She knows. Lux stood alone, surrounded by nonsensical murmurs and rustling trees. The hefty breaths she’d heard around the Avaritia house were louder than ever before. She clenched a wooden crate in her hands, stained by the decay of the crow’s dead body. She tucked the shovel Azazel had given her into the belt of her uniform; scanning the cascading leaves for any sign of the voices swirling around her. So loud that if she didn’t have the exact moments already archived—she might’ve assumed her recollection of Abigor, Rae, the servants inside, who never once flinched at the noise, were false. That perhaps they had been a result of her own negligence, a failure to pay proper attention to those around her.

  But she hadn’t been negligent. Especially not now. When the voices jabbered over one another, drowning out the litter-fall crunching beneath her shoes.

  She dipped further into the woods; stray patches of light illuminated a disjointed path of twigs and dew. A clearing? She thought, before striking the dirt, only for her shovel to bang into thick root. She moved onto the next clearing—then another and another—until the clearings she’d ruled out outweighed the number of fingers she had.

  Caught on another rock-like root, Lux ripped her shovel from the ground. The air around her had begun to shift, and when she stood straight, she felt as if something was breathing down her neck.

  “Lux—.”

  Her gaze shot back, circling around to scan her surroundings. It’s gone. The premonition of an entity peering over her shoulders dissipated in an instant. The only exhale she could feel, all her own.

  She reached down to the wooden crate at her feet, taking the crow’s corpse, and wandered for a while longer. She turned her chin up, eyeing the jagged cliff that loomed—and found a new break in the treeline. Small, but distinct; she could only hope the clearing was real—rather than an illusion created by the angle she stood at.

  Lux staggered up the cliffside, trading walking with floating where the ground became unstable. A faint trickling broke through the clamor as she stepped onto the lower plateau, met by the first level of a tiered waterfall.

  Finally, the woods opened up before her. The lush was sparse, the plane of grass clear of trees. She reached for the shovel at her waist; stabbing it into the dirt. Which gave way so easily that the grave took mere minutes to hollow out.

  Lux met the crow in the eyes as she lowered it into its grave. It was torn apart and twisted every which way, terror-filled eyes stuck in place; capturing it’s dying moment. Lux crouched over the crow’s grave, hands clasped together in a silent prayer. A routine prayer, drilled into her since the day she was reborn. Rest easy and return to the dirt. Then, she filled the grave, and the crow was truly gone.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  ~

  Lux reached towards the waterfall, watching it pour over her fingers. Carefully, she scraped at the grime under her nails. A foul blend of rotting flesh and black blood, that she’d be tainted with until she returned to the Avaritia house to scrub herself raw. Unsure if she’d ever feel clean again, she was determined to erase every reminder of its body left on her own.

  No reminder of the nothingness she felt when it dropped dead before her. No reminder of the ‘love’ she lacked—because she didn’t yet want to think that finding it was impossible.

  She pulled her hands from the waterfall and lifted them towards the light. Spirit gleaming; she curled her fingers and examined each nail individually—finally, somewhat satisfied with her cleanliness.

  Just then—a voice sounded behind her.

  “Lux—.”

  The voice bellowed through the trees. Something tugged on her chest, right where her mortal heart once sat, squeezing her ribcage tight. Turn around. She told herself, but her thoughts quickly retorted, no—the last time it disappeared when I faced it. Her gaze stayed fixed on her reflection in the waterfall—and it was there she saw it.

  An entity stood in the lush. Body made of fog, with white eyes glued to Lux’s back—glaring. A soul pulsated in its chest; beaming brightly, a high-pitched wheeze sounding with each false breath.

  A rogue spirit.

  An unorthodox, treasonous existence—the second she’d encountered since descending onto the Mortal-Plane. A husk of bygone magic; that had somehow miraculously evaded the purge of the Old World. Or, had it? Rogue spirits had been declared extinct millennia ago; their magic, though dormant in modern times, once flowed through every crevice of the Mortal-Plane. So, of course. . ., whispers of the exceptions to this rule had appeared. Lux had studied them; fairytales about rogue spirits hiding in the New World, seeking out the lives they lost—disrupting the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. However, some of these tales weren’t fiction.

  She bit her tongue, pondering; how exactly did you escape the Stratum?

  She materialized the sight in her memory, ensuring it would be vivid enough to properly archive. Then, she pushed past the tightness in her chest, turning to face the spirit.

  The woods fell silent, and it was already gone.

  Lux breathed in the pine, the cedar, exhaling the tightness in her chest.

  She had been right—the thing didn’t want to get caught. Not by an angel, and certainly not by the Upper-Plane; that would snuff it’s existence the moment it was exposed. That told her one thing; this rogue spirit is young enough to know it’s not supposed to exist.

  She started down the cliffside, resolving to get back to the Avaritia house quickly.

  Souls don’t get trapped on the Mortal-Plane—not anymore. Not unless their rebirth is tampered with.

  Somebody must be responsible.