Chapter 134 The Price of Tears

Nilo lifted both hands toward the drifting mask, the rain between them shivering like a held breath at midnight. Porcelain met his fingertips, cool as a river stone, then slid into his palms with a sigh of relief.

“Are we certain about this, someone here should be certain,” Zinnia said, her hand tight on her satchel strap.

Nilo shrugged, “I’m not certain, I’m just tired of being the only empty thing in the room.”

“Then be careful, I will be certain for both of us.”

“Thanks, that’s the nicest threat anyone ever made me.”

Tink thumped his cane once against the planks. “Once the mask settles you cannot take the first tear back, so decide now, boy.”

“I decided when it said I could carry it with someone.”

He pressed the mask against his face, as the whole hall exhaled together in one long weary sigh. Rain poured upward from the floor in a silver torrent, wrapping around his body like a living cloak.

“Hush, small blank, I have you, let it fall,” the Weeper whispered, so close that the words seemed to come from his own ribs.

[ MASK BOUND ]

[Mask: The Weeper]

[Grade: Great Face of Sorrow]

[Bond: 1]

[Price: Weeps through every fight]

His patched coat dissolved into a hooded shawl of rain, the hems trailing silver droplets across the planks. His hair spilled down in strands of silver-blue mist, a staff of water glass forming in his grip.

“Do not fight the water, small blank, steer it,” the Weeper murmured inside his skull.

“Steer it where?” he whispered.

“Toward whatever is hurting, rain has always known the way.”

Knowledge poured into him like an incoming tide, the old art of bending a downpour around a lantern’s glow. The staff hummed against his palms, a long glass lantern with a cold flame burning quietly inside it all.

[ FORM ]

[Mask: The Weeper]

[Form: Mourner]

[Weapon: the Glass Lantern]

[Mastery: rain weaving, tide dances, grief weight]

“Young man, you have started to leak,” Clangor observed with some alarm.

“Darling, he looks magnificent, like a widow in a very expensive opera,” Cadenza sighed.

Tears slid down his face before he noticed, steady as a tap that someone finally turned after years of rust. He felt no sorrow, only a clean ache behind his eyes, like the breath before a very long overdue apology.

“Nilo, you are crying,” Zinnia said, stepping closer, her voice small.

“I know, it doesn’t hurt, it’s just… happening.”

The rope at his waist tugged once, a worried pull from a dock far above them.

“Not yet, Captain,” he muttered, “I’m in the middle of something.”

The black water on both sides shivered, then rose in dripping ridges as shapes stirred beneath the surface. Pale arms broke through one after another, dozens of drowned Tatters wearing rotted Heron masks and trailing weed.

“Mourners, they rise whenever a Face is claimed, stay behind the—” Tink barked, as the first claw burst through the planks.

Nilo tightened his grip on the staff, “A welcoming committee, how thoughtful.”

The first Mourner lunged with its claws raking toward his throat, but the staff swept up in an arc. A single tear fell from his chin onto its wrist, spreading through the rotted arm like ink in water.

Zinnia called out, already backing away, “Whatever you just did, do it more.”

The creature froze, then sank to its knees with a hiccupping sound, crushed flat by a thousand forgotten goodbyes. It wept silently into the planks, no longer a threat to anyone, a drowned soldier finally allowed to rest.

“Terrifying, beautiful, same thing,” Zilch said, his voice somewhere near his hip.

More Mourners surged over the causeway in a ragged line, weed whipping behind them like banners at a funeral. Zinnia’s rapier flashed in a golden fan, splitting her into three illusions that circled the flank at full speed.

“That is three of me, only one of them hurts, so choose carefully,” she called.

Calla slid between two Mourners without a sound, her vial hissing across the planks in a bitter violet cloud. Both creatures slumped into a rattling snore, their rotted masks drooping like candles left too long in the sun.

“Left flank is mine, Quartermaster,” she said quietly.

Zinnia’s tail scarf flicked, “Right flank is mine, and for the record I do not take orders from lavender.”

Nilo spun the staff overhead, the rain obeying him, twisting into a funnel that hovered high above the whole causeway. Each tear he shed fell into the whirlwind like a star, until the funnel crashed down as a great wave.

‘They aren’t dying. They’re remembering what they lost, that’s enough to put them down.’

The wave struck the Mourners head on, each drop landing on a heart like a stone in a well. They sagged, lowered their claws, and slid into the water in a quiet row, like children going to bed.

“Hahaha, I am so sorry, my laugh went off, I did not mean it, that is the worst possible timing,” Jingles squeaked.

