… "The consssumer. One of the ssseven. One of the dying. One of the forgotten. One. With. Me."

  'Yeah, that's not creepy at all, buddy.'

  "Join usss, little wraithling. Eat their ssstrength. Hop between. Become powerful, sssell the rotten coilsss esssence. Eat." It hisses out as it slowly closes the distance between us. Its words echo in my mind as memories from an internal conversation surface.

  'If I could enhance myself in any way, I would take it. Within reason. I didn't plan to sell my soul.' Thoughts I had about half an hour ago. It knew my soul number. It knows I'm part of the seven. A seemingly mindless beast can now suddenly talk and offer to buy my soul for power. 'I didn't plan to sell my soul.' It can possess people. 'It's in my head!' The thought snaps into place just in time to backpedal away from the slowly advancing creature. 'Then why not possess me?

  I go to take out my dual-chambered spray bottle from my inventory when I see Mia's bird fly into view of our small clearing. 'Fucking bitch now is not the time to remind me why I poisoned all the bird feeders!'

  Seemingly growing bored of the silence, the Wraith-infused mutant burst forward, claws extended and jaw unhinged, as slime bubbled up from the depths of its throat. I tried to think, calm my mind and come up with a plan, but my rose steel blades were missing. I was being watched by a third party I couldn't bring myself to trust. The cunt was in my head, and I was outmatched in every physical category. The best I could hope for was a stab through the temple, where the light shone out the brightest, showing some kind of weak point. But there was no way I could reach up to the now two and a half metre tall creature, and that was just the humanoid torso part.

  In short, I was fucked. I could always reveal my miasma gadgets to Mia, but the Wraith was smarter now and had already seen what I could do, and I didn't even know if it would help. But I will be damned if I die like a coward. With a laugh and a shit eating grin, I run at the monster in snake skin and begin the dance of blades and claws.

  I aimed to make it stab itself with its mutated scales as much as possible, as I did my best to run circles around the roaring Wraith. I knew iron and silver weakened them from our last encounter and my experiments, so I hastily made loops of the metals wrapped around any scaled flesh I could get my hands on. It worked, if only barely. Blood poured from its sides, iron burned keratin, causing it to smoke, while silver helped cut into the body as it turned.

  But it wasn't enough, and I got more than I gave. I had dozens of cuts spanning my body in mere moments after the fight began. After some quick thinking, I imbued my armour with power, making it harder to break, while I solidified my blood to avoid bleeding to death. The metal strain alone was enough to make me cry out in pain as my head throbbed and my vision blurred. Blood began to seep out of my nose, ears and eyes, but I didn't stop. My laugh started to sound manic even to my own ears, but I couldn't stop. If I could make it just a few more seconds, if I could be better than I was, if I could keep going and not die in weakness, I could bleed out with a smile on my face. I don't care if it killed me, I would be better than I was, even if it killed me, I would be free.

  Clawed, scaled fingers are mere inches away from my face, but I'm able to dodge to the side, only for my shoulder to be impaled. Bloody claws burst out of my back like a macabre flower. Scales scraped against bone as I was lifted into the air by my dying flesh, my body hanging limply, seemingly deprived of strength, until I was eye level with the great mutant. A twisted, fanged smile fills its face, only to pause as it catches sight of the motes of blue slipping through my lips as monster crystals fill my mouth. But what it doesn't see is my last glass shatter field in my remaining functioning hand being gently tossed towards its unburdened arm.

  Its glowing eyes snap towards the movement, but it was too late, and at this distance, I can't miss. In that moment, two things happened. First six liquid crystals fall down my throat, filling my body with a raging torrent of power. Second, the glass ball shatters, mixing its payload of miasma-infused water and salt, creating a small, localised forcefield and freezing its arm to its torso.

  Untamed power burns my body from within, flooding it with foreign energies it tries to absorb, but there's too much, and it won't follow my commands. Energy crashed through my body at alarming speed, tearing through my meagre power reserves and my physical body alike. The air becomes filled with a foul smell as multicoloured sweets break free from my skin, leaving trails of reds, blacks, and greens that cloud my vision.

