Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sam Manson was only fourteen years old when her world shattered.

She’s fourteen, her life has changed before, the world has changed before, but nothing has left Her this empty and cold.

She will remember the moment she found out for the rest of her life: the sterile buzz of her phone against her palm, the way Tucker’s voice cracked on the other end, the silence after the words ‘Danny’s gone.’ Even the world seemed to hold its breath, traffic stilled, birds quieted, the hum of the fridge was too loud in the kitchen. It was an ordinary afternoon, and yet nothing would ever be ordinary again. And now here she was, looking at her best friend’s body, pale and still, dressed in a suit that he would never have worn in life, lying in his coffin.

She sat stiffly in the front row of the chapel. Her fingernails dug crescent moons into her black dress as someone speaks at the podium. She had painted them black just a few days ago. Danny had teased her about the color, asking why she didn’t branch out, maybe try some shades of grey, or, if she was really feeling adventurous, even purple. Now the polish was chipping.

The words of the speaker washed over her, “tragic accident,” “too young,” “bright future,” “dearly missed,” but they felt like hollow echoes in a room that couldn’t contain the weight of her grief. She felt like she was choking on it as it pushed its way up her throat; tears that wouldn’t come as her heart raced and her breaths shortened. Her pulse pounded in her ears, drowning out the murmurs of the crowd around her. She feels like she’s suffocating; as the crowd pushed in, her chest tightens.

The room smelled of lilies and candle wax, but Sam could’ve sworn she smelled ozone and smoke, like the aftermath of a raid when the streets burned. The scrape of chairs, the drone of voices, the murmur of grief. It all felt wrong, muted, like she was watching someone else’s funeral. Like maybe she’d wake up tomorrow and Danny would still be there, smirking at her over lunch.

She doesn’t look at the speaker. She doesn’t look at Jazz, trembling silently beside her. She doesn’t even look at Danny’s parents, who sit stone-faced, as though grief itself has scorched them hollow.

All Sam could see was the coffin at the front of the chapel.

Danny Fenton wasn’t the first fatality in the war against the Ghost Zone, and he wouldn’t be the last. But he was Sam’s best friend. He was only fourteen.

The last time Sam had seen him, they were getting lunch at Nasty Burger. He was so bright and cheerful despite the growing darkness of the war. He spent the whole time gushing about some new satellite that was launched toward Jupiter to study its moons and would arrive in five years. He was looking toward the future, and now it would never come.

Everyone knew what had happened. A ghost had broken into the FentonWorks lab, and Danny had been caught in the crossfire when one of their ecto-weapons overloaded.

The lab breach wasn’t random. Pariah’s forces have been targeting ghost-tech research. It wasn’t just an accident; it was murder. The body in the coffin was proof enough. The town mourned, the Fentons seethed, and Sam believed every word. She needed to. She needed to believe it was murder. Because if it wasn’t, if it was chance, then the world was crueler than she could stand. Ghosts had taken him, and someday, they would pay.

Sam glanced up at the funeral crowd.

Uniformed soldiers lined the chapel walls, guns crossed over their chests, braced for an attack. They needed to stay guarded even in this time of grief. Sam hated it. The war took Danny away. The war was pain and suffering, and Sam needed to scream.

Townsfolk Sam doesn’t even know, crowd into the small space, eager to pay their respects to the fallen son of the town’s top ecto-biologists. But none of them knew Danny, really knew him. Sam caught whispers from the crowd, “Poor kid,” “Another casualty of the war,” “Can you believe it? The Fentons’ own kid?” It’s all a farce. Sam hated the way they said his name, like a headline or a warning label. None of them knew him; they didn’t know the way he laughed when Tucker burned toast, or the way he hummed under his breath when he worked on homework. She wanted to cry and rage, to make them understand! Danny’s dead, he’s gone, and he’s not coming back!

None of them, none of them understands what they’ve lost. Sam dug her nails into her palms, hard enough to leave crescent moons in her skin. They called him a “fallen soldier,” a “casualty of war.” As if Danny had been drafted, as if he’d chosen any of this. He wasn’t a soldier. He was a kid who just wanted to help. And they killed him.

Dash, Paulina, and the other A-listers sat a few rows back. Sam is shocked to see Paulina actually crying; she didn’t think she cared. Just a few seats away sits Mr. Lancer. He dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief, muttering under his breath, “The Dark Interval indeed.” It seems even the grief of losing a student can’t shake his habit of cursing in book titles.

Jazz looked dazed as she stood and walked to the podium to give the eulogy, like the fact that Danny’s gone hasn’t clicked yet. Jazz’s eyes glistened, but she didn't cry. Sam almost envied that blankness, the way shock shielded her from the truth. Sam doesn’t have that luxury.

Jazz talked about her brother, his deep love of the stars, - Sam remembered lying on FentonWorks’ roof with Danny and Tucker, Danny pointing out Orion’s belt with sticky fingers from melted popsicles - his desire to become an astronaut and go to space some day, and overall, overshadowing everything, the tragedy of such a bright life cut so short.

“My brother was brave.” Jazz’s voice was steady, even though Sam could see the way her knuckles whitened where she gripped the podium. “Braver than most adults I know. He wanted to help people, no matter how afraid he was. And I . . . I hope the world remembers him that way.”

Sam sat stiff in the pew, listening but not hearing. The word brave thudded in her chest, meaningless against the roar in her head. She hated the coffin sitting at the front of the room, too small, too final, too wrong. Bravery didn’t save him; bravery doesn't matter when you’re dead. Sam couldn’t stop the thought looping in her head: It should’ve been me. I should’ve been there. I should have saved him. The weight of the coffin pressed down on her chest like stone, and she couldn’t breathe. She wanted to throw herself across it, pry it open, tell him to get up.

Sam remembered being here, in the chapel, just a few years ago, when they were in elementary school. Danny’s mom had suggested he join in the local nativity play to gain some Christmas spirit. Even back then, Danny hated Christmas, but his mom insisted.

Sam and Tucker teased him ruthlessly until Danny let it slip to their parents, and suddenly the nativity play was a group activity. They all auditioned together and got the role of the sheep (they didn’t try very hard). Even though their roles were super small, Sam recalls Jazz standing up and cheering for her brother at the end, and Danny’s bashful smile.

They used to be so happy.

Tucker is curled up in his chair in the front row. He hasn’t moved since the funeral started, when Danny’s casket was carried down the aisle. She thought about reaching for his hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch another person right now, not when she felt like she could crumble any moment. Tears streamed down Tucker’s face, and the knees of his pants were wet. She wished she could cry.

God, she wished she could cry! Then at least she could feel something other than the aching hollow chill in her chest.

Once the service is over, the crowd spilled outside into the grey afternoon, a sea of black clothes dotted with Fenton green “Ghost Free World” pins. The soldiers carried Danny’s coffin on their shoulders to the graveside. Sam shivered as an otherworldly wind cuts through the mourners. It felt like the chill ghosts leave behind, bone-deep and haunting. The breath of the crowd misted in the air as people glanced around worriedly, even now bracing for an attack.

Sam stood shoulder to shoulder with Tucker, both of them silent as the coffin was lowered. Jazz stepped forward again, trying to speak, but the words were devoured by the low, grinding hum overhead.

Military aircraft, blotting out the sky. Anti-ghost patrols.

The engines howled, and Sam thought bitterly that even the sky didn’t care enough to let Jazz say goodbye. Even here, the war barged in, louder than grief, louder than memory. War clawed at the edges of the funeral. The soldiers in their stiff uniforms, the sound of jets overhead, the whispered prayers for protection from Pariah Dark. Grief didn’t matter anymore, not when the whole world was counting bodies and drawing lines in the sand. And Danny had just been another name added to the list.

Danny’s parents, the Fentons, stood off to the side. Jack has his arms wrapped around his middle and is shaking silently, eyes dry. He clutched one of Danny’s model rockets in his hand like he’s afraid that it might vanish. Maddie was stone-faced and silent, gazing off into the slight green haze that surrounds Amity with a murderous expression on her face.

Sam follows Maddie’s sight line over the horizon into the green haze.

The green didn’t used to be there. Amity used to have blue skies, but seven years ago, that changed.

The tears in reality started like hairline cracks in glass, barely there, only visible when the light hit just right. By the time Sam was starting second grade, they were everywhere. At first, it was small things, bugs with glowing eyes, tiny rodents scampering across playgrounds. People joked about “ghost bugs” on the news; kids traded stories about tiny glowing mice scurrying across the playground. Strange, but almost magical.

Sam remembers one summer afternoon when Danny caught a flickering dragonfly in his cupped hands, its wings glowing an eerie teal. He grinned, eyes wide with wonder, and Tucker took a picture on his PDA like it was the coolest thing they’d ever seen. That picture still hangs in Sam’s room. A grainy image of the three of them with a glowing speck cupped in Danny’s hands.

Fenton Thermoses became commonplace, and life went on. Back then, Sam hadn’t hated the ghosts. She’d even argued that they were just creatures displaced from their home.

When she was seven, she remembers finding a little glowing green rabbit in the Amity Park Park. It hopped around the park and nosed at the flowers that were beginning to peek up through the grass. Its nose twitched, and Sam couldn’t help but smile. It was so small and innocent-looking. She immediately fell in love.

She had heard her parents and people around town discussing ghosts, talking about how they were pests and evil, but what did they really know? she reasoned with her naive seven-year-old logic. After all, this bunny didn’t look like it could do any harm.

When she had picked it up, the soft fur brushed against her arms, gentle as a cool spring breeze. She brought the ghost home that evening and did her best to care for it in secret for a while. She’d whispered to it like it could understand, promising it was safe now. Promises she couldn’t keep.

Eventually, her parents found out. They yelled at her for bringing “such a dangerous creature” into their home, and Sam yelled right back. It was just a bunny, it wasn’t hurting anything! Plus, it was just a creature displaced from its home! Can you imagine how scared and helpless it must feel? She was just trying her best to help it adjust to the Living Plane.

But she was only seven, and in an instant, her parents whipped out the Fenton thermos, and the rabbit was gone. The whoosh and steadfast click of the thermos shook Sam to the bones. She had refused to go to Danny's house, to be surrounded by his parents’ inventions, for months.

Sam had been devastated; she thought it was an innocent life lost. She didn’t think that way anymore.

As the years went on, the cracks spread, and what came through stopped being harmless. Wolves with transparent hides and flaming fur stalked the alleys. Bears that could walk through walls appeared in grocery store parking lots. By the time Sam was eight, the ghosts weren’t oddities anymore; they were threats. And then came the first real nightmare: a night when the sky itself split open like a paper bag, bleeding green fire.

They were only kids when the war began. Sam can still feel that moment etched in her chest, the first wail of the siren, high and shrill, cutting through her elementary school hallway. Teachers dropped everything, faces drained of color, herding children toward underground shelters. Sam’s heart had slammed against her ribs as she clutched her lunchbox, Tucker shaking beside her. Danny was the calmest of the three, or at least he pretended to be. “It’s fine,” he had whispered, grabbing her hand, his palm warm and sweaty. “It’s just practice.” He was lying. They all knew it.

That night, whole city blocks vanished. Smoke choked the streets, and Sam remembers standing at her window, watching the orange glow on the horizon while her parents argued about whether to leave. That was the first time she heard the name whispered: Pariah Dark.

Even as a child, Sam understood the weight behind those two words. People spoke them like a curse. Reporters kept their voices low, like saying it too loud would draw his attention. He wasn’t just a ghost; he was the ghost, the king of the dead, the shadow behind every attack. Rumors painted him as unstoppable, an ancient power who could rip the sky open with a thought.

Sam remembers Jazz once telling them a bedtime story, meant to be silly, about a king who ruled the underworld. It made Tucker laugh. It made Sam uneasy. Now, years later, she realizes Jazz had been trying to make sense of the same fear everyone carried: that Pariah Dark was watching, always watching.

The world scrambled to fight back. Governments pooled resources, formed the Ghost Investigation Ward, the GIW: a patchwork attempt to understand what they were facing. They studied ghosts, tore apart stolen tech, and armed soldiers with Fenton inventions: thermoses that clicked shut like coffins, rifles that hummed with ectoplasmic energy.

Amity Park became the fault line, the weak seam between worlds, and the epicenter of the war. The Fenton Ghost Shield kept the worst of it out, but nothing was foolproof. Battles raged just beyond city limits. Sam remembers seeing soldiers march past her school, rows of green and gray uniforms, rifles gleaming. Some never came back. Entire battalions vanished in the infamous Dead March at Amity Hill. The next morning, a black banner stitched with a flaming green crown hung over the ruins. They said Pariah Dark’s army put it there, a message to anyone who thought they could win. Soldiers still whisper about that night, the horrors they witnessed beyond number. Allies caught in the burning green flame who went mad and turned on each other, souls freed from the body with the touch of a blade, terror after terror introduced to the battlefield.

The sirens became part of life. By the time they were ten, Sam and her friends had the routine memorized: grab your bag, find the nearest shelter, wait. Danny would always crack a joke - something about ghost-proof juice boxes - to make Tucker laugh. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. When the doors finally opened again, the city outside was different. Streets smelled of ozone and burning ectoplasm. Sometimes a lamppost was gone. Sometimes a house. A few times, entire blocks.

After a while, no one talked about it. There was nothing to say. The silence after each attack was heavier than the siren itself, like the whole city was holding its breath. It became Sam’s new normal. The world was tearing at the seams, and fear was a constant hum under her skin. And through it all, Pariah Dark’s shadow stretched longer, darker, a quiet promise that things would only get worse.

The war had been going on for seven years now, and humanity was losing. Badly. And now, with Danny gone, Sam wasn’t sure if there was anything left worth saving.

Sam was snapped back to the present by the dull thud of dirt hitting the lid of the coffin.

Thud. Thud. Thud. It sounded like death. Like marching boots and falling bombs. Each sound landed like a fist to her gut; she flinched but didn’t move.

Her friend was gone. Gone and buried. Danny won’t be coming back. Never again will they hole up with Tucker during a ghost raid in his parents’ ghost shelter; Tucker cracking jokes and arguing with Sam about veganism while Danny mediates. No more late-night stargazing when the smoke clears. No more horror movie nights with just the three of them. There is no more “three of them,” there’s just her and Tucker.

Beside her, Tucker sniffled. His sobbing had lessened to hiccoughing gasps. Maybe he’d just run out of tears. He mumbled Danny’s name between shovelfuls of dirt, as if the mantra could bring him back from the dead. His hand twitched like he wanted to reach for hers, but neither of them could bridge the gap. Not yet.

As the final shovelful of earth thudded onto the grave, the mourners fell silent. Maddie Fenton stepped forward, her face a mask of steel, though her gloved hands trembled at her sides. The wind caught at her auburn hair, but she didn’t flinch. Her voice carried, steady but sharp, cutting through the quiet like a blade.

“This is not the end,” she said. “Pariah Dark and every specter that follows him will answer for this. For every life stolen. For every name carved into a headstone. We will make them pay.”

She didn’t shout, but the promise in her tone made Sam’s stomach tighten. It wasn’t just grief; it was fury tempered by brilliance, the sound of a genius calculating revenge. Maddie had always been the mind behind the Fenton arsenal; now, she sounded like a general.

When she turned toward Jack, the steel cracked. Her shoulders hunched as though the weight of the grave pulled her down. Jack met her halfway, catching her in arms that had always seemed too big for delicate things. Today, though, he held her as if she might break. His tears were unhidden, slipping down his cheeks, rough and unashamed.

Sam watched them fold into each other - grief and love tangled together - and felt a strange ache in her chest. Maddie’s words echoed in her ears, heavy with a promise that reached beyond the grave.

A few people clutched at each other, fists trembling, as if Maddie’s words had lit something inside them that had been smoldering. Mothers pressed children to their sides, and veterans straightened in their uniforms, the weight of years and loss pulling at their shoulders.

Sam’s stomach twisted. She wanted to scream, to echo Maddie’s promise, to hurl every ounce of rage she felt into the empty air. Her fingers dug into the grass, and her nails bit into her palms. Tucker exhaled shakily beside her, eyes wide and unblinking, still trying to hold himself together.

Some began murmuring prayers, quiet and hesitant. Others shouted names, not just Danny’s, names of those lost in the seven years of war. The chapel’s order and control had fallen away; for a moment, everyone was raw, human, untamed by ceremony.

Sam’s eyes swept the crowd, seeing people she didn’t know, faces twisted with grief, some angry, some stunned. And in every pair of eyes, she saw the same thing she felt: loss, helplessness, and a need for justice.

And as the crowd began to drift, Sam found herself staring at the headstone, at the fresh soil that still smelled of rain and iron. Life felt smaller without him. The fight larger.

She thought of the ghosts and the banners and the blood, and for the first time, the idea of losing didn’t feel possible. Not now.

Sam’s knees ached from the hard ground as she kneeled by her best friend’s grave, and her hands were raw from gripping the grass, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t. The coffin, the dirt, the wind - it all felt like a punishment, a weight she couldn’t shake. Every breath she took burned, hot and metallic in her lungs, and she hated herself for wanting to run, to leave, to escape the scene of a world that had finally broken her.

Tucker’s shoulders shook beside her, silent gasps punctuating the quiet hum of the cemetery. Sam wanted to reach over, to wrap him in a hug, to share the impossible load of grief, but she couldn’t. How could she touch someone else when she felt like she was splitting open from the inside out? Her fingers twitched, itching to do something, anything, besides sit still. She felt the need to scream Danny’s name, throw herself into the cold earth, claw at the dirt with hands stained green and brown, just to feel something real again.

Her eyes flicked to the fresh mound of soil. The world had buried him neatly, with rituals and solemnity, as if those things would soften the blow of his loss. But the grass would grow, the dirt would settle, and no ceremony could undo the absence. Sam imagined Danny’s fingers brushing against her arm one last time, his voice teasing and warm, asking about the latest ghost sighting or her latest social crusade. She could almost hear it, but the memory was too sharp, stabbing like ice.

She remembered Danny’s smile, the one he gave when he thought nobody was looking. How it reached his eyes, bright and fleeting, and made everything feel safer, lighter. She remembered the tiny hand he had pressed to hers during the first real ghost attack she had survived, how solid it had felt, like an anchor in chaos. And now? Now, that hand would never grip hers again. That smile would never flicker across his face.

Tucker’s voice broke her reverie. “Sam . . .” He didn’t finish. He couldn’t. His chest heaved as he stared at the grave, the words swallowed by the wind. Sam wanted to curl into him, to share in the silence, but instead she just let the hollow ache sit in her chest, a cold, stubborn companion.

Around them, the crowd was thinning. Soldiers saluted, townsfolk whispered prayers, and yet Sam felt isolated in a bubble of grief, untouched by the formalities of mourning. She could see Maddie and Jack retreating toward FentonWorks, Maddie’s face still hard as stone, Jack’s hands never leaving hers. She wished she could step into that bubble of strength, to lean on someone, anyone. But she couldn’t. She had to endure this alone.

The breeze shifted, carrying a faint metallic scent that reminded Sam of the lab, of burned circuits, of Danny’s endless tinkering. It made her stomach twist. She thought of the day Danny had tried to teach her how to solder, how he laughed when she nearly burned herself, how Tucker had cheered her on like she had just won a medal. Those moments felt like light against the shadow now, unreachable and cruelly distant.

Her fingers found the edges of her sleeves, twisting the fabric until it creased beneath her nails. She closed her eyes and let herself remember the quiet nights on the FentonWorks roof, when the city hummed below and Danny traced imaginary constellations with his finger. He had always known the patterns, always believed there was order to the chaos. Now, she couldn’t find any. Stars hid behind the haze, ghosts prowled freely, and the boy who once promised to make everything brighter was gone.

By the time the last car pulled away, only she and Tucker remained. Neither spoke; words felt like intruders here. They sat side by side on the damp grass, backs pressed to the cold stone. The evening crept in quietly, painting the cemetery in blue shadows.

When the sun finally slipped below the horizon, Sam tilted her head back, expecting the comfort of familiar constellations. Instead, the sky was murky, choked with ecto-haze, a sickly green-gray veil that swallowed the stars. It was like the world itself refused to shine.

Her throat tightened. Danny loved the stars. He used to trace them with his finger, pointing out patterns only he seemed to see. Without them, the night felt empty. Wrong.

She imagined the stars hidden behind the haze, cold and distant. If they can see her, she hopes they burn bright enough to witness what comes next. Sam clenched her fists in the grass. “I know you’re there,” she whispered to the hidden sky. “I don’t care if I can’t see you. You’re watching. You have to be.”

Tucker glanced at her but didn’t interrupt.

She stood, wiping her hands on her jeans, and raised her chin. “I swear to you,” she said, voice low but sharp, the kind of promise that carves itself into bone. “They will pay. Every single one. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make sure they regret ever touching him.”

The haze didn’t clear. The stars stayed hidden. But in the stillness, it almost felt like someone was listening.

Chapter Text

Three weeks had passed since the Fentons buried their son, and the world was still at war with the Ghost Zone. Amity Park hadn’t healed; it had hardened.

The posters had gone up overnight; ghosts, sketched in harsh black ink, leered from every wall. “REPORT SIGHTINGS. TRUST NO ONE.” The ghosts on the posters look beastly, inhuman. Even in daylight, the streets of Amity Park felt hollow and dark; shadows seemed to stretch longer than they should, as if the ink from the posters had bled into the streets themselves. The silence between passing patrols was louder than any alarm.

In the cold air, people’s breath misted, tinged a faint green by the ectoplasmic haze. It lingered and caught on skin and in throats until each breath felt like wasting borrowed time. The sound of patrols echoed in the distance. The buzzing hum of their vehicles pounded in time with Tucker’s pulse as ecto-sensor lights flashed in the distance.

The walk to school felt longer now, each step heavier without Danny. They used to race and laugh the whole way; now the streets were silent.

People hurried past, heads down, as if speed alone could keep them safe from a ghost attack.

At Casper High’s gates, students shuffled past a wall of soldiers, one by one. Each student was scanned with an ecto-detection wand; anyone showing high contamination or signs of possession wouldn’t make it inside.

Tucker slipped to the back of the line, eyes down, fingers tightening on his backpack strap. He’d avoided school as long as he could, but his “excused absences due to grief” had run out. The whispers, the fear, his friend’s death being used as a rallying cry - it was all too much.

In front of him, the wand beeped, sharp and shrill. Star froze, eyes wide, before soldiers seized her by the arms. She screamed, insisting she wasn’t possessed, that it was a mistake.

No one moved. A couple of kids winced, one boy shifted his backpack higher on his shoulder, but the line kept shuffling forward. Heads ducked, eyes slid away. They’d all seen this before, or something like it. Better to keep quiet. Better to keep walking.

Tucker’s stomach twisted. He ducked his head too, pretending not to see.

The wand swept over him. A flash of green, then a soldier’s rough hand shoved him through the gates.

Soldiers line the front steps. Inside, reminders about the new curfew and warnings about recently spotted ghosts are plastered all over the walls.

The halls buzzed, lockers slamming, voices echoing, but Tucker felt cut off from it all. The crowded hallways blurred around him as he fiddled with the PDA, flipping it open and closed, scrolling through files that didn’t matter, pressing buttons that didn’t do anything. Anything to keep his hands busy, anything to keep his mind from spiraling.

Nothing felt normal anymore. No Doomed. No tinkering with his PDA. No meat debates with Sam. No quiet side glances, no whispered jokes across the lunch table. Danny had been the glue holding it all together, and now every small thing felt untethered.

A laugh rang out: bright, sharp, familiar. Tucker whipped his head around, heart jumping. Danny? Blue eyes sparkling, grin wide?

No. Just a freshman, blond hair, brown eyes. The laugh had the same pitch, the same carefree energy, but it was all wrong. Tucker’s chest tightened, hope twisting into a sudden ache. Even that small, fleeting thought of Danny - of seeing him just for a second - had been cruelly stolen.

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and turned back to the blur of students, lockers, and announcements, everything moving too fast, too loud, too normal. And yet nothing was normal anymore.

As he wandered, not really seeing, Tucker collided with someone. Dash turned, snarled, and Tucker flinched. He didn’t have the energy for this today. But Dash only sighed and shoved him aside, almost gently, as if even Dash didn’t have the heart to keep old habits alive.

Well. Tucker’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth - whatever that meant.

He continued to drift down the hall. His eyes wandered, catching on random details: Paulina touching up her lipstick, Valerie tying her shoelace, Kwan putting up a poster. Tucker froze.

It’s a memorial poster. Danny’s school photo stared back at him ‘In Loving Memory. Honor the Fallen.’ Danny had hated that picture. The eyes seemed to follow him as Tucker rushed down the hall, flat and printed, but catching the green tint of the hall lights in a way that made them seem alive.

Tucker arrived to class ten minutes late. Normally, Mr. Lancer would glare, yell, or hand out detention. But today he only looked at Tucker with a sad, almost helpless, expression.

He would rather have been yelled at.

Tucker spent the rest of class staring down at the screen of his PDA. Just needing a distraction, a distraction that school can’t provide. He needed something, anything, to keep from looking over at the empty, cold seat next to him. If he looked, the grief would hit again, and he couldn’t handle that.

He didn't get scolded once.

At lunch, he sat at their usual table. It felt so much larger now, without their third - actually, without Sam either. Where was she?

Tucker glanced around. He couldn’t find her, until the commotion drew his eyes.

Sam stood by the corkboard, the one that had been reduced, for months, to war notices and safety warnings. Kwan stood beside her, cowed and looking at the floor, while Sam raked him with a furious stare, a crumpled flier clenched in her fist.

“You don’t get to ‘honor his memory’!” Sam shouted. “You didn’t know him! You and all your buddies - you bully him one day and then act all grief-stricken the next!” She flung the flier to the floor and stomped it flat with her platforms, then stormed away from the small crowd.

For a heartbeat, there was silence. A few students shifted their weight, eyes darting between the fallen flyer and the space Sam had vacated. One whispered something quickly to a friend, who smirked awkwardly and looked away. A couple of younger students shuffled backward, pretending to tie their shoes or check their lockers, hoping no one would notice they had seen the confrontation.

Tucker flinched. It was one of the memorial posters, like the one he’d seen Kwan put up earlier. The whispers, the half-smiles, the avoidance, it all hit him like a cold weight. Even grief, here, had rules, and most people followed them blindly, or wore them like a mask.

When Sam stalked over, Tucker forced a small, tight smile, something like solidarity. He didn’t want to see Danny’s bullies fake their grief, either. She snorted, spared him a brief look, and kept walking; she didn’t sit with him.

After picking at his lunch, he headed back to class. The rest of the day rushes by, teachers mumble and students whisper, and Tucker registers none of it.

At day’s end, he shouldered his backpack, his eyes stuck on Danny’s empty seat. He moved in a daze and was funneled out the doors as soldiers swept the school, making sure everyone was headed home before curfew.

He walked home, dragging his feet. If going to school was unbearable, home was worse. At home, there was nothing to distract him, no chatter, no rush of other students. His silence was broken by a crash, a flash of sickly green light overhead, and distant sirens.

Tucker glanced up, sighed, and kept walking. The pervasive chill that had settled over Amity since Danny’s death made him shiver. The cold clung to his skin and made his teeth ache.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

After walking back from school, Jazz slowly opened the door to her home. She peeked around the corner, sighed when she didn’t see her parents, and stepped fully inside.

