The storm scoured gold leaf into tear tracks on tombstones. Ayla's nails split digging the third handful of mud. The empty grave's bronze plaque chilled like Lucas' prosthetic palm, engraved "Lucas van Neumann, b.1988, d.—" with fresh chisel marks at death year—like mechanical wolf bites. The copper box unearthed was smaller than her pre-rebirth urn, its lock jammed with half a sculptor's knife—the one she lost at fourteen.
(Twisting the blade released decay and chamomile stench, triggering her two-year-old analgesic withdrawal)
Medical records congealed by blood showed the earliest date: June 11, 2003. The night before her rebirth, Lucas' "illegal analgesic procurement" left his tibia nailed with twelve iris-engraved pins. Next was a 2005 storm log—his stolen surveillance tapes cost him a "Memory Flush" injection, administered by Odile.
"Don't drown your brain." Lucas shielded her from rain with his overheating prosthetic, steam parting the deluge. "These scraps aren't worth mourning."
Eric's watch chain snared the box, gear teeth slicing his glove: "Young Master claimed graveyard soil preserves lies...seems accurate."
Ayla grabbed mud-caked bandages—the 2008 spinal fusion gauze still clung to his removed neural sensors. Rain rinsed blood to reveal microchip etchings: "Ayla's backup pain receptors ver.7.3". She retched, realizing those phantom fingertip pains during sculpting marathons were his salvaged nerves.
(A rusting music box wheezed her mother's favorite Withered Iris through the storm)
Lucas collapsed, his spinal waterproofing rupturing. Cerulean fluid etched Odile's lab blueprints onto the coffin lid. Binding his bleeding neck port with bandages, Ayla found subcutaneous microfilm—him begging Odile: "Replace her pain threshold with mine, any blocker dosage".
"Your pulse..." His bloodied finger tapped her clavicle bolt. "...syncs with raindrops hitting gauze."
The box's bottom held a yellowed photo—fifteen-year-old Lucas fetal on studio floor, back carved with vent maps to her post-rebirth haunts. Blood scribbled the edge: "When she smashes the seventh Thorn Wolf, carve me into her tombstone".
Eric's laugh crackled with thunder: "Young Master's romanticism always bleeds."
Ayla ripped Lucas' shirt open. Rain sluiced twelve surgical scars forming an iris over his heart—each hid vials of ashes from burned birthday letters. The deepest vial held a silver hair labeled "Subject 21 Primary Gene Sample".
(The music box died as Odile's perfume oozed from grave soil)
Crimson lightning revealed the box's inner engraving—"Initiate Memory Purge Protocol 7 when inverse embrace thermal drift exceeds threshold". Lucas' grip clamped her wrist with sculptor-tutorial precision: "Leave...unless you want my death date engraved..."
Soil collapsed thunderously. A hologram rose from the coffin—teenage Lucas injecting sedatives into his temple, timestamped precisely to June 12, 2003 03:00: her rebirth moment.