As the morning rain battered his window intensely by the minute, Jared rolled over to the side of his warm and large King sized bed, shivering from both the cold and his nightmares.

As he woke up with a gasp as his nightmare ends, he can't help but feel to be concerned about what is happening around the city, with the rising cases of patricide and with the looming tensions on international powers that he read so much in the newspapers.

A newspaper that he read says that men have been reported to have been missing mere days or weeks after their marriage and nobody knows why.

Everyone in the town was aware of the issue, including Hilda, and were concerned by it.

As Hilda walked down the street with knife in hand, her heart began to beat harder and harder from panicking on the inside due to her nervousness of this plan's unlikely outcome

But this is all she can think of, and she had to be ready if they tried to storm the house, for any reason.

And nonetheless, Stephen, David, Frida and Kaisa were also aware of these murders, having reported that some of their grown men went missing after they went back home. A young adult and an adult in his 30s has also went missing around their premises.

These cases had made Stephen quite worry about the wellbeing of his worker..

At the breakfast table, Frida is drinking a teacup of Chinese herbal tea in one hand and reading a newspaper on the other. As she reads the paper quite so gently, she's trying to look at the other sections in order to stop thinking of Hilda in her head.

'Stop, Hilda is probably dead at this point, and even if she isn't, she might not even be as capable as you thought.'

She sighs, downing another shot of tea before going back to reading the newspaper.

The actual Hilda was in her home again, spending her remaining pences on some remaining meat and salt along with some books to keep her entertained.

She 's currently sitting in a murky but somehow comfortable sofa with Dagger by her side, sleeping. She had been reading a book to give her rest before going about the plan that she had in mind.

After reading the final sentence, she placed the book hurriedly at the sofa before going to her bedroom, where she had set up a desk on how she will plan her assault on Jared.

She was free for the day because they started to have less and less funerals as either families were in crippling debt to pay for such, or whoever died was so rich that they could be buried in more luxurious terrains.

Needless to say that Stephen's methods had been de-stabilizing the main economic barriers between the upper class and the middle class.

She didn't mind THAT much, after all, she could get a lot of money as soon as he stripped Jared away from his life and belongings.

After practicing her moves on a haystack and updating her plans to the current day, she called it a day and walked out of her bedroom and suddenly seeing Dagger under the sofa.

She peered under it and as she saw him whimpering deeper into the sofa, a sudden burst of lightning filled the room, surprising Hilda that she bonked her head on the sofa's metal legs and scaring Dagger even further.

Seeing his scared state, Hilda coos him over the first time, and Dagger didn't move even with her in his sight. She coos him over for a second time and seeing that he won't move, she pulled him over out of the sofa and rubs his back.

As she runs her hand through the soft fur, she feels that he's shaking in fear, shakened by the thunderous thunder outside and Hilda feels that.

Then after putting him up on the sofa, it rained and suddenly the room became extremely chilly and both shivered at its breeze and with the battering rain hitting the makeshift roof, Hilda hugs Dagger closer to her.

But her worries still stand, as during Britain's infamous rains, two women in men's oilcloth visit the cemetery after one of their members reports one of their suppliers is last seen climbing over the cemetery fence.

They look around the cemetery, hoping to find their supplier in the rain, or at least their remains, and as they trudge through the torrential rain, they discover that a card sticking out of a specially displaced patch of dirt and mud.

They give it a closer look at it and it is what they feared. They handed each other miniature garden spades and began digging through the rain and after digging through soft earth for about 12 minutes, they saw the still-decomposing body of their supplier.

"Jaeden, holy fuck….."

and as they finally dug up the body, their suspicions were confirmed.

"I feel like stephen and his business can wait." One of the women said loudly in the rain.

"Yeah… we got someone else to take care of."

After throwing their garden spades upward, they lifted themselves up from the squishy dirt and mud and into the topsoil.

After looking at the grave one more time, she lifts a finger. "Now hold on a second, who the hell knows where she lives?!"

"I don't know," the other one shrugs, "but at least we all know why the guns aren't coming out soon."

Nodding at the conclusion, they both carefully walked their way out of the cemetery, their clothes drained of its oily exoskeleton and suspicions confirmed.