They’d been a bit manic since the funeral. Checking her over for ecto-contamination, any chance they got, and when they weren’t half convinced that she’s a ghost in disguise, they insisted on showing her their new anti-ghost inventions, each more brutal than the last.

Jazz remembered coming home the evening after Danny died . . . She could still see his little sneakers by the doorway, untouched. The image made her throat tighten, and she had to press her hands to the counter to keep from breaking down. She had found her parents down in the lab, scrubbing green splatters off the floor. They looked like blood. Her dad was sobbing; Maddie had been blank-faced and furious. She ran her scrub brush over the floor and walls with a sharp, staccato rhythm. The toxic green streaks that stuck to the walls glimmered faintly, almost like they didn’t belong to this world at all.

Jazz had asked what happened, and it was like they couldn’t hear her. They just kept cleaning. Jazz kept asking. “What happened?” “Where did this mess and all the shattered glass come from?” “Where’s Danny?”

Her mom had started scrubbing faster after that question.

“Mom?” she’d asked hesitantly.

Maddie had looked up from the ground. “He’s . . . “ She choked out. “Your brother . . . The ghosts got him. He’s gone.”

Jazz shook herself out of the memory. She didn’t need to dwell on that right now. Right now, there were things to be done.

Lately, Jazz’s parents had been even more forgetful than usual. They forgot to eat for days at a time, instead staying locked down in their lab. The bills weren’t getting paid, the house wasn’t getting cleaned. So, Jazz took over.

She would be the perfect daughter. Her parents wouldn’t have to worry about her. She cleaned the house. She avoided Danny’s room; it was too empty, too neat, too unchanged. She blasted music in her headphones to make the house feel less empty and quiet. Less like she was now an only child.

After cleaning up, Jazz made dinner. She had to fend for herself and for Danny for a while now, her parents too caught up in their research and the war effort. So, she was a pretty decent cook, or at least a passable one. She could make fantastic chicken nuggets, and pasta was her signature dish.

Tonight was a pasta night, and Jazz made enough for three (just three). She plated it up and carried two downstairs to the lab. Her parents are hunched over their tables, tinkering with high-powered rifles and ecto-bombs. They didn’t notice her when she came in.

She cleared her throat, and Jack jumped. His hands spasmed, and the gun he was working on shot off a bolt of green energy that hit the wall with a sizzle and left a massive charred spot. Jazz flinched at the sound.

Her parents both looked up at her and smiled when she gestured to their plates of food. Jazz forced a polite smile back, but her stomach twisted. They hadn’t noticed her efforts, hadn’t noticed anything, and part of her wanted to yell, to dump the plates on the floor and storm out. She swallowed the urge with bile in her throat. They stood up, took their plates, and smiled at her as they set them down on their workbenches.

“Thank you for the dinner, sweetie,” her mom said, “I’m sure it’s delicious. Your father and I are so excited to try it, and we’ll get to it as soon as we finish these last few tweaks!”

“Just these last few tweaks, honey!” her father boomed from across the room.

Jazz nodded and sighed to herself; they’ve been saying the same thing for the last few days, and the last few days, whenever she comes by, she’ll inevitably end up taking their only half-eaten meals back up to the kitchen. She scooped up their still-full plates from the day before and headed back upstairs.

Jazz ate her dinner by herself (no annoying little brother to bother her) and did some research on her computer.

While she may have been a bit ambivalent to the war before, now that the war had taken Danny, her little sibling, hers to protect, away from her, and she would no longer sit by.

She fell into rabbit hole after rabbit hole. She plotted instances of recent ghost activity and tracked them on a map, hoping to see a pattern somewhere. Some way to make sense of Danny’s death. There had to be a reason for it all.

It was around midnight when she sat back, the blue glow of the screen lighting her face as she stared at the map in front of her.

Well, she doesn’t know why it’s happening, but Pariah Dark was definitely getting closer.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Sam kicked at a loose pebble as she stalked down the empty street, the sound echoing louder than it should have in a town that used to buzz with life. Curfew signs glared at her from every lamppost, bright red warnings about ghost attacks, about staying inside, about safety that didn’t really exist anymore. She shoved her hands deeper into her jacket pockets, jaw tight. Everyone else was content to grieve quietly, but Sam’s anger wouldn’t let her sit still. Not when posters with Danny’s parents’ faces stared down at her, promising protection they hadn’t been able to give.

“Thought I’d find you out here,” came Tucker’s voice, warm and tired all at once. He jogged up beside her, his breath fogging in the cold night air, and for a moment she didn’t meet his eyes. He didn’t press, just fell into step with her, hands shoved into his own hoodie pocket. They didn’t need words yet. The silence between them carried enough weight.

Sam kept her gaze fixed ahead, shoulders tight enough to ache. The sidewalk blurred under her boots, each scuff of the concrete sounding too loud in the stillness. “It feels wrong,” she said finally, her voice sharper than she intended. “Everyone’s acting like this is just . . . another sad story. Like he was just some kid who got caught in the crossfire.”

Tucker’s jaw tightened. “He wasn’t just some kid.”

“No,” Sam said, hands curling into fists in her pockets. “He deserved better than this. Better than whispers and pitying looks and a painted-on calm- ” Her voice broke off, thin and sharp.

Tucker didn’t say anything for a moment, just let the silence sit heavy between them. The wind tugged at his jacket, carrying with it the distant hum of cars and the faint scent of drying flowers. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, but hard. “They’ll never get it. They didn’t know him like we did.”

Sam’s throat tightened. “They didn’t see him when he -” She cut herself off, biting down on the memory of his grin, the way he’d light up when he got something right, even if it was something stupid like a pop quiz or a bad joke. “He was more than this.”

Tucker pushed his glasses up, blinking hard. “Yeah. More than some headline.”

For a moment, they just walked, their footsteps syncing without trying. Sam hated the weight in her chest, hated that she couldn’t shake the image of the casket, hated the neatness of it all. “You know what gets me?” she said, sharper now. “People talk about him like he was fragile. Like he didn’t matter. Like he didn’t try. He might not have been some big hero, but he -”

“He mattered to us,” Tucker finished.

“Yeah.” Her voice cracked. “Yeah, he did.”

They stopped at the corner, the light changing from red to green and back again, while they didn’t move. The silence stretched around them. The world kept going, and Sam wanted to scream at it for not stopping, for not caring.

Tucker glanced sideways at her and fiddled with his PDA. “He hated that suit, you know. The one they made him wear for photos, the one from the funeral. Said it made him feel like a mannequin.”

Sam let out a breath that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. “Of course he did.”

“He was awkward,” Tucker said, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “But he was ours.”

“Exactly.” Sam looked down at her boots. “He wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t - he wasn’t strong. But he was brave in his own way. He showed up. Even when people made his life hell.”

“Especially then,” Tucker added quietly.

Something loosened in her chest, just a fraction, hearing it said out loud. “Do you think,” she started, hesitated, “do you think people ever really knew him? I mean, really knew him?”

Tucker shook his head. “Not like we did. And that’s what makes this so much worse.”

The words sank between them, heavy but true. They stood there a moment longer, the hum of the traffic and the echo of memories filling the space. Sam thought about the lunch table where they’d sat together, Danny’s stubborn cowlick, the way he’d try to hide his shaking hands after a bad day. None of it belonged in a casket.

“We can’t let them forget him,” Tucker said finally.

Sam’s head snapped up. “What?”

“I’m serious. If they want to treat him like a footnote, fine. But not us. We tell the stories. We keep him here.”

Sam swallowed hard. “You really think that’s enough?”

“No,” Tucker admitted. “But it’s something.”

And for the first time all day, Sam’s hands relaxed in her pockets.

They walked down the street in silence for a while until Tucker let out a quiet snort, muffled like he was trying to swallow it down. Sam’s head snapped toward him, frowning through blurred vision. “What?” she asked, her voice raw.

He shook his head quickly, shoulders hitching as if denying it would make the sound disappear. But another snort escaped, louder this time, and then he was chuckling, helpless, awkward, like the laugh had slipped out without his permission.

“He - he would’ve hated this, “Tucker wheezed between gasps of laughter. “His name being used to build up the fear of the war, and all the new ‘safety’ measures being put in at school. All he wanted was to have a good time. To go to the movies after school, or to play Doomed all weekend.”

Tucker broke down with more wheezing laughter. Sam just stared. He was broken. Her friend had cracked.

“He would’ve loved the fame, or well, not the fame, exactly - just being seen for once.” Tucker managed to get out. Her chest twisted, was he really laughing? But the more he wheezed, the more the corner of her own mouth betrayed her. And then, like water pouring from a broken dam, she burst out laughing.

Not her usual contained, haughty snort either, but full belly laughter. The kind that had tears streaming down her face, leaving trails of eyeliner in her white foundation.

She and Tucker gasped and hiccuped and giggled, leaning on each other. Eventually, the laughter turned to sobs, and with a start, Sam realized that it was the first time she’d cried since Danny’s death. She’d been too focused on her simmering anger, boiling just under her skin. Crying felt like a relief. Like a pressure valve that’d been opened, letting out the pressure of her grief.

“I - I miss him,” Tucker whispered into the crook of her shoulder, like he’s voicing a terrible confession.

With her head leaning on his red cap, Sam croaked, “I do too.”

Silence enveloped them.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Danny drifted in a place that wasn’t the sky, wasn’t the ground, but something vast and humming in between. The Ghost Zone felt alive in a way the living world never had. Threads of light twisting through green haze, shadows shifting with the weight of unseen eyes.

Craggy purple islands floated in the distance, defying physics in a way that messed with Danny’s mind. Portals, doorways, and cracks in the haze flared and vanished, faster than eyes could track.

His breath caught, or tried to. He twitched for a heartbeat he no longer had, his chest refusing to rise and fall. The realization pressed cold against him: he was dead. Actually, really, fully dead.

The currents of the Zone drifted around him, and he could feel his body (his ghost body?) move with them. He could feel the zone, almost like it was part of him, or he was a part of it. The shadows shifted with him, slow and deliberate, as though they weren’t following the currents but his heartbeat- except he didn’t have one anymore.

Danny’s jaw tightened. He couldn’t just float here. He could feel that fact in his bones, or whatever passed for bones now.

“But how does someone move,” he muttered, glancing down, “when physics called it quits, and you don’t even have legs?”

Where legs should’ve been, black vapor curled into a ghostly tail. He thought about kicking off the air, about swimming, and the tail twitched. Progress. Sort of.

Then something inside him stuttered, a hot spark at his core, a white flash, and suddenly the ground dropped out from under him. Danny yelped, the world blurring into streaks of green and violet. Islands and clouds tore past as he spun, weightless and utterly out of control.

The spark flared again, brighter this time, and everything snapped. His tail coiled, his body righted itself, and he was suspended midair, chest heaving out of pure habit. “Okay,” he panted to no one. “That’s . . . something. That’s something.”

It didn’t last. Another surge ripped through him, his body glitching, splitting into static, limbs phasing in and out, tail stuttering like a broken signal. For half a second, he saw double: the human version of himself overlapping with the ghost, then fragmenting apart. His voice echoed back at him, warped and distant, as if the Zone itself was laughing. For half a second, his grin split too wide in the static reflection, teeth glowing where they shouldn’t be, before snapping back into place.

Somewhere in the green fog, a deep, measured ticking answered his glitched-out scream. It was faint, but deliberate, like a clock in a silent room, steady and unhurried. When Danny whipped around to find it, there was nothing. Only the slow swirl of mist, and the certainty that someone, or something, was watching.

Danny twitched, scanning the green around him, certain that there was something there somewhere. The ticking got louder, and from the clouds emerged a large, deep blue clock tower. A cacophony of sound arrived with it, and Danny felt like it physically pushed him backwards. He’s hit with clicking of different gears at different paces with different tones, the ticking of arms, the gongs of large church bells, and the lighter chime of grandfather clocks.

The sound wrapped around him; it seemed too big and too layered to belong to one source. Danny’s hands curled into fists at his sides as he fought the instinct to retreat. The Ghost Zone didn’t exactly come with a manual, and the sudden appearance of a building where there hadn’t been one was enough to put his nerves on edge.

The tower solidified out of the mist like it had always been there, stone and metal gleaming faintly blue, faces of countless clocks built into its walls. Some ran forward, some backward, others froze mid-tick, but all of them seemed aware of him.

The heavy doors creaked open on their own, releasing another wave of sound: tick, tock, whir, chime. It wasn’t chaotic, exactly. More like a thousand voices speaking in perfect rhythm, inviting but unnerving.

Danny hesitated. His powers still sparked and sputtered under his skin, unpredictable and raw, and the idea of walking into another unknown wasn’t comforting. But something about the sound was steady, anchoring. Not hostile. Watching, yes, but patient.

“Okay,” he muttered, forcing himself to move. “Creepy ghost clock thing wants to meet me. Sure. Why not? It’s been that kind of week.”

As he stepped forward, the air shifted. The ticking slowed, deepened, like it was matching his pace. A faint figure appeared in the open doorway, a tall, robed ghost with a staff tipped by an ornate timepiece. The figure’s face was calm, unreadable, and impossibly old.

“Daniel,” the ghost said, voice like the echo of a grandfather clock in an empty room. “You’re late.”

Danny’s guard went up. “Yeah, thanks, but who are you? And how do you know my name?”

“Names are easy to know when time is no barrier,” the ghost replied, stepping closer. “I am Clockwork. I keep the balance of what was, what is, and what might yet be.” His gaze flicked over Danny, assessing but not unkind. “And you, young one, are . . . unpredictable.”

“Not sure that’s a compliment,” Danny muttered. His powers still twitched under his skin, unpredictable since the glitch, and the idea that someone was watching made his stomach tighten. “So what, you’re some kind of time ghost?”

“I am Time,” Clockwork corrected, tilting his head. “I observe. Occasionally, I . . . intervene. The Realms are wide, Daniel, and full of forces you have yet to meet. Some benign, some less so. It is wise to prepare.”

Something in the way he said it made Danny’s shoulders tense. The words were calm, but there was an edge, like someone quietly nudging a chess piece into place. “Prepare for what?”

Clockwork’s smile was small, unreadable. “In time, you will see. For now, your first step is to learn. To listen. The Infinite Realms have many currents, and they are shifting.” He turned, gesturing toward the open doors. “Come. There is much to discuss, and even more to show you.”

Chapter Text

In a small village, east of Amity Park, the war had taken over. Soldiers had built temporary housing structures, and the village residents had long since evacuated. The streets that used to be full of children’s laughter and happiness were now overrun by the sounds of marching boots and barked orders. Every corner seemed to hold its own shadow too long, as if something waited in the dark beyond the soldiers’ firelight.

For now, though, it’s calm. Or, as calm as it can get. Soldiers cleaned their weapons, read their books, or prepared for the day ahead. Despite the downtime, the mood was melancholy and subdued; everyone was tired of war.

In the command tent, a radio crackled, squeaked, and then went dead. Sergeant Miles tapped the side of the headset, frowning. “Command, repeat your last. Say again.”

Nothing. Then, static, like wind over broken glass, and a voice burst through, jagged and thin. “- attack - breach - need immediate reinforcements - something new - don’t let it -.” A sharp, keening feedback swallowed the rest. It sounded like wind whistling through an empty canyon.

“Hell,” Private Singh muttered. “That’s GIW frequency. Those bastards never call for backup.”

“Until now,” Miles said. He waved a hand at the nearest squad. “Load up. Whatever’s got them spooked, we don’t want it getting any closer to our lines.”

The truck roared to life, tires chewing mud and frost. No one spoke.

When they crested the ridge, the facility came into view, or what was left of it. The reinforced gates were twisted metal, the perimeter wall sheared open like it had been hit with a wrecking ball. Smoke curled upward in greasy ribbons. The smell hit next: burned plastic, ozone, and something faintly sweet and wrong. The sweetness clung in the throat, like rotting fruit, like breath that wasn’t theirs.

“Contact left!” one of the scouts barked, rifle snapping up.

Miles raised a hand. “Hold fire.” He moved forward, boots crunching over scattered shell casings. The ground was littered with GIW gear, helmet visors shattered, white armor stained with something that glowed faintly green.

Bodies lay scattered, some still twitching, some utterly still.

“Sir,” Singh called, crouched beside a fallen agent. “This isn’t Pariah’s work. Look at the residue, no scorch marks, just ice. It’s like something just . . . ripped through them.”

Miles’ gaze tracked the destruction. The walls hadn’t been blown inward; they’d been blown out.

Another voice: “Over here!”

The squad gathered at what used to be the main lab doors. They were folded outward like tin foil, and the concrete around the frame was glazed, smooth as glass.

Something moved in the smoke, just a flicker, a pale light cutting briefly through the haze. The light wasn’t steady; it pulsed like many eyes opening, then closing again. The air sharpened with sudden cold, breath frosting at the edges of the men’s masks, and for a heartbeat the haze itself froze in place—ash and dust hanging midair as though time had forgotten to move forward. A low sound followed, not a growl, not quite human. Then nothing.

“Sir?” Singh whispered.

Miles didn’t answer. He was staring at a single mark on the ruined wall, a stylized P, scratched deep into the concrete, glowing faint green before fading.

“Whatever hit this place,” Miles said finally, “it wasn’t Pariah. It wasn’t anything I’ve ever seen.”

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Rumors spread like wildfire, hopping from one encampment to the next. The name Phantom was whispered late at night, under the cover of the stars and behind bunker walls. In a southern outpost, a single lamp stretched long shadows across a dented metal table where a handful of soldiers lounged, cards in hand and gear scattered at their feet. The air smelled faintly of oil and cold rations.

“Your turn,” one muttered, flicking down a card. “And make it quick. I’ve got watch in twenty.”

Another snorted. “Watch? What’s there to watch for? Pariah’s troops don’t move at night.”

“Maybe,” said a third, cleaning his rifle with slow, methodical strokes. “But I heard the GIW said the same thing before their Utah site went up in smoke.”

The first soldier raised a brow. “That story again?”

“I’m telling you,” the rifleman insisted, voice low. “They called for backup, whole comms were scrambled. When help finally arrived, nothing left but rubble and green sludge. They say no survivors.”

“Green sludge? Sounds like ghost residue,” one said, shuffling his cards. “Pariah’s got wraith units that could -”

“Wasn’t Pariah,” the rifleman cut in. “Word is it was something else. Something fast. Hit them hard and vanished.”

The table went quiet for a moment. Then someone scoffed. “You’re all talking about that Phantom thing again, aren’t you? That’s just a ghost story. A real ghost story.”

“Yeah? Then why’s every GIW site running extra drills? Why are their squads suddenly scared of the dark?”

Another soldier leaned back, boots thudding on the table’s edge. “I heard he’s stronger than any ten ghosts. That he tears through wraiths like paper. They say his eyes glow like burning ice. Like they could cut straight through you, freezing you from the marrow outward. And if you’re close enough, you’ll hear it, like whispers brushing your ear. Not words, not really, just the sense that something is speaking from inside your own head. Some guys swear it’s the voices of the damned.”

“Burning ice,” someone echoed with a short laugh. “What does that even mean?”

“Means he’s not normal,” the rifleman said. “Some say he’s a traitor, one of Pariah’s own who turned on him. Others say he’s something else entirely. Not a ghost. Not human. A ghoul.”

“You’re all ridiculous,” the skeptic said, though his voice had thinned slightly. “Next, you’ll say he can bend time and vanish before you blink.”

“He can,” said the rifleman softly. “But no one who’s seen it has ended up sane.”

The card game went still. The lamp buzzed faintly overhead.

Finally, the soldier with the boots on the table smirked, though it seemed forced. “He’s just a rumor. A myth to scare rookies. Ghosts fight ghosts, nothing more.”

“Maybe,” said the rifleman, clicking his weapon back together. “Or maybe he’s out there right now, deciding who’s next.”

The lamp flickered once, then steadied. For a heartbeat, every shadow seemed to lean closer, listening. No one moved to deal the next hand.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The year after the funeral was one of uneasy quiet. Amity Park lived with the war the way you live with a storm always on the horizon: distant, threatening, but just far enough to pretend it couldn’t touch you. But lately, the whispers were growing louder. They spoke of a figure who moved like a shadow between worlds, more ruthless than Pariah’s generals, more cunning than his knights. Some swore the shadows bent toward him, stretching as if eager to be claimed. They called him Phantom.

Nobody knew where he’d come from, only that his rise was fast and merciless. Ghost armies were breaking. Survivors told stories of a white-ringed blaze cutting through the dead like paper, of cold green eyes that spared no one. Humans saw only fragments: grainy footage of a glowing figure on battlefields, ghost-hunting patrols doubling overnight, news anchors struggling to keep up.

Even the streets of Amity Park felt the shift. Children dared each other to whisper his name. Posters warned civilians to run. But for some, it was an omen, a shift towards worse to come.

And Sam was the first to aim for war.

Shouldering her rifle, Sam squinted down the range at the green, blob ghost shaped target. She breathed in, aimed, let out her breath, and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot sounded like thunder in her ear. The recoil pushed her back, but she’s used to that by now. She’d been going to the range almost every afternoon for months.

She couldn’t bring Danny back from the dead, but she could get revenge on those who killed him. As soon as her sixteenth birthday rolled around, she planned on enlisting. She’d make her way to the front lines and end those bastards herself.

After checking to see that she hit the target dead on, she reloaded mechanically, motions smooth and practiced, like she’s memorizing the ritual of war.

She breathed, aimed, fired again. This time, the shot went wide. Sam muttered a curse under her breath and yanked on the lock of hair that fell into her eyes. Why can’t I do anything fucking right?! She slammed the gun down, paused, took a deep breath, and then raised it back up to her shoulder. Her hands trembled as she reloaded.

She didn’t know if the ghosts could feel fear, but she hoped so. Every round she fired was a promise, a quiet vow that the universe wouldn’t get away with what it took from her. Her friends thought she was reckless; her parents thought she was going through a phase. They didn’t understand the restless energy that coiled under her skin, the way she would wake up some nights half-convinced she could hear Danny laughing just down the hall, only to remember the coffin and the cold words spoken at his funeral.

Only three hundred and fourteen more days until she could get out there and fight the real thing. She couldn’t wait. Sam sighed and began to pack up her bag. Before zipping it up, she took out a battered black notebook and marked down her scores for the day. She’d been improving.

She scuffed her boots along the sidewalk as she walked home. Bits of the curb crumble underfoot where it had been damaged in some past ghost skirmish. The walls beside her are covered in posters, some faded and peeling, others brighter and newer. One in particular stood out. It’s one she hadn’t seen before. “NEW THREAT,” it blared in bright green. “PHANTOM STILL AT LARGE! Do not confront, if seen, RUN.” Sam snorted softly and thought to herself, yeah right, if I ever see that ghost, I’ll nail him right between his eyes.

Letting out her breath in a soft whoosh as she passed by Tucker’s house, she glanced up at his window. From the street, it’s just a square of dim blue light, but she could just make out the faint silhouette of his hunched shoulders, head bent toward the glow of his monitors.

Tucker Foley’s world had become one of screens, signals, and secrets. Where Sam burned, Tucker buried. He threw himself into code, tech, anything that could keep his hands busy and his mind too full to think. Between classes and his parents’ polite worry, he built things, tracking programs, drone prototypes, backdoor feeds into government servers. It started as a way to help Sam keep tabs on ghost activity, but somewhere along the way, it became more than that. Something about the grainy Phantom footage wouldn’t let him go.

Nowadays, his life existed in encrypted chatrooms and Ghost Zone forums, trying to learn anything and everything he could about ghosts and the war effort. He couldn’t protect his friend, but maybe, just maybe, if he goes deep enough, if he learned everything there was to know, he could protect the people who are left.

Lately, he’d been running into more rumors about some new player called Phantom.

Lately, he’d been running into more rumors about some new player called Phantom.

The posts read like scattered weather reports - storm warnings from people who swore they’d seen the lightning firsthand. One claimed he’d “wiped out a whole battalion near the Far Frozen,” though the timestamps didn’t line up with any official GIW reports. Another whispered about a wail, some kind of ultimate weapon, but the descriptions shifted like wind: sometimes sonic, sometimes a shockwave, sometimes just a bone-deep chill. A few threads insisted he was a Pariah loyalist, a rogue ghoul, or completely unaligned, dark clouds rolling in from every direction, no two stories the same.

Tucker frowned at the inconsistencies, scrolling as if chasing static across a broken radio. Rumor wasn’t proof, but he knew how to read the weather, and patterns were forming. Every sighting left the same trail: sudden comms outages, shredded mission logs, entire squads vanishing like houses ripped off their foundations. Wherever Phantom passed, systems cracked and toppled in his wake.

This wasn’t random thunder. The data pointed to strategy, not chaos. Someone, or something, was hunting with intention. Phantom had a grudge. And it was personal.

A quiet knock broke the glow. “Tuck?” His mom’s voice, gentle. “It’s late. Want me to make you some tea?”

He hesitated, torn between the warmth in her tone and the cold lines of code on his screen.

“I’m good, Mom. Just finishing some homework.”

A pause. “All right. Don’t stay up too late.”

The door clicked softly shut. Tucker exhaled, then leaned closer to the screen. He wasn’t sure if Phantom was after total destruction or just one person, but whatever it was, Tucker needed to know why.

Outside, the sidewalk stretched on. Sam’s boots tapped a slow rhythm, passing Tucker’s silent house and heading toward the brighter end of the street. Just a few blocks over, another silhouette bent over papers instead of screens, a curtain drawn against the night: Jazz Fenton.

She sat at her desk poring over news reports and paper cuttings. There were highlighters and pens of various colors scattered everywhere. There’s a system to it, but one that’s a mystery to everyone but Jazz herself.

She muttered to herself as she scanned over war reports that she snuck out of her parents’ lab. She ran her hands through her hair, and there were ink marks on her cheek.

She reshuffled the papers, then glanced around the desk top, looking for more space. Her eyes caught on a framed photo of her and Danny, her arm over his shoulders, and wide smiles on both their faces. She reached for it, hesitated, then quickly flipped it over before placing it on the floor.

Jazz was quiet about her grief. She didn’t have Sam’s anger or Tucker’s restless obsession, but she carried her own weight of guilt. The funeral had aged her in ways she couldn’t explain; one day she’d been a sister, the next she was a guardian of no one. She still lived at home, still smiled when their parents asked about college, but it was all surface-level. Every night she locked her door and read psychology texts, occult manuals, research reports on ectoplasmic phenomena. She was piecing together something larger than herself, trying to understand how a world could so easily steal a boy and leave behind nothing but questions.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The night was alive with neon and glass, a bustling city that never slept, but right now, it was holding its breath. Cameras from half a dozen networks lined the streets, their operators whispering urgently to anchors who were already mid-broadcast. It started as a ripple - first a green glow reflecting off mirrored towers, then the sudden surge of icy wind that blew through summer air.

“This is Channel Nine News, coming to you live from downtown Denver,” a woman’s voice said, pitched high with barely restrained urgency. “Something is happening above the Daniels & Fisher Tower - wait, we’re getting confirmation now. It’s not a storm, folks. It’s them. It’s the ghosts.”

A shimmer, at first no bigger than a raindrop, widened until it was a body. Massive. Armored. Cruel. Prince Aragon spread translucent wings that eclipsed entire blocks, his roar rattling in ribcages and windowpanes alike. Glass hummed, thin and fragile. Below him, people scattered. Cars honked and collided. The city lights sputtered, flickered, died.