Nilo wiped one cheek, still crying with his face perfectly calm, “It’s fine, it’s his hourly one, even grief has to share.”

“Darling, laughter at a funeral, how improper, I approve,” Cadenza purred.

Zilch’s voice rumbled from the rack, “Wrong time, right laugh.”

The last Mourner was the largest, a hulking shape in a cracked helm, dragging a rusted anchor chain. It swung the anchor in a screaming arc toward Tink, who raised his cane as if expecting it.

“Behind me, old man,” he said, his voice low and level.

He stepped between them, slid the Glass Lantern beneath the chain, and turned his wrist in a gentle twist. The anchor curled back along its own links, plunging into the water and dragging the Mourner down in silence.

“I did not need saving, you know,” he grumbled, straightening his apron.

“Obviously, I just wanted the credit.”

The hall fell silent, the rain thinning to mist, the last ripple fading from the water around the causeway. Nilo stood at the center with the staff planted, his shawl dripping, his face lifted toward the high ceiling.

The old man nodded slowly, “That was efficient.”

One Mourner stayed kneeling at the edge of the platform, humming a tide table in a faint cracked whisper. Across the brow of its small mask, someone once scratched four careful letters spelling out the single name Kiri.

“That is her, that is Kiri, the Captain’s Heron,” he said, his voice breaking on the name.

“She’s still singing,” Nilo said, his tears falling faster.

“She never stopped, small blank, the water keeps what it loves, so she is loved.”

“We cannot leave her here alone,” Zinnia whispered.

Nilo lowered the staff slowly, rain dripping from its glass tip in time with the humming of the kneeling Mourner. Zinnia lowered her rapier as well, the three golden illusions folding back into her like pages closing in a book.

“A knight may weep at a funeral, young man, I withdraw my protest on those terms,” Clangor said quietly.

“Weep all you like, kid, I will not tell a soul I saw it,” Drifter drawled.

“You will not, bring him down, she will sing it to him to the end.”

“I’ll bring him, I promise it on the ribbon,” he said, touching the gold knot on the rack.

“I feel lighter than I have in years, like I put down a bag I forgot I was carrying.”

“That is the first gift of Sorrow, small blank, it takes the weight and keeps the memory,” the Weeper murmured.

He lifted the mask away, expecting the tears to stop, but they ran on over his cheeks like rain. The coat snapped back to patched gray, the staff dissolved into mist, and still his eyes would not dry.

“It’s off, I’m back in my own coat… why am I still crying?”

“Will you stay quiet in my head?” he added.

“I will stay as long as the water does, small blank, I promise to hum softly.”

“Will the tears come every fight?” he asked.

“From the first blow to the last, small blank, and sometimes a little after,” the mask said.

“So I can’t fake being tough with a straight face.”

“You can try, but the tears will tell the truth for you.”

“Grief is a tide, small blank, it does not obey a clock, it will stop when it is finished.”

“You cry like someone who practiced not crying for years,” Calla murmured from the shadows.

“I practiced everything else, crying was on the list for later.”

“Later arrived,” she said.

Zinnia pulled a handkerchief from her satchel, folded it twice, and pressed it into his palm without a word. He wiped his face, yet the tears kept coming, as though he finally found a locked door standing open.

“Keep the handkerchief, I will not charge you for it,” she said, not quite looking at him.

“Is that a tally entry?”

“It is a gift, it goes in the other column, do not make it strange.”

“Maren would have liked you, she cried at weddings and funerals alike, never once at the pay line,” Tink said gruffly.

“I think I would have liked her too.”

“This is scary,” Jingles whispered, “I like it better when I am the one who cries.”

“Great, the price is a waterfall and I’m not even sad,” Nilo said, laughing a little, crying more.

The rope at his waist tugged twice, a firm pull from the dock far above.

“Two tugs means we found something,” Zinnia said, her voice softening, “three means Bruno is panicking.”

“Four means he is already halfway down the stairs,” Calla murmured.

He turned toward the stair with the squad around him, the lantern flame steady for the first time in years.

The climb back up the spiral felt twice as long, each rib ringing softly beneath their weary footfalls tonight. Water curved overhead in glassy walls, each drop of Nilo’s grief rising to join it in a silver thread.

“Thank you for not leaving me on the dock, I am still terrified, but thank you,” Jingles whispered.

“Anytime, you’re the only one of us who tells the truth about being scared,” Nilo said softly.

Behind them a thousand masks sighed, every tear he shed ringing against the planks like a tiny bell.