The morning after Ren bought the inn dawned hazy, draped in the sort of golden light that made even broken window shutters look romantic. Dew clung to the porch railing of the Shaded Fern Inn like it was trying to convince the world it had character, not rot. The building stood crooked in a charming way, like an old man who refused to die out of sheer spite. And now it was ours.

  Ren arrived armed with a basket of cleaning supplies, a toolbox, and an unreasonable amount of optimism. Behind him stomped Bramblethump, wearing a bandana that made him look like a particularly enlightened bandit. Mimi trailed behind them with a wheelbarrow and a military-grade glare, already mapping exits and weak points in the inn’s structural integrity.

  And me? I had been strapped to Ren’s hip like a ceremonial bread knife, humming the song of doom with every step.

  “I’m a sword,” I hissed. “A blade forged in the ashes of empires. I have tasted the blood of tyrants. I should not be used to pry open a stuck cupboard door.”

  Ren smiled, as though my suffering were ambient noise. “You’re multifunctional.”

  “I’m cursed. Not cursed-and-convenient.”

  He ignored me, naturally. Because that’s what he does.

  The inn creaked as we entered, groaning like a stage actor in its final act. Dust swirled in beams of light that streamed through the crooked windows. Furniture sagged under the weight of decades as the air smelled of thyme, woodsmoke, and ambition.

  Bramblethump, to his credit, surveyed the space with surprising seriousness. He sniffed the fireplace, tapped the beams, and declared in his low, rumbly voice, “Needs more dance.”

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  “Later,” Ren said, already rolling up his sleeves. “Today we are going to scrub.”

  Thus began the most absurd attempt at renovation. Ren swept, Bramblethump beat rugs with the fervor of a troll avenging his ancestors, Mimi dismantled a wasp nest with surgical precision and repurposed the broom into a spear and I, of course, was repurposed as a floorboard lever, a loose hinge adjuster, and—at one particularly undignified moment—a very effective duster handle.

  “I will haunt your children,” I told Ren as he polished a lantern using my pommel.

  “You don’t have lungs.”

  “I’ll find some.”

  Despite my vocal protestations and Mimi’s intense side-eyes toward every creak and groan, something extraordinary began to happen. The place started to shine. Not all at once, but in stubborn, sparkling corners. The hearth took a breath, the dust thinned and the floor stopped wincing under every step.

  Ren hummed while he worked but It wasn’t a song I knew, just a soft, looping tune that seemed stitched together from old lullabies and warm kitchens. It filled the rooms, settled into the beams and even Bramblethump swayed.

  Around midday, they took a break in what had once been the common room. Ren passed around bread and cheese and Bramblethump carefully removed a splinter from his finger and held it aloft, claiming it was the spirit of the building attempting to communicate.

  Mimi took this as evidence of potential magical interference and began carving goat-warding sigils into the doorframes.

  And I—relic of destruction, vessel of unspeakable arcane malice—was used to slice apples.

  “I should be ending wars,” I muttered.

  “You’re slicing honeycrisp apples,” Ren said. “It’s a good look on you.”

  The absurdity of it all, I confess, was beginning to soften even my iron-bound soul. The inn, for all its creaks and cobwebs, was beginning to feel less like a ruin and more like... a promise. Not a perfect one. But something that might hold.

  As the sun dipped low, casting amber streaks through the dust-streaked windows, Ren stood in the center of the main room. He turned in a slow circle, taking it all in—the polished banisters, the swept hearth, the half-fixed shutters, while his eyes shone.

  “It’s going to be beautiful,” he said quietly.

  Bramblethump performed a slow, graceful bow toward the now-clean windows and Mimi bleated once and left a notebook labeled “Phase One: Occupy and Fortify” on the front desk.

  And me? I didn’t hum a warning that night. Not even once.