Kaisa was once again in her office, the heavy rain meant there would be no letters in the mail, and Stephen was unlikely to use his workshop. Seeing the rain tapping their glass windows furiously like an angry worker, she could just take another break with a glass of wine.

She pondered a bit of the other opportunities she could take during this time, mainly wanting to take a warm bath after quite a long time only taking quick ones at night to save time. Deciding there was no reason not to do it and seeing as if Stephen is too busy to reprimand her for doing it, she got up from her secretarial polyester chair and walk all the way to the family's bathroom to fill up the bathtub with warm water.

She has heard of these cold baths and plunge pools around, especially during her meetings with other businessmen, and she does not want to try that out, ever.

Then as she waited for the water to fill the bathtub nearly to the brim, she heard a knock from her behind.

It was David.

"Hey uhh….Kaisa?" He said over the door, with a clear hesitant tone in his voice.

"Oh, come in sir!" She said, loudly, letting him in the bathroom with her permission.

As he entered the room, he saw her still in her secretarial formal clothing but with a bathrobe hanging on her shoulders.

"Oh, uhhh I'm sorry if I'm intruding you at this moment! I didn't know you're taking your bath." David apologizes, making a stance that implies he's walking out the door.

"No it's fine sir! I have some time… stay around for a while heh…" She insists, grabbing his arm and forcing him to stay around in the bathroom for a while.

"Wait, you sure? I mean, you're going to take a bath, right?"

Kaisa pulled her hand out of his arm. "Sure, just….stay here for a bit, it's been a while since I have some good company."

Seeing her face warm up to a big smile, he relented and sat at the wall next to the door, where he closed it shut. As he closed the door, he looked back up to see Kaisa taking the bathrobe off her shoulders and turning off the faucet.

"Uh…. this feels weird…shouldn't I turn around or….something?" He asks, with an awkward blush on his cheeks.

She looks at him looking up at her with puppy eyes and cheeks strewn with deep, strawberry red blushes. She can't help but turn herself away from his face to try and hide her own blushes from him.

"I mean, yeah, you should turn around! That's what gentlemen do when in the presence of women in a bath."

"Okay, okay." He said in a repeat, standing up and turning to the wall as she said.

Now with David's eyes toward the wall, Kaisa is free to unbutton the baggy Christmas sweater-like suit and the tie in a slow, button-by-button pace, and then she tosses it to the sink and then she wore the snow white bathrobe and then proceeded to tie the knot on the robe and took off the skirt.

While this is happening, David actually placed his face smack dab in the plywood wall, and as his nose pushed against the wall, he suddenly can smell garlics across the thin wall.

"Hey, what's with that smell in the hallway, it smells like someone painted it green."

Kaisa clutched the strings hard, how can he smell it from across the hall, then she felt like her waist become swell before looking down to see that she pulled the strings too hard in shock.

She loosened the strings a little before turning to David. "You can look now, also what was that you said?"

David turned around and he saw a grown woman with purple ends in a snow white bathrobe, and he really tried to zone out in order to not think of (you know) but he did hear the question.

"I said something across the wall that smells like garlic for some reason, is there any arsenic in there?"

Kaisa sweated in realization, she never read much of their books but she did put 2 and 2 together and now she felt horrified.

"...it didn't come from the hall b-but….yes that is arsenic."

"Kaisa, that thing is toxic! you should have brought it to my father and told him about it! Otherwise we might die too young!"

"I know, I'm sorry sir! It was just a little letter and I didn't know it was laced with it!" She whimpered, accidentally slipping the letter to him.

She huddled to her knees next to the bath, shaking in fear for what he might do, but instead he backed up a few steps to inspect the smell before asking her.

"What letter?"

She sighed in pity. "Can we please talk after I'm done, I might need to wash it off from me."

He accepts out of mercy, going out the door to check the smell, leaving Kaisa alone in the bathroom in her bathrobe.

