"What?" Tanya said, her head whipping round.

Mrs. Eceer grimaced, the tension clear in her shoulders. "I said, I'll do it."

Tanya's mouth opened, then closed. "But you said…"

"I'm not a weak old woman anymore, Tanya," Mrs. Eceer said. Her eyes were resolute. She walked over to the sofa and lifted it with one hand. The legs of the sofa scraped softly against the floor, a low growl breaking the silence. Tilting her head slightly, she continued, "It took me a while to realise that." The sofa thudded back down again.

She wanted to argue—wanted to say she should be the one to do it—but her hands wouldn't stop trembling, and there was a raw, gut-deep part of her that knew she couldn't.

Mrs. Eceer didn't hesitate any longer. She walked over to Tanya and extended a hand, palm up. Her palm hung in the air unwavering—a contrast to Tanya's trembling fingers.

"Are—are you sure?" Tanya said.

Mrs. Eceer's larynx bobbed up and down. "Yes."

Tanya looked over to Ishita's sleeping face. Tears dripped down her cheeks. "She asked me…"

"Tanya," Mrs. Eceer said, her voice cutting through the thick air. She crouched slightly, trying to meet Tanya's downturned gaze. "How much do you know about the 1980s?"

It caught Tanya off guard. She wiped her cheek, blinked a few times. Her voice quivered still. More tears covered her cheeks. "Uh, not much. There was arcade machines and tube tops an', uh, Star Wars maybe?"

Mrs. Eceer gave a small, breathy laugh. It didn't reach her eyes. "It wasn't all neon lights and MTV." She pulled over a stool and sat down, hands clasped in her lap. Her voice dropped low. "Have you heard of AIDS?"

Tanya looked up and rubbed her fist across the bottom of her nose. "Uh, yeah. Kind of."

Mrs. Eceer stared into space. The candlelight threw long, wavering shadows across her face, making her look both older and somehow more alive. "I came out when I was twenty because of Dakari. He was a boy at my church who came out as gay and as a drag queen… I'd not even heard that word before. He invited me to the ballroom, and…" she sighed. "I eventually came out too."

Tanya swallowed.

"People got sick, a strange new illness targeting my community. They called it G.R.I.D back then—Gay Related Immune Deficiency." Her voice grew quieter, and Tanya watched the first tear drop down her cheek. It reflected orange against the candlelight. "I watched the people who showed me how to live—how to be brave—die one by one. No one knew what this was, just that it targeted gays. The news called it divine intervention. No one helped us." Mrs. Eceer pressed her hand against her chest as if steadying her heart. Her breathing grew uneven, fragile in a way Tanya had never seen before.

"Dakari was the first death I knew personally. We weren't close anymore. I'd made a new community. But I walked past his room, meeting others in the hospital, and he waved me in."

The pit in Tanya's stomach sank further. The walls seemed to lean in around them, the boarded up windows making it feel even more claustrophobic.

"It was fast for him. He'd only had it a few weeks. He got diagnosed with HIV encephalopathy, it was taking his brain away. Others had been deteriorating slowly for months… I said what do you need and he made me promise." Mrs. Eceer's voice cracked. She cleared her throat sharply. The sound was jarring in the soft quiet of the room. "If he slipped under and wasn't coming back—he begged me to pull the plug, to let him go." She looked Tanya dead in the eyes. "He didn't want to rot away. He was scared of becoming a ghost in his own skin."

Tanya whispered, voice shaking, "So… you did it?"

For a second, Mrs. Eceer said nothing. Her fingers twisted together in her lap, the knuckles bone-white. The candle on the table guttered slightly, throwing their shadows against the wall. Finally, she shook her head.

"No." Her voice was barely a breath. "I looked in that room every day. I signed the paperwork. Then it happened, and I couldn't do it. I couldn't make myself move. I was your age. I thought coming out was supposed to be my salvation. Instead, it felt like punishment. Like God was daring me to break."

A long silence stretched between them.

"The nurses were all busy. There weren't enough of them. His do-not-resuscitate order was in effect, so they just stopped the alarm and ran to another—someone they could help. They said they'd be back, but a long time passed."

She took a breath and continued.

Tanya found herself holding her own breath, afraid to disturb the memory.

"A man walked past pushing an IV. I'd seen him on the corridors before, first visiting and then as a patient. He walked in, saw me crying and said, 'Baby who died?' and laughed. I just cried harder. He asked me questions as I nodded and shook my head, and then when he was sure unplugging him was his wish, he did it for me. Then he touched my shoulder and said, 'oh child, he in heaven now.' I didn't see him again."

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Tanya wiped her face with both hands, the guilt, the terror churning inside her unbearable. Her palms came away wet, but it didn't stop the tears. "I can't—" she said, looking toward Ishita. "I know this ain't as bad as that, I just—"

Mrs. Eceer stood, slow and deliberate. Floorboards creaked under her weight. The strength in her face was like nothing Tanya had ever seen before.

"Tanya," Mrs. Eceer said, voice low but iron-clad, "I wasn't telling you this because one is worse. I told you because I want you to know I'll be okay. This isn't my first apocalypse."

Tanya sat frozen, her chest tight, breath caught somewhere between a sob and a gasp. The weight of Mrs. Eceer's words sank into her ribs.

Mrs. Eceer held her hand out again, and this time, Tanya relented.

Tanya lifted the skirt, reaching to her thigh and drawing it out of her skin. It stung like pressing down on a sunburn. The sword shimmered into being, faint and ghostly against the air. She had to concentrate just to feel it in her hands. She passed it to Mrs. Eceer.

"It needs somethin' organic to combine with."

