The sewer tunnels stretched on, twisting and sprawling like the veins of a dying beast, pulsing faintly with the dripping, hissing, and shifting of the underground. Time had become a sluggish, distorted thing, they had been walking for hours now, the weight of exhaustion creeping into their steps.

  Ciel, usually one to keep up the pace, found herself slowing, letting her boots scuff lazily against the damp stone floor as she fell into step beside Miri.

  The rest of the team moved ahead, their movements quiet but purposeful—Raze and Sylva were leading, watching the tunnels, while Gorrug trudged forward like an unstoppable wall of muscle, Skrimp still nestled under one arm, twitching and making strange guttural noises every now and then.

  Veyra walked a little ahead of them, rifle resting on her shoulder, still humming some old-world tune off-key.

  Which left Ciel and Miri bringing up the rear.

  Miri didn’t mind the slow pace.

  If anything, she seemed to enjoy it, her feet moving effortlessly over the damp, uneven ground as she twirled her fingers through the residual magic still clinging to the air.

  Ciel glanced at her, then tossed her gun between her hands idly, voice lighter than the damp air around them.

  “So, Hex,” she mused, eyeing her with curiosity, “you’ve been carrying around a book full of dead things for as long as I’ve known you. Where does that habit start?” Though she knew the answer, she wanted to fill the silence.

  Miri let out a soft, breathy laugh, twirling a strand of violet hair around her finger before tilting her black-silver gaze toward Ciel.

  “Oh, darling, you make it sound so morbid.”

  Ciel arched a brow. “That’s because it is.”

  Miri grinned, not at all offended, and hugged her grimoire closer to her chest.

  “Well,” she mused, “I suppose I’ve always been a collector of sorts. Even before I learned magic, I liked… keeping things.”

  Ciel smirked. “Oh, so you were one of those creepy kids who kept dead birds and weird bones in jars?”

  Miri blinked. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Ciel laughed. “It absolutely is.”

  Miri pouted, but it was theatrical, playful, and she held up a slender hand, palm up, letting a small wisp of shadow magic curl from her fingertips like smoke.

  “When I was younger,” she continued, her tone shifting, becoming more absent, thoughtful, “I wasn’t allowed to practice magic. My family thought it was… unseemly.”

  Ciel glanced at her, picking up on the faint edge in her voice.

  “Your family didn’t want you to be a witch?”

  Miri huffed, giving a mock offense scoff. “They didn’t want me to be anything. Too fragile, they said. Too delicate.”

  Her fingers twitched, and the shadow wisp in her palm briefly flickered into the shape of a small, dark butterfly before dissolving back into nothingness.

  “Of course,” she added, a little too sweetly, “they’re dead now.”

  Silence stretched between them for a second too long.

  Ciel blinked. “Uh… should I ask?”

  Miri giggled, giving her a sly look. “No, darling. It’s more fun if you guess.”

  Ciel snorted, rolling her eyes. “Figures.”

  Miri stretched, her robe flowing lightly around her, chains jingling softly. “Regardless, I learned magic anyway. Found a teacher—an old warlock who lived in the ruins of a library. He taught me all sorts of things. How to collect essence, how to weave shadows into spells… how to make the dead whisper if you listen carefully enough.”

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  Ciel tilted her head. “And now you use it to heal us and store creepy sewer monster souls in your diary?”

  Miri grinned, biting her lip playfully. “Everyone needs a hobby. Mine just so happens to store souls in books… or eat them.”

  Ciel chuckled, shaking her head. “You’re weird.” Ciel had seen Miri eat the undead before, she was particularly good at eating… ghosts for some reason.

  Miri nudged her, bumping shoulders lightly. “And yet, you like me.”

  Ciel smirked. “I tolerate you.”

  Miri just hummed, her expression unreadable, knowing.

  They walked in silence for a while, the air growing heavier, the tunnels narrowing, the distant sounds of dripping water and shifting stone becoming more pronounced.

  Ciel finally exhaled, stretching her arms above her head.

  “Well, that was depressing. Any happy stories in that spooky little book of yours?”

  Miri laughed softly, but there was a weight behind it this time.

  “Oh, Ciel,” she sighed, “happy stories don’t end up in books like this.”

  Ciel paused at that.

  Then, before she could respond, Sylva’s sharp voice called from ahead.

  “We’re coming up on something.”

  Instantly, their banter faded.

  Ciel’s hands drifted toward her revolvers.

