Near the mouth of the alley, partially hidden beneath a fire escape’s lowest landing, something glints against the brick wall. A tarnished silver locket lies on the ground, its black metal chain coiled around it like a sleeping snake. The locket’s surface catches what little light penetrates the alley, revealing intricate engravings of thorny vines that seem to writhe slightly when viewed from the corner of one’s eye.

A faint sound drifts from deeper in the alley – not quite crying, not quite sighing, but something that makes the hair on the back of the neck stand up. The air here feels heavier somehow, thick with an emotion that has no name but tastes of salt and regret.

The green-painted door at the alley’s entrance stands slightly ajar, and from within comes the distant sound of someone weeping inconsolably.

Whilst the weapon Cara is carrying isn’t aimed at anyone specific, nor is it brandished, the butt of the weapon nudges a little closer to Cara’s shoulder barrel off to one side just a touch closer to a ready position as she watches Ren. Then Cara’s phone blips and she checks the screen only to curse. “Ghosts. I fucking hate ghosts.”

Constance points up at the locket, her keen senses picking it out effortlessly in the evening light. “Right there. Something fucked up in All Saint’s tonight, I think. I’ve been to enough exorcisms to figure that this is fucked.” She squints at the alleyway. “Might be cursing this house with sorrow.”, she tells Cara, ignoring Ren.

Ren watches them work with a kind of…worried fascination. Constance and Cara are here on work, and they’re largely just here. Not entirely sure why they are. Still, the crying, the hairs on the back of their neck stand up, obscured under a hood and they lean over. Drawn slowly to the sound. “…hello…?” they wonder.

“Don’t touch that thing! Mrs. O’Brien looked at it yesterday and hasn’t stopped crying since. Had to take her to hospital, we did.”

The locket’s surface reflects not the weak afternoon sun, but something else entirely – brief flashes of faces twisted in anguish, hands pressed against what appears to be glass from the inside.

Constance jolts upright, turning around at the noise of being chastised about the locket. “Who’s there?”

“Who said that?” Cara calls out to the person issuing the warning, tone guarded as she turns her head to watch for inbound threats from the angles the others mightn’t be looking at. “Give me vampires, werewolves or a board of directors meeting any day of the week. I was not expecting to be a supernatural therapist when I signed up to the Temple.”

“Locket…?” Ren says with a confused look. They frown and shiver. Clearly caught up in a kind of wrongness of the whole situation, but certainly wanting to stay out of the way of the pair.

a ship’s hold filled with the sick and dying, a small grave dug in frozen ground, hands reaching desperately through darkness. The psychic sensitivity makes the locket’s influence more immediate and intense.

The thorny vine engravings on the locket’s surface seem to pulse with a faint, sickly light.

Ren holds their head a little, wincing, as something lances through them. Sensation or the light. “O-ow…ow…” they mumble, staring lost at the locket.

Cara it seems had been more preoccupied with watching the perimeter and the source of the voice than she had the locket, her bearing militaristic and watching for threats a soldier might watch for rather than keying in fully to the more exotic nature of this potential supernatural threat. She didn’t see the imagery relecting in the surface of the locket.

“Don’t let them be forgotten… please…”

Ren shifts forward, toward the locket, drawn by it. Mentally, they seems open to it, this evocation through their supernatural sensitivity to such things. “What is it…? It’s so strange…horrible…?” They mutter

Constance frowns and makes sure to stay back. “Well, if she’s volunteering to touch it,” she mutters, unconcerned for Ren’s safety.

With no external threat seeming to appear Cara looks back to the locket, glancing warily aside at Ren periodically. If Cara were a hound, her hackles would be up. She’s visibly tense looking at the item. Cara also doesn’t make any move to stop Ren, morbidly curious.

The locket’s engravings pulse brighter, and for a moment, the thorny vines seem to reach outward from the silver surface.

Ren proceeds, unbidden, to try to seize up the locket.

“Carrreful.” Cara chides, though she still makes no move at this time to intervene.

Constance just watches Ren as Ren picks up the locket.

“Help them… help us all…”

Ren feels a crushing wave of grief wash over them – not their own, but the accumulated sorrow of dozens of people. The loss of children, the death of parents, the ache of leaving everything behind. Each emotion feels as real and immediate as if it were their own memory.

From the green-painted door comes a fresh bout of weeping, louder now, as if responding to the locket being disturbed.

Ren lets out a whimper soft, at first, but then a deep wailing escapes their throat. Tears feel then pour down their face as they sink, despairing to the ground. Their eyes no longer see anything around them, lost to the world as they sink into a deep and enveloping misery. They clutch the locket close to their chest.

Constance suggests mildly to Cara, “We could just take her from here and throw her in the observation rooms in Tempsec and see if destroying it would be safe?”

“Object works as our witness testified.” Cara says in low tones aside to Constance, biting the inside of her cheek as she hears Constance out, actually nodding as though that were a viable option. “That would remove the threat from the public domain. Once it’s in quarantine we can seperate them from the object. Maybe learn a little about our mysterious friend whilst we’re at it.” Cara raises her firearm to a low ready position, as though preparing for an arrest.

As Ren clutches the locket, their wailing seems to harmonize with the crying from behind the green door. The sound grows louder, more desperate, and suddenly the door swings fully open.

An elderly Irish woman emerges, her face streaked with tears, moving with the shuffling gait of someone lost in profound grief. She doesn’t seem to see Cara or Constance – her eyes are fixed on Ren and the locket.

“Siobhan’s child,” she whispers, reaching toward them. “She’s been waiting so long for someone to understand.”

