A headstone halfway across the graveyard vanishes. In its place is a stumbling, unsteady figure, pivoting to the sound of Noelle's screaming before he even straightens up completely. In the next instant, the gravedigger snaps to the head of that distant open grave.

The boy in her place is nearly as frantic as Noelle is, dark eyes wide in their sunken hollows. The top hat he was wearing when he snapped awake in the dirt is at the gravedigger's feet, leaving his cropped hair a wild mess around his drawn features.

"Noelle," Krouse croaks, voice creaking with disuse, "Noelle, it's okay, I've got - "

He looks down at what she's screaming at and blanches, already strangely pallid brown skin as washed out as a corpse. A ripple of clashing emotions contort his expression - horror, dismay, panic - a whirl so complicated it'd be easy to miss, in the moment, that none of them are shock. His eyes snap back up to her face.

"Noelle," he repeats, gentling and intent, "Look at me, okay? Just look at me."

He drops to his knees by her grave, reaching out to her in entreaty, palms spread open. Something snags in his brain, hard and hurting, but he ignores it. Nothing else matters except the girl in front of him.