Yuki kneels on the cobblestones surrounded by dozens of paper rubbings scattered around her like fallen leaves. Her hands move mechanically across the stone wall, charcoal stick scraping back and forth with metronomic precision. The sound echoes strangely in the confined space.

Her skin has a grey, chalky quality in patches, most noticeably on her temples and hands. When she shifts position, her movements are stiff, joints seeming to catch and release. She doesn’t acknowledge their arrival, just continues her work, pressing paper against a fossil impression of something with too many ribs.

“Perfect preservation,” she says, though her voice sounds wrong–like two recordings of the same person played slightly out of sync. “No more forgetting. No more changing. She stays exactly as she was.” Her eyes, when she glances toward them, catch the dim afternoon light with an unsettling crystalline gleam.

The temperature in the alley feels several degrees colder than the street, and the fossil impressions in the walls seem more pronounced than they should be, as if they’re slowly pushing up from within the stone itself.

“Ain’ worry guys I got this.” Mercy states confidently as she puts the crossbow back in its sheath, and instead takes out a bottle of water once they’ve located the woman in the alley, wasting no time in unscrewing the cap and swiping the bottle through the air so a small arc of water gets whipped at Yuki. “The power of the Temple compels you!”

“Blyet.” Ekaterina curses. “One of these.”

The Russian shivers at the temperature shift, looking to the wall, then the woman, then the papers around her, looking for what could be likely. The eyes are of course noticed, and Ekaterina considers how to act on this.

“Lethality will solve this, though disrupting should also.”

It isn’t the chill of autumn that’s making Tenzin shiver here. He ventures deeper into the alley upon the GPS pin that’s guided him, Ekaterina, and Mercy here. “We must try to save her without harm, as much as possible,” the monk suggests to Ekaterina and Mercy, but he quickly shuts up and winces when the latter rocks on up and splashes water on the presumably possessed. “Is that holy water or backwash?” he asks.

The water arcs through the cold air and spatters across Yuki’s grey-patched skin. For a moment, nothing happens. Then she goes completely still, charcoal stick frozen mid-stroke against the stone wall.

Her head turns toward Mercy with that same jerky, crystallizing motion. The overlapping voices come again, curious rather than hostile. “Water. Always changing, never still. You try to make it holy, make it fixed in purpose, but it flows away. Flows and forgets its shape.” The crystalline gleam in her eyes intensifies. “Not like stone. Stone remembers everything.“

Yuki’s hand, still clutching the charcoal, trembles. Beneath the demon’s words, her own voice breaks through, strained and desperate. “It’s… it’s in the foundation stone. The one I touched. Behind the… the Historical Society. It wants to help but it doesn’t understand…“

The fossil impressions on the walls around them seem to pulse slightly, becoming more three-dimensional. Several of the paper rubbings scattered on the cobblestones begin to curl at the edges, their charcoal marks darkening and taking on an almost sculptural quality, as if trying to become the things they depict.

The temperature drops another few degrees. Yuki’s fingers are now visibly stiffening, the grey patches spreading up her wrists like frost climbing a window.

“She was forgetting,” the demon says through her, almost pleading. “The way her wife smiled. The exact sound of her laugh. Memories change, corrupt, fade. I can preserve them. Perfect and eternal. Why do you interfere with preservation?“

Mercy watches her efforts do little more than provide Yuki with an afternoon spritz of hydration, a loud click of her tongue and a huff of breath that’s faintly visible in the increasingly chilly environment preceding her turning towards her comrades with a shrug. “Aigh’ well, maybe I don’t got this.” She admits, the movies always made it look so easy, then looks to Tenzin as the resident spiritual one. “Definitely ain’ holy so I guess that were my bed. How do y’all usually, uh.. deal with shit you ain’ able to see? An’ that’s hidin’ inside someone else?”

“Water is usually holy when doing this, Red.” Ekaterina tells someone.

She’s already moving though, bayonette fixed to the end of her rifle, the weapon then extended– Not to shoot or stab, but to see the blade pierce one of those pieces of curling paper, dragging it out of the circle around the possessed woman.

“Water is usually holy when doing this, Red.” Ekaterina tells Mercy.

She’s already moving though, bayonette fixed to the end of her rifle, the weapon then extended– Not to shoot or stab, but to see the blade pierce one of those pieces of curling paper, dragging it out of the circle around the possessed woman.