Kaisa sighed in relief, untying the strings and as she entered the bathtub, feeling the hot water mindlessly warming her exposed body. Feeling all relaxed, she opened her eyes in harmony and looked around out of boredom and noticed an open cabinet. Looking at it with a little smirk in her face, she forced herself to move out of the comfort of the hot water and placed her two feet back into the cold tile.

She wore the bathrobe back into her warm but wet body and walked all the way to the cabinet and unlocked a shaft where she had hid her alcohol and pulled a red wine out of it and popped open its cork.

It was a wild mixture of her typical Hanoverian beer, French wine and champagne and a slight, tiny bit of opium and herbal medications quite known for enhancing certain performances.

She didn't even try to deny herself from stopping it: the constant stress of being around the family had made her a suffering workaholic which caused her to be a closeted alcoholic, two things that are really not meant to be together. Sometimes she had to cut her job short or even excuse her way out of the job due to the effects of what she's drinking.

Being even responsible for an unintentionally fabricated supposed unemployment wave once, since she wrongly cut expenses way over the top and messed up the charts.

She knows these habits are harmful to both herself and to her job, but it's her guilty pleasure, she can't stop it. She has been doing this routine ever since she felt herself burning out from the piles and piles of work, and she knows how David and even Stephen might say this.

She finished the glass and poured the water down and went back to the bathtub, removing her bathrobe again and bathing herself in its warm waters again. After a few more minutes, she's done and now she's donning on a new set of clothes and leaving the room with a refreshed smile.

It was only then she noticed a bit of the eye-corner looks she was getting from the other maids.

'Is that David coming out of my room?' She thought she saw, and knowing what this could mean, she rushed quickly but he was already downstairs.

She rushed into her room and saw that the letter was gone from her desk, with a clearly defined spot dented in it to show that it's gone, and as she rushed downstairs, since she didn't dry up her feet, she slipped as she went down and accidentally tripped a lampstand.

Thank God there's no lamp in it, instead it's a letter.

She looked at it with a sense of curiosity as she picked it up with her still wet fingers, and what she saw is indeed, no joke, a seal of marriage along with its declaration laid out in all of it's glory.

The ink is still fresh, meaning this must've been written as she was taking her warm baths, and she knows that David isn't old enough to make one like this himself.

"I just took a bath, and now he's FUCKING GONNA ARRANGE ME INTO A WEDDING?"

This feeling of shock made her stand up and go back upstairs, not minding the fallen lampstand. She walked back upstairs with cement shoes and after arriving near the vicinities of Stephen's room, she heard two voices across the wall.

"Dad, this is serious! We need to dispose of that immediately!"

"Son, what we should worry more about is the fact that there's these thugs coming after us and our business!"

"Dad, aren't you more worried about hoe this letter can affect me! I'm your son!"

This heated argument is the perfect time for Kaisa to barge in, and as soon as things between them start to get physical, she waltzes right in with a kick.

"Hey, uh, sir, with all respect, what in the name of the king is this!?" She shouted angrily at Stephen, confronting him about the letter.

She was somewhat surprised to see David in there even though she has heard his voice in this room but that doesn't matter for now.

Stephen looked at Kaisa's fuming anger and focused his eyes on the declaration she's pointing out. "Ahh yes, you're gonna be married soon, just you wait." He said, in a relaxed voice.

Meanwhile, on a distant carriage that was traveling between cities, a very special figurehead was coming. He was a 6'4 man, with a distinct hat and cape around his shoulders, with a white-haired woman on his side.

As the carriage strode along the dirt roads, the man was getting impatient with this slow journey to Trolberg and so, he whips out a bell and rings it with the fury of a million screams.

"Hurry up, you stupid ass!" Erik said, throwing the bell at the horse, not an ass, but it made the horse run faster than it's driver can manage.

"Erik, what the fuck is up with you? Can't you wait?" Gerda quipped at him, elbowing him at his arm for that act.

Erik seems disgusted, pulling his cloak towards his body like he just touched a rat. "What the fuck did you do to me, you old hag?"

As he was about to scream and rant at her for elbowing him, she just remained silent although definitely pissed during the ride, and with nothing better to do, he sucked it up and waited along for him to arrive to Trolberg, despite his impatience.