  I had no idea what was happening. I had taken a massive leap of faith that its early speech was a double bluff. It was in my head, and knew I wouldn't sell my soul or humanity, yet presented the offer as if it were doing me a favour. Also, it had been trying to kill me the whole time. It was a pretty big clue now that I think about it.

  The energy dissipates rapidly as what was once a snake woman lunges towards me, fangs bared in an unhinged jaw. I didn't have much time to follow through with my gamble; I seized what energy remained in a metaphysical tug-of-war and used it to fuel myself. My arm moved so fast I felt something snap, but it didn't stop me from driving my knife through its glowing temples into its corrupted brain, just as its fangs pierced the skin on my neck.

  For a brief, horrifying moment, the world slowed. My knife bit deep into its skull as my neck bled crimson lifeblood in slugish, almost cautious droplets before the giant snake monstrosity teetered forward, almost comically slowly, before collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut. My mind was foggy and my powers were exhausted, but I was just able to liquify the stone floor and corpse upon contact just before I was crushed by the tone of muscle and scales. Even then, I was still a few milliseconds off. The crushing weight forced all the air out of my lungs, while what was left of the scales shredded the skin on my chest and legs.

  Unsurprisingly, it hurt like hell. This whole Wheel-forsaken day had been nothing but pain and suffering. I may chase the adrenaline, but these last few hours had me lying on the floor in a viscous pile of gore and surrounded by the few remaining trapped undead, barely breathing and bleeding out. My mind swam trying to stay conscious under the pressure of the last few hours, almost like it was trying to protect itself from all the pain and fear. I didn't want to be torn apart and boiled alive over and over again, like it was a sick twisted cosmic joke. I didn't want to have to rely on others or hide who I was out of fear of being judged and forgotten. My eyes start to feel damp as I lie in this pool of what was once a human being, battered and broken. A weak, shaky laugh rattles out of my mouth. 'Then why?' I flick the gore from my fingers and wipe away the tears trapped in my eyes. 'Why do I only feel alive when the world is collapsing around me?'

  I heave my fragile body out of the sticky gore. 'Why is the only time I don't feel broken is when my life is on the line?' Ignoring the now-familiar glowing blue cube, I sheathe my knives and begin looking for my rose-steel blades. 'And why am I still so scared?' I sigh as every movement sends pain shooting through my system, as I try to hold my blood in my body through sheer force of will after spending most of my stored power.

  And that's how the others eventually found me, after clearing out the undead in the chamber, half dead on the floor, barely sitting up against what remains of a collapsed stalagmite. I was able to find my missing weapons, but could do fuck all afterwards, causing me to collapse and wait for the sounds of fighting to die down.

  "What the fuck happened to you?" Noah asks as he rushes over in a panic, quickly followed by the others. "Jesus, what the hell is that thing?" He yells out, jumping slightly at the sight of the once possessed mutant. Or at least what was left of it.

  When the other arrived, they gave me a rundown of what happened. It boiled down to the undead swarming them, and eventually, the sickly man running away after half the horde was dead for good. Which was quickly followed by my own rendition of events, I even kept in the wraith possession part, although I left out the part where I had met it before and knew what it was.

  The reactions from my experience were mixed, from Ella's disbelief at the magic ghost thing to Sam's horror at my having to kill the woman in self-defence. But I didn't care about that at the moment. My primary focus, after asking Ella to heal me once again, was on Mia as I asked her something I never thought I would ask anyone. To enter my mind.

  It didn't come without risks and danger of its own, but I had to remove the connection from the wayward Wraith. I don't know how I would distract her from the truth about what I can do or have done to keep it hidden, while using the best of our abilities to find any signs of possession. All I could do was try my best to hide the truth behind confusion and distractions, in what Mia called a mind palace, where we would have limited control over the environment.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I also made sure to explicitly ask for her confidentiality on anything she sees in my mind today or on any of our future training sessions. I just hope the goodwill we had built up between us would be enough to hold her to her promise before I could find something more binding.

