Chapter 2 

The Eve of Destruction 

 

 

The once-corpse sniffed the air as he sat inside the magic circle, apparently examining his "new" body.

 

"Nose works... That's good. I can see too... What about..."

He then pinched his pale forearm and winced.

"Ah. I can feel pain again. Splendid..."

 

All this time he was speaking to himself, either unaware of Delaney and Lucas, or just outright ignoring them. Delaney, however, watched him with growing awe.

"No way... I freaking did it!"

After using the desk chair to pull herself to her feet, the ginger immediately jumped into the air, pumping her fist in triumph.

"Hell yeah!! Well, there ya are, Lucas! One bonafide mentor, fresh from the afterlife! I gotta say, he looks a little young to be teaching a guy like you."

 

Lucas slowly leaned forward, looking the undead man up, down, and every which way he could…

"That's not him."

 

"... Wait..."

Lucas' words crashed the party going on in Delaney's head. It was enough to make her completely freeze, fist still held high in the air as her bewildered gaze bore holes into her client.

"...What!?"

 

"That's not my master. You just rose some nobody from the dead,"

Lucas shook his head, eyes clouded with annoyance and disappointment. He then curtly extended a hand towards Delaney.

"I want a refund in full for this inability to fulfill my request. I've no use for some random corpse brought to life."

 

"Huh? No no no– It's just gotta be the right guy!"

Panicking at the thought of handing over all the money she'd just "earned", Delaney frantically waved her arms in dismissal. She then pointed sharply at the man she'd resurrected, demanding his attention.

"You there! You're totally this guy's mentor, right? Tell him that you look different when you come back from the afterlife or something!"

 

Unfortunately, the man on the floor was apparently unperturbed by Delaney's urgency, and was currently licking the back of his hand – likely to see if he could taste. He then spat on the ground, with a loud “Ptugh!”, before finally looking up at Delaney.

 

“Huh? Oh right, talking… Hold on, mentor? I’ve never mentored anyone in my life. You’ve got the wrong… Wait, is that my…?”

He pointed towards Delaney, somewhat weakly, before rising to his feet and taking a step towards her.

Only to immediately stumble forward, his ankle collapsing and sending him back to the floor.

“UGH! Damn… motor controls…”

 

"Er..."

Delaney's once confidently outstretched arm wilted as she watched her resurrection turn into a ragdoll the moment he'd tried to stand. This couldn't possibly be happening…

"But... I don't understand... That can't be possible, I did everything the book said!"

She promptly retrieved her grim tome and flitted through the pages once more. Upon finding her page, she read the spell over and over again to ensure no steps were missed. Nothing seemed out of place in the instructions, nor were there any fine-print or notes upon the page that Delaney could have possibly overlooked. Suddenly, her mounting anxiety was interrupted by a sharp tongue.

 

"Then maybe it's your fault,"

Lucas tapped his runed tome with his fingers, impatiently waiting for this "professional" necromancer to give his money back.

"Maybe you just aren't cut out for Necromancy."

 

"Either of you got, like...a cane or something?"

Behind him, the undead man was currently trying to stand up again, but hardly succeeding. And hardly helping the situation.

 

"Aren't cut out for ... Why you--!"

That comment definitely struck a nerve in the girl. A sort of fire erupted in the emerald depths of her eyes as she stomped the heel of her thick boot into the floor, clenching her fists at her side. In the process, she'd kicked her chalk-on-a-broomstick contraption over towards the resurrected man. A dull "Ow" was his response, seeing as it had hit his leg somewhat furiously.

"What gives you the right to say something like that!? Necromancy is hard! Just because you make a little mistake doesn't mean you're... You're... You aren't cut out for it! I'm sure if you'd just be patient we could work something out!"

 

Lucas chuckled derisively, permeating the stale basement air with his disbelief.

"No, we won't. The sooner I can find someone to bring back my teacher the better. I don't want to waste my time with you any longer. Now give me back my money!"

He lunged towards the necromancer, grabbing her and attempting to find where she'd put the Astrid he'd paid her. 

 

"What-- Aah!"

Delaney gasped and cried out as Lucas forced himself onto her. She'd never felt anything quite as frightening as his tightening grip on her slender wrist, or his hand frantically traversing her body to find the pocket where she'd stashed his money. It felt unreal, yet very very real all at once. Even her words of protest struggled to pass through her lips before finally --

 

"GET THE HELL OFF ME, YOU CREEP!"