The second glow arrived like a knife. Blue-white, sharp enough to sting the eyes. Cameras jerked upward but caught only a blur streaking through the sky, fast as a lightning strike. When the blur steadied, the shape resolved.

Phantom.

The anchor’s voice cracked. “He’s here. The Phantom.”

The two shapes circled each other high above the tower, ghosts haloed in their own radiance. Aragon struck first, a gout of emerald fire spraying down the side of a high-rise. Phantom answered with a blast of ice, freezing the flames mid-fall with a hiss that echoes like breaking glass. Their attacks collided, the explosion lighting up the city like noon for one blinding instant.

Sound lagged behind. A thunderclap shuddered through concrete. Car alarms screamed. Someone in the crowd whimpered.

“We’re witnessing what appears to be a full-scale battle,” the anchor narrated breathlessly. “Phantom is engaging the Prince of Pariah’s court. This - this is unprecedented.”

Phantom dove, fast as a bullet, striking Aragon across the jaw. The sound cracked like thunder, reverberating off concrete. Aragon reeled, snarled, and lunged, his claws tearing through the air and sending shockwaves across the rooftops. Phantom twisted around him, firing twin streams of ecto-energy, each blast slicing neon green through the darkness. His grin widened, showing an unnatural amount of teeth, as the blast carved clean lines, surgical in their cruelty. Aragon answered with sheer brute force, slamming Phantom against a building hard enough to shatter glass ten stories below.

“Oh my god,” someone said off-camera. “Did you see that? He just went through the side of the tower!”

But Phantom wasn’t down. He glitched through the collapsing debris, almost as if reality bent around him, before reforming into a boy-shaped warrior. He grinned, teeth flashing white. It was too sharp, teeth catching the city’s light like broken glass; for a second, his outline seemed wrong, larger, as if more than one shape flickered around him.

“T̶̛̟̞͈̗̮̈́͝͝h̷̫̾ȧ̵̹͈̃̚t̴̡͙̜͕̄̿͂́̏ ̷̨̤́a̴̯̍l̵̙̐l̸̫͕̝̥͐͝ͅ ̶̱͉̓̈̾y̶͙͂̀o̸͓̜͔͊̆͠ǘ̷͕̬͊ ̶̢̻͔͊͐ģ̶̙̖̓͑̚o̴̱̫̼͋t̴̰̿͛̽ ̷̬̽̄͒͘͝l̷̠̓í̸̗̀̋̇z̷͙͍̞̝̣̓̎͐̎z̶̛̯̅͛̂ả̷̠̰̑͆ŕ̸̛̖̼̤̩̍̊ͅd̴̢̄̑̄̒ ̸̘̤̓͂̍̋̓ḇ̴̱̈̏̈́̂͘r̸͈̼̺͍̬͂̊̿̾e̵̗̮͂͑̀a̴͍̙̰͛͂̎̌̚t̷̼͐̉͐̄h̶̯̐͠ͅ?̸͕͍͕̽̇̚͝” [1.] he taunted, voice carrying even without speakers.

The crowd’s scream came seconds late.

Aragon bellowed, fury rising. He dove, jaws wide, a lance of green fire preceding him. Phantom shot upward to meet him head-on, the two colliding in an explosion. The air between them collapsed into thunder and pressure, a storm made flesh. Shattered windows became rain. Sparks became stars. Denver drowned in echoes. Car alarms wailed. Somewhere, someone screamed.

Phantom darted around the dragon, his smaller frame a blur of speed. Aragon followed like an avalanche, swinging his tail like a wrecking ball. The clash of their attacks sent shockwaves that shattered glass in nearby buildings.

Civilians ducked behind cars. The news anchor ducked, then popped up again, adrenaline pushing her forward. “The Phantom appears to be pushing Aragon back, though reports suggest Aragon’s forces have already caused significant damage. Authorities have not yet issued a statement on whether this incident is linked to the Ghost Zone conflict, though the evidence seems clear.”

Phantom spiraled upward, gathered energy into his palms, and fired. The blast tore through Aragon’s wing, sending the prince spinning backward with a roar. But the victory was brief. Aragon recovered fast, snarling, his form swelling with ghostly rage.

“Ỳ̶͙̙̘̟̱͎̤͉̯̬̾͋͆͐͒ơ̴̢̺͙̦͕̭̻̟̺͉̯̳͒̐̽̐͌̃̚ų̴̹̦̈́͑̔̄͌̒͂͛̌̋ ̷̨̧͔̬̟͇̦̰̳͖̖͇̭̍̋̈̇̃͂͜w̸̛͕̍̇͒̐̈́͆̄́̏i̶̻̼̒͋̎͂̅́̓̃̕l̴̺͍͉͠l̴̯̙̓̌͗̓̅̃̕ ̸̧̮̥͈̟̦̺̹͎͓͖̳̻̝̔ķ̴̛̯̜̼̦̓̏͌̎͆̀̆̏n̴͉̮̯͚͙͎̟̯̖̋͊̓̓̌̃͂͆̕ȩ̴̡̧̧̲̘̗̩̺͉̼̳̗̳̲̉̑̓̔́͆̾͋́͗̐̐̊̚͘é̷͙̹̗̞̹́͊͌̊͘̕l̵͍̲͗̒̐ ̷̡̤̥̝͔̎̑b̴̧̰̬̮̹̻͎̠̹̝̲́̈́̃̉̍̕e̸̲͙̾͒̀̄͗̏̃̽͘͜f̸̢̨͎̹͍̟̲̅̈̊͒̑̔͑̀ô̶̧̙̯̟̝̭̻̟̣̥̦͍͚̟̖̾̃̀̈́̅̅̈́̎̽͌̕̕r̸͔̬̄̓́͑̽̓̆e̵̳̐̑̓͒̔̃̃́̂͑̕͠ ̵͔̃́͆̎̊̌͐̆̕͝ṁ̴̰͕̤̲̩̯̻̠̦͖̦̪̯̐͋̑̄́̕͘͝e̴̝̮̙̓̏̐̊̊͗!̴̝͎̀̅̄̇́̑͐͘”[2.] Aragon bellowed. He slammed his talons into the street. Spectral chains erupted, lashing upward like snakes. Phantom twisted and phased through most of them, but one clipped his wispy tail, yanking him downward. He crashed hard, impact rattling the street.

The camera zoomed in. “Phantom’s been hit! I repeat, Phantom’s been - wait!” The anchor’s voice cracked with disbelief as Phantom surged to his feet, chains melting away around him. His eyes glowed brighter, his jaw set. The glow bled into the cracks of his face. At first it was just a hairline fracture, a seam of light at the corner of his jaw. Then it spread, slow and deliberate, a spiderweb of fissures crawling across his cheekbones and down toward his throat. The glow inside wasn’t steady; it pulsed, brightening in uneven surges like something alive straining against bone. For a breathless moment, his face looked less like flesh and more like a mask splitting apart from within, as though the fire under his skin had grown too fierce to be contained. He shot upward, straight toward Aragon.

“I̶̫̅͂̆͛ ̶̙̹̓̎̇̈̊͋̄͌̔̔̉̀͂͠ḑ̷̝̮̖̯̬̞̞̬̞̽̎̓̈́͒̓̌͝͠o̸̺̮̩̫̱̝̫̔̈̀͆̾̇̈̈́ͅͅn̴̛̝͎̠̦̣͙̫̯͆̊̌̈́̍͛’̶͉͙̆͌͑̃̇̽̾͂̊̃̿̒͆͘͠ẗ̴̥̥̥̘̹̬͕̯́ ̷̧̢̖̰̘̐͛͊̅̀̚̕k̶̢̫͖̳͈̪͎̩͙̃́̂͛͝ͅņ̷̰̗̭̼̬͔̺̼̽͐͋͒̍̈́̔̓̌́̀̓̄̽͠e̸̝͕̘̰̳̮̻̐̓̇̃̀̈́̍͠ē̶̠̰͑̌̔̿̀̐͛̋͒̚͝͠l̸͈̼̻̻͂̃̒̂̚ ̶̢̛̛̫̼̻̀̆̎̀͜t̷̨̢̛͉͖͚̹̩̹̰͙̑̃̌͛̌̾̔̚͠ȯ̵̼̯͔̹̑̈́̏́̍͛͋̇͐͌͐͝ ̵̛̉̾̇͋̒̈́̒̈͑̍̍̕ͅt̸̢͔̠̠̭̼̦͆̏͊̾̅y̷͈̮̝̹̽͝r̵̛͕̟̦̲̮̎̍͐̔̑͒̏͝a̸͇̥͑̈́͂̾̾͘̕͠n̶̺̖͍̾̀̈́͛̌̀̕̕ţ̴̺̫͇̀́̀͒͛́͗̃́̌̕̕͝s̶̛̟̫͍̾̂͆͒,̶̭̟̫̪̐̎͜”[3.] he spat.

With a roar, he slammed into Aragon full-force. The prince’s dragon form shattered, fragments raining down like crimson stars, leaving his human guise behind. They grappled midair, fists blurring. Phantoms’ smaller size seemed to be his strength - every hit precise, every dodge razor-thin. And then, with a final surge, He twisted behind Aragon and drove an ectoblast into his back. The explosion lit the night, the shockwave throwing both of them apart.

When the smoke thinned, Aragon faltered. Phantom remained, glowing fissures spiderwebbing across his face, his body split by the light inside. Not flesh. Not bone. Something else.

The news anchor’s voice was soft, reverent. “Aragon is retreating . . . the Phantom stands.”

The silence after was deafening. Phantom hovered there, panting, before turning. The cameras caught it, though they were half-blind with dust. Just a flash of white hair, green eyes, and then he vanished into the night.

Chapter Text

The broadcast flickered on. Green and white light cutting through the shadows of living rooms, cafes, and makeshift shelters alike. The footage was grainy, distorted - static curling across the screen in jagged patterns - but no one needed clarity to understand the terror. Buildings ripped open from within, walls peeling back like paper. Fires froze mid-air as ghostly ice surged through them, hissing and splintering the flames into shards of frozen light. A car hung, mid-explosion, as if the world had paused its scream. From the haze of smoke and chaos, a figure emerged: white hair streaming like a comet’s tail, eyes cold and vivid, moving faster than the camera could track. Phantom.

Across the city and beyond, rumors spread faster than the images themselves. Some whispered he struck without warning, leaving devastation in his path. Others spoke of the sheer precision of his attacks, as if he knew every move before it happened. Survivors recounted scenes that made even hardened soldiers blanch: wraiths torn apart mid-fight, GIW squads left in frozen tableaux, civilians narrowly escaping streaks of emerald light slicing the streets. Nobody could agree if he was justice or horror incarnate.

In a dim corner of a GIW command center, analysts hunched over flickering monitors, murmuring to one another in hushed, tense tones. Reports of Phantom’s attacks scrolled endlessly across the screens. Each line more incomprehensible than the last. “This . . . it’s coordinated,” one muttered, voice tight. “He’s not just attacking randomly. He’s hunting.” Another scribbled hastily on a red-stained form. “Phantom’s echo?” A note scrawled in the margin, circled, then angrily struck through. No one could prove the connection, but the suspicion lingered. Containment protocols were strict, urgent. One misstep and the consequences would be catastrophic.

The footage switched again, this time to a ruined GIW outpost far north. Soldiers huddled in the wreckage, rifles shaking in frozen hands. “It . . . it wasn’t supposed to be like this,” a private gasped. The static-wrapped voice of Phantom hissed across a handheld radio, fragments of words barely intelligible, broken by interference. “ - all . . . kneel . . . not . . . stop -” Even in pieces, the cadence carried menace. The private’s eyes widened as a pulse of icy light struck the remaining ghost patrol, freezing their very forms mid-motion. When the light faded, silence fell. The soldiers were alive, but all around them, the world had been rewritten in Phantom’s image of fear.

Somewhere in another lab, a faintly glowing containment field held the unnamed echo, cables and sensors tracing every twitch and shiver. The technicians had long stopped speaking of it as anything sentient; it was simply the Phantom-linked subject, an unknown variable in a war they no longer fully controlled. Occasionally, a monitor would flicker with the echo’s image, blurred and shifting, and the analysts would lean closer. They were trying to learn what made it tick. All the ins and outs of how it functioned. If they could find a flaw, any flaw in this echo, it could be used to take down the Phantom.

They did not know what the connection between the two meant, only that it existed, and that Phantom’s fury might follow it anywhere.

Outside, the city slept fitfully, streets emptied by whispered warnings and the growing sense that no corner was safe. On the edges of towns and villages, civilians caught glimpses of green and white light streaking across the sky. They whispered each other’s names, pressed against windows, tried to imagine why one ghost could hold the world in fear. “The Ghost King. . . or a demon,” someone muttered in a back alley. “Either way, he spares no one.”

And somewhere, watching it all unfold, the unknown echo waited, tethered invisibly to a specter that was shaping a war no one could contain.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The air vents over the lab were dusty, clogged with cobwebs that shivered whenever Sam moved. The stale, metallic tang of old circuits hung in the air, and a faint hum from a half-assembled Fenton device thrummed against her skull like a heartbeat. This mess of the vents didn’t really surprise Sam; the Fenton’s had never been known for their cleanliness or tidiness. What did surprise her was the group of five GIW agents, dressed in their signature, stainless white suits, crowded into the lab down below. Their uniforms gleamed under the flickering fluorescent lights, stark against the chaos of half-finished Fenton tech littering the tables.

Sam shifted carefully, trying not to cough as dust clung to her throat. Tucker was sprawled out next to her, his PDA screen dimmed to the faintest glow, his thumbs darting quick and silent as he probed the GIW’s local signal. Jazz crouched a little further ahead, pressed tight to the grate, her knuckles white where she clutched the metal frame.

Jazz had invited them over under the guise of “studying.” And they were, just not for school. They were studying the war. Things had taken a sharp turn lately. There was a new player on the field. He was ruthless, and no one knew what his motives were.

Phantom.

A shiver traced its way down her spine. Sam didn’t even like saying the name in her head. It wasn’t that she believed in curses, but the word carried its own gravity, its own threat. That flicker of white hair and toxic green light, neither ally nor enemy, tearing into whatever - whoever - crossed his path. Some people had once thought maybe he was on their side. He fought other ghosts sometimes, didn’t he? But then he’d turned the same violence on humans, GIW patrols and even soldiers. If he had a side, no one could see it.

Down below, Maddie Fenton’s voice carried, crisp and edged with calculation. “We’ve tracked Phantom’s energy signatures across four different hot zones. You’ve seen the same data we have. Pariah Dark is still a threat, yes, but he’s predictable. Phantom . . .” she trailed off, shaking her head. “He’s something else entirely.”

The lead GIW agent, rank stripes stitched in black across the immaculate white fabric of his sleeve, nodded. “Pariah is the enemy we know. He wants conquest, control. That can be resisted. But this Phantom? He could raze both worlds without warning. And if he knows about Echo . . . nothing we do will slow him down.”

Sam’s stomach clenched. She darted a glance at Jazz, who hadn’t moved, eyes fixed on her mother below. Tucker’s typing had slowed to a crawl.

Jack Fenton’s booming voice filled the space. “And that’s exactly why we have to work together. Fenton tech and GIW manpower. You’ve got the boots, we’ve got the brains.” He slammed a meaty fist into his palm. “Together we can crack him like an ecto-walnut!”

Sam bit back a groan. Typical Jack. But the GIW didn’t laugh. They didn’t even smile.

Instead, one of the other agents stepped forward and dropped a thin file onto the lab table. The folder spilled open, revealing grainy photographs, blurred streaks of white and green light, wreckage left in Phantom’s wake. And one picture that made Sam’s skin prickle: a dark cell, lit by harsh fluorescent lights. A figure strapped down. Human. Or close enough. Sam’s stomach lurched.

“Recent captures,” the agent said flatly. “We’re holding several anomalous entities for interrogation and dissection. Phantom hasn’t come for them. Yet. If he knew what was inside that containment, he would.”

Her throat went dry. Dissection. The word rattled in Sam’s skull like a stone in a jar. She pressed her fist against her mouth to stop herself from gasping. Beside her, Tucker’s fingers twitched against his PDA screen.

Maddie leaned over the file, her face unreadable. “If he hasn’t tried to reclaim them, maybe he doesn’t care. Or maybe he’s waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” asked one of the agents, voice low.

Maddie’s silence stretched too long. When she finally spoke, her voice was low. “For us to make the wrong move. And when that happens, Phantom will come for it himself.”

The briefing wound down after that, talk of patrol routes, weapons calibrations, updated kill orders. The words blurred together, a litany of violence and fear. Phantom’s strikes. Pariah’s threats. Ghost incursions, anomalous captures, body counts. The tone wasn’t one of victory but of attrition; the sense that humanity was holding on by its fingernails while something vast and merciless circled above them.

At last, the GIW gathered their files and left, boots clicking sharp against the floor. Jack followed them up the stairs, booming about prototype ecto-cannons. Maddie lingered only a moment longer, staring at the empty file folder on the table, before she, too, disappeared.

Only then did Jazz shift back from the grate. Her face was pale, her breath shallow. Sam realized she’d been holding hers the whole time.

They crawled back through the vents in silence. Dust clung to their hair and clothes, streaking their skin in gray. By the time they dropped into Jazz’s room, Sam’s lungs burned, as if the air itself had been poisoned. She sank onto the bed’s edge, her fists clenched in her skirt, every thought heavy with the image of the humanoid figure strapped to the table.

For a long moment, none of them spoke.

Then Tucker exhaled a shaky laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all. “We’re going to lose.” His PDA dangled limp in his hand, the screen finally dark.

Jazz hugged her arms around herself, eyes darting between them. “If Phantom keeps escalating . . .” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

Sam sank onto the edge of the bed, her fists knotted in her skirt. She wanted to argue, to say they had a chance, but the words wouldn’t come. All she could see was that blurred photograph - the captive strapped down under cold lights, waiting for the knife.

And Phantom, out there somewhere, waiting too. Sam imagined those streaks of green light slicing across the night sky, and her chest tightened. Every shadow felt alive, every silence a threat.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The air in the Ghost Zone rippled, thick with anticipatory energy. Soldiers in white stood shoulder to shoulder at the border outpost, weapons clutched tight, waiting. They had been told to expect movement. Phantom had been carving through lairs for weeks, and now he was drawing the powers of the Zone itself into his orbit.

And then the gathering began.

Sojourn, Ember, Skulker, Johnny 13; the warlords who had once terrorized the living. But they didn’t matter next to the Ancients.

One by one, the Ancients drifted in, forms immense and commanding; entities older than recorded human history. Clockwork with his staff, Pandora in her armor, Frostbite like an icebound giant. Nocturn’s starry black cloak folded tight, Undergrowth’s tendrils writhing with silent distaste, Vortex shrouded in whirling winds.

Boots scraped against stone as the soldiers shifted instinctively backward, even though there was nowhere to retreat. Every one of them knew the whispers: none of these beings had bent knee to Pariah Dark. They had stood independent, proud, untouchable.

And yet-

They knelt.

The chamber echoed with the sound of it: massive forms lowering, heads bowed. Frostbite’s claws dug furrows in the stone floor as he pressed his head down. Ember’s music went mute as her flame fizzled. Even Clockwork, timeless and aloof, inclined his head.

Only Vortex and Undergrowth lingered upright longer than a heartbeat. Small gusts of wind swirled around Vortex, murmuring discontentedly. Undergrowth hissed in a language that withered the air. But when Phantom’s gaze snapped to them - those blazing, impossible eyes - both sank low, hatred smoldering but submission unavoidable.

The silence afterward was suffocating. Even the humans watching through cloaking shields felt it in their bones.

And then, from the throng of Ancients, Clockwork floated forward, staff raised. Pandora followed, her armor gleaming in the sickly light of the Zone. In their hands were artifacts of immeasurable power: a crown of fire, braided with writhing sparks, and a ring of rage, black as void and thrumming with violence.

They hovered before Phantom, the air quivering with the energy of ages. Slowly, reverently, Clockwork lowered the crown onto Phantom’s head. Flames licked the edges of his form, tendrils wrapping around his skull as if recognizing him as their master. Pandora slid the ring onto his finger. It pulsed in tandem with the crown, resonating through the very air of the chamber.

Power surged. Phantom’s form stretched, shadows deepening unnaturally, limbs elongating, features sharpening. His eyes burned brighter, green lightning flickering across his skin. The crown’s flames danced and merged with his hair, haloing him in a corona of fire, while the ring sent ripples through the ground, bending reality subtly, making the Zone itself recoil in recognition.

“By god,” one of the rookies whispered, hands shaking around his rifle. “Pariah was bad enough, but this-”

“Shut up,” hissed his commander. “Do you want it to hear you?”

Phantom stood with stillness sharper than motion. He didn’t gloat. He didn’t smile. His words came jagged and inhuman, tearing through the air in a voice that wasn’t a voice - syllables bent into static-etched commands that seared into memory whether you understood them or not.

K̶̼̞̀͊n̸̢̓̆̈́͑è̷̱͖̳̫͓̯̂ě̵̜̰͇̩̭̬ļ̴̡̨̝̰̯̆.̵̢̨̛̼̹̳̺̽̅̂̐ [1.]

The word vibrated in the skull, too loud to be thought, too deep to be forgotten.

Silence followed. Suffocating. Crushing. The kind of silence that made soldiers’ ears ring, that made ghosts shudder in their cores. It stretched so long that some nearly broke under it, desperate to fill the void with sound, with anything.

And then - not from Phantom’s mouth, but from the Zone itself - came the echo, cold and absolute:

S̵̨̛̛̤̱̘̄̋̍͌͘ë̷̢̨̺̯́͊̈́̽̎͑̌͌͝r̷͎̯̍̇͛̄̂̽͠v̴̨̳͈̲̺͇̯̓͐̊̓̋̅̆̿͠e̶̡̺̙̍̈́̅̅.̵͉̰̞̿̒͆͂̆͆̍̚ [2.]

No “or else.” No explanation. The threat lived in the stillness that followed, in the way space itself recoiled from him.

Then Phantom’s gaze shifted. He lifted one hand, and from the throng, a figure was dragged forward.

Plasmius.

Once arrogant, flamboyant, a power in his own right. Now trembling, violet aura sputtering like a candle. He tried to straighten, to sneer, but the weight of Phantom’s eyes stopped him; his knees hit the floor before any words could form.

“̵̯̓Ỳ̷͚o̶̰̍ų̷̐-̶̲͠ ̵̹̏”̸̲̂ his voice cracked. “Ỳ̵̟ò̵ͅú̸̳ ̵͓̔w̶̻̄o̷̜͂u̸̚ͅľ̷̲d̸͔͠n̷̚ͅ’̶̣̽ṯ̷̂ ̷̼͋d̸̹͝ã̴̬r̶̥̍ȅ̸͜-̷͓̈ ̸̥͋”[3.]

Phantom tilted his head. A crack of green lightning carved through the floor an inch from Plasmius’s face. The smell of ozone bit through the chamber.

Silence followed. Endless. Heavy. The kind of silence that pressed Plasmius’s forehead to the stone, not from force but inevitability. His violet aura sputtered, shrinking under the weight of it.

And then - like a verdict, not a sentence - the Zone itself whispered, jagged and cold:

K̶̼̞̀͊n̸̢̓̆̈́͑è̷̱͖̳̫͓̯̂ě̵̜̰͇̩̭̬ļ̴̡̨̝̰̯̆.̵̢̨̛̼̹̳̺̽̅̂̐ [4.]

Plasmius whimpered, forehead pressed deeper into the stone, his aura guttering out. Even from behind their shielding, the soldiers could feel the tension - not rage, not wrath, but something more deliberate, more absolute. Phantom didn’t strike him down; he didn’t have to. The silence itself carried the weight of judgment.

The green lightning dimmed, Phantom’s aura settling slightly, but the message was unmistakable: submission was absolute. The soldiers could feel it, deep in their bones; Plasmius’s chance to rise again, if it existed at all, would not come easily.

The GIW squad leader whispered into his comm. “Record everything. This is why we need Project Echo operational yesterday.”

“Project Echo won’t stand against that,” hissed another. “Nothing will.”

“Orders are orders. The higher-ups say Phantom bleeds, he bleeds. We’ll make it happen- ” He cut off, because Phantom had turned his head.

The commander swore Phantom’s gaze locked straight onto him, piercing the cloaking veil. For a breathless second, he was certain those glowing eyes saw through everything- shields, tech, even the thin armor of bravado. The commander couldn’t breathe. His hand tightened on the trigger, knowing it wouldn’t matter.

And then Phantom looked away. As if the humans weren’t worth the effort.

That disregard stung worse than direct threat.

The silence stretched again, oppressive and heavy. Finally, Phantom raised a hand, and the ghosts - ancients, warriors, predators alike - rose as one. Not defiant, not triumphant. Simply . . . bound. The order had been given, and now they would follow.

When Phantom departed, the cold remained.

Only once the chamber was empty did the GIW squad breathe again. Helmets hissed as filters kicked to high, wiping away the sweat and frost that clung inside.

“Still think Echo’s enough?” the rookie whispered, voice hollow.

The commander didn’t answer. He just turned off his recorder, muttering, “God help us if it isn’t.”

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

People huddled in an underground shelter, waiting out the most recent ghost attack. The light was tinged green by the ecto-shield stretched over the ceiling and shadows stretched and bent unnaturally, adding to the eerie air.

A small, beat-up radio in the center of the room was their only source of news in the outside world; when the attack is over, they’ll only know because of the radio.

Static-filled words echoed through the shelter, only intelligible to those near-by, muffled by arguments and sniffles. “The situation . . . Zone . . . escalated.” The words didn’t mean much by themselves, scraps of a larger story, but they were enough. Enough to stir imaginations. Enough to make the silence unbearable.

“What does that even mean?” a woman near the back hissed, clutching her child closer. “They’re just making things up to scare us.”

“They’re not making it up,” an older man shot back, voice hoarse. “I heard the same thing last week. Whole patrol wiped out. Phantom wouldn’t let them pass. He’s not fighting for us, he’s fighting everyone.”

That lit the spark. Voices rose, sharp and overlapping, some insisting Phantom was the only thing slowing Pariah’s armies, others swearing he was worse than Pariah ever was. The shelter walls seemed to shrink as fear turned inward, civilians snapping at each other because they had no other target.

“He’s punishing us,” someone muttered near the radio, words nearly swallowed by the noise. “You don’t kneel, you’re erased. Isn’t that what priests used to say? Defy a god and be struck down?”

“Don’t - don’t call him that.” The woman’s voice shook, but her denial only made the words linger heavier in the stale air. A god. A tyrant. A specter no weapon could touch.

A voice burst from the radio, for once unmarred by static, cutting through the arguments, “Pariah Dark is gone . . . none of his patrol units have been sighted in over 48 hours.” Then the static was back, and so was the silence.

Parents clutched their children closer. Friends huddled together, taking comfort where they can. The same thought filtered through everyone’s heads, this terror was never going to end.

The silence pressed heavy, broken only by the scrape of a chair or the stifled sob of a child. It would have been easy to believe the fear was contained to that single room, but aboveground, Amity Park wore the same expression.