  But the problem with all these plans and my schemes in general is that they rarely survive contact. Initially, I thought that thinking about such things before the mental invasion would give me away. What I did not take into account was that my mind palace was a complete mess of biblical proportions.

  Mia and I appeared on a small wooden raft held together by duct tape and dreams and were surrounded by a raging tempest on all sides. Lightning, forged from thoughts, lights up the dark, billowing clouds that block out the skies in rolling waves of fear and desperation. Buffeting winds of joy push the little raft chaotically in a dance of mania across the crashing black waves of my memories. Around and around we spun, not able to hear each other speak, as my mind did its best to capsize us in depression and times long gone. Thunder boomed, echoing my thoughts across the vast ocean, only to overlap into an incoherent mess of jumbled noise. Images of memories dance across the waves, distorted by the churning currents, until they are pulled into the depths, only to be replaced by new ones as the cycle continues anew.

  Concepts of depression and anxiety splash against our mental projections, bringing us to our knees aboard the tiny raft as it shakes and dances through the chaos. I don't know what I expected from my mind palace, but a boat struggling to survive a maelstrom of mental anarchy certainly wasn't it. I was getting a headache just being here; the only real benefit was that Mia couldn't see my…Naked memories… and that the reality fracture hanging in the air was a good indication of where we should start. We just had to get the boat over to the shattered-mirror-looking anomaly.

  Luckily, Mia was here and able to project her thoughts into my head despite the external noise. It had a weird echo effect after I heard her words, distorting the message with claps of thunder, but it was enough to convey her intent. Together, we willed the crumbling raft through the monstrous waves towards the fracture, whereupon I noticed the glowing, thin band of light wrapped around my ego's wrist, which grew brighter the closer we got to the strange phenomenon. Thoughts of sinew, like string wrapped around my wrist, flash through my mind, but I try my best to drown them out with endless speculation about how the mind palaces worked.

  Eventually, we make it to the jagged hole within my mind and see through the tear in reality just in time to witness the Wraith be torn apart within its own mind. Its Palace was a hell scape of sticky fleshy cord webbing that hung between mountains of half-rotten corpses, and it was being decimated before our very eyes. A silver cloud lazily floated across the hellish expanse, leaving nothing but an empty void in its wake as the Wraith's ego screamed and howled in anguish, its very mind being eaten alive. Within moments, the cloud had expanded to encompass a third of the creature's mind in a ruthless, methodical assault.

  Mia and I stared at the encroaching doom before frantically trying to patch up the rip in my mind, not knowing if the cloud of death would chase us into the storming ocean. While neither of us knew how mind magic worked, we had more than enough motivation to learn quickly on the job as Mia tried to put the broken shards back into place so I could sew them closed. We only got halfway when the billowing cloud blew straight past our little window into the Wraith's mind, as if we weren't even there, only to eviscerate the spirit monster, sending the feeling of true death echoing out of its mind through the now-naturally healing, fractured anomaly. We stared in silence for a few moments as the rest of the mental wound healed itself shut, before turning to each other with only a single thought thundering across my mind.

  'What the fuck just happened?'

  POV Oliver, half an hour later

  "So you're telling me, you left Ivy in the hands of a bunch of humans, lost most of our undead and don't even have anything to show for it?" A cold, beastly voice asked, followed by an icy presence, as my breath became visible when the large, bulky woman leaned forward into the moss light, revealing parts of her pale white fur and ivory tusks.

  "Yes, boss, I'm sorry, boss." I stammer out as I look down in a hasty bow to not meet the dangerous woman's eyes.

  She lets out a guttural growl before sitting up and hiding her monstrous face in the shadows. "You disappoint me, Oliver, you let one of our own die to a human, a lesser creature, and didn't even manage to avenge them."

  "I'm sorry," I say again, hoping to lessen her ire. 'I didn't say she was dead; she was alive when I left.' I think internally but dare not voice my thoughts out loud.

  "Stop your useless apologising." She snaps, causing me to close my mouth immediately. "You are to tell us everything you remember about these humans." She pauses for a moment, then yells at the 2.5m tall one-eyed behemoth of a man to my side.

