Death magic. The most reviled, most illegal, most dangerous form of magic in existence. His parents had begged him to promise he'd never use it again, to lock that part of himself away and never open it. They'd been scared, not of him, but for him, and the distinction matters even now.
He'd tried. He'd tried as hard as a twelve-year-old could. But unlocking the power had given him the ability to see spirits lingering between life and death, and what he saw was unbearable. They were confused. Suffering. Trapped between worlds with nowhere to go and no one to tell them it was going to be okay. Some became violent in their pain and lashed out at the living, which would bring the Templars, who would banish them from existence as a matter of policy. Not guided to rest. Just obliterated. Erased as though they'd never existed at all.
August had seen another way. A way to speak to them, to calm them, to lead them gently to the afterlife they'd lost sight of. No one else would do it, because doing it was a crime. Because necromancers were monsters and death magic was corruptionand the law said it was better to let the dead suffer than to permit the dark arts under any circumstance.
He couldn't accept that. Not when he could feel them. Not when he could help. Not when he was the only one willing to try.
So he'd practiced in secret, teaching himself control, learning to guide spirits without binding them to his will or tearing them from the earth. He would find lost souls wandering the places where they'd died and sit with them, talk to them, help them remember who they were and where they needed to go. He would calm the violent ones, the ones who screamed and broke things and frightened the living, not with force but with patience. He would show them the way, and they would go, and the places they left behind would feel lighter for their absence.
Every use took a little of his life with it. Every use poisoned him a fraction more. He'd known that from the beginning and he'd chosen to do it anyway.
By the time he was sixteen, his parents had stopped trying to prevent it. Instead they'd made him promise to be careful, to hide what he could do, to stay invisible. His mother had cried. His father had held him and said nothing, which was worse.
He'd kept that promise for fourteen years. And then some necromancer had ripped open rifts across the city, flooding Haven with death magic so violent it was impossible to ignore, and the Order had started tracking every trace of necromantic energy they could find, which had led them straight to the quiet psychopomp in the Old City who had never once hurt anyone.
Now he's living on borrowed time in more ways than one. If he limits himself to speaking with spirits and guiding the dead, he might have a year. But that calculation assumes a life of careful, minimal casting, not fighting Templars, not chasing a rogue necromancer, not throwing walls of shadow to cover his escape. Every large expenditure cuts the timeline shorter. Every fight brings the end closer.
According to his research, there are three more rift sites in the pattern. Three more chances to figure out where the final ritual will happen. Three more opportunities to stop this before the vault falls.
He can't rest. Not when spirits are suffering. Not when people are dying. Not when the real threat is still out there, still building, still accelerating toward something catastrophic.
***
August is pulling on his jacket when there's a knock at the door.
He crosses the room and opens it, unsurprised to find Sidney. No one else knows he's here.
"Hey." Sidney leans in the doorway, scanning August with the kind of quick, worried assessment he's gotten very good at disguising as casual interest. He's not fooling August, who has known him for six years and can read the concern in the set of his jaw, but he appreciates the effort. "You heading out? You should eat something first."
August tries to remember the last time he ate. Two days ago, probably. Maybe longer. It's hard to keep track when feeling terrible is the baseline and the only variable is the degree.
"Come grab a seat," Sidney offers. "I'll bring you a sandwich. Xela can watch things for a bit and you can tell me all about whatever," he raises an eyebrow and gestures past August to the explosion of papers covering the bed, "that is."
The thought of sitting down with someone who actually gives a damn about him, of taking an evening to just exist as a person instead of an instrument of purpose, is almost unbearably tempting. He's spent every night this week tracking leads and helping spirits. He's supposed to be keeping a low profile now that the Templar is hunting him. It wouldn't be the worst ideato rest for a few more hours, eat something, let his body recover what little it can.
Then something clicks into place and he freezes, staring past Sidney at the maps on the bed.
There's a pattern he hasn't seen.
He's been looking at these maps for weeks, trying to predict the next rift location, always one step behind. But he's been thinking about it wrong. The ritual sites aren't just forming a circle around the Cathedral; they're following a specific sequence. The Mortis Cabal had been obsessive about precision, their power structures built on exact geometric alignments and temporal correspondences. The rifts aren't random points on the circle. They're being activated in a specific order, timed to specific intervals.
August pushes past Sidney, "Sorry, one second," and spreads his notes on ley line confluences across the bed beside the maps. His hands shake as he cross-references dates and locations against the Cabal's known ritual timing structures. The numbers line up. The dates line up. The intervals are precise to the hour.
The pattern he missed is so obvious now that he could scream. He's been staring at it for weeks and seeing pieces when he should have been seeing the clock.
There.
The next rift will open tonight. In approximately three hours, if the lunar cycle and timing pattern hold. And the location is the abandoned Red Line subway station beneath Merchant's Square.
August's blood turns to ice.
The Red Line closed nearly thirty years ago after a cave-in killed seventeen people and injured thirty more. It's one of the most potent Mortis Cabal sites in the entire city, a place where violent, unexpected death saturated the earth and where the veil between worlds has been tissue-thin ever since. The ambientdeath energy down there is staggering. August had felt it once, walking over Merchant's Square on an errand, and the sensation had nearly dropped him. He'd avoided the area ever since.
If the rift-maker opens a breach at that site, with that much raw power to draw on, the undead that pour through will dwarf anything the previous rifts have produced. And with the station sealed off underground, there's no telling how long it will take before the Order even notices. The dead could flood the tunnels and emerge from a dozen access points across Merchant's Square before anyone thinks to respond.
August checks his watch. Seven PM. The rift will open around ten, give or take. He needs to be there early enough to set up countermeasures: protective wards, containment circles, anything that might disrupt the opening or at least slow the flow. If he can turn back some of the undead, if he can stave off the worst of it, maybe the Order will pick up on the disturbance in time to respond.
Or maybe he can stop it entirely. It's a long shot, his wards against that much concentrated death energy would be almost nothing, but maybe.
