himself the moment he finished speaking. His expression shifted by the smallest degree.
He now had three. The correction formed automatically before memory caught up with arithmetic. Evelyn remained close enough to catch the thought as easily as anything he had spoken.
Then he remembered that one of the previous two was dead. The brief warmth in his thoughts dimmed without fully disappearing. No correction was necessary.
“Quality over quantity, hmm?” The rate at which Evelyn received stray surface thoughts from him had begun to increase, far beyond what she expected. Even so, she mentioned none of the details that entered her awareness like involuntary offerings. The unconscious Vale, the cold morgue, and the distant hospital above them remained where they had been, but the conversation between the two had quietly changed something far more personal than the contract they had signed earlier.