“Obsidian Vein” – 3:47 A.M.

The tattoo needle buzzed low and steady, like a wasp trapped in a glass jar. Ash Viralli hunched over the girl’s wrist, eyes sharp despite the late hour. His fingers, stained with ink and ash, moved with surgical precision. Outside, the wind howled through the shattered cathedral spires, carrying distant echoes of inhuman growls.

“Almost done,” he murmured, voice gravel-thick, Italian accent curling around the syllables.

The girl said nothing. Just clenched her jaw and stared at the ceiling, eyes ringed with exhaustion. Ash recognized the look — not pain, not fear. Numbness. Like she'd already died and just hadn’t noticed yet.

He wiped the ink away, revealing a thin, jagged sigil — something half remembered from pre-Collapse occult books. “You said this wards off the screamers?” he asked without looking up.

She nodded, but her hands trembled.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, standing. “It’s yours now.”

He stripped off the gloves, tossing them into the fire bin beside a broken pew. Red light flickered across the old stones, casting monstrous shadows on the cathedral walls. Ash lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. Not from fear — from exhaustion.

Then he heard it. A low click. Like bone on tile.

He stilled.

The girl sat up. “Deadwalker?”

Ash grabbed the rusted blade beside the cot and moved to the darkened doorway. “Stay behind me,” he growled.

Another click. Then nothing.

Silence stretched like wire.

Ash didn’t blink.

Finally, whatever it was turned and left.

He exhaled smoke into the dark and muttered, “Too close.”

Turning back, he smirked faintly at the girl’s stunned face. “Payment’s ink, blood, or bullets. Your choice.”

The door creaked softly — not the main one, but the old connecting door at the back of the cathedral shop, where blackstone met splintered wood and scorched iron. It groaned on its hinges like it hadn’t been used in years, though Ash had oiled it yesterday.

She stepped through, silhouetted by the weak orange glow of dying lanterns in the adjoining apothecary. No blood. No limp. Eyes sharp, scanning the dark.

His girl.

Ash lowered the blade without a word. Relief didn’t show on his face — it never did — but the way his shoulders dropped, the way he finally let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding? That was enough.

The girl on the cot looked between them, blinking like she’d just realized something holy had walked in.

Ash flicked the cigarette aside, embers scattering across stone like dying fireflies. “She’s clean,” he said gruffly, as if daring the shadows to argue. “No screamers on her.”

The sigiled girl slid off the cot, cradling her wrist. "That's her? Thought you'd made her up."

Ash’s jaw twitched, and for once, he didn’t have a comeback. Just stepped aside so his girl could cross the room without threat. The kind of trust you didn’t speak aloud in this world.

He touched her shoulder — brief, grounding, like a promise — before turning back to the girl with the fresh ink.

“Payment,” he repeated, voice harder now. “Ink, blood, or bullets.”

The screamers would be back. The dead would always walk. But his girl was here. Safe.

And for a few seconds, that was enough.