The locket grows visibly heavier in Ren’s hands, the chain links seeming to multiply and coil around their wrists. The thorny vine engravings begin to spread beyond the locket’s surface, appearing faintly on Ren’s skin where they touch the cursed object.

Ren for a long time doesn’t or can’t move. Their eyes slowly trail up towards the woman, sorrowful, but also, the vaguest hint of understand beyond the distress, they weep deeply, ignoring the locket gripped tight in their hands. The vines which coil, and link about their wrist. As if to welcome it.

“Siobhan again?” Cara thinks aloud, before elaborating for present company. “Siobhan was mentioned at the last haunting too. Northwest of stop 103. Her child died of sickness. She wasn’t ready to move on…” There’s a note of unsteadiness in Cara’s voice. “Right whatever we choose to do, we need to do it promptly. We seperate the locket from the hoodie or we take them into Temple HQ.”

The elderly woman steps closer, her voice thick with accumulated sorrow. “She made it to remember them all – her family, her baby girl, everyone who died on the crossing. But it won’t let her rest, won’t let any of us rest.”

The locket’s mirror surface begins to glow with a cold light, and within it, clearer now, the face of a young Irish woman appears – gaunt, desperate, her mouth moving in silent pleas. Around her, other faces press against the glass from within, all reaching, all crying.

“She needs a proper wake,” the old woman continues, her eyes never leaving Ren. “Irish tradition. She never got to say goodbye to her family, never got to lay them to rest proper. That’s why she’s trapped, why they’re all trapped.”

The thorny vines on Ren’s skin pulse with each heartbeat, spreading slowly up their arms. The weight of the locket seems to be pulling them toward the ground.

The elderly woman steps closer, her tears falling like rain on the cobblestones. “She made it to remember them all – her parents, her brothers, her wee daughter. But the grief… it grew and grew, taking in everyone’s sorrow.”

The locket’s mirror catches the light, and for a moment all three can see the reflection clearly – not their own faces, but the face of a young Irish woman with hollow, desperate eyes, surrounded by the ghostly forms of countless others, all reaching toward the surface as if trapped behind glass.

“She needs a proper wake,” the old woman continues, her voice breaking. “They all do. The dead who were never properly mourned, never given their due. That’s how you break it – give them the farewell they never had.”

The thorny vines on Ren’s skin pulse with each heartbeat, growing darker and more defined. Time is running short.

Ren blinks, begins to slip from their reverie. “A-ah…ah! What’s…what’s happening!” They groan and claw at their hands, their wrist, trying to pry itself from their body. “H-help!” They cry.

“I’m about done with ghosts inflicting the misery they can’t get over onto the living.” Cara snarls, stepping forward the few paces between herself and Ren and striking the butt of her weapon into the back of someone hands, trying to knock the locket clear of the critter it is trapping.

“I’m about done with ghosts inflicting the misery they can’t get over onto the living.” Cara snarls, stepping forward the few paces between herself and Ren and striking the butt of her weapon into the back of Ren’s hands, trying to knock the locket clear of the critter it is trapping. Cara’s methods are rough, but she does appear to be trying to help.

Constance nods solemnly, scannign the area with her overwatch. “Yeah, this is a pretty…normal one, unfortunately.”

“Please… help us rest…”

The old woman kneels beside the locket, careful not to touch it. “There’s a way. The old traditions – we gather what we can of her story, light candles for the dead, speak their names aloud. Give them the wake they never had.” She looks up at them desperately. “I knew Siobhan’s great-niece. She kept some of the family stories. We could do it proper, right here in the alley where she’s been waiting.”

The faces in the locket’s mirror seem to grow calmer at these words, their reaching hands settling into poses of prayer.

“Will you help?” the woman asks. “Will you help them finally rest?”

The afternoon light is beginning to fade, and the weight of decision hangs heavy in the air. The curse can be broken, but it will require compassion rather than force – a proper farewell for the dead who have waited so long to be remembered.

Ren screams and the locket tumbles. They grabs at it, pulling it away, clawing at the chainlike vines which spread across their skin, trying to rid themselves of its pull. They don’t care for Siobhan. They don’t care about this woman, or the suffering. All they want is free of it.

Cara’s jaw sets as the woman remains steely and unsympathetic in her initial reaction before reluctantly dropping the guard. “Your loss is terrible… I don’t know the traditions, but if you carry them out i can bear witness and remember your passing.” Cara suggests to the woman.

Constance sighs. “Unfortunately I’m dogshit at the magic part of things. I don’t know the slightest about how I’d help with this.

The old woman nods gratefully at Cara’s offer and begins to speak in a lilting Irish accent, her voice carrying the weight of tradition. “Siobhan O’Malley, daughter of Cork, we remember you. Patrick and Mary O’Malley, her parents, taken by the fever. Little Brigid, her daughter, who never saw her first birthday on American soil.”

As she speaks the names, the faces in the locket’s mirror begin to glow with a softer light. The thorny vines on Ren’s skin start to fade, loosening their grip.

“We light no candles, but we offer our witness,” the woman continues, looking to Cara. “We say their names so they are not forgotten, and we release them from their sorrow.”

The locket grows lighter in Ren’s hands. The desperate reaching of the trapped souls transforms into peaceful gestures of farewell. One by one, the faces in the mirror fade away, finally at rest.

“Go in peace, Siobhan O’Malley. Your grief is ended.”

The locket’s surface goes dark, becoming nothing more than tarnished silver. The oppressive weight in the alley lifts, and even the weeping from behind the green door falls silent.

The curse is broken. The dead have found their rest at last.