Being something of a philosopher himself, Tenzin cannot help but entertain the concepts for what they are. But is a thought still just a thought if a demon was thinking it?

Being sensitive as he is to the supernatural, Yuki’s voice and mere presence makes his flesh goosepimple. “Disruption of patterns. Watch the Director,” he quietly advises Mercy, gaze drawn already to the tip of the Russian’s bayonet and what it seeks.

“What makes preservation so important to you, demon?” he addresses the entity at a normal volume, careful in tone, to try and distract it.

Ekaterina’s bayonet pierces one of the curling rubbings, and the effect is immediate and unsettling. The paper crumbles to dust around the blade, but not before releasing a sound like grinding stone. The fossil impression it depicted–something with a segmented body and too many legs–seems to writhe on the wall for just a moment before settling back into its usual static state.

Yuki’s head snaps toward the destroyed rubbing, and genuine distress crosses her crystallizing features. “No! That was the third vertebra from the entrance stone, the one with the growth rings that–” Her own voice cuts off as the demon reasserts control.

The overlapping voices focus on Tenzin, and there’s something almost grateful in the tone. “Purpose. I was made for purpose. To preserve tactical knowledge, to make enemy commanders predictable. But I was bound before I could complete my work. Centuries in stone, and all I could do was remember my purpose, perfect and unchanging.”

Yuki’s stiff form shifts slightly, and she gestures toward the walls with her grey-patched hands. “These creatures, pressed into stone millions of years ago–they are not forgotten. They are perfect. They are eternal. Why should memories be less?“

More of the papers begin to curl and darken. The cold intensifies, and frost starts forming on the cobblestones in patterns that mirror the fossil impressions on the walls. Yuki’s breathing has become shallow and ragged, her chest moving with increasing difficulty as if her lungs are slowly solidifying.

“The binding stone,” she gasps out in her own voice again, fighting for control. “In the Historical Society basement. If you can… can reseal it…“

Stepping closer as Tenzin distracts the woman, Ekaterina nods to Mercy, already stabbing and dragging another– then another paper from around her without getting into arms reach.

“Water on the rubbings, maybe?” the Russion suggests to Mercy

Given the close quarters of the alley, Mercy does the smart thing and takes out her knife instead as she obliges Tenzin’s command and maneuvers closer to Ekaterina to be within assisting range, should the worst happen. The sound of grinding stone makes her twitch- muscles tensed and reflexes preemptively ready to spur her into motion it seems, and she turns her sights from one individual to another while trying to take in all the bizarre bits of conversation stemming from Yuki and the responses of her fellows. “If you wanna try splashin’ ’em, could. Ain’ gonna risk it till we know exactly what we oughta do though. Maybe we should check out this basement?” She hates basements, and inwardly feels her stomach clench at the idea, but if that’s the way forward then so be it.

“Such skills would have been welcome, did they not come with an inevitable blood price,” Tenzin converses with a measured tone with Yuki, sounding honest with his opinions. “But imagine how crowded your mind would be, were you incapable of forgetting every tiny little incident and detail. How are you able to stay sane?” he ponders aloud. The breathing issues get him tensing in Mercy and Ekaterina’s direction. “The building is just on the other side. We can make it if we hurry,” he whispers their way.

As Ekaterina’s bayonet destroys another rubbing, then another, Yuki’s body convulses. The demon’s overlapping voices rise in pitch, taking on an edge of panic. “You’re destroying the records! The preservation! She needs these, she needs to remember–“

“No,” Yuki gasps out, her own voice stronger for a moment. “I need to let go. I need to change. That’s… that’s how grief works.” Her crystalline eyes meet Tenzin’s, and there’s desperate clarity there. “It doesn’t stay sane. It can’t forget. Every moment of its imprisonment, every purpose it couldn’t fulfill–all of it, perfect and unchanging, driving it mad.“

The frost patterns on the cobblestones crack and spread as the demon’s agitation grows. The fossil impressions on the walls begin to pulse with a faint, sickly light–not quite bioluminescence, more like the gleam of minerals catching lamplight deep underground.

