"You want me to extort her? Are you fucking crazy?" Pell asked.

The five of them walked back toward the entrance of the prison. Enya walked with her hand clasped in Pell's. Elria drifted beside the Dullahan, floating like a swimmer kicking their legs.

"The first time we met her, she snapped her fingers and changed space within the church. She can literally manipulate space. With a thought she could probably erase me—all of us—in an instant!" Pell continued.

"I can do that too, you know." Elria kicked her legs and moved ahead of them. "Listen. Felicity is loaded. She's got dough; all sorts of trinkets, artifacts, and mystical items."

Pell's soul-flames squinted. "Go on."

Elria smirked. "Look. I need your help. My physical body was destroyed again thanks to you two. The small portion of my soul I got back from Lyssia isn't enough. It helped me feel alive again, but now it's all gone."

"So? Where is that our problem?" Pell said, raising a hand to gesture at Enya and himself. "If you're expecting an apology—you aren't getting it."

"I'm the one who helped you get the Cauldron. The very least you can do is help me get some items to restore my body."

"You trapped the girl inside an endless white painting."

Elria rolled her eyes. "Yes, yes—I get it. You're still being petty. But listen—" She stopped kicking and stood in front of them. "How about a deal?"

"A deal?"

"You extort some items from Felicity—anything that'll help me get my flesh back—and the little doll here can make those items. She can gain experience making items as she works to restore me to normal. You told me she's supposed to be a crafting-based necromancer, right? Like Sable?"

Pell was confused for a moment, until he realized that the doll she meant was Enya.

"Sable? Was he a necrosmith too?" Enya asked.

"Necrosmith? Is that what your so-called class is named?" Elria replied, shifting her gaze to Enya and then back to Pell. "And no, he wasn't. From what I remember, he was strictly a regular necromancer. He just loved making things. People always made fun of him for not being born a dwarf."

Enya tilted her head.

"Getting the girl crafting materials is great and all, but I don't see how you fit into the picture. You just do nothing while she works to revive you?"

"Restore, not revive. I'm not technically dead. If you aren't satisfied with that—how about this: I travel along with you two. I'll teach her some things, maybe some witchcraft, and act as a guardian. I'll supervise her while she works. You get one of the strongest witches that has ever lived as a bodyguard, and the girl gets high-rarity materials and a mentor in witchcraft. I also know some things about crafting, though not a lot."

"Travel with us? How can we even trust you? You might make her create something that'll steal her soul and restore yours," Pell shot back.

Elria sighed. "I didn't want to resort to this. But since you guys are so untrusting—" She lifted her hand, palm facing them.

Pell immediately tensed, letting go of Enya's hand. He summoned his Soul-Harvester scythe, ready to slash at whatever attack she was about to use. Enya followed, raising her palms and forming two bone-spear spell circuits.

However, what Elria summoned wasn't an attack.

In front of her palm, a small puppet appeared, stitched together from cloth and straw, .

They relaxed.

"A voodoo doll?" Pell asked.

"Yes. More specifically, one for me. I'll bind this to myself and give it to you. That way, if there's anything you don't like me doing, you can just stab the doll or pinch it or whatever. Whatever is done to the doll happens to me."

"And if I cut it in half?" Pell asked.

Elria's eyes tightened. "Then you'd cut me in half. And no—I won't be able to survive that. I'm not immortal. That would kill me."

Pell grabbed the doll out of the air and looked at it. He looked back up at her. "How can I trust you? You could be lying."

"Aren't you a merchant? Appraise it or something."

"I'll do it," Enya chimed. She stepped forward and took the doll from Pell's hand. She used Insight on it.

Skill: Insight has been activated. Target: Voodoo Doll [Unbound] Revealed Information: A plain voodoo doll. Once bound with a soul, anything that happens to the doll will reflect back on the bounded target.

"It's real. It's a voodoo doll. Anything that happens to it will happen to whoever it's bound to."

Pell stared at Elria. He couldn't make out her expression. Was it a trick? Or was this the truth?

"Okay, regardless—how do you expect me to convince Felicity to give us more stuff? That's a big risk to be putting my life, and Enya's life on the line. She seemed like the typical, annoying arrogant person high on power and position. Like a noble."

Enya looked up at him.

Pell didn't look back. He simply coughed. "Are you going to convince her then? 'Cause there's no way she'd listen to us."

Elria shook her head. She floated back up into her swimmer's position and began to kick again. The rest of them continued moving forward.

"No. I'll be hiding. Don't tell her I'm there. I don't exactly want her to know I'm with you."

"What? Are you two on bad terms? How the hell am I supposed to extort her, then?"