 

Delaney slammed her knee into Lucas' groin with all of her might, letting any morsel of attraction she originally held towards him towards him evaporate. The ginger then took advantage of his stunned state to shove him as far away from her as possible. Lucas stumbled back in great pain, clutching his crotch and almost losing his footing. Luckily, he bumped into someone behind him. Someone with a foul stench to boot…

 

"Ah... Thank you, deadman... Wait–"

He looked out his peripheral and realized that the man Delaney had resurrected was still on the floor, using the broomstick to pull himself to his feet. He was in the middle of the magic circle, yet Lucas was still only at its border, with something incredibly humanlike holding his back.

"If you're still there, then-"

 

Chomp!

 

The ghastly figure behind Lucas bit viciously into his neck, piercing the jugular as its victim let out a panicked cry. Rich blood splattered the shelves beside him as Lucas tried to reach for his tome, hoping to cast something – anything. But with so much blood lost and shock gained, he ended up fumbling the book out of his hands and over near Delaney as the undead assailant took him down.

As his head fell limply to the side, Lucas' final sight was of the resurrected man's hollow eyes widened in stunned horror. He seemed to realize the gravity of the situation, unlike Delaney, who could barely process what had just happened.

 

"What... What are... What's going on...?"

Her words were heavy with shock, unable to look away as this... corpse... began to devour the man who'd just assaulted her.

It was eating him, ferally, as if it was a starved animal. Yet its body was so withered and decayed one could barely make out any distinguishing features. As if someone had stretched sticky leather across a skeleton, leaving bits of flesh exposed haphazardly, with stringy muscle and sinew barely clinging to the joints...

 

"What the hell is going on!?"

 

While Delaney was rendered paralyzed, the resurrected man overcame his own shock. He urgently looked around the cellar before spying a filet knife on a nearby table, which was strewn with candles and wax. A surge of adrenaline allowed him to surpass the weakness in his limbs and sprint forward, snatching the knife. While the corpse-like creature was feasting upon Lucas, the man rushed forward and stabbed his blade from the base of the creature's neck and out its gaping, blood-soaked mouth. 

"C'mon... Die…!"

Impaled, the creature twitched, trying to claw something around it before falling limp over Lucas's mangled corpse.

 

"Ghouls... I thought as much."

The man sighed from exertion, his exhausted new body collapsing into a sitting position on the floor beside the massacre. 

"What... spell did you cast?"

 

Delaney had still been relatively stunned from watching the gruesome scene, but luckily she was quick to recover upon hearing the word "spell."

"Ah.. U-uhm, J-Just a basic spell to bring back the dead! It's... Here, from this book,"

She held the tome up in front of her torso, almost as if using it as a shield. Displayed was the page holding the resurrection spell in question.

"Nothing from this tome has ever really messed up before! That's why I don't… Understand…"

 

Ignoring her obvious nervousness, the man snatched the book from Delaney's slightly trembling hands. Feeling the leather-bound cover, and running his fingertips over the raised ornate inscriptions, brought a bit of old life to his cold, undead hands.

"I'll thank you not to call my work 'basic'..."

 

Instinctively, Delaney had made a grab for the book as it passed through her fingers. That tome had belonged to her since she was a child, so having it so ruthlessly ripped away felt like losing part of herself. Yet, the resurrected man's words hit her like a brick to the head. It was a good distraction from the two corpses merely feet away.

"Wait... your work? Just...who are you..?"

 

"Marrow; and yes, my work."

Marrow flipped through the pages of his book, skimming over most of the content the way one would search their school notes for an algorithm or reference.

"It's still in good shape... minus the faint scent of vanilla... Good for masking the scent of death, I suppose..."

His expert flitting of pages only stopped when he landed on the spell Delaney had displayed before he'd closed the book. In hindsight, maybe he shouldn't have been so overzealous in his nostalgia, but what can you expect from a man who just got a newly formed brain? Certainly not impulse control.

"Ah, here we go. Did you… Draw the circle with chalk?"

 

"Huh? Oh, yeah, of course. I lit the candles too,"

Unfortunately, Delaney was only half listening. She had unintentionally tuned out sometime during Marrow's muttering, her gaze straying to the bodies on her cellar floor. It was odd, but the more she looked at the two, the more Delaney was able to swallow the situation. So, curiously, she had meandered over to them. 

