#this will parallel

I think I died. It sounds beyond crazy, but Let me try this again, alright? With a little more conviction this time.

I was fucking murdered.

I clearly remember jotting some notes, minding my business when the icy bite of a sharp knife drew like a bow to strings across my neck. I barely had time to understand what was happening to me before I buckled and went black.

All my stuff from my apartment is gone, the door locked, nothing left. Was it a robbery? Well, if it was, then whoever did the deed is a complete and utter knob for choosing the poorest bitch in the Dunes to hit up for a quick coinpurse. Enjoy the stacks of case files I couldn’t turn into gil before they went cold. I hope you like ratty women’s clothing that smells like the business end of an industrial chimney. I think there was a stale loaf of bread from the food pantry in town, ripe for the taking, and about 4 gil rattling around in a leather pouch. A real fucking treasure trove. More likely than not, my landlord cleaned the place out five minutes after my body went cold and turned it over to a new tenant. We’re all just trying to get by in the desert.

But here’s where it gets good, right? You wouldn’t guess who I woke up with when I came to. Pitch blackness, a man on either side of me. I know what you’re thinking, and I had the same thought, too. Did I somehow get drunk again and outdo myself? Absolutely not. I’ve been drying out quite effectively thank you very much and, in case you forgot, I was fucking murdered. I’m sure of it. But I digress. Who else but Ezen and Lachlan should be at either side of me, equally as confused as to how we got there.

Turns out that Ezen was murdered, too. It’s not just me, alright? You can write me off as a drunk or a burnout, but Ezen? Safe bet. He was even able to go dig his own body up. Wild. I have no hope of finding mine—not like I have any family who would want to bury me properly (let’s not even talk about my cousins). I’m probably tossed in a sand pit somewhere, wasting away. And Lachlan? Who can even say. He was too hung up on the idea that something salacious had happened to say anything useful. An absolute gobshite. I’m almost certain two of us didn’t die and go to Lachlan’s bedchambers as some sort of afterlife. Gods alive.

But it leaves sort of a big question open, doesn’t it? A few of them, really. Got a pretty good idea of how I died, but who did it and why? What does this have to do with Lachlan and that creepy book? And...well, how the fuck am I standing here?

Whatever the case, we’re lying low—Ezen and I, anyway, at this bizarre little place in Gridania manned entirely by automatons. Lolah’s doing, that’s what he told me. Glad to see she’s managed something useful since she broke out of prison. He was supposed to return home to fix things up with his girlfriend...fiancée, whatever you want to call her, and then that whole murder thing happened. It seems in retrospect like it might have been trivially easy to try to drive a wedge in there if I wanted. A return to the good old days of flirting with disaster in exchange for a good fuck. But for once, I’m leaving well enough alone.

Would you look at that? Maybe I can still learn.