She waved a lazy hand at her. "Just make up a lie. She's strong and arrogant, sure, but she's also desperate."

"Desperate?" Enya asked.

"She's been trapped just as long as I was. The difference for her is that her cauldron and athame have been stolen from her and used as the power source for keeping this prison functioning. Separating a witch and her cauldron is like losing a part of yourself. And she lost both cauldron and athame."

"So… what? She'd be so happy to see them again that she'd be willing to give us everything she owns?" Pell asked.

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A snort escaped Elria as she tried to contain a chuckle. "Of course not, you idiot. She'd be happy, sure, but she wouldn't give you everything just because."

"Then what the hell do you expect me to do?"

"Push her into a corner, merchant." Elria turned to face him, floating in front of his gait. "Get her into a position where she's trapped. You're the one with leverage. She also won't be able to escape the church she's been sealed in immediately. She's got to spend extra time repairing the thing. So even if she gets the Cauldron, you won't have to worry about her retaliating. Especially if I'm with you."

Pell looked down at Enya. She looked back up at him with a head tilt.

"Being rich is good, right?" Enya asked.

Pell paused for a moment, then looked back up at Elria. "Yeah. Being rich is good."

"If you're willing, I'll even give you some lines to really push the lie," Elria said, smirking. "And if things do get out of hand, I can at the very least make sure we all escape the church at the minimum."

"Phylactery?" Felicity repeated. Her eyes slid to the little girl struggling within the invisible chains.

There was no way that was true.

"A phylactery? The girl barely looks ten years old. There is no way she is at the level of creating a phylactery. Necromancer or not, come up with a better lie." Felicity stared at Pell, debating whether to decimate him.

"A lie? Well, I can understand why you'd think that." Pell kept steady in his seat, expression completely calm. "Asloche."

Felicity's face faltered. "How? How do you know that name?"

"How do you think?" Pell said, mimicking a smirk. "Soul-prison, right? All prisons need prisoners."

Felicity's expression hardened. "You met him down there?"

Pell nodded. "Yeah. Took quite a liking to Enya. We did him a little favor and he helped her create a phylactery. So now, even if she dies, she'll revive down in the soul-prison. All she'll have to do then is come back up and take the Cauldron outside. Asloche might even have an interest in it if she brings it back to him."

A flicker of concern passed over Felicity's face. "Then I'll just torture the girl. She won't die if she loses a few fingers."

"Touch a single strand of her and you'll never get the Cauldron," Pell said, voice cold. "That favor we did for Asloche also involved helping him out of the prison. A week from now he'll be free. I'm sure he'll fancy a witch's Cauldron and Athame placed outside the Church. We know you're more powerful than him. He even admitted so. But if you can't even leave the Church… you wouldn't want your soul-cauldron melted down into some sort of necromantic relic, would you? I wonder what happens to a witch if their cauldron is destroyed."

She paused, thinking it through. Her eyes burned fierce against the skeleton.

She examined his soul.

It was covered in darkness. Absolute scum. Greed and self-loathing. Pity. Hatred. There was only a small section that was bright white. With this—she knew he was lying. A complete bluff.

However, the problem did not lie with him.

Her gaze slid to Enya. Her soul—different. Strange, almost shaded by something. At the skeleton's words, Enya's soul should have wavered, revealing the conspiracy. Yet it did not. It was odd. Too odd. Felicity could not get a clean read.

It was pure white. No dark spots. Filled with innocence.

Contradiction coiled inside Felicity as she weighed her thoughts: one of them was lying; the other did not.

It made no sense. It was too risky to come to a definitive conclusion.

"Think about it," Pell continued. "You've been stuck in here for what, hundreds of years? Thousands? Surely a few items from your catalogue would be enough for a trade after all we went through?"

As if on cue, the sound of the death remnants rose outside. Felicity rose and moved to the front of the church. She peered through the blinds and found a pair of remnants staring down at her cauldron.

"No! Don't touch my cauldron!" she cried, panic slicing her voice.

Pell's voice came from behind her. "Be a shame if those remnants picked it up and accidentally dislodged the athame by mistake. What's that thing medics say? Don't remove the arrow? You won't die from the arrow itself. You die from the blood loss." He chuckled. "I wonder if that applies to your damaged cauldron, too."

She faltered. Then she released the binds. The invisible witchcraft holding Enya and Pell vanished.

Pell made a casual motion to crack his neck. "We have a deal, then?" he asked, voice calm.

Felicity growled her reply. "What do you want, skeleton?"

Pell's soul-flames flickered. Got her.

"Wow, you really didn't let up, huh?" Elria said.