Now, Delaney gestured to the chalk on the end of her broomstick contraption -- which she was currently using to poke at the Ghoul.

So much for that distraction.

 

"Right, good… and how many times did you utter the word 'Riszè'?"

Marrow nodded in acknowledgement, still looking at his book. In fact, it was questionable whether he had even noticed Delaney move at all.

 

"Three, of co– Wait,"

Frustrated, Delaney whipped around to face Marrow again.

"Are you seriously quizzing me!? Now is totally not the time for that when there's a dead guy – no, two dead guys in my cellar!"

 

"Three, actually."

Marrow pointed a thumb at himself, regarding Delaney's indignation with a rather bored expression.

"Not to mention, this isn't a quiz. I want to know where you went wrong to cause this Ghoul to show up as a consequence, since in case it wasn't obvious, that's definitely not supposed to happen. Nothing I've ever crafted would be designed to cause such a– Oh Gods..."

 

As the words passed Marrow's lips he'd glanced back at the spell and immediately made a revelation. The once-necromancer then pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed in a language Delaney couldn't understand.

 

"Damn it… This spell is for me specifically. That's why you could bring me back instead of whatever poor soul that weirdo requested. I messed with the instructions to specifically bring myself back should I ever die. Ugh..."

Marrow tossed the tome back to Delaney with exasperation, wandering over to the two corpses. Still groaning a little at himself, he bent down and began inspecting the ghoul.

 

"That was before I'd ever tasted death, and how freeing it can be on the soul. No sack of flesh and bones to lug around, no hunger, no stamina, no need to even breathe…"

After looking the ghoul up and down, Marrow's gaze veered to the other tome in the room, not far away from the dead body of Lucas. Intrigued, he swiped the book from the floor as if it was a few coin and he was a gambling addict. 

"I could kill myself to get that all back, but I don't believe in wasting a perfectly good life."

 

Delaney was still stumbling to catch the book of necromancy, nearly dropping it in the process. Although she raised an eyebrow at Marrow's "theft" once she'd finally managed to tuck the tome under her arm, she really didn't think much of it. After all, was it truly theft if the owner was already dead?

Instead, Delaney was more curious about Marrow's words.

 

"So you're saying... Bringing back the wrong person... wasn't my fault? But the ghoul..."

A lump formed in her throat as Delaney tried to speak.

 

"Yes, that was definitely something relating to you,"

Marrow opened his new tome, looking over the spells Lucas wrote in it before dying.

"When you brought me back, you must have had excess Mana waiting to be used afterwards. That excess Mana must have shot out wayward, bringing the nearest corpse it could find to life as a ghoul. It's a standard byproduct of an imperfect ritual, so nothing too out of the–"

 

A choir of groans came from above them, along with the creaking of wooden stairs. Marrow gingerly took a few steps towards the cellar staircase to investigate. At the top of it was a small horde of ghouls, slowly making their way down towards the two necromancers from the door Delaney had mistakenly left open.

"What the... How much magic did you put into that spell!?"

 

From where she stood, Delaney couldn't yet see the horrors descending into her cellar, but their sounds of anguish and hunger were enough to paint a pretty vivid picture in her mind. It made her skin crawl with fear as she struggled to fully grasp the situation.

"Huh!? I just did what the book told me to do! It... It didn't have any Mana measurements like I was baking a cake or something! I didn't... Think about putting any amount of magic into it..."

 

This was bad.

 

This was really bad. 

 

Just how many of these ghouls did Delaney create? The full gravity of the situation couldn't even begin to fall upon her mind yet, as if her brain was preventing it in some sort of survival instinct. Instead, all she could do is tremble in grim anticipation, and the racing fragments of thoughts, clutching her necromancy tome to her chest.

 

"Hey!"

Marrow snapped at Delaney, whose nerves and anxiety were easily felt.

"If you've got anything in here worth keeping, I suggest you gather it now!"

 

He then slammed his hand on his open tome and pulled it back. The words on the page began to levitate and glow a fiery red, only glowing brighter and brighter as he tensed his fingers, letting the letters dance around them rather than evoking them just yet…

Marrow's voice had snapped Delaney out of her panic, luckily. She blinked for a moment at what he was doing, mesmerized by the ease of his arcane abilities, when the situation suddenly clicked for her.