The streets lay dim under the sickly glow of the ecto-shield, neon-green light warping every shadow into something alien. Windows were darkened, businesses shuttered. GIW trucks rumbled down main roads, their engines growling like warnings, while families peered out from behind blackout curtains. It didn’t matter where you hid - the war had found its way into every corner of the city.

At dinner tables and kitchen counters, in bedrooms, and bathrooms, and places that were supposed to be safe, the war pressed in.

In one house on the northeast side of Amity Park, a little girl sat on the floor of her kitchen, green crayon gripped in her pudgy fist. Her parents argue overhead, not really angry, but just so worried that they don’t have another way to express it.

“If the ancients kneeled . . . what chance do we have?”

“We can’t just give up! We have to keep fighting!”

“But that about Claire? Think of her, we have to keep her safe!”

“I am thinking of her! She’s all I think about!”

The crayon in her hand snapped. A jerky green line jutting out from the blob she had been scribbling. The snap echoed loudly and the argument above her stopped, and the silence stretched.

Outside, a storm brewed, and no prayers would be enough to stop it.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The briefing room was cold, humming with fluorescent lights and the scratch of pens across paper. GIW commanders stood around a projected map of the Ghost Zone, its shifting green geography flickering with unstable borders. The news from earlier in the week still hung heavy in the air: Phantom had taken the ancients. Kneeling. Every last one. The silence in the room wasn’t respect, but fear.

“The situation is untenable,” one agent said at last, voice flat but tight at the edges. “If even Clockwork and Pandora bow to him, then there is no ally left in the Zone. We are standing on an island, and the tide is rising.”

The Director didn’t look up from his notes. “Project Echo is our contingency. Containment is holding. Until further notice, we proceed with analysis and refinement. Phantom can’t know we have it.”

A knock at the door, sharp and frantic. A junior agent stumbled in, helmet under one arm, his face pale with sweat. He tripped over a chair, nearly dropping the helmet. His voice cracked as he blurted it out:

“Containment has failed. Project Echo is gone.”

The room froze.

For a moment, no one moved. Then voices rose at once, orders shouted, questions hurled, panic spilling through the chain of command like a breach in a dam. Someone demanded reports. Someone else swore Phantom must have learned of it. The Director’s pen snapped clean in two between his fingers.

The projection flickered, bathing them all in green light. On the map, the Zone seethed and shifted, borders collapsing in on themselves. Phantom’s storm was spreading.

No one said it aloud, but every soul in the room felt it: whatever Echo had been, whatever purpose it was meant to serve, it wasn’t theirs anymore. And without it, they had nothing.

By now, the storm had already broken.

Chapter Text

The city didn’t sleep. Not since Project Echo failed. Even beneath the flickering green glow of the ecto-shield, streets lay empty, as if the war itself had drawn a line no civilian dared cross. Behind shuttered windows, huddled inside shelters, whispers traveled faster than the news feeds. Some said Phantom was unstoppable. Some said the Ghost Zone itself had bent to his will. Some murmured that no one could survive him unless something, someone, was offered in blood.

The words weren’t said lightly. Families clutched children tighter, afraid the air itself might snatch them away. In one corner of a shelter, an old man repeated the same sentence over and over: “Kneel or die . . . kneel or die,” a mother pressed her forehead to her child’s hair, muttering a shaky prayer, though she wasn’t sure whether she was praying for safety, mercy, courage.

The fear pressed against the walls, seeping upward into a city that had long since stopped pretending to sleep. Above ground, sirens had long gone quiet, replaced by the hum of distant GIW trucks and the occasional crackle of radio static carrying fragmented reports. Occasionally, words cut through the static, eerie and disjointed: “Ancients . . . Phantom . . . Crown.” Voices would fade mid-sentence, leaving only the imagination to stitch together horrors too vast to comprehend. The silence that followed was worse. Even adults found themselves whispering names of friends and neighbors in dread, as though speaking their names might draw the ire of the ghost king to them.

People gathered in ragged lines outside stores with empty shelves, bright yellow ration slips clutched tightly in hand, hoping for enough food to get their families through the coming week. One father held a ration slip for a family of five, but only his wife and two kids gathered around him. Street preachers stood on every corner; the end of times had already come, now all that was left was to bear the aftermath. Some talked of ways to make it better, of submitting to the ghosts. They argued that nothing could be worse than what would come if people continued to fight the Zone. Others spat at their feet, calling them traitors, though the words lacked conviction. Everyone knew, deep down, that desperation makes strange allies.

In a command center far from the families and famine, outside a set of reinforced doors, a group of soldiers milled about. Boots scraped against tile as they waited, straining to catch even a word from the muffled shouts within. They weren’t privy to the debates unfolding, but the rise and fall of voices told enough: fear was winning ground. A younger soldier whispered that brass only shouted like that when there were no moves left to play. No one answered him. The silence said plenty.

Rumors slithered through the ranks faster than radio waves. Some swore they’d overheard fragments of transmission: that the commanders were weighing something beyond tactics, beyond casualties. The phrase surfaced in hushed tones, sharper each time: an offering. No one dared say more, but every man and woman waiting in that hallway felt the weight of the word. They gripped their rifles tighter, as if steel in hand could fend off the terrible choice looming just beyond the doors. A veteran leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closed, lips moving soundlessly. Whether he was praying, cursing, or bargaining, no one asked. No one wanted the answer.

And beyond those reinforced doors, the answers were being forged in voices sharp enough to draw blood. Leaders gathered, their faces pale under the fluorescent glare. Panic had a taste, and it lingered on the tongue of every general, every politician, every scientific adviser. They argued, they shouted, they folded hands in uneasy prayer over maps of the Ghost Zone, trying to make sense of borders that no longer obeyed any logic. The failure of Project Echo - their last hope, the contingency they’d pinned everything on - had undone them all. Without it, they had nothing to hold Phantom back. Nothing but fear and desperation.

The table was long enough to seat thirty, but the space felt crowded, suffocating. Holographic maps flickered at the center, showing sectors swallowed by ghostly green, cities erased from existence as though they had never been drawn on Earth in the first place. Borders pulsed and shifted in ways no strategist could track. The Ghost Zone bled into their world now, as inexorable as the tide.

“Reinforcements?” General Ross barked, his knuckles white against the tabletop. “We don’t have any left. Half my men are ghosts already - walking corpses, cut down by things we don’t even have names for. If we commit more troops, we’ll lose them the same way. Half the men we lose turn to ghosts themselves and become our enemies on the next battlefield.”

“Then we sue for peace.” The words came from Councilor Whitman, thin-voiced but sharp as a knife. He sat straighter, folding his hands in front of him as though in prayer. “We cannot win. The people know it. Every death we throw at him is wasted blood. There are . . . precedents, after all.” His eyes flicked toward the priests seated near the back of the chamber. “The texts say the Ancients spared worlds in exchange for offerings. Gifts. Tributes.”

“Tribute?” one of the governors repeated, voice brittle with disbelief. “What do you propose we give, our last grain silos? The mountains our people shelter in? Half the continent already burns. If we strip away what little we have left, we condemn the survivors to starvation even if the fighting ends.”

Another voice joined in, harsh with weariness. “We could offer land. Access. The mines, perhaps-”

“The mines are exhausted!” someone else snapped. “And do you think the people will meekly hand over what soil they still bleed for? Trade is already dead, our coffers empty. What do we have left to bargain with?”

The chamber fractured, the arguments jagged and overlapping: food, water, borders, relics scavenged from ruined cities. Each proposal carried the same undertone: the surrender of what little remained.

Then the low, steady voice of a priest cut through the noise. “There is another kind of offering.”

All heads turned. The priest’s fingers worried at a rosary, beads clicking like chattering teeth. His face was calm, but his eyes burned. “Blood has always bought peace. Not grain. Not gold. A sacrifice of life. The Zone does not hunger for soil. It hungers for souls.”

A shocked murmur rippled across the table.

“That is barbaric,” Dr. Hirsch hissed, shoving his glasses higher on his nose. “You would have us dress up murder as diplomacy? You would -” His voice caught. He searched the faces around the table, looking for agreement, for outrage. None came.

The priest did not look away. “Tell me which weighs heavier: one life, freely given, or the slow death of millions? Which choice is cruelty?”

For a long moment, silence pressed in, suffocating. The suggestion should have been dismissed outright; yet no one moved to strike it down. Hirsch’s protest found no echo. The silence that followed wasn’t uncertainty, but calculation. Every second it stretched made the priest’s words seem less monstrous, more inevitable.

Hirsch’s mouth opened again, but no sound came. The protest withered on his tongue.

It was Senator Liang who finally spoke, voice measured, calculating. “If such a sacrifice were considered . . .” He let the words linger, poisonous in their plausibility. “Then who decides what life is offered? And how do we present it so the world sees martyrdom, not betrayal?”

That was the pivot point. The shift no one wanted, but everyone had been circling. Words spilled out faster now: prisoners, criminals, volunteers, symbols. Each proposal revealed more about its speaker than about Phantom. Some wanted the powerless, the expendable. Others demanded that the sacrifice be someone meaningful, someone whose death could be paraded as proof of humanity’s devotion.

“A lamb,” the priest whispered, rosary clattering against the tabletop as his hands shook. “The texts are clear. The lamb must be pure. Innocent. Only then will the offering be accepted.”

Around the table, heads bowed or turned away, shame and fear twisting in equal measure. No one wanted to be the first to say it aloud, but the shape of the answer had already settled over them like a shroud.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Sam hadn’t been trying to eavesdrop. She’d only meant to cut through the east wing hallway, away from the ever-hovering staff, away from the suffocating quiet that hung over the house since Project Echo’s collapse. But the low murmur of voices stopped her mid-step. Her rifle bag swung and hit her hip, a solid, grounding bump.

Her father’s voice, sharp and clipped: “You’re asking us to put our family on the line.”

A second voice, smooth, calculated, and unmistakably political, answered. “On the contrary, Mr. Manson. I’m offering your family the chance to be remembered as the one that saved humanity. A gesture like this carries weight. The people are looking for hope, and the Manson name has always commanded respect.”

Sam pressed closer to the half-open study door, her heartbeat spiking in her ears.

Her mother’s voice cut in, quieter but firm. “And you’re certain this is what they want? A lamb for the slaughter?”

“Not a lamb,” the other voice corrected gently. “A symbol. An innocent offered freely shows surrender without shame. It tells the ghost king that humanity is willing to bow, to pay the price. And coming from such an important family, it tells the people that their leaders are not afraid to sacrifice their own.”

There was a pause. Sam’s stomach churned, her heart froze in her chest.

Her father exhaled slowly, the sound of a man resigning himself to an unpleasant bargain. “She’s always been . . . difficult. Headstrong. Rebellious. If her death can serve a greater good, perhaps that’s the path she was meant for.”

Her mother didn’t object. In fact, Sam could hear the subtle lift in her tone, as if already seeing the political advantage. “The family that gave up their daughter to save the world. Yes . . . yes, I can see how that would elevate our standing. It would silence those who doubt our loyalty. It would make us untouchable.”

Sam’s breath caught in her throat. She must be misunderstanding. They couldn’t - There’s no way. Her fingertips brushed the heavy wooden door. She pulled back, sucked in a breath, steeled herself, then shoved.

The door banged hard against the wall. Both her parents and the aide turned at once, their expressions more annoyed than surprised.

“You can’t be serious.” Her voice cracked, her whole body trembling. “You’re- you’re selling me off? To him? Like I’m nothing but a pawn in one of your stupid games?”

Her father didn’t flinch. “It isn’t a game, Samantha. This is survival. The world demands sacrifice, and you have been chosen.”

“No.” Sam’s fists clenched so tight her nails dug crescents into her palms. “You volunteered me. Don’t dress it up as destiny. Don’t pretend this is noble.”

Her mother’s eyes were cool, sharp, cutting away every plea before it left Sam’s throat, but she was looking at the wall behind her, refusing to meet Sam’s eyes. “One girl’s life in exchange for peace is a bargain anyone would take. You should be proud. You will be remembered long after the rest of us are gone.”

“I don’t want to be remembered!” Sam shouted, her chest burning with fury and grief. “I want to fight. I want to live. I’m not your lamb. I’m not-”

But the words broke off as her father stood, straightening his jacket with finality.

“You are what the world requires. Nothing more, nothing less,” he said. “And you will not shame this family by refusing.”

Sam’s vision blurred with hot tears, rage and betrayal twisting so tightly in her chest she could hardly breathe. She slammed her palms against the polished desk, rattling the fancy trinkets and rewards her parents prized so much.

“You don’t get to decide this for me!” she screamed. “You don’t get to throw me away because I don’t fit your perfect little picture. I’m not a bargaining chip, I’m your daughter - your child!”

Her voice cracked on the last word, but her parents only stared at her as if she were an inconvenience, a mistake in the middle of an otherwise tidy arrangement.

Her father’s lips thinned. “Compose yourself. You will not disgrace us further.” He turned back to the government aide, an apologetic look on his face, and reached down to adjust his cufflinks.

Her mother’s gaze was colder still. “If you cannot understand the necessity of this, Samantha, then perhaps you were never as strong as you thought.”

Something inside Sam broke at that - not cleanly, but jagged, like glass shattering. For a heartbeat she thought she might lash out, might tear the room apart in fury, but her strength failed her all at once. She let out a strangled sound, somewhere between a sob and a curse, and spun on her heel.

She stormed down the hall, footsteps echoing too loud in the empty mansion, until she slammed her bedroom door behind her. The lock clicked under her shaking fingers, but it was useless - what good was a lock against a death sentence signed by her own parents?

Sam slid down the door, her knees giving out. The sobs came fast, wracking her chest until she could hardly draw breath. She pressed both hands to her face, smearing tears and snot across her skin, trying to hold herself together and failing miserably. Perhaps you were never as strong as you thought. The phrase coiled through her like poison, making her wonder if her mother had been right all along.

They’d taken everything from her. Her freedom. Her future. Even her fight. She’d sworn to battle the ghosts, to avenge the friend ripped away from her by the war, and now - now she was being offered up like cattle to the very monsters she hated.

And the worst of it, the knife twisting deepest, was that her parents hadn’t hesitated. They hadn’t fought for her. They had given her away.

She couldn’t breathe. Tears clogged her throat, choking her - drowning her. Her chest felt hollow, frozen through, but beneath the ice something still burned, rage and betrayal simmering like embers refusing to die. Her own parents. They hadn’t really gotten along in years, but still, Sam thought they loved her, cared for her, would fight for her, if it came down to it.

But no; they were tossing her out like an inconvenience. Casting her out of the only life she’d ever known. No more afternoons with Tucker, discussing the war or watching movies or playing video games to distract themselves. No more evenings at the range, practicing so she could avenge Danny. God, Danny. It felt like a betrayal of his memory to just surrender like this, to give in without a fight. Maybe her mom was right; maybe she wasn’t strong enough. She couldn’t bluster her way through this with false bravado.

Sam curled into herself on the cold floor, shaking, choking on the sound of her own grief. She clutched the tiny bottle on a chain around her neck. Inside the bottle, a glow-in-the-dark star from Danny’s childhood bedroom rattled faintly. For the first time since the war began, she felt utterly, terrifyingly alone.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Sam sat motionless on the edge of her bed, her skin cold beneath the thin silk shift her mother had pressed into her arms. She hadn’t spoken since the decision had been made almost a week ago. Words felt hollow, useless; even breathing took effort. When her mother’s hands guided her upright, she didn’t resist. When fabric settled heavy across her shoulders, she didn’t flinch. She was nothing more than a mannequin dressed in white, prepared for slaughter.

Her hands jerked in an aborted motion to tug at her hair, a habit she picked up at the range - you couldn’t aim well if you couldn’t see. But no, she didn’t have her rifle, she couldn’t fight this. And her hair was oh so nicely styled. God forbid I look unseemly in my big media appearance, she thought bitterly.

Her mother murmured platitudes, soft tones, practiced tenderness, but they slid off Sam like water off stone. “Keep your eyes lowered. Do not raise your voice. Obey what is asked of you, and you may yet find peace. If he grows angry, do not talk back. If he reaches for you, yield. In time, perhaps you will even learn to be grateful.” Her hand lingered for a second on Sam’s back. The scent of her rose perfume drifted over her shoulder and Sam wanted to be sick. She used to like her mother’s perfume, but now it was just suffocating.

Sam’s stomach churned, but she didn’t move. The words pressed against her like silk binding her tighter than any rope.

The only thing anchoring her was the faint rattle at her chest, the tiny glass bottle with its fading plastic star. She kept her fingers curled over it, even as pale gloves were pulled onto her hands. Her hip ached with phantom memory - the rifle bag that used to hang there, a solid weight, her proof she could fight back. Gone. Now all she had left was this, and it felt unbearably fragile.

The gown was smoothed, the sash tied. At last, her mother’s fingers brushed the chain around her neck.

“This,” she said gently, almost apologetically, “does not belong. It’s childish, Samantha. And disrespectful. You cannot carry the memory of an enemy into the Ghost King’s presence.”

Sam’s breath hitched. For the first time in hours, she moved, snatching the chain in both hands, clutching it desperately to her chest. A flicker of Danny appeared in her mind - his wide, hopeful eyes, the ceiling of his room dotted with stars. She could feel him there, even in memory, and it fueled the fire in her chest.

“No,” she rasped. “Please. Not this. Don’t take this from me.”

Her mother’s face softened in a way that felt crueler than any slap. “Let go, darling. Some things must be left behind.”

Sam shuddered, digging her fingers into the chain. Her knuckles whitened as she grunted, a low, ragged sound, resisting with everything she had. Her mother was methodical, inexorable, prying her fingers apart one by one. The chain slipped free.

The loss was physical. Sam folded in on herself as though something vital had been cut away, as though her heart had been ripped from her chest. The world seemed to blur around her. She didn’t want to - she couldn’t - face reality without the necklace there, without the tiny star to remind her why she had to keep fighting.

She was numb and hollow as she’s guided out the front gate of her family mansion. She didn’t register the faces of strangers that pressed around her as she walked to the car, or the questions and flashing lights of the press. None of it mattered anyway - Sam was a sacrifice, she was as good as dead. Maybe she would see Danny soon.

The drive to the edge of town was spent mostly in silence. Occasionally her mother would shift in her seat, dress rustling against the leather, or her father would clear his throat, as though he was going to say something, before looking down at his lap and returning to silence.

The seatbelt dugs into Sam’s chest oddly. She’s not used to not having it catch on the studs and pins that adorn all her usual clothes.

They reach the edge of town and pass under the pulsing green ghost shield and are met by a gathering of men in white suits: the GIW. They were going to be the ones escorting Sam to her fate. Not my parents, Sam thought bitterly, they would never set foot in the Ghost Zone themselves, that was far too dangerous.

The car door opened, and Sam’s parents stepped out first, straight-backed and solemn, accepting nods from the officials as though this were a business deal and not their daughter’s life. Then Sam was pulled gently but firmly from the car, her pale dress catching the light, her hollow eyes hidden beneath the fall of her hair. The shield’s pulsing green glow cast a sickly tint over everything, bleaching even the grass of its color. Ahead, the GIW agents stood in crisp formation, faceless behind their visors. Behind them, a small cordoned-off area held the only people who mattered.

Tucker broke through first. He nearly tripped in his rush, but he didn’t seem to care. His hands clutched at her arms, his voice cracking as he tried to sound braver than he felt.

“Sam, listen to me. I’ll find a way - I swear I’ll find a way. They can’t just take you like this. I’ll hack the systems, I’ll tear down the shield if I have to. I’ll get you back.”

She wanted to believe him, God, she wanted to, but the GIW was already moving closer, their stiff white uniforms a wall between them. Tucker’s face twisted with desperation. “I promise!” he shouted as rough hands yanked him backward. “I promise I’ll save you! I can’t lose you too!” His voice broke into a scream, his words lost under the scuffle as he was dragged away, still reaching for her.

Jazz came next, calmer, but with eyes swollen red as though she hadn’t slept in days. She wrapped Sam in a trembling hug, holding on longer than the GIW agents seemed to like. When she pulled back, her hand pressed something small and sharp into Sam’s palm.

“I’m so sorry,” Jazz whispered fiercely. “I tried to stop them. I tried everything. You didn’t deserve this.” Her voice cracked, but she steadied herself. “Stay alive. For him. For all of us.”

Sam curled her fingers around the tiny shapes Jazz had slipped her. Later, when she dared to peek, she’d see the familiar edges of glow-in-the-dark stars. Danny’s ceiling. Danny’s room. A piece of him to carry into the dark, gifted by Danny’s sister, a token to get her through this.

Valerie, a friend from the shooting range, lingered at the edge of the crowd. She didn’t push forward like Tucker or cling like Jazz, but when Sam’s eyes met hers, the connection was sharp and unspoken. Valerie gave her a single nod, grim, soldierly respect, and then looked away, jaw tight, as though to show anything more would undo her.

A hand settled on Sam’s shoulder. Her father’s voice, practiced and calm: “We’re proud of you. You’re giving everything for the greater good.”

“So brave,” her mother added softly.

Sam’s stomach twisted. Brave? Her hands shook with the effort not to claw the words back down their throats. It wasn’t bravery if you didn’t get to choose. It was slaughter dressed in silk.

The agents closed in before she could answer. Their gloves were too tight on her arms, too steady in their movements. She was escorted step by step toward the rift that pulsed at the edge of the platform. A wound in reality, glowing sickly green, light leaking like steam. The air around it hummed, thick with static, and every hair on Sam’s body rose as though the Zone had already reached through and touched her.

One agent murmured something into her earpiece. Another adjusted his grip and nudged her forward. Sam’s heels scuffed against the stone, but the rift swallowed them whole.

And then - cold. Cold unlike anything she had ever known, not winter, not ice, not death. It clawed at her lungs, sank its teeth into her bones. She staggered, breath ripped out of her. Her silk dress felt thin as gauze, and without the grounding weight of her rifle bag at her hip, she felt adrift, helpless, and almost like a ghost herself.

The Ghost Zone stretched around her. Skies churned a restless, sickly green, clouds rolling too fast and too low. The ground was an alien purple, rough and scarred like stone that had never cooled. And in that endless chaos, human order had been carved: the GIW’s white tents lined in flawless grids, harsh as scars against the landscape.

It smelled sharp, like ozone - like danger.

They didn’t loosen their grip until she was shepherded to the outpost gates. Only at the edge of their perimeter, where the air itself seemed to snarl, did the agents finally pause. Beyond lay the Zone proper.

Sam shivered. The silk clung to her skin. And for the first time, she realized how far from home she truly was.

The GIW outpost ended in a hard line of floodlights, and beyond that, there was nothing but the eerie, shifting glow of the Zone. The agents slowed, exchanging uneasy looks. None of them wanted to be the first to cross.

Then a shape flickered out of the mist. Small. Quick. Human-sized.

Sam’s breath caught as the figure resolved into a girl, barefoot, white-haired, and younger than she was, only eleven or twelve at the oldest. A child, and not a child, her sharp green eyes glittering with something inhuman. She wore a simple over-sized tunic and pants, covered in a cloak that fluttered gently in a wind that wasn’t there. At first glance, she could’ve been a lost child. But when her head tilted, too far to one side, the motion birdlike, unsettling, the GIW flinched back as though a gun had been drawn.

“Clockwork told me I had to pick up something important from here,” the girl said, voice soft, lilting, almost sing-song. Her gaze swept Sam up and down, unhurried, unsettlingly precise. Then her mouth curved. Just for a flicker, rows of teeth too sharp flashed before her smile reassembled into something almost normal. “You aren’t what I expected.”

Her words hung in the air, colder than the Ghost Zone’s unnatural chill, and Sam’s blood ran cold. She reached instinctively, desperately, for her rifle, for a Fenton thermos, for anything. But she’s alone. Helpless.

The GIW agents shoved Sam forward. She stumbled, silk skirts tangling around her legs, and a small hand caught her wrist.

The girl’s grip was firm. Too firm for a child. Her skin was cold as marble. “Come on,” she murmured, tugging Sam over the threshold. As she moved, her limbs jerked in tiny, staccato flickers, the steps almost out of sync, and the cloak swirled like wind-chased smoke. “He’s waiting.”

The floodlights behind her flickered and dimmed, swallowed by green.

And just like that, Sam was gone, dragged into the Ghost Zone by inevitability and innocence twisted into something monstrous.

Chapter Text

Sam couldn’t tell if she was walking, drifting, or being carried forward on some unseen current. The ground beneath her shoes was gone. Endless green sky stretched below, making her stomach lurch and breath hitch. Her feet still moved out of habit, but it felt like gravity had forgotten her existence. Her hair lifted around her face, brushed by a nonexistent wind. She was falling and flying all at once.

Beside her, the girl - no, the ghost - floated easily, as though this were the most natural thing in the world. Wisps of light seemed to cling to her hair, pooling where it shouldn’t, and her boots never touched anything solid. Her outline lagged half a second behind her as she moved.

“I’m Sprite,” the ghost said finally, as if testing the word before handing it over. “That’s . . . what I go by here.”

Sam nodded, clutching her arms around herself, braced against the chill of the Zone. “I’m - I’m Sam,” she whispered.

Sprite didn’t offer more, and Sam didn’t dare push. The silence stretched, broken only by the low hum of the Zone itself.

Time wasn’t behaving quite right here either. Sam couldn’t tell if minutes passed, or hours. The sky shifted constantly, clouds swirling in shades of acid green, rippling with lightning that left no thunder. Her watch ticked, then froze, then jumped ahead by three hours when she blinked. She hit the watch face as if that could fix reality.

The temperatures started to drop even more as the mist swirled and thickened around them. And then, on the horizon, something vast and crimson bled into view.

The keep rose out of the mist like a wound carved into the sky; impossibly tall walls of stone the color of dried blood, jagged towers that scraped against the swirling clouds. Gothic arches and spiked buttresses loomed overhead; windows slit like eyes. Sam’s chest tightened. It looked like every nightmare painting she’d ever seen of medieval fortresses where sacrifices were carried screaming.

But this fortress wasn’t abandoned. It wasn’t still.

Everywhere she looked, Pariah’s symbols: the jagged crown, the curling serpents of his banners, had been scraped away, replaced with a clean white mark: a stylized P that glowed faintly against the stone. And beneath the oppressive gothic spires, newer wings of the keep were taking shape; they were sleeker, lighter, like a city’s skyscrapers trying to shoulder their way into the ruins. The old and the new overlapped uneasily, as though the keep itself hadn’t decided what it was becoming.

Beside her, Sprite grinned at the fortress. Her smile was all sunlight and teeth, too wide, too fast, like she’d learned it from a mirror that didn’t quite remember how people worked.

Glancing upwards, Sam noticed that the sky above had changed too. Gone was the swirling, poisonous green of the Ghost Zone. Here, it was a midnight blue so deep Sam wanted to fall into it, punctured with stars upon stars, whole galaxies twisting like spilled diamonds. Planets burned bright, close enough she swore she could touch them if she reached. The sight was too vast, too impossible.

Her breath caught. She wasn’t looking at a sky. She was looking at infinity.

Sprite’s gaze flicked toward her, head jerking, almost too fast to see, before reality seemed to catch up. “We’re here,” she murmured.

And Sam’s stomach dropped.

So far she had been holding herself together with a thin glassy calm. Her terror and despair ran so deep that she couldn’t feel them anymore. The pit of writhing anxiety in her chest had iced over, and all that was left was hollowness. Her pounding heart beat sounded distant, echoing as it underwater. Everything felt a little too far away and her body didn’t quite feel like it was hers.