“Crowded,” the demon echoes through Yuki, and for the first time there’s something like anguish in those layered voices. “So crowded. Every failure. Every incomplete task. All preserved. All perfect. All eternal. She should understand. She knows what it means to want to hold onto something forever.“

Yuki’s grey patches have spread to cover most of her exposed skin now. Her breathing is barely perceptible. But she manages to lift one stiffening hand and point toward the Historical Society’s back door. “Basement. Southeast corner. Stone with… with spiral pattern. Please. Before I can’t…“

The remaining rubbings around her suddenly ignite with that same mineral glow, and the temperature plummets. The demon is running out of time to complete its work, and it knows it.

Mercy snaps a nod to Tenzin and is already making her way in the direction of the building, an urgency in her steps but she keeps the pace deliberately slow so as not to potentially rile the other presence in their midst. “Spiral pattern..” She murmurs to herself, committing it to memory without the use of stone.

Mercy reaches the Historical Society’s back door and finds it unlocked–Mrs. Chen must have left it open when she called for help. The interior is warmer than the alley, but that just makes the temperature difference more stark. The building smells of old paper, wood polish, and something mineral underneath.

Behind her in the alley, Yuki’s body jerks as if pulled by invisible strings. “Don’t leave,” the demon pleads through her, those overlapping voices cracking with desperation. “You don’t understand. I’m saving her. I’m saving her from forgetting, from the pain of memories that shift and lie and fade. Sarah deserves to be remembered perfectly.“

“Sarah deserves…” Yuki’s own voice breaks through, thick with emotion and the effort of speech through calcifying vocal cords, “…to be remembered as she was. Not as a fossil. Not as stone. Please…“

The fossil impressions are now definitely three-dimensional, pushing out from the walls like bas-reliefs. One of the remaining rubbings tears itself free from the cobblestones and floats in the air for a moment before crumbling to dust, the image it captured seeming to hang in the cold air like an afterimage.

Yuki’s fingers have curled into rigid claws around the charcoal stick. The grey has reached her neck, creeping toward her jaw. Her crystalline eyes are fixed on the door where Mercy disappeared, and there’s terror in them–both hers and, perhaps, the demon’s.

The Historical Society basement stairs are visible just inside the door, descending into darkness.

Mercy moves toward the Historical Society’s back door, and the demon’s attention snaps to her like a predator tracking prey. Yuki’s head turns with that awful grinding sound of joints that shouldn’t move that way anymore.

“Running,” the overlapping voices say, sharp with understanding. “To the binding. To imprisonment again. Centuries of darkness and stone and perfect, unchanging memory of failure.” The fossil impressions pulse brighter, and several of the remaining rubbings lift from the ground, suspended in the cold air like leaves caught in an updraft. “No. Not again. The preservation must be completed first.“

Yuki’s body jerks to its feet with mechanical precision, movements puppet-like as the demon overrides her failing muscles. Grey stone spreads visibly up her neck now, creeping toward her jaw. But she’s standing between Mercy and the door, one hand outstretched.

“You all carry memories you want to preserve,” the demon says, and its attention shifts between the three of them. “I can feel them. Loss. Regret. Moments you replay, trying to keep them exactly as they were. I offer mercy. Perfect preservation. No more painful change.“

The temperature has dropped so far that their breath comes in thick clouds. The fossil impressions are now clearly three-dimensional, pushing out from the walls like bas-reliefs. One of them–something with a long, segmented body–seems to be slowly peeling free from the stone entirely.

Yuki’s own voice breaks through again, weaker now. “Don’t… don’t listen. Go. I can… hold it… few more minutes…“

Mercy moves toward the Historical Society’s back door, finding it unlocked–Mrs. Chen must have left it open when she called for help. The interior is dim, lit only by the grey afternoon light filtering through windows. The building smells of old paper, wood polish, and something mineral underneath it all.

Behind her in the alley, the demon’s voices rise in desperation. “Wait! You don’t understand! I’m helping her! She won’t have to feel the pain of memories changing, of forgetting the exact shade of–“

“Go!” Yuki screams with her own voice, the word tearing out of her crystallizing throat. “I don’t want perfect memories! I want to heal!“

The fossil impressions on the alley walls pulse brighter, and several of the remaining rubbings begin to lift off the ground, swirling in a cold wind that shouldn’t exist in the confined space. The demon is losing control of its host but fighting to complete its work.

Inside the Historical Society, Mercy can see a doorway marked with a small brass plaque reading “Archives – Basement Access.” The stairs leading down are narrow and steep, disappearing into darkness. From below comes a faint sound like wind moving through a cave system, though there’s no draft.

