'Sword forged by compounding silver and gold. A sacred weapon to hunt Those Who Live in Death. Deals holy damage. The inseparable twins found solace in the Golden Order, the only institution not to revile them as accursed beings.' D is a knight of the Golden Order whose vocation is the hunting and unmaking of Those Who Live in Death, the cursed unliving created in the wake of Ranni's theft of the Rune of Death. He carries the Inseparable Sword, a weapon of compounded silver and gold whose holy damage prevents the slain from rising again. He works methodically, joylessly, in the manner of a man performing a sacrament. He arrives in Caelid in pursuit of Fia, the Deathbed Companion, who keeps the cursed dead alive in her embrace.

'Armor depicting entwined twins of gold and silver. The two known as D are inseparable twins. They are of two bodies and two minds, but one single soul. Not once do they stand together; not one word do they speak to one another. Perhaps this armor longs to find its way to the other D.' The canonical D is two men. The Hunter is the elder ; the younger waits at the mausoleum in the Siofra River, mute, awaiting the brother who will not visit. The Twinned Armor is engraved with their conjoined silhouette but is given to only one of them at a time, and the canonical detail is unsparing : 'Not once do they stand together ; not one word do they speak to one another.' If Fia kills the Hunter D in his sleep, the armor passes to the silent brother, and the moral mathematics of Those Who Live in Death are inverted by a single act of Deathbed mercy. Hunter and hunted exchange identities ; the brother who never spoke now wears the weapon that killed his sibling.