  Miri’s fingers flexed, dark magic curling at her fingertips, ready to be unleashed.

  Ciel didn’t hesitate.

  She moved to the front, slipping past Raze and Sylva, spinning one revolver between her fingers as she walked ahead. The tunnels had narrowed here, the walls slick with something thick and old, the air buzzing with an eerie, unnatural energy.

  Then she saw it.

  Them.

  At first, they were just shapes, half-hidden in the murky, flickering light of the tunnel.

  Humanoid. Unmoving. Standing in formation like eerie mannequins.

  Then one of them twitched.

  Ciel froze, her breath hitching as her eyes adjusted to the dim glow of Miri’s magic.

  The figures became clearer.

  Dolls.

  Horrible, human-sized dolls.

  Each one was porcelain-skinned, with exaggerated, too-perfect features, wide, empty glassy eyes, frozen plastic smiles that didn’t quite match their unnatural, jointed limbs. Their hands were delicate, fingers carved to look dainty, elegant, yet… too long, too sharp at the tips.

  Their dresses were gaudy, frilled, and stitched together from various fabrics, clearly torn from things that did not belong in this time.

  Ciel recognized the twisted remnants of an old-world aesthetic, but it was wrong. A warped parody of something once considered beautiful.

  And then—they moved.

  Their joints cracked, bending at unnatural angles, heads tilting in eerie unison.

  Sylva stepped up beside Ciel, eyes narrowing.

  “What the fuck.”

  Before anyone could react further, the dolls lunged.

  They moved like marionettes without strings, their legs and arms snapping unnaturally, heads twisting too far back, grins never faltering.

  Ciel fired instinctively, the first shot shattering the porcelain face of the nearest one.

  The head snapped back with a horrible, crunching crack.

  But it kept coming.

  Ciel cursed, dodging sideways, rolling into a crouch as one of them lunged toward her, clawed hands swiping for her throat.

  “Oh, that’s bullshit!” she snarled, pulling both revolvers, firing off rapid shots.

  The bullets hit, shattering limbs, but the dolls didn’t stop.

  Raze let out a low growl, swinging his greatsword in a brutal arc, cleaving through three at once, but as the limbs hit the ground, they twitched and writhed, trying to move on their own.

  Gorrug roared, swinging his warhammer, sending one of the dolls flying into the tunnel wall, shattering it into pieces of ceramic and cloth.

  Veyra, perched atop a broken pipe, fired off precise headshots, cursing under her breath when the dolls refused to stay down.

  Miri hummed, weaving her fingers in the air, a wave of violet-black magic surging forward, wrapping around one of the dolls—

  And then she flinched.

  Something cut through her spell.

  A presence.

  Something worse.

  And then… the laughter started.

  It was a strange, wooden sound, hollow and clicking, like something was knocking against the inside of a hollow frame.

  The dolls froze mid-motion, their bodies still twisting, still shuddering—but they stopped attacking.

  Because something else was coming.

  The tunnel ahead of them darkened, the flickering bioluminescence dimming, retreating as if the very walls were recoiling.

  Then—he stepped forward.

  A silhouette, tall and wiry, his limbs made of warped, blackened wood, his joints clicking unnaturally with every movement.

  His face was carved, but crude, exaggerated, too humanoid yet utterly unnatural. The wood grain stretched like veins across his cheeks, his hollowed-out eye sockets filled with nothing but swirling darkness.

  And his grin was carved into his face.

  Deep. Too wide. Too sharp at the edges.

  A marionette.

  But not just any marionette.

  A corrupted Pinocchio. One of the few legendary beasts of the sewers.

  He took a mocking bow, his wooden limbs bending unnaturally, his body jerking like it was being moved by unseen strings.

  Then, his head twitched toward them, his carved mouth moving far too smoothly for something that shouldn’t be alive.

  “I hate liars.”

  His voice was not human.

  It was a series of layered, unnatural tones, echoing as if coming from a dozen unseen mouths at once.

  Ciel exhaled, steadying her grip on her revolvers.

  “Yeah? Well, I hate haunted fucking puppets, so we’re even.”

  His head twitched, snapping to the side in a broken movement.

  And then, with one sharp, jerking motion, he lifted a hand.

  The dolls surged forward again.

  But now, they weren’t just attacking.

  They were speaking.

  Their voices blended into one, a warped, childish singsong.

  “Tell the truth, and you’ll be free~”

  “Tell a lie, and you’ll belong to me~”

  Ciel’s blood ran cold.