They drifted gently, weightlessly, down towards the towering gates. Sam clutched at the edge of Sprite’s cloak; she might not really know Sprite, but she was the only vaguely familiar thing in this terrifying alien world, and Sam would be damned if she let that one small connection go.

The gates loomed taller than skyscrapers, iron bars carved with the stylized P glowing like a brand. They almost seemed to hum; a low vibration she could feel in her teeth. Sam’s breath clouded in the frigid air.

The ghost waiting at the gates was massive, shoulders broad enough to blot out the light spilling from behind him. His skin seemed carved from stone, all sharp planes and shadow. Muscles coiled under his armor like barely leashed violence. Faint cracks in his form glowed from within, not bright like Sprite’s soft shimmer but deep, angry, ember-red, like something volcanic straining to break free.

When his eyes opened, they weren’t the soft green glow she’d heard of in whispers of Phantom. They burned, twin furnace flames that locked on her and measured. Predatory. Heavy.

Sam’s knees wobbled before she forced them stiff.

The ghost didn’t smile. His mouth was a scar of a line, teeth catching on the dim light, too sharp, too many. When he spoke, his voice rumbled through the stone of the gate itself.

“The offering from the living plane?”

It wasn’t really a question.

Sprite dipped her head in a nod, casual, like they hadn’t just been addressed by a monster larger than myth.

Sam swallowed hard. Her throat felt tight, her pulse hammering against her ribs. Sprite was unsettling, sure, but this ghost? This one was danger itself, waiting just beyond the firelight.

The giant towering over them scoffed gently; Sam could feel the noise reverberating in her bones. He stepped forward, and before her eyes, seemed to shrink. The air flexed, space bending around him, and he landed in front of them at a more reasonable seven feet tall. Reasonable only in the sense that he no longer blocked out the entire gate.

His eyes lingered on Sam, unblinking, and for a moment she wondered if he was weighing whether to snap her in half. Then he turned, bowing his head, not to her, but to Sprite.

“I’ll take her from here.” His voice was gravel ground against iron.

Sprite just nodded, as though this were perfectly ordinary. “Alright, General Wraith.” She gave Sam one last glance, something like sympathy flickering in her too-bright eyes. Then she turned and slipped back toward the gates. The mist twined and folded around her, and she was gone.

Sam’s breath caught. The one thread of familiarity, the single presence she’d half convinced herself she could trust, was gone. And in her place stood this . . . Wraith.

He turned, already walking through the towering doors. “Come.”

Sam hesitated only long enough to realize he hadn’t waited for her, then stumbled after him.

The keep swallowed them whole.

Inside, everything was too vast: ceilings lost in shadow, corridors wide enough to march armies through. The echoes of their footsteps lingered too long in the air, as if the hallways were trying to hold on to them. Flickers of ecto-light burned in sconces along the walls, but the flames never wavered, never cracked. They glowed steady and unnatural.

Sam mustered her courage. “So . . . General Wraith. Is that, um, a title?”

“Yes. And a chosen name.”

She blinked, waiting for more. Nothing came.

Another stretch of silence, their footsteps echoing. She tried again. “You’re . . . one of the King’s generals, then?”

“Yes.”

The clipped tone wasn’t cruel, but it was sharp enough to cut off further questions. Sam bit her tongue, staring down at the inlaid floor, dark stone etched with constellations she didn’t recognize.

Wraith moved with the certainty of someone who had walked these halls for centuries, his broad stride forcing Sam to rush to keep pace. They passed beneath arches carved from black stone that seemed to drink in the torchlight.

“This is the main hall,” he said as they entered a cavernous chamber. Columns spiraled upward into shadow, banners stitched with sigils Sam didn’t recognize hanging heavy in the air. A ghostly hush pressed at her ears, like the room itself demanded silence. “Court gathers here when the king commands it.”

Sam swallowed, eyeing the long benches and the dais at the far end. A space built for spectacle. For judgment.

Next came the dining hall - a vaulted chamber lined with tables that gleamed like obsidian glass. A few specters lingered there, their gazes sliding over her with interest that was anything but welcoming. Platters of food that shimmered faintly green rested untouched. The smell was sharp, metallic, nothing like any meal she knew.

Sam scanned the empty tables, shimmering platters. “Where is everyone? I thought a king’s court would be . . . busier.”

Wraith’s jaw tightened imperceptibly. “The living have no place here. Until you prove you deserve one, they’ll keep their distance.”

Sam swallowed, noting the subtle weight behind his words. She was, quite literally, alone among them.

He didn’t linger, passing through the hall and the corridors with long strides. “The armory,” Wraith announced a corridor later, pushing open iron doors etched with flame. Inside, racks of weapons glowed faintly, some pulsing with the heartbeat of captured ectoplasm. A handful of ghostly soldiers drilled in formation, their movements too sharp, too fast, wrong. The crack of blades colliding reverberated through her ribs.

Finally, he brought her into the throne room. It was empty, save for the throne itself, carved from a single piece of stone, vast enough to dwarf any figure who sat upon it. Green fire smoldered in braziers along the walls. Sam’s breath caught. For a moment, she thought she saw the shape of wings unfurling from the shadows that clung to the throne’s back, but when she blinked, there was only stone.

“This,” Wraith said, voice low, “is where power is decided.” His eyes cut toward her, unblinking. “Remember that.”

Sam’s eyes lingered on the empty throne, imagining the king. “What’s he like?”

Wraith didn’t glance at her. “You’ll see,” he said, voice low, leaving a chill in the air.

After a moment, he turned around and guided her back out the throne room door. They walked in silence through dark, winding halls, lit by steady green torches.

At last they stopped before a set of doors carved from some dark, gleaming wood. Wraith pushed them open with one hand.

“Your quarters.”

Sam stepped inside. The room was lavish, far more than she’d expected, but the alien quality of it only heightened her unease. She turned back, hoping for some reassurance, some hint of explanation.

But General Wraith was already gone, the hallway empty behind her

Sam drifted farther in, feeling like a ship adrift on a storm-tossed sea. The door clicked shut behind her, soft but final. She jumped, then stilled. She already knew she was a prisoner - the sound only made it real.

The furniture in her rooms was all just large enough to be off-putting. The bed in the center of the room was truly massive, even larger than the king bed in her parents’ room. It had a dark green, velvet canopy mounted on an ornate walnut frame. If Sam had seen it under more regular circumstances, she would’ve fallen in love with it at first sight. But these weren’t normal circumstances; this was her prison, and she couldn’t let her guard down.

She wandered through the connected rooms. Each door she opened overwhelmed her more. She found an office with a large desk that appeared to be carved out of glowing green ice. The accompanying chair is tall enough that if she were to sit in it, her toes would be barely able to touch the ground.

Through another door, there was a bathroom larger than her bedroom in her family mansion. A sunken bathtub, large enough to pass for a pool, dominated the room. A basin of water sat on the counter, and when Sam leaned over it, her reflection vanished.

The surface rippled - flashes, too fast to make sense. Green fire devouring buildings. A figure in red, shoulders squared beneath a weapon far too large. A small shape strapped to a table. Someone - her - on the floor, sobbing, black makeup streaking down her face.

The visions flickered faster, until she couldn’t tell one from the next. For an instant, she smelled smoke and heard someone screaming - herself? - before it dissolved into ripples. Sam staggered back, pulse thrumming, and the water stilled. Only her wide-eyed reflection stared back.

Sam shook herself. She couldn’t let herself be too unsettled. Not here. Not among the enemy.

Connected to the bathroom, a huge walk-in closet waited, its empty shelves and hanging rods stark and unwelcoming. Sam cursed under her breath. There’d be no changing out of the sham of a wedding dress for her.

Sam shut the door with more force than she meant to. The hollow thud echoed through the chamber, then left her in silence. For a breath she just stood there, arms hanging stiff at her sides, throat burning. Then the silence pressed too hard.

She stumbled back to the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed. The canopy swallowed her, the blankets cool and alien against her skin. She curled in on herself, pulling her knees tight to her chest, the dress tangling uncomfortably around her legs.

The sobs tore out of her before she could stop them. Hot and ugly, filling the vast silence of the room. She pressed her face into the pillow, clutching at the small plastic stars Jazz had pressed into her hand at the ceremony, smuggled past their parents’ watchful eyes. The points dug divots into her palms. The pain was comforting.

Her fingers dug into her palms, clutching the stars like they were the only solid thing in this whole unreal nightmare.

Danny’s ceiling had been covered in them. Every time she slept over, she’d fall asleep counting constellations that weren’t real but were theirs.

“Jazz,” she choked, her voice muffled and raw. She pictured Tucker’s grin, Danny’s stubborn eyes. Her chest ached so badly she thought it might crack apart. They couldn’t reach her. She couldn’t reach them. And her parents - her parents had handed her over like a bargaining chip. Smiling, calling it bravery.

The thought made bile rise in her throat.

Sam squeezed her eyes shut, sobbing harder, wishing she could claw her way back through whatever rift had brought her here. Wishing someone, anyone, would open the door and tell her this wasn’t real. But the only answer was the faint shifting of the water in the basin, the pulse that seemed to beat through the walls of the keep.

She was alone. Completely alone.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

When Sam woke again, the canopy above her loomed like a forest of velvet shadows, the air too still, too heavy. Her cheeks felt tight from dried tears. For one suspended moment, she let herself believe she was home, that if she rolled over, she’d see her walls plastered with posters, her desk buried in books, the faint glow of her alarm clock on her bookshelf.

But there was nothing. Just the cavernous silence of a stranger’s castle.

Her chest tightened. She couldn’t stay here, sealed away like some fragile thing on display. She couldn’t breathe.

Sam pushed herself upright, scrubbing at the dried tears on her face with her hand. The bed was too big, the room too empty, and every tick of silence scraped at her nerves. The stars Jazz had given her pressed warm against her palm where she’d clutched them in her sleep, a reminder that someone out there still believed in her.

The walls seemed to lean closer. Sam swung her legs off the bed and stood. Her pulse thrummed with a restless, reckless beat. She had to move. She had to know what lay beyond these doors, even if it was dangerous.

Especially if it was dangerous.

She crept to the door, laid her hand against the cool wood, and listened. Nothing.

Sam took a deep breath and eased it open.

The hallway outside was empty.

There was no General Wraith, or some other ghostly guard standing by, posted to keep her from leaving. There was no one. The corridor stretched out, green light on black stone, uninterrupted as far as the eye could see. A cold draft rushed down the empty hall, making the green light of the torches sway.

Sam slipped out of her doorway. Her bare feet whispered against the floor as she padded forward, each step sounding far louder than it had any right to. The silence pressed in, so complete it seemed to swallow her breaths.

Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.

The sconces along the walls burned with green fire, casting long, shifting shadows. Some of them seemed to ripple, as if shapes stirred just beyond the edges of light; shapes that might’ve been faces, or claws, or nothing at all. Sam quickened her pace.

She turned a corner and screamed when a figure loomed out of the dimness.

Her shriek echoed, high and sharp, before she clapped both hands over her mouth.

The figure recoiled just as violently. An insubstantial, half-faded ghost whose form trailed off into wisps of mist. Its eyes glowed faintly, wide with alarm. It carried a bundle of folded linens in its arms, as if it had been in the middle of some simple chore when she collided with it.

For a moment they only stared at each other, equally startled.

The servant ghost recovered first. It ducked its head low, avoiding her eyes, and its voice came out in a trembling whisper: “Forgive me, my lady. I meant no fright.”

Sam’s heart hammered. “Don’t - don’t call me that. I’m not a lady.”

The ghost hesitated, then bowed so deeply its form blurred at the edges. “Of course. I will trouble you no further.” Its voice shook with fear, or obedience. Before she could think of what to say, it had drifted away down another corridor, swallowed by shadow.

Sam pressed a hand to her chest, forcing her pulse to steady after the servant ghost slipped away. The corridor was empty again, but the silence was no comfort.

She kept walking.

The Keep seemed endless, hall after hall unfolding in twists and switchbacks. Doors loomed on either side, some cracked open just enough for a sliver of green light to spill out, others sealed shut with runes that shimmered faintly as she passed. Once, she swore she heard whispers leaking from behind one of the doors, but when she stopped to listen, there was nothing but the echo of her own breath.

The further she went, the stranger it became. Stained glass windows showed shifting patterns instead of still scenes: crowns devoured by flame, armies of shadows bowing before a figure wreathed in fire. Sam tore her gaze away, unsettled.

And always, always that feeling of eyes on her.

Her skin prickled as she rounded another corner. This time, the ghost waiting for her was not a servant.

A tall ghost drifted into her path, its robes impossibly elaborate, folds moving as if underwater. Its face was concealed by a mask of pale bone, etched with curling sigils that seemed to shift when she tried to focus on them. Where the servant had recoiled, this one lingered. Watching.

Sam froze. The air around this ghost was colder, heavier, as if gravity itself bent differently around it.

The ghost tilted its head slowly, considering her the way a collector might inspect a curious artifact. “So it’s true,” it murmured, voice smooth and cutting. “The living girl walks our halls.”

Sam’s throat tightened. “I-”

Whispers of laughter slipped past the mask. “The stories reached me before you did. A mortal escorted through the Keep by the general himself.” Its thin, boney hands rubbed together. “Some whisper you are a harbinger, a sign the tides shift. Others say you are only bait, Clockwork’s meddling, as ever.”

Her stomach lurched. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“On the contrary.” The courtier leaned closer, the mask nearly brushing her cheek. Its words chilled the air. “We know what matters. You are mortal. Frail. You bleed. That alone makes you . . . fascinating.”

Sam stumbled back, pulse spiking.

The courtier didn’t follow. It straightened with deliberate grace, folding its long fingers together. “Be careful where you wander, child of the living plane. Every eye in this court is upon you. And not all are kind.”

Sam’s fear hardened, sharp enough to cut. Her voice came out low, shaking, but not weak. “Then tell them to keep staring. I’m not here for them.”

A pause. The mask tilted, as if re-evaluating her. Then, with a faint hiss of amusement, the ghost drifted aside and melted into shadow.

Sam’s pulse was still hammering when she turned around, planning to return to her rooms - only to stop dead in her tracks.

Wraith stood at the far end of the corridor. Silent. Waiting.

Her stomach dropped. Had he been there the whole time?

The shadows clung to him unnaturally, pooling deeper than they should, as though he carried the dark along with him. He didn’t stride forward, didn’t scold. He simply was, immovable as stone, his ember-red gaze steady on her.

Sam swallowed, every instinct screaming at her to run, even though there was nowhere to go. “You were following me.”

Wraith’s expression didn’t change. His voice was low, even, almost calm. “I was watching.”

Heat flared in her cheeks, anger, shame, the sting of being caught. She wanted to demand why, to snap at him. But the words stuck. He had already turned, walking back towards her rooms.

“Come.”

Sam hesitated, fists clenching at her sides. Her pulse hammered, and every instinct screamed at her to run - but run where? There was nowhere to go. And he could tear her apart in seconds. She had no weapons, no allies, no leverage. Her body sagged with fatigue, and a bitter thought stabbed at her: I’m here to keep people alive. If I make a mistake . . . That alone made her legs obey.

The walk back was suffocating. His silence pressed heavier than words, as though each step reminded her that she was tolerated here, nothing more. That every corridor, every flicker of green light in the sconces, belonged to them, not her.

At last, he opened her door again. The room loomed in velvet and shadow.

Wraith inclined his head, barely, and closed the door behind her.

Sam sagged against the door, nails digging into the polished wood. Alone again.

Her gaze swept the vast chamber, but the lavish furnishings only mocked her. The canopy bed, the glimmering desk, the pool-sized bath - illusions of freedom. None of it mattered. She couldn’t sneak around. She couldn’t leave. Not when even the shadows themselves betrayed her.

Her eyes dropped to the gap beneath the door.

The darkness there shifted. Writhed. Not a trick of her mind, not imagination - the shadows were alive, stretching thin tendrils into the room, twitching like antennae, listening.

Her chest went tight. She didn’t need anyone to tell her the truth: she was under watch. Always.

Sam pulled her knees up to her chest and pressed herself into the bed’s corner. The velvet canopy felt like a cage, soft but suffocating.

The shadows beneath the door writhed again, stretching upward, climbing the walls. For a moment, they took shape - wings, eyes, a crown of fire - before collapsing back into darkness.

Her fingers closed around the plastic stars she had hidden under her pillow. The faint glowing through her fingers felt like a lifeline.

“They can watch all they want,” she whispered, voice trembling but fierce. “They can cage me. But I won’t break.”

The shadows twisted again, echoing her words silently, but Sam didn’t flinch. Not anymore.

Chapter Text

Tucker stood frozen before the pulsing green rift.; it wreaked of ozone and fear The only reason he hadn’t collapsed completely was because the GIW agents still held a grip on his arms, their fingers like iron cuffs despite their protests of restraint. His knees threatened to buckle anyway, and his mouth hung open, as if all the air had been ripped out of his lungs.

His ears rang with the low hum of the rift. A faint metallic tang pricked at his tongue. Every pulse of green light seemed to echo through his bones, a drumbeat counting down some unknown judgment.

She was gone.

Sam.

They hadn’t just taken her - they had thrown her into the Ghost Zone like she was nothing, a piece of expendable cargo tossed into a world that had no place for her. The idea was barbaric, twisted into some warped logic of diplomacy and sacrifice. Tucker knew it could happen, theoretically - but to actually see it? To feel it? It burned like acid in his chest.

How could they justify this? Could the Mansons really call themselves parents while letting this happen? He imagined Sam alone, terrified, and it made his stomach churn with helpless fury.

A cold breeze rolled off the rift, brushing through his jacket, seeping into his bones. The rift pulsed, green light rippling like a heartbeat, and Tucker flinched with each flicker. The GIW agents were still murmuring instructions, but he barely heard them. The world had narrowed to a single, impossible fact: Sam was gone - gone without a trace.

The rift shivered with light. Tucker shivered with it. How had they done it? How had anyone been able to just . . . cast her out?

He didn’t remember leaving the rift. Didn’t remember the car ride, or the walk home but somehow, he found himself back in his room, the transition a blur, a rush of vertigo that left him staggering. The lights were dim; the house was silent except for the faint hum of electricity and the careful footsteps of his parents somewhere down the hall. They didn’t speak, didn’t knock. It was as if they feared the sound of words would shatter him completely.

They didn’t understand. How could they?

He sank onto his bed, heart hammering, and felt the familiar hollow of loneliness creep back in. He had known it before - after Danny’s death. That had been a jagged tear in his world, a wound so raw it had never really healed. Nothing could fill that space. Nothing could bring him back to whole.

And now Sam was gone too.

The memory clawed back, unbidden: the green lights had sliced through the darkness like knives. The smell of smoke and burned plastic lingered in the memory. He could feel the cold seeping into his bones as he waited, alone, the tension tightening in his chest like a vise. He hadn’t known what had happened yet, just that something was terribly wrong. He’d sat awake all night, waiting, clutching his phone and scanning the web for news updates until his hands went numb.

The call hadn’t even come from Mr. or Mrs. Fenton. They hadn’t thought to tell him.

It had been Jazz. Her voice breaking, sobs choking every word, so shattered he could barely understand her. He’s gone, Tucker. Danny’s gone.

That was how he’d found out.

He remembered the way the floor had seemed to tilt, the way his stomach had fallen through his body. And he had been alone in that grief, except for Sam. She had been his anchor, the one who understood without a single word. They had leaned on each other, kept each other upright, survived together.

He’d lost Danny to death. He refused to lose Sam to silence.

He couldn’t just sit here. The helplessness clawed at him until his hands twitched for something to do. The GIW had sanctioned this - someone had decided, at the highest levels, that a life could be traded for peace with the ghosts. If there was a record, a log, a name he could trace back, he would find it. And he would make them pay.

The anger surged before the grief could even settle, a hot, scalding current. Tucker leapt off the bed, pacing the room as if movement alone could anchor his mind. He pulled at his laptop, rifled through GIW records online, but the pages were locked, encrypted, inaccessible. Every folder he tried led nowhere, every document a dead end.

His pulse thundered. “What the hell is wrong with you people?” he muttered, voice raw. “Do you even care? She’s human! She -” He bit back the rest, swallowed the scream clawing its way up his throat.

The thought of the Mansons, their cold logic, their political maneuvering, made his stomach turn. How could they offer their own daughter like she was a bargaining chip? Did they even see her as a person? Or just a means to an end?

He slammed his fists onto the desk. “I don’t care if you can’t get her back! I will get her back!” The words left his lips like fire, and he felt the tremor of it in his chest.

The room shifted slightly as Jazz appeared in the doorway, voice small, wary. “Tucker . . .”

He hadn’t even heard the front door, only realizing she was there when her reflection appeared on the dark screen. Of course she’d come here. The Fenton house would be unbearable now.

“Where have you been?” The words came out sharper than he meant, and Jazz flinched. Guilt pricked, but the fire wouldn’t die. “Don’t just - don’t just stand there.”

Jazz flinched under the intensity, hands gripping the doorframe. “I’ve been holding things together as best I could. I just . . . I can’t face it all at once, not without breaking.”

“You can’t?” Tucker snapped, stepping forward, fists clenched tight enough his knuckles ached. “She’s out there, Jazz! She’s alive! And you’re just standing there?”

“I’m trying,” Jazz said quietly, voice shaking. “I’m trying to make sense of it too! But - ” She broke off, swallowing hard, tears glinting in her eyes. “I can’t do anything right now. I’m . . . I’m not ready to fight.”

Tucker’s chest heaved. He felt the tension coiling in him, every instinct screaming. His hands shook with the urge to act, to move, to tear through every barrier between him and Sam. He wanted to punch a hole in the world if it would get her back.

“Not ready?” he spat. “She’s not dead, Jazz! She’s not dead! And the world doesn’t wait for us to get ready. The ghosts who took her - the people who sacrificed her - they don’t care about being ready. They’re not waiting for anyone!”

For a heartbeat, Tucker caught a glimpse of Jazz’s pale face, the worry etched in her features. He wanted to soften, to take it in, but the fire in his chest wouldn’t let him

Jazz flinched at the edge in his voice, but didn’t argue. She just nodded once, tight and brittle.

Tucker turned back to the laptop, scanning every last GIW log he could get his hands on. Every encryption, every firewall, every stonewall only made his jaw clench harder. He felt the weight of helplessness pressing down, but he forced his mind to bend, twist, searching for a crack. Somewhere, a way in.

Hours, or maybe minutes, it was impossible to tell, passed in a blur of frantic searching. He scoured every map, every log, every record he could find - anything that might hint at where Sam might have ended up, or how someone could cross the rift safely. If he could figure out its patterns, its pulses, its weaknesses . . . maybe he could reach her. Somehow. He barely noticed the cold creeping into his bones, barely heard Jazz sigh and settle onto the edge of the bed behind him. He didn’t look up; he couldn’t. He had to keep going.

Every failed attempt stoked the fire in him. Every locked file, every dead end, every bureaucratic obstacle hardened his resolve.

He would not let them win.

Not the Mansons. Not the GIW. Not the war.

Most of all . . . not the thought of losing Sam the way he lost Danny.

Tucker’s fists unclenched slowly, trembling as the adrenaline ebbed just enough to let his vow solidify. He pressed both hands to the desk, head bowed, mind racing.

“If there’s even the tiniest chance she’s alive,” he whispered, voice low but unyielding, “I will find her. I don’t care what it costs me. I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care how many walls I have to break through. I will bring her back. I swear it.”

The words hung in the room like a promise, echoing off the walls and sinking into his bones. He would not sit idle. He would not despair. She had been taken, but she was still out there, and he was still standing.

The green light from the city’s ecto-shield pulsed faintly through the window, as if mocking him, or perhaps urging him on. Either way, Tucker felt a spark ignite inside him, the first flicker of movement after the immobilizing shock of loss. He would act. And he would act now.

Jazz stayed silent, watching him, small and fragile in the doorway. She hadn’t the strength to join him yet, but she didn’t leave. That much, at least, was something.

Tucker’s pulse roared in his ears. Every nerve screamed with the same single truth: Sam was alive. And nothing, not the GIW, not the Mansons, not even the war itself, could take her from him unless he let it.

He wouldn’t.

Not this time.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The keep was too quiet.

Danny sat hunched in the hollow of his throne, shoulders curled forward, head in his hands. The stone under him was cold, humming faintly with the power carved into it centuries before his birth. It should have steadied him. Instead, the vibration thrummed through his core like a warning.

“She’s here,” Elle said softly. Her voice carried from the shadows near the wall, a thread of sound almost lost in the cavernous silence. “She’s been here for two days.”

Danny flinched. He already knew. He’d felt it immediately: a living, human heartbeat slipping across the boundary of his domain. The halls themselves carried the tremor to him, like a tolling bell. Sam.

Alive. Warm. Out of place in every possible way.

And he hadn’t gone to her. It had been two days.

“She’ll think this is a punishment,” Clockwork added. He had appeared without warning, as he always did, turning the great clockface of his staff idly between his fingers. His calm, too-knowing gaze pressed down on Danny. “Leaving her alone only deepens her fear. You carry a crown heavy enough to crush you, yet you forget it was meant to guide, not cage.”

Danny’s fingers twitched toward the hovering crown, but he didn’t touch it. He could feel its pull even from inches away, the cold gravity of it pressing against his core.

“I can’t,” He rasped. His hands curled into fists against his knees. “Don’t you get it? I can’t see her. Not like this.”

Memories pressed in, jagged and sharp. The night sky opening above him, the ghost raid slicing through Amity with fire and wails. The cold moment of dying, but not quite right. The way his parents had looked at him when he staggered home - hopeful for a heartbeat, then horrified. His voice cracking, insisting I’m Danny, I’m yours, while his father leveled the ectogun and his mother spat abomination.

And later. Steel tables. Scalpel gleam. GIW hands tearing him apart until his pain had given shape to Dante, born of shadow and anguish.

If Sam looked at him and saw only that - monster, weapon, enemy - if she hated him the way his parents had . . . it would tear him apart all over again.

“Danny.” Elle’s tone sharpened. She stepped closer, folding her arms. Her eyes burned, stubborn, unflinching. “You’re hiding only because you fear she’ll hate you,” Elle said. “But locking her away? That’s cruel.”

The words stung.

Dante shifted beside the door. He was silent long enough that Danny thought he wouldn’t speak at all. Then, awkwardly, voice rough from disuse:

“You are not what they said.” His grip tightened on the hilt of his sword, fire curling faintly between his fingers. “You are . . . mine. Our king. My brother.”

Danny glanced at him. Dante’s stare was unwavering, fierce, but beneath it was something raw, almost pleading. As if Danny’s doubt carved cracks in him too. If Danny was nothing but a monster, then what did that make Dante? He needed Danny to believe in himself, because that was the only way he could believe in his own existence.

Danny lifted his head, throat constricted. Sam’s face bloomed unbidden in his mind, laughing in the park, dark hair whipping in the wind. Then the memory twisted: her expression warping into his parents’ cold, horrified stares. Their words slicing sharper than any weapon.

His breath snagged. Panic coiled, claws raking down the inside of his chest. If Sam looked at him like that, if she hated him, feared him, it would shatter what was left of his core.

