But he's not the one trying to steal them.
Whoever is opening these rifts has access to pre-Order knowledge, ritual techniques and site locations that should have been lost centuries ago. The power required is immense, themethod brutal, and the pace reckless. Whoever they are, they're burning through their own life force at a rate that makes August's slow decline look leisurely by comparison. They're desperate and they're running out of time, and desperation in a powerful necromancer is the most dangerous thing August can think of. He would know.
He's been tracking them for weeks, since the first rift opened and he'd felt the wrongness of it in the air. The violent, crude forcing of death magic had made his own power recoil. He'd started mapping the sites, cross-referencing locations, trying to predict the next breach. He'd been getting close.
And then he'd been so focused on the rifts that he hadn't noticed the Order sending someone after him. Which, in retrospect, was inevitable. All that death magic in the air had been a spotlight on every necromancer in the city, and August, for all his care, had never been completely invisible. Just invisible enough.
A cold draft sweeps through the room. August's breath fogs in air that had been warm a moment ago.
He isn't alone.
"I know you're there," he says quietly, without turning around. "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."
The spirit manifests slowly, cautiously. A middle-aged woman, translucent and flickering, wearing a floral dress with burn marks along the hem. August recognizes her immediately, a woman who'd died in a fire three blocks away, whose spirit he'd helped cross over six months ago. He remembers her clearly. He remembers all of them.
She shouldn't be here. She moved on. Unless something pulled her back.
"What's wrong?" August turns to face her, keeping his movements slow, his voice gentle. "Did something bring you back?"
The spirit shakes her head, her form wavering with agitation. She points at August, then makes a gesture that takes him a moment to read.
Someone is looking for him.
"The Templar," August says. "He's asking about me."
She nods. Her form flickers with distress, the edges of her blurring the way spirits do when they're feeling too much. She points at him again, then draws a hand sharply across her throat.
Danger.
"I know." August manages a tired smile, the kind he gives to spirits who are worried about him, which is more of them than he'd like. "Thank you for coming to warn me. You didn't have to."
She didn't have to. She was at rest. She was at peace. And she'd pulled herself back from that, willingly, because she was worried about the man who'd helped her get there.
The spirit drifts closer, bringing with her the familiar chill of ghostly presence. She reaches out as if to touch his face, her expression sad and maternal in a way that makes something in August's chest ache. She'd been kind, when she was alive. She'd run the corner store and given free food to anyone who looked hungry, and the neighborhood had mourned her with the particular grief reserved for people who made the world better just by being in it. Her death had been senseless: a grease fire that spread too fast, smoke inhalation before she could get out.
August had found her spirit three days later, confused and frightened, trying to get back into her store. He'd sat with her for hours on the curb outside. Talked gently. Helped her remember who she was and where she needed to go, not with magic at first, just with patience and the willingness to be there. When she'd finally moved on, she'd thanked him with tears in her translucent eyes, and August had sat on that curb for a long time after she was gone.
And now she's come back. Pulled herself from rest out of concern for him.
"I'm sorry," August says softly. "I'm sorry you had to come back for this. But I promise I'll be careful."
The spirit doesn't look convinced. She points at the notes and maps spread across the bed, then at the black veins on his bare arms, then at the exhaustion August knows is written all over his face, and the look she gives him is unmistakable. It's the look every concerned person in his life has given him at one point or another, and the dead are apparently no exception.
Stop. Rest.
"I can't." He doesn't expect her to understand. He barely understands it himself, this compulsion to keep going when his body is begging him to stop. But the alternative is letting people die, letting spirits suffer, and he's never been able to do that. Not when he was twelve and terrified, and not now. "People are dying. Spirits are being ripped from the underworld against their will and forced to hurt the living. I have to stop it."
She drifts closer still, and August feels something cold against his cheek. It's as much comfort as a ghost can give, and it's more than most living people have offered him in a long time. He leans into it, just for a second, allowing himself that small mercy. Then she fades, releasing herself back to wherever peace is, and leaves him alone.
Alone with his maps. His pain. And the knowledge that the Order is closing in.
***
He's been practicing necromancy for fourteen years. His reasons have never changed.
He'd started at twelve, when he accidentally raised his dead cat in a moment of grief-stricken panic. He'd been terrified, hadn't understood what he was doing or how to undo it. The cat had just stared at him with empty, glassy eyes until August figured out, through sheer desperate instinct, how to release it. The memory still makes his skin crawl. Not because of what he'd done, but because of how alone he'd been while doing it.
His parents had been horrified. They were mundane, and they'd never imagined their son might develop a spark of power. But necromancy doesn't require a bloodline the way other magics do. It develops where it's called, and August had been strong enough to call it to him. Strong enough, and lonely enough, and grieving enough. Death magic is drawn to loss. It finds the cracks.