 

"Ah, right!"

Delaney rushed over to her workbench, grabbing a messenger bag that was hanging beside it and filling the bag with various items from the bench. For as urgently as she worked, the ginger was very precise in her collection; working well under pressure was always one of her best qualities.

However, with every passing second the mass of ghouls shambled down the stairs. Some even stumbled down a few steps before picking themselves up.

Marrow stood at the bottom, the glowing flames of words around his hand swirling into a sphere before his palm.

 

"C'mon... Closer..."

When the Ghouls were close enough that one could just reach out to grab Marrow, he flicked his wrist and the orb exploded into a cone of fire. The heat was powerful enough to disintegrate all the ghouls blocking the stairs, leaving nothing but charred remains and a few melted feet that weren't quite in the line of fire.

 

"Hah! Well... That was– Fuck-!"

The fire didn't just burn the ghouls, but also Marrow's hand, and it was still aflame. Sure, he didn't have all his pain receptors, but he had enough for this misfire of magic to hurt. So, in a bit of silent panic Marrow waved his hand in the air, and even slammed it against the wall before his brain cells finally kicked in.

"Oh, right. Magic."

He grabbed the wrist of his burning hand and concentrated through the pain. Slowly, the flames began to die out, leaving his once pale hand now black with soot and ash.

"Phew... Hey, you got everything?"

 

By the time Marrow had turned around, Delaney was facing him with a messenger bag over her shoulder and an entirely unimpressed expression.

"Yeah, If you're done having a seizure... And haven't obliterated the stairs..."

 

Luckily for them, the staircase to the surface was only moderately charred, permeating the air with the fragrant scent of cherrywood. However, it was obvious that the surface was erupting in a commotion. As they scaled up the warm staircase, an underappreciated Marrow leading the way, the open cellar door welcomed them to a new world of horror.

It was more than just the ghouls in the basement. The undead were running rampant all around Veilein. Those who were quick enough were locking their doors and barricading their buildings while the less fortunate died in the streets. Screams cut through the din of groaning corpses, sobbing victims, and scrambling footsteps. It was a true nightmare…

 

"Oh cool,"

Marrow chided sarcastically.

"So you're just some... tsunami of a Mana Pool who can bring an entire city of undead to life? Gods, I should've stayed dead..."

 

As Marrow put a hand to his face, Delaney would catch a more personally ghastly sight. The ginger had been slamming the cellar door shut with her boot, and padlocking it as Marrow spoke, unaware of the hellscape her hometown had become. As she turned and faced the scene her blood ran ice cold, freezing her in horror.

Across the street, a ghoul was feasting on a fresh corpse. The Monster seemed to be half-covered in dirt, with once well-kept but now withered flowers and broken clay pots scattered around them. It's current meal was Ms. Petra, the lady whom Delaney tried to help merely hours ago. 

Her rather plump body was being gorged upon by the ghoul who surely took her life, when two more joined the banquet. Blood-curdling screams filled the air as the living fled the ravenous dead, and shots rang out periodically as some of the more prepared civilians fired at the ghouls with rifles and handguns.

 

"No... This can't... Be real..."

Delaney was absolutely petrified. It felt like her entire body was numb and immoveable, as if her brain was so incapable of processing the scene that it had simply shut down her senses altogether.

 

"As a Necromancer, I’m obligated be a little impressed, but gods this is giving me a headache..."

Marrow looked up at the sky, judging their direction by the position of the sun. Unlike Delaney, he was apparently unfazed by the horrific scene unfolding around them.

"To hell with standing around here. C'mon!"

 

Marrow roughly grabbed Delaney's hand and pulled her along as he made a break for the East. On top of being the direction with the least undead, it was the way to the nearest town, if his old memory was correct.

Luckily, Delaney didn't fight Marrow's guidance. She was too mortified to move for herself, so she stumbled along behind him, gawking at the scenery around her as a deafening ring filled her ears. Being that Veilein had a rich history of providing graveyards and burial services for the supernatural, it was no surprise that the town was so tremendously full of the now-undead. 

 

But this same town that Delaney loved so much, for all of her life... It was turning to ruin... All because of her...

 

"Everyone... I'm so sorry..! I'm ... I promise I'll fix this!!"