"I know," Mrs. Eceer said. She twisted it over in her hands, Tanya assumed, whilst studying her interface.

Tanya walked toward the sofa and ripped a floorboard up. She didn't even need to leverage it; it just ripped out, nails and all. The sound of splintering wood broke through the parlour. She pressed it into the edge of the sword in Mrs Eceer's hands and watched as it transformed once more.

It was similar to the other sword but in a darker wood. The iron nails merged with it too, becoming a band around the base.

Mrs. Eceer twisted it this way and that before her. Its edge caught the low light with a dull, wicked gleam. "This will do."

Tanya turned back to Ishita, still in the same pose, her left arm limp at her side.

Mrs. Eceer positioned herself carefully. She tied the bandage above Ishita's wrist as tight as she could, yanking the knot across with superhuman strength. She stepped back. The sword rose. Tanya's heart thudded painfully in her chest.

"On three," Mrs. Eceer said quietly. "One."

The blade moved. There was no two.

A sharp crack split the air, and Tanya jerked her head away at the last second, squeezing her eyes shut. She didn't see it come off, only heard the wet, awful sound of it.

The feel of falling in her stomach was worse than it had ever been. She didn't want to look at Ishita's interface. All she could do was pray that the hand worked.

The seconds stretched out unbearably. Tanya stayed frozen, her hands by her side, nails digging into her palms. She looked up again. Ishita tossed side to side, but she still wasn't conscious. She groaned, like in a dream far away. Mrs. Eceer dropped the sword, and it clattered to the floor. She stared down at her hands, blood soaking through the makeshift bandage.

Tanya's breath hitched as the feeling continued—dropping—her stomach wouldn't stop dropping. "It—It's not summonin'!" she cried, running over.

Mrs. Eceer grabbed Ishita by the shoulders, shaking her. The force of it made Ishita's limp body sway, her head lolling back and forth.

Tanya's boot slipped across the floor, and she looked down, seeing a puddle of blood. Her eye caught on Ishita's wrist. She could see inside it—bones and muscle and blood—so much blood. The bandages tied like a tourniquet were slowing it, but not enough.

Ishita seized, her body shaking all over, eyes slightly open but rolled back in her head. Tanya stumbled back.

"She'll be alright," Mrs. Eceer said, looking at Tanya. "Her class will bring her back."

Tanya tried to just listen to the words, not the doubt behind them.

They both stood, staring at Ishita for a long time as she stopped seizing and then fell still. Tanya couldn't make herself check Ishita's pulse.

Mrs. Eceer swallowed. "We have time if the tattoo doesn't work. If—if it doesn't work, she will bleed out again and then come back. We will just need to stabilise her arm before she dies enough times to lose her Attributes entirely."

Tanya hadn't even thought of that.

Wait—

"She died already," Tanya said, realising. It all clicked into place.

Martyrs are always dead.

Mrs. Eceer blinked. "You didn't know?" She turned back to Ishita. "We must have spoken about it while you were recovering."

Tanya sighed, scrubbing a hand down her face. "So she doesn't regain limbs when she dies then. That was me pipe-dream backup plan."

Mrs. Eceer shook her head. "Based on the fight outside, it stabilises her and brings her back, but no regenerating."

They fell into another silence, neither moving.

The sword lay between them, a blood-slicked thing no one dared touch.

Ishita gasped, coughing and choking. She sat up, her eyes wide.

"Summon the prosthetic!" Tanya yelled.

"The tattoo!" Mrs. Eceer cried over her.

Ishita looked down at her arm, blinking and wincing like the world was far too bright. Her breath came in ragged little shudders as if every nerve in her body was screaming.

She said something garbled. Tanya picked up a 'how?'

"Focus on the design and the feelin' you get when healin'. It'll be that same space as your other Vitality Abilities," Tanya rambled.

Ishita scrunched her face, her missing hand pulling to float above it instinctively. The tattoo on her arm began to push up into the skin. Now that she was watching it on someone else, it reminded Tanya of those subdermal implants—body mods where silicone was put under the skin to heal around in strange shapes or to make little horns.

Tanya was ready for it to pull itself out like Assistant, but instead, it fell out and clattered to the floor. Tanya stared at it, then stared at Ishita staring at it.

Ishita leaned down. Mrs. Eceer dashed forward and picked it up before Ishita could fall off the tattoo chair and helped her back onto it. The chair wobbled and squeaked slightly under Ishita's weight.

Mrs. Eceer awkwardly offered it to her, wrist first.

Something about holding it like that reminded Tanya of passing someone a sword to wield, but the positioning of her holding the hand also looked like the strangest handshake Tanya had ever seen.

Ishita looked down at the raw flesh of her missing hand. It was so cleanly cut that it looked like a glitch. She didn't react. Didn't even flinch. Her head lolled around slightly from the effort of holding it off the back of the recliner. Her eyes were glazed over, like she couldn't process anything.

She pushed the stub at the prosthetic tattoo in Mrs. Eceer's hand, and they melded together at the wrist.

At first, Tanya could see the blunt end of her wrist through the tattoo, but as they combined better and better, Tanya couldn't see it anymore. It still looked fake, though—like the prosthetic hands she'd seen before that were slightly plasticky and not quite the right skin colour.

The moment they finished combining, Ishita let out a relaxed exhale, and her eyes flickered shut as she laid down again. The hand vanished the moment she fell asleep, but its impact remained. The stub had scabbed over slightly—still raw and with a bone clear in the centre—but no longer actively bleeding.

The Vitality had worked.

Tanya's legs gave out from under her, and she crumbled to her knees on the floor, feeling the weight lift from her chest for the first time in hours.

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