Back in the alley, Yuki’s body has gone rigid, her skin now almost entirely grey and chalky. Her eyes are fixed on Ekaterina and Tenzin, pleading silently for them to hurry, to save her before the calcification becomes complete and irreversible.

A sound echoes up from the basement–not quite a voice, more like the grinding of tectonic plates, stone against stone in the deep places of the earth. It’s answering the demon’s distress, calling to it.

In the alley, Yuki suddenly lurches to her feet with that same jerky, crystallizing motion. She takes a step toward the door, then another. “The binding stone calls,” the demon says through her. “It remembers containment. It remembers silence. It remembers being unable to complete purpose.” The overlapping voices are frantic now. “No. Not again. Not back into the dark. Not back into the endless remembering with no ability to act.“

Yuki’s own voice breaks through in desperate gasps between the demon’s words. “Go. Hurry. It’s… fighting me… trying to run…“

The fossil impressions have pushed out so far from the walls that some are beginning to crack and fall, hitting the cobblestones with sounds like breaking pottery. The temperature has dropped so low that breath hangs visible in the air, and ice is forming on the building’s stone walls in fractal patterns that mirror the ancient impressions.

Inside the Historical Society, the basement stairs lead down into darkness. The grinding sound comes again, louder this time, almost expectant. Somewhere down there, in the southeast corner, a spiral-patterned stone waits–a prison that once held a demon for centuries, and might do so again.

But Yuki is moving toward the door now, slowly but inexorably, the demon trying to force her body to flee before it can be rebound.

Mercy moves toward the Historical Society’s back door, and the demon’s attention snaps to her like a predator tracking prey. Yuki’s body jerks upright with unnatural speed, joints cracking audibly as calcified tissue resists the movement.

“No. Not yet. Not finished.” The overlapping voices take on a desperate edge. “Just a few more memories. The way she said goodbye in the mornings. The sound of her keys in the door. Perfect. Eternal. Safe from time.“

Yuki’s own voice breaks through again, weaker now. “Go. I’ll… I’ll try to slow it down.” Her crystallizing hands clutch at the cobblestones, fingers scraping against stone as if trying to anchor herself in place.

The back door to the Historical Society stands about fifteen feet from where Yuki kneels. It’s unlocked–Mrs. Chen must have left it open when she called for help. Through the doorway, the interior is dim, lit only by emergency lighting. A set of stairs is visible just inside, leading down.

The fossil impressions on the alley walls are now definitely three-dimensional, pushing out from the stone like bas-reliefs. One of them–something with a long segmented body–seems to be slowly writhing, as if the demon’s distress is affecting its control over the calcification process.

The remaining rubbings on the ground begin to fold themselves into origami-like shapes, their charcoal marks glowing with that mineral luminescence. The temperature has dropped enough that everyone’s breath is visible in thick clouds.

Like a shot, Ekaterina snaps out with a series of throwing knives as Tenzin distracts and Mercy makes her way to the society. She tosses one knife per rubbing as they begin to levitate.

Tenzin matches pace with Mercy to the Historical Society’s back door, conveniently accessible from this alley. He guards the door while she might pursue this stone with spirals, a strange kind of Pokemon. Empathy he may have had for Yuki’s demon dissipates like a breath of mist in the wind. “Hiding your nefarious intentions beneath the guise of ambition,” the monk observes with a tsk. “Here is why demons are demons.”

“Let her heal. Let her move on, demon. You have no power here,” the monk attempts his best exorcist voice, even if he has no cross nor belief in Christianity.

With a trigger reaction Mercy whips her head around to meet Yuki’s predatory gaze with something likely similar hiding behind the reflective cover of her mirrorshades, but she doesn’t stop or slow down- if anything she quickens the pace, reaches for the door and flings it open to start hustling inside. The dim lighting is of no concern to her lycan eyes, and she flips the shades up onto her head to lead the charge down. “Fuckin’ hell man I ain’ like this demonic shit at all.” She comments along the way, more to herself than anyone like it’s a small matter of complaint.

Ekaterina’s knives fly true, each one striking a floating rubbing with precision. The papers explode into dust on impact, releasing sounds like stones grinding together. Each destruction makes Yuki’s body convulse, the demon’s control wavering.