Delanry screamed these words to whoever might hear them, tears rolling down her freckled cheeks as she clenched her eyes shut. In doing so, she was able to tear her mind away from the atrocity around her and run with stronger, surer steps, tightly clutching Marrow's cold hand in resolve. As the ringing in her ears faded a new thought broke through her stupor.

 

I can't avenge the people of Veilein if I die alongside them…

~~~

The two ran until there were no longer any ghouls in sight, following the road stretching East from Veilein. They had silently agreed to stay off the road itself unless absolutely necessary, preferring to be closer to any cover they could use to hide from potential undead.

 

"I was not built for running..." said Marrow between panting breaths. He had let go of Delaney's hand some time ago, now only holding Lucas's strange tome. Delaney herself was just as out of breath, and her legs were so numb from running that when the two had finally stopped she simply collapsed into a half-sit on the grass.

 

"All... Those people... I don't understand what happened..."

She muttered out, shellshocked. They were surely several miles from Veilein now, and the ghouls didn't seem to be capable of moving very fast. This meant the necromancer's fatigue and disbelief was finally catching up with her.

 

"Like I said, you put a lot of mana into that spell. Too much, even.” 

Surprisingly, Marrow stayed standing despite his evident fatigue, as if used to resting like a sleeping horse. It gave Delaney the odd sense of being towered over by some mysterious and superior being. 

“I expected a ghoul or two to spawn as consequence from an amateur like yourself, but an entire city?"

 

Delaney listened dreadfully to Marrow's words, basking in her own devastating inferiority as it threatened to crush her very soul.

Eventually, she turned her gaze to her hands. They felt sullied... Stained. As if she'd taken every life within Veilein with those fair, slender hands.

 

"Veilein is called the City of the Dead…"

Delaney's voice barely allowed itself to pass through her trembling lips.

"It's the only city in Eydìs that accepts even the corpses of the supernatural for burial. The Veilein Cemetery was the final resting place for so many poor souls.... If the entire city was pumped with Mana, that means I've condemned them all to an endless nightmare..."

 

The necromancer clenched her tainted hands into fists before hastily trying to wipe the tears away with her oversized cloak sleeves. Delaney was trying desperately not to flatten beneath the weight of her own foolish mistakes, because somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that if she broke now her promise would never be fulfilled. It was an evident struggle, one which robbed Delaney of her voice once more. After all, if she continued to attempt speaking her mind, surely none of it would make sense. 

So instead, grief gripped her throat like a vice.

 

"Veilein? That explains the horde of undead; No Church of Seras, no place to properly burn the bodies..."

Marrow pondered on the thought before noticing Delaney's condition. He couldn't blame her, especially if this amount of death and destruction was a first for the young necromancer. So, after a moment of steeling himself, Marrow sat beside Delaney, running a hand through his shaggy bangs so he could see her properly.

"Who are you, exactly?"

 

Delaney couldn't answer him immediately. She took several moments to calm down enough for proper speech, wiping her sleeves over her eyes again as if trying to prevent more tears from shedding.

"I'm... Delaney... Delaney Chainsworne. My family isn't from Eydìs, but I was born and raised in that town... That town and that – er – your tome are the reasons why... I became a necromancer..."

 

Although the elaboration was unprovoked, it seemed to be helping her recollect herself. Marrow raised his brow at it, however, before averting his gaze from Delaney in staunch realization.

 

"Huh... Never thought of myself as a teacher. I only wrote my tome like a textbook so that whoever picked it up would eventually bring me back to life... Which I guess worked?"

He paused, then looked back to Delaney.

"I mean, I didn't want it to be like this, or... at all, really. The afterlife is much more freeing…"

 

"If that's the case... then why did you work so hard to make sure someone would resurrect you..?"

The ginger asked after a small sniffle, her tears finally drying. However, the way Marrow spoke of his current state made Delaney question it. As her tearstained eyes scanned his form she could tell something seemed odd about his materialization... Then, she suddenly remembered how his body seemed to glow from its core when he used magic. Though it was only caught out the corner of her eye, at the time she'd paid it no mind, too wrapped up in gathering essentials for their escape. But now, Delaney wished she'd seen it more clearly.

"Though... by the way you said it, something isn't right about the way I resurrected you, is it?"

 

"Did the sullen eyes and corpse-white skin give it away?"