He's always sent to cities like this where he would look at minor cases and handle them, mostly because he paid his way to get the easiest cases to solve, and because he thinks that it's his duty to help out those redcoats who just can't get the job done.

Most of the time, he'd catch the culprit immediately thanks to the old method that he always employs in his investigations:

Hue and Cry.

Due to its simplicity of letting the people catch the killer for him, some of them got away but he did fish out some of the criminals.

No issues there, so far.

He only didn't know one thing.

Someone in the city has known him before his rise to power and she has a plan for him.

Hilda had been theorizing on who could be her father's killer and the only clues she could go for is his voice, which sounds like a braggadocio thinking he's gonna be the best general ever of the British Empire.

Then at one day, she heard that familiar voice at a crowd that gathered up to a public hanging of a poor man who is pleading for mercy but the crowd, in the midst of their cries, didn't hear.

Then as Erik pulled away the shaft underneath him and then let loose of the rope. Seeing as the man who shared the same voice as the one in her past, she finally found him.

And as he is about to solve another minor case from Trolberg thanks to an anonymous request, his carriage tries to rush it through the dense wilderness that still surrounds the city.

"God, someone please set this forest on fire."

As he made the remark, he felt an elbow to the side by a pissed Gerda and then pointed her finger towards the road and it showed the entrance of the city in reddish orange lighting and then after the carriage rested in one of the stables, Erik respectfully paid the driver and then ran off without an apology.

Wanting to get this done before supper, he rushed towards the constabulary station and as he rudely kicked in the door, he saw that the constables weren't really in shape to do anything.

Erik facepalmed at this sight. "You're fucking guards, not reserves!" He yelled at the sound of a door slam, waking everyone and had them stumbling to be in line.

As they lined up arm to arm, they then gave a good look of the decently fine chap and after looking at his badge, immediately knew who he was and saluted in his honour.

"Oh please, don't salute to this lazy hog that paid his way into power."

Erik turned around and slammed his foot at the wooden floor with an anger. "EXCUSE FUCKING ME?"

His face boiling hot red with anger but as he turns around, he didn't saw a lowly commoner, instead it was his coworker and """trusted""" ally. Gerda.

Instead of trying to fight against her judgment, he decided to turn back with bottled anger inside and just pointed his finger towards the janitor's closet, which the men understood quickly and ran.

As he sat down in a barrel, which he felt disgusted at, he then began to observe the entirety of the station and it is (in his eyes) absolutely trashy. Rifles unloaded and misplaced all over, their gunpowder bags empty, their desks racked with piles of paper along with unnecessary items like a plate or a letter.

Then he looked up and it's even worse (to him at least). The roof, although made with Cornwall tin, still looked busted to him and the attic looks like a shoddy, cheap construction firm of an outhouse.

"Jesus Christ, who in our King's name built this goddamn place?!" He complained, smashing his fist at the table and it cracked at first touch.

A worker climbed down 5 steps from a ladder. "Sir, this place was gifted to us by The Fergusons. The father, Stephen, financed the construction."

Erik scoffed. "Well at least the families here have some sympathy for the constables."

"I'd say 'gifted' is a strong word sir, it's basically someone gave us the rights for this building as long as we-"

They were suddenly interrupted by a Redcoat who walked right in after hearing loud noises coming from the station.

"As long as you what?" A cheerful yet falsetto sounding voice coming in from the entrance.

"Nothing, you gnome." Erik remarked on his gnome-like hat.

Meanwhile with Stephen, he was trying to have some liquor as Kaisa wouldn't stop pestering him about that declaration, at least, that was what she was doing in his eyes.

"You can't just marry me to your son! I'm a person, not a doll!" Protesting, she slammed her fist in the table, almost tipping over her empty glass.

"I would bet that in a hundred years, we'd be equals but sadly we aren't, so technically I have power over you."

"Excuse me?!" David joined along with Kaisa, bashing his two fists at the table with his anger. "I barely even consented to this!"

Stephen wagged his finger side by side. "Now look, son, I have to give you a deal, the business world is always chaotic just like the world it lives in. Competitors, potential business failures, that weird cult about 'feminism' and the safety of our men. We need someone like you to wed kaisa, instead of some ol' lunatic you found in the street."

