The rain in the Scarred Hills was a fine, grey mist that didn't so much fall as hang in the air, soaking everything slowly and thoroughly. It was the kind of weather that made stone weep and deadens sound, turning the world into a blurred etching.
They held the service at dawn, because that's when protocol dictated it, not because anyone wanted to see the light.
For Larry.
They buried him on a rocky promontory overlooking the eastern scarp, where he'd sometimes go to grumble about the wind. His body was wrapped in a plain, brown shroud. There was no coffin. Wood was a luxury. The earth would take him back, faster here than in any city cemetery.
Calvin said the words. His voice was flat, stripped of its teacherly warmth, reciting the Earth-Denial from memory.
"From stone we are given form. To stone we return our breath. The truth of you endures in the weight you leave upon the world. Be still."
It was the standard farewell for a Stoneblood. It felt like a lie. Larry's truth hadn't endured. It had been cut short by a knife in the dark. His Characteristic—a Petrified Knot of gnarled, grey stone that had formed where his heart had been—rested on a small cairn beside the grave. It pulsed once, a slow, heavy throb of mineral energy, then fell inert. A fist-sized piece of "Unmoving Truth," now just a relic.
Rylan stood apart, collar turned up against the mist, his face a smooth, closed door. His Flowing Memory replayed the last time he'd seen Larry alive—the big man stomping off to the forward post, muttering about the cold. A clean, logical piece of the plan. Now he was a plot of turned earth.
Sirius observed, his hands clasped behind his back, an assessor at a resource audit. He gave a shallow nod when the last shovelful of wet dirt thudded onto the shroud. "Log it. Stoneblood Savant. Operational loss. Characteristic secured." He turned and walked back towards the outpost, his boots silent on the sodden grass.
For Anya and Toren.
They were buried together in a smaller plot further down the slope. No one knew their full rites. Anya had been Fire, Toren Earth. They got the generic, non-denominational service for Auxiliary Assets.
Calvin couldn't bring himself to speak this time. A junior Initiate, a Water-Adept girl who'd helped in the infirmary, read the bland, approved text from a damp card. "Your service is recorded. Your element is returned to the great cycle. Be at peace."
Their Characteristics hadn't fully formed yet—they'd died too quickly, their Astral selves shattered before they could crystallize. A few sad, mundane personal effects were placed on the grave: a charred firing-range tally for Anya, a worn geology text for Toren. The rain quickly soaked them into illegibility.
The handful of remaining Nightcrawlers—cooks, scouts, the medics—stood in a loose semicircle, their faces blank with a fatigue deeper than tiredness. They were watching the institution bury itself.
For Leximus.
This was done later, in the steel-grey light of late afternoon. There was no ceremony. No words.
The location was a patch of thin soil behind the outpost's rusting boiler shed, where chemical runoff kept the grass stunted and yellow. It was where they disposed of contaminated materials and failed experiments.
Two of the junior medics carried the grey polymer sack. They'd kept it in the cold locker. It was light.
Sirius oversaw, along with a stony-faced security Savant Calvin didn't recognize—probably sent from Central to ensure "sensitive disposal."
They didn't dig a proper grave. They scraped a shallow trench, just deep enough to cover the sack and deter scavengers. The wet earth came up in heavy, claggy chunks.
"No marker," Sirius instructed, his breath fogging in the cold air. "No record in the ground. He is to be an un-person. The anomaly is terminated. Erase the footnote."
The medics rolled the sack into the trench. It landed with a soft, final sound. They began shoveling the dirt back in. It wasn't a reverent act. It was janitorial.
Calvin watched from the corner of the boiler shed, hidden in the shadow and the rising steam. He saw the pale, blurred shape of the sack vanish under the dark soil. He thought of the boy in his study, flinching at a raised voice, his eyes holding a bottomless, quiet hurt. He thought of the hollow, cold presence he'd become. He'd been a question Calvin had failed to answer. Now he was a secret buried in poisoned ground.
Rylan did not watch. He was in his quarters, sitting on the edge of his bunk, staring at the Cinder-Heart where it sat on his desk. Its warm, pulsing light painted his motionless face in shifting shades of orange and black. Each pulse was a beat of a heart that wasn't there, a memory of a fire that had burned too fast and too foolishly. The Flowing Memory was a riptide, pulling him under. He didn't fight it. He deserved to drown.
Back at the shallow trench, the medics finished. They patted the earth down with the backs of their shovels, making it look as undisturbed as possible. The security Savant scuffed the area with his boot, scattering leaves and debris.
"It's done," he said.
Sirius nodded. "See that the site is added to the contamination log. Routine soil hazard. Nothing more."
They walked away, leaving the patch of freshly turned earth behind the shed. Unmarked. Unmourned. A secret in the mud.
In the infirmary, Esther floated in her amber tank, her breath bubbling slowly from the respirator tube. The machines hummed their sterile song, keeping the ruin of her body in a state of not-death. Her last act, the most illogical thing, had bought a phantom a chance. She would never know. Her war was over.
The rain continued to fall, a slow, cold seep that promised to wash away all traces, to blur the edges of the new-turned earth behind the shed, and to deepen the silence that had fallen over the Scarred Hills like a shroud.
The funerals were over. The disposal was complete. All that was left was the living, and the hollow spaces where the dead had been.