“She’s not them,” Elle said, voice gentler now. Maybe she saw it in his face, maybe she just knew. “She deserves better than shadows and locked doors. At least give her the choice to decide who you are.”

Clockwork tilted his head, unreadable. “Time favors action, not paralysis.”

Danny’s hands trembled. He pressed them flat against the throne until the runes glowed in response, grounding him in the present. His voice, when it came, was hoarse.

“Dante.”

The ghost straightened, silent as stone.

“Bring her to me.”

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Sam had lost track of how long she’d been shut inside the rooms. Two days? Three? Time seemed to blur in the Keep. The walls didn’t shift or change like she’d expected of ghost-haunted space; they just loomed; cold stone carved with runes she couldn’t read, glowing faintly as if the Keep itself were quietly watching, reminding her she was not fully at home here.

The food didn’t help. Someone - sometimes Sprite or occasionally Wraith, who always seemed to be lurking just around the bend - brought it once, maybe twice a day. Not enough. Never at the same time. It felt like they didn’t know or didn’t care how often humans actually needed to eat. Her stomach gnawed at itself now, sharp and insistent, leaving her weak and irritable.

And then there were the clothes.

The first morning after she’d woken in the Keep, she’d opened the closet only to find it full. Black jeans, boots, layered skirts, lace blouses, mesh gloves; her exact style, down to the cut and fabric. She slammed the doors shut, the mirrored panels rattling, heart hammering so loud she thought the Keep itself might hear. It felt like someone had crawled inside her mind. How could they know? Were they watching? Was this some trick to make her play along, to make her trust them?

She hadn’t touched a single piece. So she stayed in the thin white dress she’d arrived in, shivering against the cold. Days blurred together - meals too few and too far apart, Wraith’s shadow never far behind, the glowing runes always humming at the edge of her sight. Her stomach twisted with hunger now, sharp enough to leave her dizzy.

That was when the knock came.

It was more a rap of armored knuckles than a polite knock, and then the door opened without waiting for her answer. The General, - Wraith - stood there, black fire coiling faintly around his hand where it rested on the hilt of his sword.

“Come,” he said, voice rough but firm.

Sam stayed where she was on the edge of the bed. “And if I don’t?”

His eyes flickered, pale and burning all at once. Not cruel, not kind. Just . . . blank. “Then I will carry you.”

Her pulse jumped. She stood.

Her steps echoed against the stone, bouncing in the vast emptiness.

The shadows seemed to slither along the walls, watching, waiting.

A chill ran down her spine each time she passed a flickering ghost figure. She held her breath, counting steps silently to keep her mind from panicking.

The Keep was impossibly vast. Corridors stretching on without end, lit only by the eerie glow of ghost-light sconces. Her slippered feet whispered against the stone, every step echoing too loud in the silence.

Ghosts lined the walls as they went deeper, figures half-formed or flickering, eyes following her with an unblinking hunger. They didn’t speak, but the air filled with a low, teeth-grinding chitter, like the sound of a hundred skulls clacking together.

Her head swam; every flicker of ghost-light doubled, trailing across her vision like afterimages. Hunger clawed at her stomach, sharp and insistent. The edges of the hall seemed to stretch and twist with every step.

Sam hugged her arms around herself. The white dress felt thinner with every step.

Finally, the double doors at the end of the hall opened, and they stepped inside.

The throne room.

The aisle stretched out before them, flanked on either side by the gathered host: spectral soldiers, wraiths and revenants, their glow painting the air in shades of sickly green and blue. Sam’s knees locked, but Dante’s hand settled, awkwardly, almost gently, on her shoulder. Whether it was comfort or a restraint, she couldn’t tell.

They walked.

At the far end of the room, the throne waited.

It was smaller than she expected. A chair, carved from pale stone that glowed faintly blue, runes etched into its surface in looping, ancient patterns. Not the ostentatious seat of a tyrant. Just a chair, albeit a slightly ornate one. Empty.

Sam’s heart hammered. Phantom wasn’t here. Not yet.

Then the air changed.

A cold draft swept down the aisle, carrying the silence tighter, heavier, until even the ghosts on either side stilled their chittering. Shadows thickened, stretching across the floor like spilled ink.

The temperature dropped. Her breath puffed white in front of her.

And then - eyes.

Green, burning, watching from the darkness.

Phantom had arrived.

The air shifted, heavy with silence. Phantom lingered in the shadows at the far end, watching, waiting. For a long heartbeat he didn’t move. Then Wraith cleared his throat, the sound rasping like gravel in the stillness. At that subtle prompt, the darkness stirred, and Phantom stepped forward.

The figure emerged, tall and cloaked, more silhouette than man. At first glance he was skeletal, regal, wholly inhuman: a deer-skull mask blazing with green fire where eyes should be, a crown of crystalline spires shimmering with aurora-light above his head. Shadows bent toward him as though pulled by gravity, bowing lower than the ghosts who lined the hall. Frost spiderwebbed across the stone where his steps touched.

Sam’s heart hammered. Every instinct screamed at her to run, to fight, to do something, but she locked her knees instead. She would not cower. Not for this thing. Ghosts had stolen Danny, and now they had taken her life, but she wouldn’t bend. Not to them.

The cloak shifted as he moved, black as a starless void until the lining turned and revealed glimpses of drifting galaxies. For a dizzying instant Sam swore the stars inside were watching her back. She clenched her fists to keep from shivering.

Phantom paused halfway down the aisle. The silence grew taut. For a moment - barely noticeable, but enough - his shoulders hunched, uncertain. Then he straightened, spine like carved stone, the inhuman mask tilted with impossible calm.

As he continued slowly down the aisle, Sam’s knees locked. She couldn’t breathe. Every instinct screamed predator.

At the base of the throne, he turned outward, gaze sweeping over the court like a storm front. Then he lifted a hand.

Wraith stepped forward immediately, pressing a firm hand to Sam’s back and nudging her toward the dais. Her shoes dragged against the floor, her body stiff as stone. Even if she could move, she wouldn’t - not toward him.

Phantom reached out, his hand hovering inches from her shoulder.

“Don’t touch me!” Sam spat, the words ragged and sharp, tearing from her throat before she could think.

The silence cracked. A dozen watching eyes flicked toward her, then back to him.

Phantom’s hand stilled. For the briefest instant, it twitched, before he tucked it neatly behind his back, his mask gave nothing away. Sam’s chest tightened as she tried to imagine what lay behind the mask. Was it anger? Curiosity? Something else entirely? She couldn’t tell, and the uncertainty clawed at her, coiling like ice around her ribs.

Then he spoke. Low. Hard.

“No one touches her.” His voice cut through the chamber like a blade.

“Not a soul.”

“She stays. In my shadow. Under my Protection.”

“End of story.”

Blood rushed to her head. Chains of fear, anger, and helplessness coiled around her. Her throat constricted. It felt like she could feel the words wrapping around her, sealing something in place. This was not just a claim; it was a declaration of possession, of her autonomy stripped away. Her mind raced: How could he do this? She wanted to scream, to resist, to make her own choice

The court bent low, a murmur swelling into chorus: “So it is decreed.”

Sam’s chest heaved. He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t looked at her. And yet, in the echo of those words, it already felt like chains had settled on her shoulders. He hadn’t even looked at her. To him, she was property displayed, not a person standing here, shaking with rage.

Chapter Text

Sam barely remembered the walk back to her rooms.

Wraith’s hand was a steady pressure at her elbow, steering her through the endless, echoing halls. The green light of the ghost lights clung to her vision, staining the edges of the world; every step felt like moving underwater. She couldn’t have retraced the path if her life depended on it.

Her rooms appeared out of nowhere, the doors unfolding before them like the palace itself had decided she’d had enough. Wraith released her with a bow so slight it might have been imagined, then was gone, leaving silence in his wake.

Sam stood there for a long moment, pulse loud in her ears. Phantom’s words - claimed, bound - still reverberated through her skull, heavier than any collar. She sank onto the edge of the unfamiliar bed, fingers curling into the fabric. The weight of everything pressed down: green fire, watching eyes, the knowledge that everyone here thought she belonged to him.

She sat on the bed, watching the shadows flicker on the walls. Bells tolled as hours passed, but Sam couldn’t bring herself to move. What would she even do? She couldn’t fight this.

When the knock came, sharp and light against the door, she flinched.

“Sam?” Sprite’s voice. Bright, almost eager.

Relief surprised her. She hadn’t realized how much she’d wanted a familiar face - any face that wasn’t masked in shadow or crowned in thorns.

The door creaked open before Sam found her voice.

Sprite slipped inside, barefoot as always, her too-long tunic whispering around her knees. For a heartbeat, Sam saw her as a lost kid in hand-me-downs. Then the edges of her outline shivered, like a bad signal catching up, and Sam’s stomach tightened.

“You look wrong,” Sprite announced after a long blink. Her sharp green eyes flicked up and down Sam’s frame with disconcerting precision. “Not bad wrong. Just . . . not court-ready.”

Sam barked a laugh, brittle, sharp against her dry throat. “What, do you people have a dress code?”

Sprite’s head tilted birdlike, a fraction too far, and the air went cool, prickling against the back of Sam’s neck. “Appearances are weapons. Tonight they’ll measure yours. You don’t want to come unarmed.”

Sam swallowed. The idea of being dressed up for the people who had dragged her here made her skin crawl. “I’m not interested in being paraded around like - like a trophy.”

Sprite only shrugged, cloak twitching in a wind that wasn’t there. “You’re already Phantom’s. They’ll look either way. Better they see teeth than weakness.”

The words hit harder than Sam wanted to admit. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and flinched. The girl staring back wasn’t fierce, wasn’t unbreakable like she always thought. She was hollow-eyed, hair tangled, still swaddled in the wrinkled white silk she’d been shoved into before the sacrifice. The fabric clung limply to her frame, ghost of another life where her mother had dressed her like an offering on an altar.

Sprite’s reflection appeared beside hers, too small, too sharp. “See? Wrong,” she said matter-of-factly. “We can fix that.”

Before Sam could protest, Sprite was in motion, flicker-stepping across the room to yank open the wardrobe. She returned with black and steel fabrics, the weight of them heavy in Sam’s lap. “Armor,” Sprite declared simply.

Sam ran her fingers across the material. Not chains, not a gown. It felt like a shield. This time, when she stood, it was on her own terms.

Sprite circled her, tugging sleeves straight, smoothing layers. Then she stilled, gaze narrowing on Sam’s face. Without warning she climbed up onto the bed, kneeling so she was level. Her small hands cupped Sam’s chin, jerky but careful, and the space between them filled with Sprite’s breath, cool as fog.

“Clothes are not enough,” she whispered, almost reverent. “The court looks in your eyes. Let’s give them something to fear.”

Sam’s stomach flipped, but she didn’t pull back.

Sprite dipped her thumb into a small vial that hadn’t existed a second ago. The green-black pigment caught the light with an oily sheen. Then, with strange, staccato precision, she painted jagged lines along Sam’s cheekbones, across her brow, down the slope of her nose. The brush of her skin was cold, but not cruel - more like a ritual being rebuilt on Sam’s face.

Sam’s breath came shallow. The memory of her mother fussing with her hair, smoothing gloves over her hands, pressed at the edges of her thoughts - suffocating, silken bindings. But this was different. Every mark Sprite traced felt like a weapon being laid across her skin.

“Good,” Sprite murmured, too-bright eyes gleaming as she leaned back to admire her work. “Now you are sharpened.”

Sam stared at the mirror again. The white silk girl was gone. The war paint cut her face into something angular, armored. She still looked like herself, but herself armed.

For the first time since crossing the rift, she didn’t feel like prey.

Sam followed Sprite out of her room, her boots thumping against the polished stone, firm beneath her. The halls stretched endlessly, folding in on themselves like some living labyrinth. Light slanted in impossible angles; walls curved where they shouldn’t, shadows pooling and fleeing as if alive. Sam’s chest tightened; she had no idea which way led forward - or if forward even existed here.

Sprite’s voice was a cheerful anchor. “Keep your chin up. Not that they care if you trip. They do care if you look scared.” She twirled on tiptoe, pointing vaguely at distant doors, “Left-ish. Or maybe right-ish. Hard to say. They like to rearrange things when you’re not looking.”

Sam blinked, trying to focus, trying to recall the strange calm that came with not having to choose her steps. It slipped like water through her fingers. Here, she had no path. No map. Only Sprite’s half-truths and the echo of her own heartbeat.

The farther they walked, the more Sam realized she was utterly dependent; her body dressed in borrowed strength, but her mind tethered to guides she barely understood. She gritted her teeth, trying to feel control anywhere she could. Sprite, skipping beside her, hummed softly, as if to fill the void of the impossible architecture. “They’ll be expecting us soon,” Sprite said, glancing back with a grin too bright for these walls. “Don’t look like you’re going to run. He notices everything.”

Sam’s stomach tightened at the thought. She wanted to protest, to demand agency she didn’t have, but the memory of Phantom’s voice tightening like a noose, pinning her tongue.

The doors opened on their own, sighing outward like a held breath released.

The hall beyond was vast, geometry stretched until it broke - ceilings too high, arches bending at angles that seemed to lean over her, watching. The long table ran down the center, laden with silver that smoked and dishes that shifted when she wasn’t looking directly at them. Shapes hunched and glittered along either side: nobles draped in fabrics that rippled like water or bristled like quills, faces too sharp, too pale, too many-eyed.

Conversation stuttered. A ripple moved through the gathering, not applause, not silence - something stranger. Fingers tapped once against goblets. Horns tilted. Claws clicked against the table. A chorus of acknowledgment that carried more menace than welcome.

At the head of the table sat Phantom. His crown caught the ghostfire and fractured it into blades of green light. The weight of his gaze found her instantly, pinning her where she stood. He didn’t rise, didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

Sam’s throat dried. The war paint burned cold on her skin.

Sprite flitted a step ahead, tilting her head as if pleased by the effect. “Told you,” she whispered, voice just for Sam.

On Phantom’s other side, Wraith stood sentinel, not at attention but at ease in a way that made every shadow in the room bend toward him. His eyes swept the nobles, sharp as knives, pausing on any who lingered too long on Sam.

And then, as if responding to some silent command, a chair to Phantom’s right pulled back, the movement smooth, unnatural. Waiting.

Murmurs rose again, sharper this time. “So it’s true then, the mortal sits among us.”

Sam forced her feet to move, every step echoing louder than it should. When she sank into the chair, its weight molded around her, not comfort but confinement. The whispers swelled, a fresh wave breaking against her skin.

She didn’t look at Phantom, not yet. She couldn’t.

Instead, she fixed her gaze on the table in front of her. It was covered in odd-looking dishes: glittering goblets filled with liquid that smoked without heat, silver platters crawling with writhing green shoots, pastries that pulsed faintly as if they had heartbeats. The air was thick with scents that shifted each time she tried to pin them down: sweet, bitter, metallic.

Sam’s throat went dry.

She risked a glance sideways. Phantom sat to her left, throne-like chair larger than the others, Wraith beside him, Sprite perched beyond. On Sam’s other side was a ghost she didn’t know. They had long, flaming blue hair pulled high into a ponytail, and black war paint curved down from their muted green eyes like jagged tear tracks.

The stranger noticed her looking and smirked. “What’s up, newbie?” Their voice was raspy-smooth, edged with amusement. “Name’s Ember. Guess you’re tonight’s main act.”

Sam blinked, caught between relief that someone was talking to her like a person and dread at what “main act” implied.

A gong-like sound rippled through the hall, no source she could see, just the walls vibrating with it, and the court moved as one. Hands lifted goblets, claws tapped plates, wings folded tight. Sam scrambled to follow, fingers fumbling at the stem of her glass. She nearly lifted it too soon, but Ember’s elbow brushed hers, a silent cue to wait.

“Slow down,” Ember muttered under her breath. “They’ll eat you alive if you look too eager.”

The goblets finally tilted in unison. Sam copied them, green firelight catching in the strange liquid. It tasted sharp and cold, like biting into metal. She winced, but swallowed.

The meal began.

Sam tried to focus on the food, though “food” felt like a stretch. A platter slid toward her of its own accord, carrying slices of something luminous and translucent. She hesitated, but Ember leaned close, smirk tugging at her mouth.

“Pick the glowing one. Trust me - the others fight back.”

Sam snatched the smallest glowing piece she could find. It didn’t wriggle, didn’t resist, and she forced herself to chew. Sweetness exploded across her tongue, almost cloying, then melted into a strange heat that tingled down her throat.

“Not bad, right?” Ember said, loud enough that a few heads turned. “Kid’s got guts.”

Whispers rippled again, sharper this time. Sam felt them snag on her skin like fishhooks. Phantom’s gaze finally cut toward her, icy weight pinning her in place.

She sat straighter, throat burning. The whispers did not fade. They sharpened.

Ember leaned back in her chair, smirk tugging wider, like she was settling in for a good show. Sam’s stomach twisted. To Ember, this was fun. To Sam, it felt like being flayed open under a hundred eyes.

Sam tried to focus on her plate, on the strange sweetness still clinging to her tongue, but the sensation of being watched gnawed at her. Every movement felt weighed, measured.

A low, resonant voice broke the hum of conversation. “Curious.”

Sam froze. Across the table, a cloaked figure drifted forward, its trailing hem curling like ink in water. Only when it tilted closer did she realize the “face” was nothing but a single, lidless eye: bloodshot, wet, and far too intent. The gaze pinned her, and then, impossibly, a voice rasped out without lips or mouth to shape it. “The mortal mimics our rites. She drinks. She chews. But does she truly partake, or is this only theater?”

The court shifted, many eyes swiveling her way. The heat in Sam’s throat curdled into nausea.

Wraith’s voice snapped through the hall, sharp as a drawn blade. “Mind your tongue, Observant. She sits where the king commands.”

The words cracked the tension, but didn’t erase it. If anything, the air grew heavier, the other ghosts emboldened by the Observant’s barb.

A soft chuckle rolled across the table. Sam’s skin prickled even before she saw him. The ghost who leaned forward seemed cut from nightmare theater - skin a sickly green, his dark hair streaked with gray and sculpted into hornlike peaks. A long cape pooled behind him, rippling unnaturally, its velvet shifting in and out of focus as though reality itself couldn’t decide if it was truly there. At a glance, he wore finery, but the fabric flickered with glitching edges, revealing tatters beneath. His grin, all sharp teeth and old hunger, left no doubt who he must be. Plasmius.

“And yet . . .” his voice curled like smoke, “what use is a mortal at this table? Too fragile to endure eternity, too fleeting to grasp power. A candle at a bonfire.” His eyes gleamed as they flicked toward Phantom.

Sam’s pulse hammered. She wanted to retort, to prove she wasn’t weak, but the words strangled in her throat.

Phantom’s gaze shifted at last. It cut through Plasmius like ice through marrow. “She endures,” he said, his tone flat, final. The quiet that followed was sharper than any shout.

For a heartbeat, Sam thought that would be enough.

But then the bone-masked noble that she had run into on her first day in the keep leaned in; sigils writhing across the mask’s surface. Its voice was silken, deliberate. “How quaint. So the mortal endures. But endurance is not strength. Shall we test what she can stomach?”

The air vibrated. Silver rattled faintly on the table. Ghosts leaned forward, hungry, eager.

And Wraith rose from his seat.

The chains threaded through his cloak rattled, low and deliberate, like the prelude to a dirge. The floor trembled beneath his weight, cracks spidering faintly where his clawed feet touched stone. Sam felt her pulse climb into her throat.

The bone-masked noble tilted its head, sigils writhing across its faceplate in lazy loops. “Endurance is not strength,” it repeated, voice smooth, taunting. “Shall we test what your court truly protects?”

Phantom did not move. He only inclined his chin, the barest fraction. Permission.

Wraith’s molten eyes ignited.

He moved faster than Sam thought possible for something so massive. One moment he was beside Phantom’s chair, the next he had crossed the hall in a thunderous blur. His fist struck the table in front of the noble, shattering silver and splintering wood. Food scattered, goblets rolled, green flames sputtered as the impact rang like a bell.

The noble shot to its feet, cloak flaring, sigils blazing brighter. Energy swelled around it, symbols peeling off the mask to hover in the air like glowing brands. A spear of pure ectoplasm coalesced in its hand, sharp enough to split the air with a shriek.

It thrust forward.

Wraith caught the spear on his forearm. The tip pierced deep, hissing against the red fissures that split his skin - and then his molten light flared, flooding the wound with fire. The spear blackened and melted, dripping away in molten rivulets. Sam gagged at the stench of scorched ectoplasm.

Wraith’s claws closed around the noble’s mask. For a heartbeat, it looked as though he would crush it in his grip. Instead, he hurled the noble across the hall. The body struck the far wall with bone-splintering force, smoke spiraling where it slid down.

The court roared with glee.

Other ghosts surged forward, hungry for the fight. One flung chains of ice that hissed across the floor; another loosed a storm of jagged green shards. Wraith turned, red static dancing along his clawed hands. His cloak flared, and the chains coiling through it snapped outward, intercepting the strikes with metallic shrieks.

And then came the fire.

Cracks split across his armor, magma-bright. His hand swept outward, and a torrent of molten flame poured across the stone like a living tide. The temperature surged, air warping with the heat. Ghosts shrieked, wings and cloaks catching fire as the lava surged between them. The hall itself groaned under the heat, shadows writhing on the walls as if alive. Those who had lunged forward scattered back quickly, their eagerness dampened by molten fire.

Sam clamped a hand over her mouth. She’d thought ghosts were eerie, unnerving, dangerous, but this was something older, more alien. Violence ritualized, savored. The smell of burning ectoplasm filled her nose, acrid and heavy. The fire painted Phantom’s features in shades of blood and gold, cold eyes reflecting it without blinking.

Wraith straightened, chains hissing as they cooled in the molten air. The noble lay half-kneeling against the wall, mask cracked, sigils guttering faintly.

The hall held its breath, watching.

The bone-masked noble struggled to rise, limbs shaking, sigils sputtering across the cracked mask. Its weapon dissolved into static, slipping through its fingers like smoke.

Wraith loomed above it, molten light bleeding from the fissures in his skin, every breath a furnace rumble. His clawed hand closed around the noble’s throat, lifting it from the ground as easily as a doll. The noble’s feet kicked against empty air.

“Strength,” Wraith growled, voice resonant as an earthquake, “is knowing when to kneel.”

He slammed the noble down onto both knees. The stone shattered beneath the impact, dust pluming upward. The sigils flickered once, then guttered out. The mask hung askew, fractured, barely clinging to the noble’s ruined face.

The court hissed and howled in delight, wings thrashing, goblets raised to the violence like a toast.

Wraith straightened, chains slithering back into the folds of his cloak. He cast a glance toward Phantom, waiting, as if to ask whether further punishment was warranted.

Phantom didn’t so much as lift his hand. His gaze remained steady, cold, the faintest flicker of approval in its depths. Enough.

Wraith released the noble. It crumpled sideways, coughing ectoplasmic smoke, still moving, still breathing. A warning more potent than death: a reminder of what awaited any who dared challenge Phantom’s word.

Sam forced down the bile rising in her throat. Her stomach churned, the taste of cloying sweetness still burning her tongue. The others didn’t recoil - they leaned in, hungry, thrilled, as though this ruthless display were the most natural thing in the world.

She understood, with a fresh chill in her bones, that this wasn’t just violence. It was theater.

And they adored it. And worse - they expected it.

The hall slowly reassembled itself. Silver platters lifted, broken shards swept away by invisible hands, goblets refilled as if nothing had happened. Ghosts muttered and laughed, voices rippling like the aftershock of thunder. The bone-masked noble was carried off by a pair of silent shades, limp but alive.

Sam pushed back from the table on unsteady legs. She felt the weight of eyes on her as she stood, dozens of them gleaming in the firelight, assessing, calculating.

Wraith appeared at her side without sound, a shadow filling her periphery. He didn’t speak until they had left the hall and the heavy doors groaned shut behind them, muffling the court’s eager chatter.

The corridor was cooler, quieter, the green flames in the sconces flickering low. Only then did Wraith look down at her, the molten light in his eyes softened to embers.

“You handled that well,” he said, voice low, almost gentle. “Better than most.”

Sam blinked up at him. The words felt strange in her ears, so ordinary after everything. Her mouth worked, but she couldn’t find an answer.

He didn’t wait for one. His steps echoed softly, chains clinking faintly as they walked. “They needed to see it,” he continued after a pause. “That you are not prey. That you belong here.”

Sam’s throat tightened. “They needed to . . . see you nearly burn someone alive?”

Wraith’s mouth twitched - not quite a smile, not quite a grimace. “ . . . We’re not alive. Not like you. Remember that.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence. At her door, he stopped, shoulders looming in the firelight. His gaze flicked down at her once more, steady, unreadable.

“You’ll be fine,” he said simply, and then he turned away, cloak dragging shadows in his wake.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The screen flickered and hissed, filling Jazz’s quiet living room with color and motion. A polished anchor’s voice cut through the hum of static.

“ . . . and in a brave, selfless act, Samantha Manson’s decisive intervention has prevented a catastrophe of unprecedented scale. Authorities confirm that Ms. Manson entered the Ghost Zone alone to neutralize the threat, and her actions ensured the safety of countless citizens.”

Jazz’s stomach clenched. Samantha Manson. Not Sam. Not a person. Just a name, stamped on headlines and repeated over and over. The clips rolled: stock footage of glowing lights, city streets evacuated, officials shaking hands, Sam’s figure silhouetted in chaos, heroic and unreachable.

Her eyes burned from too many sleepless nights - families, children, all the ones who’d lost everything to the same conflict Sam had tried to stop. She’d spent the week helping them fill out relocation forms, finding words of comfort that always felt like lies. And now the news had turned one more person into a symbol instead of a soul.

“The Council of Spectral Affairs has commended Ms. Manson’s courage,” the anchor continued. “Experts describe the Ghost Zone as inherently unstable and dangerous. Only someone with unmatched bravery could survive such an environment - and Ms. Manson’s actions exemplify the qualities we all hope to see in a citizen.”

Jazz’s hands clenched into fists in her lap. Every carefully chosen word felt hollow, like it had been hammered into a press release by people who didn’t know the real Sam at all. The real Sam, who had panicked, who had fought, who had been scared - who hadn’t wanted to be anyone’s martyr.

Jazz turned off the screen before the anchor could finish praising her sister again, but the voice lingered in her head. The Ghost Zone is dangerous. Samantha Manson is a hero. She willingly entered the Ghost Zone to protect the living.

She pressed her face into her hands. Willingly? She had been there. She knew the truth: Sam hadn’t volunteered, hadn’t wanted this.

The official story was clean, polished, and complete. And it was a lie.

Footsteps echoed from the hallway. Maddie’s voice, bright and full of excitement, called out: “Sweetie! Did you see the news?”

Jazz pulled her hands away, blinking at the sudden intrusion. Her mother stood in the doorway, eyes shining, cheeks flushed. Behind her, Jack shuffled in, tie crooked, hair mussed - but with the same wide, almost manic grin.

“Jazzy-pants,” he said, voice booming against the living room walls, “did you see? Samantha Manson! Our city owes her everything!”

Jazz froze, the nickname jarring against the somber glow of the TV. She forced a smile, tightening her fists in her lap. At work, she’d seen parents wear that same bright, desperate hope - the kind that tried to cover grief with patriotism. They didn’t notice me when I was keeping this family together, but they cheer over a story they can’t even see the truth of.