David waved his arm erratically, slamming a glass by accident. "So now you're targeting my preferences too? What do you know?!"

Kaisa quipped a comeback. "Just because your business is failing doesn't mean we're free meat!"

The argument at the table raged further and further and as the rage reached the other side of the table, with Mary, Henrie, Amelie and Frida, it bothered them to hell.

Frida tinged her glass with her spoon. "Now is this gonna be like the main thing we're going for now?"

"No!" Stephen, David and Kaisa all synced in a bell toll of No's before going back to their argument.

Frida bowled her head at the tabletop, covering her ears to try and block out any and all noise coming from them in the other table, but it still came through.

As she clenched her hair to the bitter shouting, she felt tense at the touch of a gentle rub on her shoulder.

She looked up to see David's concerned face with his hand on her shoulder.

"Look, I'm sorry if father is like this, he's always desperate to get a penny out of us." He grimaced at his look on his father.

She sighed. "I see….just survive today and we can move on tomorrow." Rest assured, David places his hand back to his pocket and calmly walks back to the chaotic table.

As she breathed in a sigh of relief, she now focused back to her meal and as she took a piece of steak cooked by her parents into her mouth with a fork, she hears a giggle.

She puts her eyes back on the table, looking to see who's giggling, and after making a quick observation on her parents, her ears finally detected the laugh.

It came from Mary.

"What?" She raised an eyebrow, confused on why she's giggling out of nothing.

Mary gulped her giggles for a moment. "I'm sorry, sweetie, it's just that you and David look like a nice couple together."

She scoffed, although blushing beneath her skin. "Mary, please, we're still friends."

Mary giggled again. "All I'm saying, Frida, is that you and David look fit for each other. Didn't you see that?"

She blushed, trying to hide it with a napkin and faking a sneeze to cover it up. "Mary, can we save this talk later?"

"Sure."

On the other hand, Hilda had much different worries. As she was doing her standard purchases around the still-crowded markets, she noticed from behind her that a group was following her. She didn't want to make a fuss around here, she can't afford that, so now she had to try and hide her hair while going through the crowds.

Instead, as she purchased a small opium pipe from a doctor, she looked behind her and those same group of people are closing in on her, so she decided to take a different route, straight to the richer areas of the city, which made them follow straight into the park and next to the constabulary station.

As she finally got out of the crowds without somehow getting pickpocketed or mugged on the way, she then took a run for it towards the bridge, and as she ran over the dried blood stains that remained on its foundations, she leapt and landed on the other side and ran towards the park.

"Christ, we lost him!" A follower muttered to her fellow followers, stomping on the ground in a fit.

The other follower placed her hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, besides he's still at a disadvantage."

As the follower calmed down, she decided to take a careful observation at the bridge and as she took a step on the brick arch, a black beret stood out from the bridge's grey coloured, bloodstained bricks, laying on its back at the other side. Seeing the beret and having known much of the townsfolk, she picked it up and then returned to the other side so that it can be examined by the others.

She forwarded the beret to one of the followers. "This one had coal stains all over it." She inferred from the darker stains found all over the beret.

Intrigued, they pass it over to one of the followers that has a magnifying glass in their grasps, and after 3 to 4 passes they then give the beret to Kelly, who is the Marra's main recruiter and leading scientist of the bunch. As she sighed, she took the beret, she observed every side of the hat and then slid her finger at the stains to see if they were coal stains or ash stains, and then she pulled out her magnifying glass.

She observed the stains through the glass and as she examined the particles found, she confirmed it to be coal stains. "Interesting, this person works at that coal mine the Fergusons owned too."

One objected to her conclusion. "Elaborate, someone can't work at two jobs here, especially being a filthy undertaker and a pathetic coal worker as well!"

"Maybe he doesn't work there… the beret doesn't sustain any damage, and all the stains are regular, like… someone painted them, or… hair?"

"What's with the hair?" Someone pointed out, plucking a few strands from the beret.

She inspected a bit of hair on the hat, grinding it between her fingers to see the coal flake away, revealing the sky-blue that it originally is.

