Lue’s sickly, ghostlike hands trembled as she stared at potential—potential to ruin her life, potential to ruin someone else’s. That was the deal with grave digging, of course. Souls came from humanity, making anything unearthed volatile and horribly unpredictable.

This coffin was different, though.

Not because of what was inside—it was still a body covered in faded tattoos, vaguely human—but because of what had been _left_ with it.

A stained shoelace, wrapped thrice around the corpse’s wedding finger.

The weapon was strung so tightly, it was committing beastly strangulation.

To anyone else (anyone untrained), it would’ve looked meaningless, just an odd pattern of knots. Not to Lue, however; she had seen that arrangement before. An illegal binding sigil.

She nudged it gently. Her hand buzzed with a burning magic, indistinguishable from paranoia.

This wasn’t a regular occurrence. Someone had tethered the soul, anchored it to the body so it wouldn’t ascend. This meant two things: someone either wanted it trapped… or they wanted it _retrieved_.

At this moment, Lue felt she and the bound soul were kindred spirits: both unwillingly caught in the middle. The soul—suspended between death and the afterlife. Lue—caught between evildoing and dutiful completion!

Her job was simple: extract and sell. Not question motives. Not interfere with bewitched shoestrings!

But a twisted, macabre instinct urged Lue to tenuously inch closer. Her hands delicately loomed over the thread. If she unknotted the lace, she knew what could happen.

The girl had witnessed it before—how a soul, snatched brutally away from a liminal space too quickly, could take form.

_She should do it slowly. _

And so, Lue, with nimble hands, gently unraveled the thread.