Marrow shook his unkempt hair. He seemed... Neutrally tired. Not cranky, not happy – just completely and utterly done with everything. His skin did still resemble a corpse in color and complexion, and not only were his eyes sullen but their irises were drained of nearly all color. 

Marrow must have noticed Delaney's not-so-subtle examination of his features, because his expression stiffened as he continued to speak.

 

"When you're a Necromancer for long enough, there's a good chance you look at the undead and spirit stuff and think 'Hey, what if I could live forever?' It's a weird connection, considering we're all about talking to the dead and everything, but it's there. And if you're worth your salt as a necromancer, that weird connection will start to fester in your mind. You'll start finding ways to achieve it, and one of those ways I found is a personalized Resurrection Spell. The one that you cast from my book."

Marrow exhaled through his nose, letting the weight of his words settle.

"The thing is, I had never died before making that spell, so I never knew how freeing it was to just be a soul floating around in the afterlife. Once I died, I didn't see much of a reason to come back. I was pretty content with not having to care about… well, anything anymore. But now I’m alive again… sort of…"

He held up his arms, still becoming re-accustomed to their weight and function, and examined their features. Catching a curious peek herself, Delaney thought they looked almost translucent.

"It seems you screwed up the spell somehow. Since my new body wasn't fully formed, I still have a good bit of my soul well-accustomed to the ethereal lifestyle, and it's trying to compensate. In academia terms, you would call me a Phantom."

 

"A Phantom..?"

After listening intently, Delaney repeated the word, wracking her brain for its intricate definitions. She recognized it as one of those common terms that most people misunderstood, and after pursuing that thought for a moment revelation dawned on her.

"Oh right! They're half physical and half metaphysical incarnations of a soul. The results of a resurrection that was.... that was... Incomplete...."

Her words slowed as she realized what this meant about their situation. Delaney then sighed heavily.

"So you're telling me not only did I screw up by resurrecting an entire town's worth of undead corpses... But I couldn't even resurrect my target properly either? Just how bad of a necromancer am I!?"

 

Marrow chuckled at that.

"Not bad, just untrained. Not anyone raises a whole town of corpses just by getting a resurrection spell wrong; most people merely lose an arm or a leg, or raise a zombie..."

Shaking his head, apparently still amused by Delaney's self-doubt, Marrow shifted attention to his hand. He thought for a second, then concentrated on the limits of his current form...

 

After a brief moment, the bones in Marrow's hand became visible as his skin shifted from translucent to transparent. He had no blood, just tissue and muscle beside the bone, and as he moved his fingers, he felt a familiar weightlessness. It was slightly exhilarating for both parties.

"I will say, I much prefer being a Phantom to a human... Humans are full of gross limitations, but this… 'Half-metaphysical' deal doesn't feel too bad."

 

Delaney peered over at her companion's mesmerizing display. The way any semblance of flesh and tissue seemed to melt away as his bones glowed with dull purple magic... It was as if his skill as a necromancer and knowledge of the undead actually helped Marrow hone his new abilities as a Phantom. After all, he did write an entire tome on necromancy. If that alone was enough to teach Delaney up to this point, one could only imagine what he was capable of on his own merit. In fact...

 

"Marrow, I want you to train me!"

Her suddenly bold and determined tone was enough to catch anyone's attention, but was even more jarring to the frail existence sitting beside her. It was enough to break his concentration, returning his hand to normal.

"If all of this happened just because I'm untrained, then... I want you to train me so that I can make things right! Your teachings have already gotten me this far, so... Surely with some training I can fix my mistakes, and actually help people again."

 

"You want me to… what?"

Marrow was still trying to process her request, his pale eyes wide in surprise.

"Kid, I'm not a teacher. I just found out what worked for me and went with it. You can't seriously be asking the dead guy you just improperly brought back to life to train you."

 

"But... Who better to teach me about dead people than a dead guy?"

 

"I… Well that… Ugh…"

Marrow palmed his forehead with a groan, then sighed.

"Fine, whatever. I'll teach you, but you can't complain about my methods, even if they don't work how you want them to."

He stood up, looking down on Delaney once again. Only this time, she didn't feel so insignificant.

"Remember, kid. You asked for this."

 

Despite the grimness in his tone, Delaney gave Marrow a bright smile, her emerald eyes dazzling with the hope and possibility they'd always had in their depths. Shimmering with the fires of determination.

"Yes! Thank you, Marrow~! We're totally going to fix this mess. Together!"