Hart delivers an unidentified body to Birdsall & Son and trades insults with undertaker Mercy Birdsall.

Hart writes an anonymous letter addressed only to 'a friend' and places it in a nimkilim post box.

Mercy receives and responds to the anonymous letter from her nimkilim, not knowing Hart is its writer.

Alma assigns Hart an unwanted nineteen-year-old apprentice named Penrose Duckers.

Cunningham sends Birdsall & Son a written offer to buy the family business outright.

Lillian urges Mercy to meet her anonymous pen pal in person after learning about the letters.

Duckers scouts the café in Mayetta and reveals to Hart that his secret pen pal is Mercy Birdsall.

Hart enters the café and torments Mercy with cutting remarks without revealing he is her letter-writer.

Mercy writes a final letter to her unknown pen pal, revealing her full name and identity.

A rogue drudge attacks Mercy on the street during Founder's Day, and Hart kills it and saves her life.

Hart and Mercy sleep together after dancing at the Founder's Day festival.

Mercy finds Hart's hidden letters in his pack and realizes he has known her identity since the café meeting.

Mercy and Lillian stake out Cunningham's dock, catch him smuggling bodies into Tanria, and have him arrested.

Hart fights through a swarm of drudges to Sector 28 and opens the portal using his mother's birth key.

Hart revives on Mercy's preparation table, and the two reconcile, declare their love, and kiss.

Hart and Mercy meet as antagonists when Hart delivers unidentified bodies to her family funeral business, and their mutual hostility masks an attraction neither will admit. Without realizing it, both begin writing anonymous letters to a stranger and grow emotionally close through their secret pen pal correspondence. A disastrous café meeting — in which Hart discovers Mercy is his pen pal but refuses to reveal himself — deepens their real-life resentment even as he falls in love with her. A drudge attack at Founder's Day sparks a passionate romance, but Hart's ongoing deception about the letters ultimately destroys their trust and forces a painful separation. While Mercy exposes business rival Cunningham's scheme to manufacture drudges for profit, Hart sacrifices himself at the source of Tanria's drudge problem and is pulled into the realm of the dead. Revived by divine intervention, Hart is reunited with Mercy, and the two finally reconcile and declare their love.

The headline love story and central plot from first meeting to happy ending.

Zeddie returns home and confesses to Mercy that he failed his Funeral Rites degree and refuses to take over the business.

Mercy carefully prepares indigent bodies at the shipyard, speaking words of dignity over them before burial.

Lillian tells Mercy she is pregnant and begs her to keep the pregnancy secret from the rest of the family.

Duckers kills his first drudge in Tanria and breaks down crying; Hart comforts him and explains the person was already dead.

Hart calls undertakers 'grubby opportunists' at Birdsall & Son, causing Mercy to burst into tears and flee the room.

Zeddie and Duckers meet when a body is dropped off at Birdsall & Son and immediately begin flirting.

Cunningham reveals he has secured exclusive lumber rights, effectively cutting off Birdsall & Son's supply of boat-building materials.

Hart visits Alma and Diane at their home unannounced for the first time in years, slowly mending their fractured friendship.

Forced to take mandatory vacation days, Hart spends a miserable week brooding alone at an isolated beach cabin.

Mercy tells her assembled family that she genuinely loves being an undertaker and does not want to sell the business.

Hart transfers his funeral arrangements from Cunningham's to Birdsall & Son, and Roy invites Hart to a family dinner.

Hart gives Mercy a transistor radio as a gift, and she immediately turns it on and dances with delight.

Hart and Duckers are ambushed in Tanria by disguised poachers; Hart is shot with a crossbow bolt and wakes in the infirmary.

Every drudge in Tanria drops dead simultaneously, and marshals overwhelm Birdsall & Son with an enormous overnight intake of bodies.

Hart's funeral arrangements reveal he left his entire savings and all his possessions to Mercy.

Mercy's family is thrown into chaos when her brother Zeddie returns and refuses to take over the undertaking business, forcing Mercy to carry everyone's secrets alone while fighting to keep Birdsall & Son afloat. Hart, meanwhile, struggles to maintain professional connections, slowly repairing his strained friendship with boss Alma while reluctantly warming to his eager new apprentice Duckers. As business rival Cunningham cuts off the family's lumber supply, Mercy digs in her heels and tries to find a way to save the business she loves — but cannot yet admit that love openly to her family. A parallel romance between Duckers and Zeddie develops quickly and honestly, offering a warm contrast to Hart and Mercy's far more complicated dynamic. Hart is ambushed in Tanria and shot, and his unnaturally fast recovery raises urgent questions about his possible immortality. When every drudge in Tanria drops dead overnight, the resulting flood of bodies forces Mercy and her family to work through the night — and pushes her toward the truth about what Hart has done.

The supporting cast, family conflicts, and business battles running beneath the main romance.

Nathan threatens Mercy with a citation during a drudge drill unless she agrees to go on a date with him.

Duckers tells Hart that his cruelty toward Mercy is a mask hiding genuine attraction and fear of rejection.

Hart recalls his first meeting with Mercy four years ago, when her beauty left him completely tongue-tied.

Zeddie announces he wants to become a chef and has secured a two-year unpaid apprenticeship at a restaurant.

The entire Birdsall family erupts into a massive argument and every hidden secret spills out simultaneously.

Mercy storms out of the family argument and prays at the Warden's altar, asking for guidance about her future.

Hart takes Duckers to Sector 28 and admits his mentor Bill died there in one of Tanria's deadliest drudge clusters.

Hart receives a letter from his pen pal requesting a face-to-face meeting and panics at the prospect of rejection.

Hart and Mercy exchange letters agreeing to meet at a café in Mayetta; Mercy says she will wear yellow.

Alone in his hotel room after saving Mercy from the drudge attack, Hart suddenly realizes he is in love with her.

Nathan interrupts Hart and Mercy's dance and possessively claims Mercy as 'his girl,' prompting Mercy to push back.

Hart confesses to Mercy that he can see souls leave bodies and reveals the full truth about Bill's death.

Mercy argues that Bill was entirely at fault for sending a teenage Hart into the deadly Sector 28 meadow.

Knowing he may never see Mercy again, Hart writes her one final letter declaring that his heart belongs to her.

Now the town sheriff, Hart finds Mercy dancing in her yellow dress at the renamed Mercy's Undertakings.

Beneath the surface of the main romance, a series of pivotal moments gradually dismantles the emotional walls that Hart and Mercy have built around themselves. Mercy's family erupts in a long-overdue argument that forces every secret into the open, compelling her to finally articulate her true dreams aloud. Hart's deep fear of rejection is exposed when he learns his pen pal wants to meet him, and it reaches a crisis point when he realizes — too late — that he has fallen in love with someone he keeps hurting. As their real-life romance develops, Hart must confront the buried trauma of his mentor Bill's death and confess the deepest truths about his nature to the woman he loves. Each act of vulnerability — from Mercy praying at the Warden's altar to Hart writing a final letter before riding into almost certain death — marks a character choosing genuine connection over self-protection. The story closes with Hart transformed: no longer running from life, but walking through a town where he has finally, deliberately chosen to belong.

The key decisions, hidden truths, and emotional breakthroughs that reshape both characters.