“She was so brave!” Maddie continued, perching on the arm of the sofa, “To think - entering the Ghost Zone alone! And she went willingly! For all of us.”

Jazz’s stomach churned. Sam had been terrified, dragged into something none of them had the right to force. She opened her mouth, but the words caught in her throat.

Jack leaned over, voice dropping conspiratorially. “Can you imagine, Jazzy-pants? The courage it must take to face those . . . those spirits. I don’t know how anyone survives in that place. I mean, we’ve always said they’re evil, right? Horrible, cruel things. But Samantha - she’s . . . exceptional.”

Their words, meant to comfort, made her feel smaller, thinner, like a shadow stretching across the floor. They weren’t seeing her at all; they were seeing the story, the shiny narrative. The Sam they revered on the news, not the friend who had panicked, who had been scared, who hadn’t wanted any of this.

Maddie’s hand brushed against her arm. “You’re lucky to have such a friend, Jazz. Someone like her to protect all of us from . . . from the ghosts out there.”

Jazz swallowed the bile rising in her throat. Lucky? No. She hadn’t felt lucky in years. She felt hollow, sick with the knowledge of what Sam was really enduring.

Jack clapped a hand over her shoulder, squeezing a little too tight. “We’re proud of you too, you know,” he said, voice booming again, full of cheer. “For having the right friends, the kind of people who - ”

Jazz tuned him out. Her chest ached, her thoughts spinning in one direction: Sam. Alone. Terrified. And everyone else, including her parents, only cared about the heroic story, the spectacle, the ghosts’ evilness, not the person behind the headlines.

She said nothing, biting her tongue. Her parents continued, oblivious, praising courage, bravery, and the righteousness of the “official narrative,” while Jazz sat frozen, silent, boiling inside.

Maddie’s hands clasped together, eyes wide. “And the things she must have faced! The creatures, so cruel, so unpredictable! I read about that wraith last year in the archives: snapped a whole patrol in half, bones cracking like twigs. Didn’t even leave a scrap behind. And those ectoplasmic hounds . . . they tear flesh from bone before their victims even realize they’re hurt!”

Jazz’s stomach twisted violently.

Jack’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Remember the Vanishing Lady? Went through an entire family’s home - walls coated in blood, screams echoing, their shadows all that remained before she vanished them completely. And the Hollow Man . . . ate the eyes of anyone who tried to look at him.”

Her mouth went dry. Her head spun. Images her parents described - bodies shredded, shadows lost forever, screams silenced in horrific ways - made her think of Sam: trapped, alone, surrounded by those monsters.

“She’s not just brave,” Maddie continued, voice trembling with awe. “She’s heroic. A real citizen. The kind we should all aspire to be. She faced them, and she won, for all of us!”

Jazz’s chest tightened. Her vision blurred. Gratitude. Awe. Words meant for headlines, not the terrified girl she knew - Sam, who hadn’t chosen this, who’d been forced into the Ghost Zone. She could feel bile rising, taste it sharp at the back of her throat. It sounded like one of the press briefings she’d been made to watch at work - every tragedy framed as sacrifice, every dead or missing turned into a lesson about courage.

“I . . . uh . . . ” Jazz’s voice wavered. She stumbled to her feet, nearly colliding with the coffee table. “I . . . need - water.”

Once inside the bathroom, she locked the door and doubled over the sink, gagging violently. The stench of antiseptic barely masked the nausea twisting through her. Every word her parents had spoken - evil, cruel, brave, heroic - felt like molten lead pressing against her chest.

And in the center of it all was Sam. Alive. Alone. Facing exactly those horrors her parents had just cataloged, unwillingly.

This was supposed to be her job - helping the ones caught in the aftermath, keeping families from breaking under the weight of everything they’d lost. But when it came to her own friend, all she could do was watch.

Jazz pressed her forehead to the cool porcelain, fists clutching the edge of the sink, trembling.

She wanted to scream, to cry, to do something - anything.

But all she could do was taste bile clogging her throat, feel her heartbeat thundering in her ears, and sit there, powerless.

Chapter Text

Sam woke to a silence that vibrated.

For a heartbeat, she thought the hall was still burning - her lungs clenched, expecting heat - but the glow that flickered against the walls was only the keep’s dim green light.

Her sheets smelled faintly of smoke. A smear of soot streaked her wrist when she brushed her face. When she shifted, something rough caught in her hair - a flake of blackened ash.

She was still alive. It felt fragile. Almost undeserved.

Her heart thudded too fast for the stillness around her. She curled her hands into fists, unclenched them again. No wounds, no burns, not even a bruise, and still her body felt like it hadn’t been given permission to stop bracing.

She could still hear it - the laughter, the roar of approval, the sound of a body striking stone. The way they’d all leaned forward, eager, when the noble started to burn.

It hadn’t been chaos. It had been celebration.

She drew in a breath that didn’t quite steady her and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The stone was cool under her bare feet, grounding her just enough to remember she was alive.

The knock came soft as rain. Then, without waiting, the door creaked open.

“Morning,” Sprite said brightly, slipping inside barefoot. The faint shimmer around her outline flickered once before stabilizing.

Sam startled. “You knocked - then just barged in?”

Sprite tilted her head, thoughtful. “Yeah. Doors here don’t mean what you think they do.”

Sam looked back just in time to see the handle shiver, as if a breeze had passed through it. When she blinked, it was still again.

Sprite crossed the room in a few light steps and stopped in front of Sam, nose wrinkling. “You smell like burnt air.”

“Thanks,” Sam muttered. “I’ll add that to my list of shortcomings.”

Unfazed, Sprite started fussing with her pajamas, shaking out soot and smoothing seams that didn’t need smoothing. “Hold still. You’re shedding sparks. Happens when mortals forget to shield their feelings.”

Sam blinked. “What does that even mean?”

Sprite shrugged, as if the explanation were obvious. “Your fear’s too loud. It leaks. The shadows like to follow it.”

“Great,” Sam said tightly. “So I’m radiating ghost panic now.”

“Not panic,” Sprite corrected gently. “Just . . . noise.” She tugged at a fold of fabric, then reached up and brushed the bit of ash still caught in Sam’s hair. Her fingers were cool, steady, not quite human-warm.

Sam jerked back before she could stop herself. “Don’t -” The word came out too sharp.

Sprite froze, hand still raised. Then she lowered it carefully and took a small step back. “You’re shaking,” she said simply. “That means you’re alive. That’s good.”

For some reason, that didn’t feel like a mercy.

The quiet that followed was heavier than it should’ve been. Sam swallowed hard, guilt prickling her skin.

“I didn’t mean to -”

“I know,” Sprite said, already moving again. She bent to adjust the hem of Sam’s cloak, her tone matter-of-fact, brisk as if nothing awkward had happened. “You mortals think surviving should feel clean. It doesn’t. You’ll get used to it.”

Sam huffed out a breath - half laugh, half sigh. “You really are terrible at comfort.”

Sprite glanced up, grin flickering quick and sly. “No. I’m just not pretending it’s something else.”

For the first time since waking, Sam’s pulse slowed. Sprite’s presence filled the room - small, bright, ordinary in a place that was anything but.

When Sprite straightened, she gave the cloak one final tug and nodded, satisfied. “There. Shadow anchored. Mostly. Try not to panic next time someone burns down a banquet hall.”

Sam groaned. “I’ll do my best.”

Somewhere, far beyond the green-tinged stone, life continued as if the Zone’s chaos were just a shadow. Somewhere, someone else was waking to the sound of discipline, precision, and rules that didn’t bend to fear.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The sharp crack of a gunshot shattered the quiet.

Valerie lowered the pistol, exhaled, then adjusted her stance. She’d drifted a little too high on that last shot. Too much tension in her shoulders. Her finger brushed the trigger again, smooth, steady - another shot rang out. The paper target jerked, a new hole torn dead center. Better.

The smell of gunpowder clung to the air, warm and metallic. No one else used the range this early, and she liked it that way. No chatter, no distractions, just her heartbeat and the rhythm of the shots. She didn’t need applause. She didn’t need anyone telling her how good she was getting. She knew.

But knowing wasn’t enough. Not when ghosts still walked free. Not when she could still see the way her dad’s face tightened in pain every time he tried to lift more than a grocery bag.

Valerie slammed a fresh clip into the gun, jaw tight. Every round she fired wasn’t just practice. It was a promise of revenge.

She fired until the clip ran dry, the sharp recoil rattling up her arms in a steady rhythm. Breathe. Sight. Fire. Again. By the time the last casing clinked against the floor, her target was little more than shredded paper.

Valerie lowered the gun, rolling her shoulders out, and that was when she felt it - a prickling on the back of her neck.

She wasn’t alone.

Her eyes slid sideways. At the edge of the range, half-shadowed by the overhead lights, stood two figures in white. They didn’t move, didn’t speak, just watched. For a heartbeat, the sight made her chest tighten. Being observed when she hadn’t realized it - it made her feel naked, vulnerable.

Then she registered who they were. And her pulse jumped for an entirely different reason.

The white suits. The insignia on their shoulders. The government’s own ghost experts. The Ghost Investigation Ward.

Valerie straightened her spine, schooling her expression into calm. She wasn’t about to let them see her rattled.

They waited until she’d slid the gun safely back into its case. Then one of them brought his hands together, slow and deliberate. A measured clap.

“Impeccable form,” he said, his smile practiced, almost too precise. “Truly impressive discipline, for someone so young.”

Valerie’s jaw tightened at the word young, but she couldn’t stop the flicker of pride that rose in her chest. They noticed.

The taller one stepped forward, his shoes clicking against the concrete floor. “Do you know how rare it is to see such raw precision at your age?” His tone was smooth, almost admiring. “Most recruits we’ve seen couldn’t match that grouping after months of training.”

Valerie crossed her arms, hiding the way her chest swelled at the praise. “I’m not a recruit.”

“Not yet,” the second man said lightly, as if it were already decided. “But you are a fighter. We’ve been following your progress for some time, Valerie. What you’ve accomplished, without funding, without advanced equipment - it speaks volumes about your determination.”

He let the compliment linger, heavy and deliberate, before adding:

“Humanity needs more people like you. People brave enough to step up, to take the fight back to the Ghost Zone.”

Valerie’s fingers twitched. Brave. Determined. Fighter. They were the exact words she wanted people to use about her, instead of the whispered pity she caught when neighbors saw her dad struggling up the stairs, or when teachers excused her lateness with “difficult home circumstances.”

She held her chin high. “I don’t need anyone’s help to fight ghosts.”

The taller one’s gaze sharpened. “No. That’s what makes you extraordinary. But imagine what you could do if you weren’t alone.”

Valerie’s arms stayed crossed, her eyes narrowing. “You talk about fighting for humanity, but where was all this when Sam Manson got sent into the Zone? You let her walk in there alone. Called it a victory. Doesn’t look much like fighting to me.”

The taller agent’s smile didn’t falter, though something colder flickered behind his eyes. “The Manson girl’s case was . . . unique. Unfortunate.” His partner stepped in smoothly, tone warm, practiced. “But you’re not Samantha, Miss Grey. You’re not disposable. You’re a fighter, and you’ve proven it on your own terms.”

Valerie’s jaw clenched. She didn’t reply, but the silence spoke for her.

The taller one inclined his head, almost gracious. “We won’t waste your time with more speeches. Words only go so far.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a crisp white card, sliding it onto the shooting bench between them. The GIW insignia gleamed faintly in the overhead light.

“Come see for yourself. Our facility. Our resources. The kind of firepower humanity deserves. Consider it an invitation.”

He straightened, smoothing his suit. “You’ve earned at least that much.”

Valerie’s eyes dropped to the card. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then she slipped it into her pocket, slow and deliberate.

When she looked up, the men were already turning to leave, their white suits stark against the dim concrete walls.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Sam followed Sprite down the narrow corridor, the green-tinted lights casting long, hesitant shadows that seemed to breathe along the walls. The keep was quiet, too quiet, the kind of quiet that made every shuffle of her shoes sound like a shout.

Sprite bounced ahead barefoot, cloak flickering with the nonexistent wind that only seemed to follow her. She stopped suddenly, turned, and tugged Sam back by the sleeve.

“Lesson one,” Sprite said, as if she were teaching how to set a table. “You step wrong and the floor thinks you’re prey. You don’t want to find out what the floor does to prey.”

Sam stumbled after her, trying to match her pace.

“You’re not serious.”

Sprite tilted her head, birdlike, expression flickering. “I am deadly serious. Or . . . mostly serious.” She twitched her fingers as though brushing away Sam’s doubt. “Now repeat after me.”

Sprite launched into a mnemonic, voice skipping and gliding:

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.

We also know that there are known unknowns; some things we know we do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know that we don't know.”

Sam repeated it haltingly, tripping over words, but Sprite didn’t correct her. Instead, she hummed faintly, the air around them rippling with the wrongness of her sound.

“Good,” Sprite said, approving. “Now, anchor your shadow.”

She produced a dull coin from nowhere and dropped it neatly onto the ground, pressing her toe against it. The coin melted into the flagstones with a faint hiss.

“Yours keeps drifting,” Sprite muttered, fussing like she was scolding a pet. “Mortals always forget to tie them down.”

“How - how would I even -”

Sprite shoved another coin into Sam’s palm. It was warm. Sam crouched and pressed it flat, watching in uneasy fascination as her shadow clung tighter to her feet. The wrongness of it made her skin prickle, but the floor went silent.

They moved again, Sprite narrating rules that made no sense. Sam wondered how long it would take before the rules stopped sounding like madness

“Breathe on the left side of the corridor. Right side’s for things that don’t need air. Don’t answer a noble’s smile unless you’re sure it’s meant for you. Don’t eat anything that talks first. And if something asks your name twice -”

“- run?”

“No, lie.” Sprite grinned, pleased. “Running’s polite enough, though.”

Sam couldn’t help it - she laughed. A sharp, surprised bark of sound. It startled her; for a moment she felt like she’d stolen it from someone else.

The little ghost in front of her blinked, then brightened like she’d just won a prize.

“There. Better,” Sprite said. “You’re easier to look at when you’re laughing.”

Then Sprite clapped her hands, eyes glinting mischievously. “But one ghost can only do so much! Watch this.”

Before Sam could react, Sprite blurred, split, and multiplied into three identical versions of herself. They zigzagged around Sam, tugging at her hands, spinning in circles like children racing in a game too big for one.

Sam stumbled back, wide-eyed. “Wait - what - how - what’s happening?”

The three Sprite’s circled her, singing, slightly off-key and oddly cheerful:

“I cannot give the reasons,

I only sing the tunes:

the sadness of the seasons

the madness of the moons.

I cannot be didactic

or lucid, but I can

be quite obscure and practic-

ally marzipan.

In gorgery and gushness

and all that's squishified.

My voice has all the lushness

of what I can't abide.

And yet it has a beauty

most proud and terrible

denied to those whose duty

is to be cerebral.

Among the antlered mountains

I make my viscous way

and watch the sepia mountains

throw up their lime-green spray.” [1.]

For a heartbeat, her voices - all three - spoke in perfect unison, tone flattened, eyes unfocused. Then she blinked, bright again, as if she hadn’t noticed the glitch.

Sam’s eyes darted from one Sprite to the next, heart skipping. The rhythm, the words, the nonsense - it all carried a strange, contagious energy that made the stones themselves seem to hum.

Sprite giggled, completely unbothered. “We need enough of us to jump rope. And maybe . . . to make you feel less alone.” One of the copies tugged Sam’s sleeve, nearly spinning her around. “Phantom taught me how to split my echo, you know. Said it’s useful when you don’t want people to notice you crying.”

Sam froze, staring at the flickering swarm of Sprites, a shiver crawling up her spine. “. . . Okay. That’s - that’s kind of . . . horrifying.”

Sprite’s grin widened, unapologetically gleeful. “It’s fun, too! Look!” She bounded into the circle, spinning and clapping, her echoes following precisely, and for the first time Sam couldn’t help but smile, caught between awe and unease. “You . . . you just split yourself?”

“Echo splitting!” Sprite said, bouncing back to a single form. “Easy as pie. Or maybe marshmallow. Or marshmallow pie. Anyway, see? Fun and useful!”

They turned a corner where the corridor widened into a colonnade of pale stone. The light here was softer, greener - and colder. The echo of footsteps ahead made Sam’s stomach knot.

Wraith was coming toward them, unhurried, expression unreadable. He looked different without the smoke and fury of last night - the violence reduced to an afterimage, but still there, like ash beneath his skin.

Sam froze. Her hand clenched around the fading light of the star she’d tucked into her pocket.

Sprite, oblivious or fearless, darted forward.

“Wraith! Look! She’s learning not to die stupidly!”

He actually chuckled. It was low, rough - human, almost. He stooped, brushed a streak of soot off Sprite’s shoulder, and straightened the fold of her collar.

“Good work,” he said mildly, to Sprite. His gaze flicked to Sam - cool, assessing - and then he moved on, the hem of his cape whispering over the stones.

Sprite waited until he was gone before saying, “He’s nicer when he’s tired.”

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Valerie had heard plenty of rumors about the Ghost Investigation Ward’s headquarters.

That it was an underground bunker carved into old missile silos. That they kept captured ghosts chained in glass tanks, screaming day and night. That every hallway was rigged with scanners that could strip you down to the bone.

Standing at the checkpoint now, she wasn’t sure those rumors had been exaggerated.

At Casper High, soldiers swept kids with ecto-wands, rough and efficient, searching for possession. Here, it was worse. Here, the guards didn’t just scan her - they stripped her presence down to data. A full-body ecto-radiation sweep pulsed through her bones, setting her teeth on edge. Heat sensors traced over her skin. A retinal scanner pinned her in place until her vision blurred.

The soldiers never blinked. Cameras followed their every twitch. A second guard copied her ID onto a clipboard; paper, in triplicate, like she was already being filed into some larger system.

Valerie forced herself to stand straight, though her shoulders wanted to knot. At Casper, the security was a nuisance. Here, it felt like judgment.

She straightened her spine anyway, refusing to fidget under the weight of their scrutiny. She was Valerie Grey. She had nothing to hide.

Her escort, the taller of the two agents from the range, glided through without pause. “Standard procedure,” he said lightly, as if the process weren’t designed to strip people down to nothing. “You understand. We can’t be too careful, not with what we handle here.”

Valerie’s eyes flicked to the sealed blast doors ahead, their metal edges gleaming like a warning. No one outside had ever been allowed in. No one who wasn’t already one of them. For a flicker of a moment, a thrill chased down her spine.

The rumors didn’t matter anymore. She was about to see it for herself.

The blast doors groaned open, hydraulics hissing, and Valerie stepped into the Ghost Investigation Ward’s headquarters for the first time.

Her first impression was . . . silence. Not the normal kind; no, this was thick, deliberate silence. The air was recycled, too clean, carrying the faint tang of disinfectant and ozone. Her footsteps echoed too loud on the polished floor.

The corridor stretched long and narrow, white walls unbroken by windows. Cameras blinked red in the corners. On either side, sealed doors bore stenciled warnings: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. LEVEL FOUR CLEARANCE REQUIRED.

It should have felt claustrophobic. It did feel claustrophobic. But at the same time, Valerie’s chest tightened with something like pride. This wasn’t some shabby high school with soldiers babysitting hallways. This was where the real fight happened. This was where the professionals worked. And now she was walking among them.

Her escort’s voice cut through the hush. “Our facility is the most secure in the country. No ghost that enters here leaves. No information gets in or out without authorization. Everything we do is in service of one goal: keeping humanity safe.”

Valerie’s throat went dry. She thought of her dad, grimacing every time he moved about their apartment. She thought of the pitying looks, the whispers about how the Greys had fallen. Keeping humanity safe? That was worth a little unease.

They passed a glass wall, and Valerie slowed. Beyond it, technicians in lab coats clustered around a tank of swirling green liquid. Something shifted in the murk - a skeletal arm twitched against its restraints, green light crawling over exposed bone. Valerie’s pulse spiked, but before she could get a better look, her escort ushered her along.

“Research division,” he said smoothly, as though the thing in the tank were no more remarkable than a beaker of chemicals. “We study captured specimens, refine containment protocols. All of it necessary. All of it vital.”

Valerie nodded, quick and eager, even as her stomach knotted. Creepy or not, this was proof. Proof the GIW was serious. Proof they could win.

And maybe, proof that she could too.

They stopped at a wide set of double doors. Her escort keyed in a code, pressed his palm to the scanner, and the doors slid open with a hiss.

Valerie blinked against the sudden brightness.

The room beyond was massive, more like a gymnasium than anything else, except no school gym had obstacle courses lined with glowing ecto-barriers, or targeting ranges stocked with hovering drone-spheres that darted like wasps. A dozen figures in white and grey training suits ran drills: firing ecto-blasters, ducking under barriers, sprinting across beams suspended over hard light pits.

They looked around her age, maybe a bit older.

For a moment, Valerie just stood there, taking it in. Her fingers itched at the sight of the gear, polished, standardized, nothing like the makeshift setups she used at the range. Then her gaze drifted to their aim, their speed, their balance.

She’d seen sharper.

One of the cadets missed a drone completely, his ecto-blast fizzling out in the air. The drone zipped past his head and smacked him with a stun charge, dropping him to the mats.

Valerie arched a brow. Amateur.

Her escort’s smile widened, as if he’d caught the thought straight out of her head. “Impressive effort, but not even close to your level. We’ve reviewed your performance. You already outpace recruits who’ve been here for months.”

Valerie crossed her arms, trying to smother the little swell of pride in her chest. “They’ve got better equipment.”

“Equipment can’t replace instinct.” His voice was low, admiring. “You’ve built discipline without any of this: without training partners, without access to state-of-the-art tools. That speaks volumes. These cadets may serve, but you?” He paused, letting the words sink in. “You could lead.”

Valerie glanced back at the sparring floor. One girl managed to down her drone, pumping her fist when the sphere crashed in sparks, but her shot grouping was sloppy, scattered all over the board.

Valerie’s lips quirked, just slightly.

Her escort caught it. “Exactly. You see the difference already. With us, you wouldn’t be just another trainee. You’d be an asset. Recognized. Respected.”

The words thrummed through her, heady and dangerous. Recognized. Respected. She could almost hear the neighbors’ whispers fading, the pity in their voices drying up.

She dragged her gaze away from the cadets, squaring her shoulders. “So show me the rest. If you’re saying I’m different, prove it.”

His grin sharpened, predatory and pleased. “Of course. The armory is next.”

The next set of doors required even more security; double authentication, a retinal scan, and a code Valerie couldn’t even follow as the agent’s fingers flew across the keypad. The lock disengaged with a heavy click, and the door swung inward.

Her breath caught.

Rows upon rows of weapon racks stretched before her, gleaming under the sterile white lights. Blasters in every shape and size lined the walls, their polished barrels glinting. Compact pistols sat in neat cases beside larger rifles designed to stop something ten times human size. There were racks of ecto-grenades, coils of glowing nets, crates stamped with hazard symbols she couldn’t even identify.

It was more firepower than she’d ever imagined in one place.

The agent let her take it in, watching her reaction with that same slight, knowing smile. “Impressive, isn’t it? Every piece here is designed for one purpose: neutralizing ectoplasmic threats. Efficiently. Permanently.”

Valerie’s fingers twitched at her sides. She thought about the hours she’d spent cobbling together mods for her dad’s old hunting rifle, just to keep up with the occasional specter that wandered too close. Here . . . here was an arsenal.

They walked further inside, past locked cases where sleeker, more experimental weapons pulsed faintly with green light. Valerie slowed as her gaze caught on a mannequin at the center of the room.

Unlike the standard white GIW uniforms, this suit was different.

Streamlined. Angular. Armor plated where it mattered, but light enough for speed. Deep crimson panels accented the dark plating, a helmet shaped to cut an almost predatory silhouette. The sight of it hit her chest like a punch.

It looked like it belonged to a hunter.

Her escort stopped beside the display, lowering his voice as though sharing something secret. “We’ve been developing this for some time. A prototype designed not for squads or masses, but for a single operator. Someone precise. Relentless. Someone like you.”

Valerie stepped closer before she could stop herself. She caught her reflection in the helmet’s polished faceplate - small, distorted, but unmistakably hers.

Her throat felt tight.

The agent’s words curved smooth as glass: “You’ve already proven what you can do without resources. Imagine what you could do with all of this.”

Valerie’s mind buzzed with possibilities - and responsibility - as she followed her escort out of the armory. The polished floors reflected her stride, echoing each step with quiet emphasis. Thoughts of what she could accomplish, what she might be asked to accomplish, pressed against her chest. They moved in silence through a labyrinth of hallways, past rows of secure doors and blinking cameras, the sterility of the facility closing around her like a quiet promise. Finally, her escort paused before a set of double doors and gestured her inside.

The conference room was as stark as the rest of the facility - windowless walls, humming lights overhead, the faint tang of disinfectant in the air. A long table stretched between Valerie and the agent across from her. She sat stiff in her chair, trying not to fidget, her gaze flicking once to the folder they’d set in front of her, the gleaming red helmet embossed on the cover.

The agent leaned forward, hands clasped. “The public thinks the war is over.”

Valerie blinked. “Isn’t it?”

A humorless smile. “Ghosts don’t surrender. Not really. They regroup. They adapt. One sacrifice doesn’t end a war. It buys us time - and it lulls the enemy into hiding.”

Her chest tightened. Sam’s face, Sam’s voice - no. She pushed it down.

The agent’s tone dropped lower, conspiratorial. “We’re fighting a shadow war now. A war the people can’t see, and shouldn’t see. Panic helps no one. But behind the curtain? We are still hunting. Still eliminating threats before they can resurface.”

Valerie swallowed. It made sense. Didn’t it? The ghosts weren’t gone. They never stayed gone.

“Which is where you come in.” The agent tapped the folder. “You’ve proven yourself against ghosts before. You’re resourceful. Relentless. You have the kind of instincts our junior operatives can only hope to develop.”

Heat crept up Valerie’s neck, pride flickering despite herself.

“You’d be more than a soldier,” the agent went on. “Within the GIW, you’d be a symbol. Someone others look to, someone whose skill and determination set the standard. The war may seem quiet to the public, but inside these walls, the fight is ongoing. We want you to be the edge that keeps our agents sharp. The knife in the dark, the beacon in the shadows.”

Her hand drifted toward the folder. She didn’t open it.

“And of course,” the agent added smoothly, “you’ll be compensated fairly. Enough to take care of yourself. Enough to help your father with his . . . difficulties.”

Valerie’s breath caught. She hadn’t told them about her dad’s medical bills.

The agent smiled like they already knew the decision. “This is humanity’s last push. One final effort to end the war for good. With your skills, Valerie, you could be the difference.”

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Sam shook off the lingering tension that had clung to her since waking, still tasting the smoke in her throat. Sprite tugged her up the winding stairs, cloak flickering wildly around her. Barefoot and impossibly quick, Sprite’s energy was infectious, and Sam found herself running to keep up.

“Where are we going?” Sam called, breath hitching, toes slipping slightly on the stone.

“It’s a surprise!” Sprite said, bouncing ahead, hands flailing as if the walls themselves couldn’t contain her excitement. “A very, very special surprise! But shh - you have to wait until we get there!”

Sam grinned, caught in the infectious thrill. She didn’t know what to expect, only that Sprite’s laughter made the keep feel less cold.