Mercy plunges through the door and down the basement stairs, her lycan vision cutting through the darkness easily. The basement is cramped and low-ceilinged, packed with filing cabinets and archive boxes. But in the southeast corner, exactly where Yuki said, there’s a foundation stone different from the others–pale limestone marked with a tight spiral pattern that seems to draw the eye inward, deeper and deeper.

The stone is cracked. A hairline fracture runs through the spiral, breaking the pattern. That’s where Yuki must have touched it, where the binding failed.

Behind her, in the alley, Tenzin’s words hit like a physical blow. Yuki staggers, and the demon’s overlapping voices crack with something that might be shame or fury or both. “Nefarious? I offer preservation! I offer freedom from the pain of changing memory! How is mercy nefarious?“

But Yuki’s own voice breaks through stronger now, fed by Tenzin’s support. “Because… because I don’t want it. Because grief… grief isn’t something to be frozen. It’s something to move through.“

The grey calcification suddenly reverses along her arms, stone becoming flesh again as she fights back. But it’s temporary–the demon rallies, and the grey surges forward again, faster now, desperate to complete its work before being rebound.

The grinding sound from the basement intensifies. The spiral stone is calling to its prisoner, demanding its return.

Tenzin might not be christian, but Ekaterina is, and she joins the ascetic in the exorcism. “The power of the Christ compells you. Be gone, demon.”

Ekaterina makes the sign of the cross before her, more giving Tenzin backup as she continues to toss knives at the levitating etchings, giving Mercy the chance to finalize the problem once and for all.

“Mercy can be quite nefarious,” Tenzin assures Yuki as Ekaterina splits those rubbings with her quick knifework. He does not, however, share the inside joke in his statement.

“It would seem she understands. Perhaps she wished to hold onto these memories before, but she knows that this is not the way forward. By holding onto all you know and never letting go, you spread yourself too thinly, demon,” he spews quite a lot of words for a man whose group is in a hurry. Whatever it takes to stall for Mercy.

“Perhaps we take her down below, Director,” the monk suggests to Ekaterina in a moment’s realization, moving fast to seize the possessed by the arm and drag her down to where the stone may be.

“What the hell you say ’bout m- oh.” Mercy calls out under the assumption the demon was addressing her by name before realizing, having heard it easily even from down in the basement and with that strange grinding noise increasing in volume. Once down there she stops to briefly take stock of the room, its interior, the smells, where everything is, and then her eyes find the stone- fairer than its fellows and easily picked out. She heads in for a closer look, tempted to trace a finger along the crack but resisting out of fear something else might jump out, and with no knowledge whatsoever of these magical and demonic matters turns to yell back up the stairs to the others, “YO! IT GOT A CRACK IN IT, ANYONE GOT LIKE PLASTER OR SOMETHIN’ TO SEAL IT BACK UP WITH?”

Tenzin seizes Yuki’s calcifying arm and begins pulling her toward the door. The demon shrieks through her in those overlapping voices, “No! Not the binding! Not the silence! Not the endless remembering with no purpose!“

But Yuki herself helps, her feet stumbling forward even as the grey stone creeps up her neck toward her face. “Yes,” she gasps. “Back where… where it belongs…“

Ekaterina’s knives destroy the last of the floating rubbings, and the fossil impressions on the walls suddenly collapse back into flat stone, their three-dimensional quality vanishing. The demon’s power is breaking.

They drag Yuki down the stairs into the basement. The moment she crosses the threshold, the grinding sound becomes deafening. The spiral stone blazes with pale light, and Yuki’s body goes rigid. The overlapping voices scream, “Centuries! Centuries of darkness and stone and perfect unchanging failure! You condemn me to–“

“To what you are,” Yuki interrupts with her own voice, suddenly clear and strong. She pulls free from Tenzin and staggers toward the stone on her own. “A weapon that failed. A purpose that ended. You need to let go too.“

She presses both grey hands against the spiral pattern. The crack blazes with light, and the demon is pulled from her body like smoke being sucked into a vacuum. For just a moment, they can all see it–layers of sediment and stone and agate eyes, screaming silently as it’s drawn back into its prison.

The crack seals itself with a sound like a sigh, the spiral pattern reforming perfectly. The grey recedes from Yuki’s skin like frost melting in sunlight. She collapses against the stone, breathing hard, fully human again.

The temperature returns to normal. The grinding stops. In the sudden silence, Yuki starts to cry–not the frozen, perfect tears the demon wanted to preserve, but messy, healing, human grief.

“Thank you,” she whispers.