"What the hell?"

"I think we have a new issue here."

Erik was at the house of the first victim at the behest of the man's brother who found him, the place was left exactly as it was when found… and the scene looks….odd. There was nothing stolen or broken aside from the door, not a single other room was invaded. Weird because in all of his years, most break-ins like this would have the house sacked.

"Seems like whoever was here, came for the man, not for what he had." concluded Erik as he looked around the house, noticing how everything was dusty, but intact and in place.

Gerda, meanwhile, was much more interested on the massive bloodstain along the room. It was dry, but it covers nearly a fourth of the wall, as if the body was left there even before the man was killed… the murderer had come back to pick up the body, probably to avoid suspicion, after all most would think she's just a friend of the man and nothing else.

As she inspected the scene of the crime further, she noticed a gleaming reflection under the crevices of the house's wooden flooring.

She crouched down and inspected the cracks on the wood with her fingers, looking to the side to see what's inside, and as she had to carve a little larger hole, she found a shovel, likely the weapon of the crime, tossed on the couch, soaked in the same dried blood.

She stood back up and notified Erik of the shovel by tagging on to his sash before forcing him to walk to the room with her to look at it.

She held it with a face of disgust. "Such savagery was done here."

"Ehh give it up Gerda." He scoffed, blowing a blast of air at the side of his mouth. "Most of the criminals we arrested are extremely unprofessional, expect a few days and we'll catch this bloodsucker!" he exclaimed while looking at the floor, which was still sticky.

"Oh sure, yeah. Then tell me how there is not a single evidence as to who did it!" Randomly, she stomped her foot hard in the ground, whipping Erik into listening. "This asshole was one sneaky motherfucker, we only know he's vicious, and fucking strong!" She screamed while pointing at the hole with such a contemptuous face looking back at him.

Erik flinched at her stance. "...and probably has the intelligence of a primate."

Gerda facepalmed.

",HE LITERALLY LEFT NO EVIDENCE! HE KILLED A MAN AND JUST DISAPPEARED!"

Erik made a doubtful sigh. "That still isn't a sign of intellect, he must've left the other evidence around."

Then as he left the room, feeling boasty and confident, Gerda just had enough but she isn't a woman who rants much in her spare time. After all, she knows she won't get past his arrogant behaviour.

Back to Hilda, she was hidden in the bathroom, against the wall and with a knife in one hand and a spade in another, all that while behind the shower curtains around the bathtub.

She heard a break-in, like someone broke down the door. She fears that this might be the same group who followed her in the markets.

After waiting on guard right at the curtains for 3 more minutes, she concluded no one was coming. With this in mind, she relaxed herself in the bathtub's murky but still warm waters, just warming her up for tomorrow.

Then as she got out and propped into her outfits remaining in her closet, she then decided to chop a few pieces of salted beef she still had and then place them on two pieces of toast.

As she took a bite of it, the salivating salt and the lukewarm, crusty beef chewed together with the somehow fresh bread and it brought Hilda the only simple joys she had left in the house.

She also handed Dagger some beef too before resting on the couch and proceeding to read more on Don Quixote. Dagger however wouldn't even move, he was hidden under the furniture, facing away from the window.

As she looked at his scared face, Hilda rolled her eyes with a weak smile, placed the book on the desk and picked him up, gently whispering a sweet lullaby she made up in her mind in his ear while offering him the piece of meat, which he slowly started to munch on.

Hilda let out a smile and a low giggle while her pet slowly ate the meat, eventually she made her own sandwich and took a time to just watch the rain fall, hear the low chilling thunder beyond the valley… She sometimes wishes she had a better view.

But that was… just enough. It was a peaceful life… so far.

Not so much so for the marras. They were currently in their hideout, a decrepit barn after one of the many old farms were abandoned to time… however as they looked through some stolen documents from the poor management… they realised one terrible thing.

Hilbert Pearson, the undertaker was born at a reasonable year, and had everything checked… except….he didn't exist… no one had that last name around the town, and there were no working trains by the time he supposedly arrived in one…

For all intents and purposes… Hilbert didn't exist.