  "Toby, prepare a small service for Ivy's passing!" She demanded.

  "Yes, Boss." His low, deep voice makes my bones tremble at his pure physical might. He nods his head and wanders off into the darkness of the cave, presumably to organise the ceremony.

  "You will be on collocation duty for the rest of the week to make up for the forces you have lost." She then gestures for me to begin the more in-depth telling of the battle. I cleared my throat and began telling the story. I started by explaining how I lured them in with cries for help, and how only one of the humans was suspicious, but it was too late. I explained how the paranoid human disappeared and what I remembered seeing of the other human's powers.

  "At the start, it was looking good with the humans panicking and confused, and one of them disappeared, but once they rallied, it became a stalemate. Then I saw the suspicious one fighting Ivy, melting the dead into the floor to use as shields until he destroyed her spear." I pause and take a breath, not that my undead lungs needed one, but it was a hard habit to shake.

  "Melting things you say?" I cringe at the sudden voice of the unstable young man who lurked in the shadows to the Boss's left. "What did this melting man look like?" He asks as he slowly steps into the dim light of the moss,

  I look at the Boss, but she doesn't say anything to refocus the conversation, so I turn to the young man. "How old would you say he was?" His face, half-masked by shadows, smiles slightly, revealing red-stained fangs. "Did you catch a name?"

  POV RETRACTED

  "Well, the timeline is clean, so whatever altered the wraith covered their tracks pretty well," I state to my partner after I come out of the past and look upon the Wraith's corpse.

  "I couldn't find any energy signatures either." They state, tapping their crystalline head with a glittering appendage.

  "Did you check the parasitic curse?" I ask them while trying to monitor the timeline of the surrounding area using the All Clock given to me by higher management.

  "Yup, it died with participant 39105 and couldn't properly latch on to participant 39856." They mumble before stating. "I fixed the window the curse used to infect the canary's mind as well", they add on as a clear afterthought.

  I sigh and look at the monitor on my wrist, still not in the red, just.' I tap it a few times to make sure, then look back at my colleague. "So, to go over it again." I rub my hands over my face in exasperation. "A wraith, strong enough to, at the very least, be from the 16th event, appeared in the spirit realm a day ago."

  "Yup."

  "Mutating from a regular Wraith after meeting Participant 39856, it then developed a basic level of sentience and moved around at seemingly random, but just happened to lock onto Participant 39856 after their brief encounter and followed him until processing Participant 39105."

  "Correct."

  "And upon meeting, it attacks while giving a cryptic message on how participant 39856 should join it by consuming?"

  "Mmhmm"

  "Then proceeds to try and kill 39856, but our little canary survives yet again," I say with mild annoyance seeping into my tone.

  "Sounds about right."

  I give a slight glare at their unhelpfulness, but carry on. "At which point we are alerted to the anomaly, kill the wraith and heal the participant's mind to avoid contaminating the experiment."

  I sigh and look in the past, hoping to have missed anything, but come up empty once again. "Which leads us with no suspect or means."

  "At least the motive is fairly easy." They say while watching participant 39856 re-enter their mind palace without the help of the growing hive mind.

  "The higher Gods and Deities like betting on things when the time flow can't be peeked at or altered. And while I can understand messing with Jeremy Wheels's show to a certain extent." I speculate.

  "A powerful God but just a God all the same." They chime in.

  "But daring to touch any of the Child's experiments is ill-advised on so many cosmic and molecular levels."

  "Alleged experiment, Nobody God or Deity, has heard from the Child in any official capacity for 37.4 cycles. Maybe the Boss is just using his name to scare away competition?" They speculate, as if we would even know, whether the mysterious Child is in contact with anyone.

  "Either way, it's far above our pay grade; let's just send our findings to management and leave the higher questions for people who don't mind being obliterated through the space-time continuum."

  "Agreed, Drinks at Vocatus later?"

  "Sure, but it's your round."

  With that, we left Earth, model 626, timeline B13, to submit our report and get drunk enough to kill a housefly from Timit to try and distance ourselves from the coming storm.