The three of them were finally free—out of the soul-prison, and away from the death-trap that was Darsmouth. Felicity had given them a small charm that let them escape the boundary that held them in. She was now left behind in her church, left to repair her shattered soul-cauldron. Elria had said it would probably take months before she restored even a fraction of its power.

Elria's Dullahan was also left behind inside the prison. Unfortunately, she didn't have enough power to retain total control over it if she brought it outside. Something about being in a place filled with souls allowed her greater control.

"You said to take anything I could. She was desperate," Pell replied.

"Yeah, well, I thought you'd grab maybe eight items at most. Not twenty. She really was serious about killing or torturing you two. I was just about to teleport you both out of there."

Pell shrugged. "Merchants have to control their emotions somewhat. And I took as much as she was willing to part with. I watched her expressions—maybe I could've pushed for a few more, but she looked about ready to snap us in half if I went any further."

He opened his spatial inventory briefly, inspecting the spoils. Bundles of herbs, trinkets, and artifacts shimmered in the void, alongside chunks of raw metals and other materials. The storage was packed to the brim.

Half of it was meant for helping Elria regain her body.

The other half consisted of the most valuable things he figured a witch would hoard—rare ingredients, enchanted components, and more gold than he'd seen in years. It was a ridiculous haul. He'd even burned three skill points just to expand his inventory space enough to fit it all.

Not that he minded. There wasn't much for a merchant to spend skill points on anyway. He'd been saving them for years, never finding a good use for them—until now.

Enya reached into her pocket and gently lifted out the small crystal spiderling—its body faintly translucent, legs curled inward like a gemstone sculpture caught in sleep. She placed it carefully on her shoulder.

The spider's glassy eyes glimmered once before a soft, feminine voice came from within.

"Better view up here," Elria said.

It was strange, seeing the witch like this. After the ritual ended, her soul had been too weak to leave the soul-prison in its ghostly form. Even with Felicity's Cauldron close by, her essence would have unraveled the moment she crossed the boundary. So, she had done something else.

She possessed a body.

Enya's minions wouldn't work; they all had independent consciousness and traces of will that rejected her entry. But tucked away in Enya's pocket had been the dormant Crystal Spiderling—the offspring of the Spider Queen. A living vessel that wasn't quite alive. Perfectly empty and waiting for a host.

Elria slipped inside it like water into glass.

The result was… fitting. The spiderling's legs moved with unnerving precision, and its voice carried Elria's familiar cadence, smooth and mocking, but now with a faint, insectile rasp.

"So," she said, stretching two front legs lazily before setting them back on Enya's shoulder. "Where are you two heading next?"

Pell looked over at her—at it—and tilted his skull. "We're heading to Eiyuria."

"What for?"

"We're going to kill some people," Enya said simply.

"Kill?" Elria's voice clicked faintly through the spiderling's fangs. "Casually mentioning murder like that… how charming. Though I suppose one of you is a necromancer."

Pell snorted. "We might be going for murder, but I'm going for answers first. I need to know the truth of what happened there."

Elria leaned forward, her crystalline body catching the sunlight as she whispered near Enya's ear. "Personal, is it?"

Enya nodded slightly. "Yeah. I think the person he loves was killed by someone else."

"I don't love her, kid," Pell cut in immediately.

Enya blinked, realizing her whisper wasn't exactly quiet. "Right. Sorry."

"Well," Elria said, her voice carrying an amused hum, "whatever your reason, at least it's interesting. Murder and mystery—two things I approve of."

"Glad to have your blessing," Pell said dryly.

They continued walking along the cracked road leading away from Darsmouth. The wind carried the faint scent of ash and stagnant air. Behind them, the distant outline of the church shimmered in the haze like a mirage.

Pell's form had reverted back to his normal skeletal body. It was much more comfortable in this state.

"We'll fence the extra relics we got, use the coin to buy transport and supplies. Once we reach the border, we'll decide what to do next."

"Practical. Boring. Sensible," Elria said. "I suppose that's why you're still alive."

"And you're inside a bug," Pell muttered.

Elria's laughter came out as a faint, crystalline chime. "Temporary inconvenience. Once the doll here crafts me up a new vessel, I'll return back to my beautiful self. Until then, this will do."

Enya smiled softly, looking at the spiderling's delicate shimmer. "I think it's cute."

Pell sighed. "You would. Call the person who almost trapped you for an eternity, 'cute.'"

Elria rolled her eyes. "A couple days at the most. Why do you have to be so petty."

Pell ignored her.

The three of them walked on, the path stretching far ahead—three unlikely survivors leaving behind a dying town and a witch trapped in her own sanctuary.

For the first time in what felt like forever, there was no storm chasing them. Only the quiet road and the weight of everything still left to do.

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