When they finally emerged onto the parapet, Sprite threw her arms wide, leaning against the low wall, hair and cloak twitching in a wind that wasn’t there.

“The skies around Phantom’s keep are better than the rest of the Realms,” she said, voice bright and proud. “Phantom has stars.”

Sam froze. The constellations sprawled above them, brighter and sharper than any she had seen in the Zone - or back home. Her chest tightened, heart jabbing painfully against ribs, because Sprite’s voice, full of joy and wonder, hit her like a lance: Danny, lying on the grass, pointing out constellations with wide-eyed delight, sharing impossible stories with her in the dark. Sprite’s bright enthusiasm, her laughter, her love of the stars - it was impossible not to think of him.

“He’s gonna be the ancient of space! He’s been learning from Clockwork!” Sprite added, bouncing slightly on her hands. “Makes him a bit more . . . serious, I guess. Scares other people sometimes, but not me. He makes sure I get the best bites first. Hums me to sleep, too. Funny little tunes. I don’t forget those things.”

Danny used to do that. The thought broke into Sam’s mind like a jagged knife. Quiet, tuneless, when he thought I was asleep. The memory hurt like breathing smoke.

They settled onto a folded blanket Sprite had brought, the edge fluttering faintly in the breeze. Sprite fidgeted with something small and glowing in her hands - a thin thread of ectoplasm that pulsed softly, light shimmering along its length as she spoke.

Sam stared, processing. Sprite’s casual knowledge of Phantom’s kindness made her feel both confused and comforted. He was larger than life, otherworldly, alien - but maybe, just maybe he wasn’t a monster.

Sprite hummed to herself, staring up at the stars. Occasionally, she would falter mid-note - not forgotten, just cut, like a song clipped by static. When she would resume, the melody had changed, a little sweeter, just also a little wrong.

After a while, Sprite fell silent, finally pressing the small charm into Sam’s hand. It was no bigger than a pebble, smooth and warm, etched with a faint spiral that shimmered softly with green light. “For you,” she said simply. “Keeps you a little safer. Or me. Or both.”

Sam’s fingers closed around it. Warm. Alive. She could discard it, throw it away - but she didn’t. She kept it pressed in her palm, a small, quiet promise.

The two of them sat together, quiet for a while, Sam staring up at the sky. She cataloged the constellations - their brightness, their sharp edges, the alien shimmer of color that didn’t exist at home. Sprite hummed softly, faintly off-kilter, tracing patterns in the air with the glowing ectoplasm. The parapet felt high, exposed, yet Sam realized she wasn’t afraid - not while Sprite was here, not while she held the tiny charm in her hand.

For the first time since arriving, she allowed herself to relax. Maybe she could survive this place. Maybe she could even learn to breathe again.

The thought hit like a betrayal, quiet and sharp. Danny hadn’t gotten that chance.

And Sam wasn’t sure she deserved it.

The stars above blurred. Her eyes burned.

Chapter Text

The Keep breathed around her. A soft pulse through the walls, like the rhythm of a distant heart - too slow, too deep to belong to anything human - anything alive.

Sam lay still for a moment, listening. The greenish light filtering through the high window had thinned, its glow fractured into slow-moving waves. Morning, or what passed for it here. Her head felt heavy, full of echoes and half-formed words from Sprite’s endless chatter the night before. Phantom has stars. Trust what you see, but not everything that looks.

The charm Sprite had given her still rested in her palm. Warm. Faintly alive. She’d fallen asleep holding it.

When she finally pushed herself up, her boots touched stone that hummed faintly underfoot - not cold, just aware. The air carried a sharp tang, the smell of ectoplasm, like mint and ozone. Not the choking, chemical haze that had haunted Amity for years, but something older, purer. She didn’t know if she preferred it.

Sam hesitated at the door. The corridor beyond glowed faintly, breathing in its own rhythm. She murmured Sprite’s mnemonic under her breath as a grounding habit - known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns - before stepping out.

The hall stretched in uneasy geometry, corners curving just enough to look wrong. She kept to the left side, like Sprite had told her, where the air shimmered less. Supposedly, it was safer to breathe there. Supposedly.

The light pulsed faintly in the seams between flagstones. Doors whispered open and closed down the corridor, never twice in the same place. Sam caught her reflection once in a pane of glass and barely recognized the pale, hollow-eyed girl staring back.

At the next junction, she caught sight of her own shadow stretched across the wall - darker than it should be, its edges trembling faintly. She frowned, shifting her hand; the shadow lagged a heartbeat behind. Too untethered again. Sprite had warned her about that, how mortals always forgot to tie them down. Sam crouched briefly, pressing her fingers to the floor, feeling for the faint warmth where the coin anchor had melted in. The tremor stilled.

When she stood, the stones under her boots rippled - not enough to trip her, just enough to push, a subtle herding motion guiding her back the way she’d come. A nearby door slammed shut before she could touch it. Another corridor, one that had been open a moment ago, seemed to blur at the edges and fold itself out of sight.

The realization hit: the Keep didn’t want her here. It wasn’t just strange architecture - it was resisting her very presence.

Her throat tightened. “Fine,” she muttered, forcing her voice steady as she stepped forward anyway. “I don’t trust you either.”

The air cooled, but the floor stilled beneath her feet.

She took that as a victory. A small one.

It took her a few more turns to find the corridor Sprite had pointed out the night before, the one that led toward the main hall. Breakfast. The word felt almost normal, and that was reason enough to try.

If she could eat where the ghosts ate, walk where they walked, maybe she could start learning the rhythm of this place instead of just surviving it.

The great hall was different in the daylight, or whatever passed for daylight here. The shadows were softer, tinted faintly green by the light spilling through the tall crystal windows. The banquet’s grandeur was gone; in its place lingered something quieter, looser. The tables still shimmered faintly with ecto-light, but the ghosts were less formal, drifting in and out like the tide.

Sam hovered at the edge, keeping her steps measured. Sprite had told her never to move too quickly in a crowd like this; the walls might forgive her clumsiness, but the courtiers wouldn’t.

Sam hadn’t thought she’d miss the human kind of hierarchy - the classroom kind, the cafeteria kind, the thousand invisible rules that kept you from getting side-eyed in the hallway. But here, the rules were visible. They shimmered in the air, written in how the ghosts moved.

She watched them carefully. Some bowed low enough that their hair brushed the floor, heads bowed like penitents. Others only tilted their chins, eyes gleaming, like they knew they didn’t need to bend any further. The air itself seemed to hum around them, thick with unspoken rank.

When one of the lesser ghosts drifted by - translucent and trembling, carrying what looked like a tray of light - Sam noticed how others turned away from it. Not out of disgust, exactly. More like they didn’t want to risk being seen treating it as equal.

It was a whole ecosystem of power, and she was an invasive species.

The hall breathed shifted around her - whispering, alive. Sam moved carefully along its edge, repeating Sprite’s mnemonic under her breath. Known knowns. Known unknowns. Unknown unknowns. She tried to keep her breathing even, her steps measured. Here, even walking felt like a test.

A group of lesser ghosts bowed low as a taller figure approached, their movements rippling like cloth in water. The tall ghost paused expectantly, eyes sliding to Sam.

Sam froze, brain racing. She didn’t know the gesture’s meaning, but instinct whispered that stillness would mark her as prey. She went with her gut. Not too low, not too proud. A nod - slow, steady, acknowledgment without surrender.

The ghost regarded her for a long second. Then it smiled - all teeth and frost - and passed her by. The floor didn’t shift beneath her feet. A small victory.

“Not bad,” came a voice behind her, smooth as smoke.

Sam turned.

The woman who watched her was radiant in a way that made Sam’s skin prickle - beauty so sharp it bordered on predatory. Her gown shimmered like liquid metal; silver coins framed her face, and a cascade of black hair spilled from beneath an ornate headdress set with green leaves. Her eyes glowed deep red, ancient and amused.

“You learn quickly for one who doesn’t belong,” the woman said. “That will keep you alive.”

Sam swallowed. “Who -”

“Names are currency,” the woman interrupted lightly. “Earn them before you spend them.”

She drifted closer, close enough for Sam to feel the air hum with ectoplasmic energy. “Tell me, mortal - what do you wish for, standing here? To survive? To be trusted? To see your home again?”

Sam’s mouth opened, then closed. She didn’t answer.

The woman’s smile deepened, as if that were the right choice. “Good. Words have weight here. Be careful what you cast into the air.”

For a heartbeat, something like approval flickered across her face - a teacher satisfied with a student’s first lesson.

Then she was gone, leaving behind only the faint chime of her jewelry and the echo of her question.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The room smelled faintly of burnt coffee and cold metal. Screens flickered in the dark, their glow painting Tucker’s face in shades of green and blue. Stacks of empty cups teetered on the desk, and the soft whir of cooling fans filled the silence where no one else dared to tread.

He leaned closer to the monitors, fingers flying. Government databases weren’t built for ease - they were built for control. Firewalls. Permissions. Layers of obfuscation meant to keep even the curious from getting close.

But Tucker had time. And Tucker had determination.

Every corrupted file, every dropped packet, every ghost of a log brought him closer.

Then he found it.

A hidden directory, buried deep beneath layers no one outside the top tier should’ve known existed. Its label glowed faintly in the corner of the screen: PROJECT ECLIPSE - SECURE.

He hesitated. The encryption was ridiculous, something no human coder would bother with. Which meant ghosts had a hand in it.

And that meant it mattered.

He went to work, breaking through layer after layer until fragments of files flickered into view. Most were broken. Garbled. But one small, partially decrypted document made his stomach twist.

Half-typed, half-scrawled notes:

Containment expansion: test ghost-to-human spread variables.

Detonation protocol: initiate only if cross-contamination confirmed.

Subject: Manson girl - ploy seems to be working.

Tucker froze. His pulse thudded in his ears as he reread the words. Once. Twice.

Ploy seems to be working.

The phrase echoed, sharp and ugly.

He stared at it, unable to look away. A slow, sick realization spread through him, and the fury followed right behind it - hot, immediate, and helpless.

He slammed a hand against the desk, sending coffee cups clattering to the floor. Sam.

His Sam.

They’d sent her in, knowing she might die - not to stop the war, not to protect anyone, but to buy themselves time. A calculated sacrifice to keep their hands clean and their data flowing.

He swallowed hard, eyes burning in the green light of the screens. Images crashed through his mind - her face, determined even at the end; her voice, promising they’d make things right.

And now this.

No rescue. No redemption. Just another move in some hidden experiment.

He clenched his jaw, the anger solidifying into something colder, steadier. She was out there, still fighting, still believing in a cause that had never existed. And all the while, they’d been watching, taking notes, running protocols.

His throat tightened. Sam wasn’t their experiment. She was his best friend.

The fans whirred, filling the silence. Lines of code scrolled past like heartbeat pulses.

They were still at it. Still scheming. Still lying.

Not anymore.

Tucker straightened, fingers poised over the keyboard. This time, he wasn’t breaking in for information. He was breaking them open.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The corridor outside the main hall was half in shadow, half alive with drifting light from the ghostly torches suspended in the air. Sam hadn’t meant to linger, she’d only wanted to take a different route back, see a little more of the Keep before it got crowded. But then she heard voices. Low, clipped. Controlled.

She froze at the corner.

“You play the part well, Wraith,” said a voice rough and metallic, echoing with the clang of distant blades. “Almost makes one forget what you’re made of.”

Wraith stood a few paces away, spine straight, his pale aura dim and still. The other ghost - colossal, blood-spattered armor fused to festering wounds, spectral swords clinking against his back as if in endless battle - regarded him like a rival general. Miasma clung to him; faint echoes of past wars seemed to ripple with every movement.

“Careful,” Wraith said. His tone wasn’t a threat. It was a statement. “You’re straying close to disrespect.”

“Disrespect?” the war-ghost rasped. “No, no. Observation only. Shadowborns don’t usually survive beyond their first reckoning.”

A few nearby attendants had stilled completely. The air hummed faintly, like a storm about to break. Sam felt the tension even from the hall’s edge, and instinct told her not to move, not to breathe.

Wraith didn’t rise to the taunt. Hands clasped behind his back, head slightly tilted - the same calm composure she’d seen when he addressed Phantom himself.

“You think you know me,” Wraith said softly, “because you remember what I was made from. But you mistake creation for purpose.”

A thin crack spread along the war-ghost’s armor, light leaking from festering wounds. He looked ready to retort, then Wraith stepped forward once, just once, and the space seemed to bow around him. His shadow stretched, long and deliberate, swallowing the torchlight between them.

“Say your piece,” Wraith murmured. “Then get out of my way.”

The war-stained ghost didn’t. Couldn’t. The silence that followed wasn’t loud, but it hurt to listen to - too sharp, too heavy. When he finally turned and vanished into mist, the air seemed to exhale.

Wraith remained still, head bowed, hands trembling once before stilling. Sam felt her chest tighten, heart hammering - not under his power, but under the weight of what self-control could do. His restraint was deliberate, terrifying.

Then, slowly, Wraith turned. His molten-red eyes flicked toward the corridor’s edge. He noticed her.

A shadow of a nod. Nothing more. And then he resumed walking.

Sam’s knees felt like they might buckle, though she was standing perfectly still. The clang of spectral swords, the stench of blood and miasma from the other ghost, the heat that seemed to radiate off Wraith without fire - it all pressed against her skin. Her heart hammered, her stomach twisted, and yet . . . she understood.

Restraint could be stronger than rage. Silence could be heavier than any war cry.

She drew a shivering breath and straightened her shoulders. She couldn’t begin to measure the weight of that control, the cost of holding power so tightly in check, but she saw it.

Sam wasn’t sure how long she stood there after Wraith disappeared - long enough for the air to settle, long enough for her pulse to stop trying to claw its way out of her throat.

“You look like you just ran through a storm,” came a voice from above her head.

Sam startled, looking up just in time to see Sprite lounging upside-down from a rafter, hair hanging like tangled starlight. The smaller ghost flipped herself upright with a flourish, landing on the banister in a crouch, grinning.

“I told you not to go wandering on your own,” Sprite said, wagging a finger. “The Keep doesn’t like surprises.”

“It doesn’t like me,” Sam muttered.

“Same difference.” Sprite leaned closer, eyes narrowing in mock seriousness. “Still - you didn’t die of manners! That’s something.”

Sam huffed, more out of habit than humor. “Wasn’t planning on dying.”

Sprite tilted her head, studying her like she was a particularly puzzling rock. “You’re learning. Even managed not to offend anyone important! Wraith didn’t incinerate you, which I consider an accomplishment.”

“That wasn’t me,” Sam said. “That was him.”

“Oh, it’s always both,” Sprite said airily. “The way you stand, the way you speak, even the way you breathe here says something. You held your ground without picking a fight. That’s rare, for a mortal.”

Sam frowned, trying to tell if that was a compliment. “Is this the part where you tell me to stop worrying?”

“Please,” Sprite scoffed. “If I told you that, you’d do the opposite out of spite.” She floated backward, twirling in the air. “No, I’m here to make sure you don’t walk into another trap. Literally.”

She flicked her fingers, and a faint shimmer spread across the corridor floor - a web of ghostly wards, lines of light she hadn’t noticed before.

“The Keep’s hungry today,” Sprite said lightly. “Step between those lines if you want to keep your soul where it belongs.”

Sam stared, then stepped carefully between them. Sprite clapped her hands, delighted. “See? Learning already.”

Sam managed a small, crooked smile. “Thanks, I guess.”

Sprite beamed. “Don’t thank me yet. I’m only helping because I like your attitude. You scowl like you mean it.”

And before Sam could answer, Sprite drifted back, fading into the haze above the hall.

For a long moment, Sam stood alone again. But the silence didn’t feel quite as hostile as before, just watchful, like the Keep itself was waiting to see what she’d do next.

She exhaled slowly. Maybe Sprite was right. She hadn’t died of a lack of ghostly manners. She hadn’t gotten lost. She’d even earned a few cautious glances instead of outright hostility.

Small victories. She’d take those.

And as she turned down the corridor, careful to step between the faint lines Sprite had shown her, she thought, just for an instant, that the floor beneath her feet pulsed softer, less like resistance and more like acknowledgment.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The smell of garlic and butter drifted from the kitchen when Jazz knocked on the Foley front door. The sound of a sitcom laugh track leaked faintly through the walls. For a moment, she almost turned back. The house felt impossibly normal - too warm, too calm - like a memory from before the world had fractured.

Maurice answered, smiling like always, towel slung over one shoulder. “Jazz! Good to see you again. Tucker’s upstairs - hasn’t come down for dinner, of course. Kid’s glued to those screens.”

Jazz forced a smile. “Yeah. I’ll go check on him.”

Angela called from the kitchen, “Tell him to at least drink some water!”

“I will,” Jazz said, voice too steady. She stepped inside, feeling the tile cool beneath her shoes. Every time she came here, it was the same: warmth, laughter, life carrying on as if the war hadn’t seeped into everything. But she knew better. She’d spent the past months visiting families who hadn’t eaten properly in days, whose children woke screaming from nightmares of fire and smoke, who lost everything in a single night. And yet here, in this house, it almost felt like the war had never happened.

She hesitated at the base of the stairs. She could tell them. Right now. She could explain that their son wasn’t just “messing around” on his computer. That he was breaking into restricted databases, skirting felony charges, chasing ghosts - literally. But how could she make them understand without shattering the fragile, everyday miracle they clung to?

She climbed the stairs.

The sitcom laughter from downstairs faded into the steady hum of computer fans. Tucker’s door was half-shut, light leaking through the crack in harsh, digital blue. She knocked softly. “Tuck?”

No answer.

She pushed the door open.

Inside, it was chaos - monitors stacked two and three high, their glow painting the walls in neon. Empty coffee cups, half-eaten instant noodles, wires snaking underfoot. The air buzzed faintly, thick with static and sleeplessness.

“Hey,” she said quietly. “You’ve been at this all day?”

Tucker didn’t look up. His hands danced across the keyboard, eyes fixed on the scrolling code. “Can’t stop now. I’m close.”

“Close to what?”

“Proof.” His voice was flat, exhausted, but threaded with something sharp. “You remember Project Eclipse? I found part of it. I think it’s connected to -”

He stopped. The reflection of the monitor flared in his glasses, hiding his eyes. “Doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t want to know.”

“Try me,” she said.

He finally turned to face her, and the circles under his eyes made him look ten years older. “You’d tell me to stop.”

“Because you need to,” she said softly. “You’re going to get yourself arrested, Tucker. Or worse.”

He laughed once, short and bitter. “At least I’m doing something! You think therapy sessions and siding with the GIW are going to bring them back?”

The words landed like a slap. Jazz’s jaw tightened. “And you think tearing down everything they built will?”

He stood, voice rising despite himself. “They used her, Jazz! They sent Sam in, knowing she might die. And for what? To stall? To buy time?” His voice cracked, the fury bending toward grief. “You think I can just sit here and let that stand?”

“Keep your voice down,” she hissed, glancing toward the door. “Your parents are downstairs.”

He froze for a moment, then lowered his tone, trembling with contained rage. “They know she was sent in. The world knows. But nobody expected her to survive. Nobody planned for that. Nobody tried to save her. I can’t live with that Jazz! I can’t sleep. I see her face every time I close my eyes!”

Her throat tightened. “You think I don’t?”

That silenced them both. The screens filled the pause with their low electronic heartbeat.

Jazz swallowed hard. “Tucker, I know you want to fix this. But you’re not eating, you’re not sleeping, and every time I come here, you’re buried deeper. You can’t save her by destroying yourself.”

He looked back at the monitors, the scrolling data reflected in his eyes. “Maybe I can’t save her. But I can damn well make sure they never do this to anyone else.”

The conviction in his voice scared her.

She took a step back. “You’re going to lose yourself in this.”

He didn’t answer.

“Fine,” she said finally, the words cracking at the edges. “When you decide you want to be human again, call me.”

She turned and left before her voice could break. The door clicked shut behind her, quiet but final.

Downstairs, the sitcom laugh track flared again - canned laughter filling the silence Tucker had left behind.

He sat motionless in the glow of the screens, their reflected light flickering across his glasses like ghosts.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The court had scattered into smaller clusters - soft laughter, drifting light, half-heard whispers echoing against the vaulted ceilings. Sam lingered near one of the spectral tables, pretending to study the dishes flickering between solid and not.

She was getting better at knowing when she was being watched. But the voice that slid up behind her still made her skin crawl.

“My, my,” said Plasmius. “You do get bolder every day.”

Sam froze before turning. He was as she remembered - or as she’d tried not to: skin the color of oxidized copper, a cape that twitched and rippled like it was alive, smile carved with too many teeth. The corruption of elegance. The scent of ozone and dust.

“Lord Plasmius,” she said carefully, trying to sound like someone who belonged here.

He smiled wider. “Ah, so you do remember names. How polite.” His voice poured through the air like honey over poison. “One does wonder though, has Phantom been neglecting his little pet?”

“I’m not anyone’s pet,” she said, more sharply than she meant to.

“Oh, good,” he murmured, circling her. “Then perhaps you’re free to make your own acquaintances." His eyes gleamed, catching some inner red light. “I’ve seen you talking with the little one - Sprite? Dear child. She always did have a soft spot for mortals.”

Sam frowned. She didn’t know why something about the way he talked made her stomach twist, only that it did.

“She didn’t mention she knew you,” she said carefully.

He made a wounded sound, almost a purr. “Ah, children so rarely appreciate their forebears. But I do keep an eye on my progeny. Especially when they take up with such . . . curious company.”

“You’re saying you’re her father?”

“In a sense,” he said, smiling as if it were a private joke. “I shaped her, once. Or tried to. She’s grown willful since.”

The faint crackle of static rippled through the air as he leaned closer. “I only hope she keeps to good influences. Mortals - no offense, my dear - are so delicate. A stray spark, and poof.” He snapped his fingers; blue-white arcs jumped between them, then faded. “Gone before the smoke clears.”

His tone was soft, almost kind, but the current that danced over his hand made her flinch.

“Still,” he went on, “there’s no need for you to be alone here. I could offer guidance. Protection, even. A whisper in the right ear, a shield against unfriendly forces. Wraith can’t keep every wolf from your door.”

“If you’re trying to threaten me -”

“Oh no,” he said smoothly. “Merely offering friendship. You’ll find it scarce in this court.”

He stepped closer. She stepped back - right into a shadow.

The air shifted, heavy and electric. The torches flared blue.

When she looked up, Wraith was there.

The court had gone silent. Even the ghosts in the farthest alcoves froze mid-motion.

Plasmius’ smile faltered. “General,” he said smoothly, “I was only -”

“Leaving,” Wraith said. The word came out low and resonant, like thunder rolling through stone.

Plasmius bowed - a theatrical dip, cape whispering like torn silk. “Of course.” His grin returned, smaller now, sharp as a blade. “Always so territorial. You’ll burn yourself out one of these days.”

Wraith didn’t move. Didn’t blink. The lights flickered; ozone thickened in the air. The older ghost’s smirk wavered, then vanished. With a ripple of violet electricity, he dissolved into smoke and static.

Only when the echo of his departure faded did Wraith look at Sam. “Did he touch you?”

Her throat worked. “No.”

“Good.” His voice had cooled, quieter now. “Next time, you leave when you see him coming.”

Sam nodded, unable to find words. He lingered a moment longer, the weight of his gaze like gravity, then turned and strode away.

She didn’t move until the last trace of his presence faded. The silence left behind felt almost colder. He’d saved her. And somehow, it still felt like she was standing too close to the fire.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The room was quiet, save for the steady hum of fans and the occasional clatter of a coffee cup against the desk. Tucker hunched over his monitors, fingers poised but frozen. The code sprawled across the screens like a living organism, lines of text crawling, fragmenting, reshaping themselves under his gaze.

He’d been at it for hours - days, maybe - sifting through corrupted files, encrypted directories, half-erased logs. Each breakthrough felt like a knife-edge victory, each dead end a reminder that time was slipping through his fingers.

And then it happened.

A small ping echoed through the speakers, sharp and alien in the quiet. One of the encrypted files blinked, a new data stream opening before his eyes. His heart thumped hard enough to blur the text for a heartbeat.

Not dormant. Active.

He leaned closer, reading the first few lines. Fragmented, incomplete, but unmistakable: PROJECT ECLIPSE - moving, feeding, reacting. Someone, somewhere, was still running it. Or someone had restarted it.

Tucker’s jaw clenched. Sweat prickled at his temples. Whatever they were doing on the human side wasn’t just bureaucracy. Not just experiments or stalling tactics. Every byte, every ping, every corrupted log could echo into the Ghost Zone - Where Sam was.

He pictured her there, fragile and defiant, making her way through shadows and silence, unaware that the strings of data he was unraveling might tighten around her. A shiver ran down his spine.

He could feel the hours compressing, the weight of every choice he’d made, every risk he’d taken, pressing on him. The monitors glowed, reflecting in his eyes like twin ghosts - one of duty, one of obsession.

He leaned back, hands hovering over the keyboard. He wanted to stop, to step back, to breathe, but the ping had been a summons he couldn’t ignore.

Whatever was coming, whatever they were planning, it was moving. And Tucker had no intention of letting Sam, or anyone else, be caught in the crossfire.

The screens blinked again, almost impatiently, and the data stream pulsed, alive.

Tucker’s fingers found the keys. The hunt was on.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Even now, long after most of the court had drifted into their own corners of the Realm, the Keep’s pulse lingered - a low, steady hum under the stone. Sam sat beside a narrow window that wasn’t really a window, watching the faint shimmer of stars and galaxies twirl through the darkness below.

Sprite’s charm rested in her palm. The little glass orb caught the glow and scattered it, green one moment, silver the next. When she turned it over, it almost looked like it was breathing.

She’d made it through another day. No mortal blunders, no fatal mistakes. Wraith had stepped in before Plasmius could do real damage. Sprite would probably scold her for wandering, but she’d be smiling while she did it.

By every measure that mattered, Sam was surviving.

So why did it feel so wrong?

She looked down at her hands, pale, trembling just slightly, and the thought came sharp and unwelcome: I’m getting used to this.

The halls didn’t scare her the way they used to. She could tell when a ghost’s smile was polite and when it was predatory. She knew which corridors led to warmth, which to cold. She even knew how to bow - not perfectly, but enough to pass.

Every small victory felt like losing ground.

Because she wasn’t supposed to understand them. She wasn’t supposed to want to.

For years, she’d pictured ghosts as monsters, the thing that had taken Danny from her, the thing she’d trained herself to fight. She’d built her rage like armor, carried it until it became part of her spine. And now here she was, sitting in their halls, clutching one of their gifts, breathing their air like it belonged to her.

What would Danny think if he saw her like this?

The thought hit too hard, too fast. Her chest clenched. She shut her eyes, trying to swallow it down - but it stayed.

Maybe it wasn’t the Zone changing her. Maybe it was revealing something - that she’d always been weak, too willing to bend to survive.

Perhaps you were never as strong as you thought. Her mother’s words echoed through her mind, and for the first time, Sam truly believed that there might be some truth to them.

Her hand closed around the charm until it bit into her palm. The light inside dimmed, muffled by her skin.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, though her voice shook.

The Keep didn’t answer. But the faint hum through the floor deepened, almost like a heartbeat - not threatening, not kind. Just there.

And she couldn’t tell anymore if it was comforting or terrifying that she could feel it.