Clawing her way out of the nightmare-filled dream, Lorelei woke up to a familiar setting. She knew the green drapes hanging around the four carved posts of the bed. She recognized the small desk in front of the big window, and the blurry forms lining the walls had to be the crates with her books. This was her room. They had returned to castle Ildemar, yet she had no memories of that. How long had she been unconscious this time? Where were Noah and Gregor, and the twins?

The young woman tried to move but the second she lifted her hand, piercing pain shot through her bones. She gave out a loud moan and felt the familiar hot and cold waves spreading again from her chest to her limbs. Turning her eyes, Lorelei could see the gray spots on her skin left by the miasma peeping out of the fresh bandages on her hands. She could swear she felt their fine tendril-like protrusions wriggling around and boring even deeper into her flesh.

Her cry had alerted the maids that were at present frantically running around the room with bandages and bowls of water. One of them ran to the bedside sobbing with a wet towel in hand.

“Merciful saints! Lorelei! Don’t go back to sleep! Stay with us!”

“Sa…ya?” Lorelei’s mouth felt like dry sand.

The other woman sobbed and gently put the wet cloth on her burning forehead.

“I am sorry! I am so sorry!”

“Don’t. Wasn’t your fault.”

Feeling her mind getting cloudy again, Lorelei bit the inside of her cheek to try and stay awake. Her eyes wandered around and stopped on a lone male figure standing at the far corner of the room. Her heart fluttered.

“My lord…?” She tried again to stand up, but Saya gently pushed her down.

“Don’t strain yourself. This is sir Lucas. He brought you here.” Saya waved at the man who came closer and knelt at the head of the bed.

“Sir Lucas?” Lorelei licked her lips, feeling her energy draining away. “His highness, sir Gregor, are they…?”

“Don’t worry, my lady. They are fine. His highness went to summon the elders. They’ll be coming any moment now to treat you. In the meantime, the lord has tasked me to guard you. I promise, no harm will come to you under my watch.”

“I see.”

There was a slight prick in her heart as she closed her eyes again. It was foolish to think that he would be here.

The doors of the room opened abruptly and startled everyone. A slender white-haired figure walked in. The moment the man entered, Lorelei felt the pain in her body soaring. She screamed and tossed around while the terrified Saya and sir Lucas tried to hold her down.

“What’s happening now!? Gerash, help us!”

Saya’s desperate plea reached the young woman’s ears. Then another familiar, yet somehow strangely distorted voice proclaimed:

“Let go of her. Everyone, leave the room!”

“Are you mad, sir Gregor? I am barely holding her down. She might hurt herself in this state!”

“Leave. Stay guard before the door. Do not enter before Mistress Norden calls you. And you, Mistress Norden, calm down.”

With Gregor’s last words, Lorelei suddenly felt the ache in her body draining away. As if the mere sound of his voice was able to penetrate her flesh and cool the icy fire burning in it. Tears ran down her cheeks as she took a deep breath. For the first time, it didn’t feel like needles stabbing her lungs. It was a miracle! A bliss!

With her mind clearing up little by little, Lorelei started to notice that there was something not quite right with the people around her. The maids’ eyes were completely empty as they obediently walked towards the door. Lorelei saw Saya and sir Lucas having the same blank expression, distorted from time to time by a quick spasm. Slowly and with obvious reluctance, the two released their grip and dragged their feet, following the rest of the servants out. The door closed, leaving Lorelei and the binshi alone.

“This is better. Now no one will disturb us. Quite the stubborn folk, these two.”

“Who are you?” Lorelei managed to summon whatever little strength she had left and turned her head to face him.

“I don’t understand the question, Mistress Norden. It is me, Gerash.”

“Don’t play games. Sir Gregor never calls me ‘Mistress Norden’. And he would never treat Saya like this. Besides… your eyes… are wrong…”

A strong cough tore at Lorelei’s lungs. Gregor sat down on the bed and took her hand in his.

“You are quite observant, little lady. I was never good when it came to your limerian titles. And now you better not speak. You’ll tire faster.”

“You didn’t… answer.”

“Observant and stubborn,” the young binshi chuckled. “Pretty much two peas in a pot, you and my brother. Then I shall introduce myself. People call… used to call me Yanosh of Star-path Valley. Right now, I am borrowing little Gerash’s body for a bit.”

Lorelei blinked several times, eyeing the familiar face that was smiling gently at her. Indeed, there was something different in the young man’s features. They hadn’t as much changed as they had gotten a bit more mature and with an added feeling of wisdom and dignity.

“Is Gerash fine?”

“I must admit, my spirit is a bit too strong for his body. And since he is not at his best, he might need to sleep for a few days to recover but there will not be any lasting consequences. More importantly, why are you so worried about a servant and not about yourself? What if I’m a malicious ghost intending to harm you?”

“And what can you do to me? Kill me?” The corners of Lorelei’s lips twitched a bit.

In response, Gregor, or rather Yanosh, burst into hearty laughter.

“There are far worse things than death, little lady. But this is a topic for another time. Right now, I’m here to heal you. Luckily, I am more than able to do so. Unfortunately, it will take quite some time and it will hurt.”

Lorelei just nodded, forcing the eyebrows of her companion to fly up.

“I’ll add courageous to the list too then. One more thing. You mustn’t fall asleep or lose consciousness before the purification is finished, otherwise, your soul might shatter.”

“Then allow me a request.”

“Go on.”

“Talk to me. I will need something to distract me… and keep me anchored.”

“No problem,” the binshi agreed and positioned himself more comfortably on the edge of the bed. “And what might the topic be?”

“I want answers. I want to know what is going on. And I feel that you are the right person to ask.”

“Even if it gives you nightmares?”

“I already have them.”

“This might take a while.”

“Even better then.”

Yanosh sighed and his smiling face turned a bit more somber. His whole body was enveloped in a warm light that condensed around his palms and trickled into Lorelei’s own hand that he was holding. Immediately, the woman’s nails dug into his flesh as beads of sweat rolled down her forehead. What she felt right now was pure agony! For a second her mind almost slipped, but then a calm voice filled the void of endless torture.

“To understand what is going on, little sister, you need to first understand what we binshi are, and how our magic works. We might look like humans, we might behave like them, but we are very different. All living creatures, from flowers to men, are made of two inseparable parts – body and soul. When the body dies, the soul perishes. But that’s not the case for us binshi. Our bodies and souls are not bound, but rather co-existing. Even death is for us simply another state of existence, albeit a cold and emotionless one. And exactly our souls are the source of the binshi magic. We can separate them and let them travel long distances, put a piece of soul in an object and create a talisman, call upon the spirits of our deceased from the Spirit Plane and ask them for guidance, and what is more – we can manipulate the souls of other living creatures.”

Lorelei’s back arched and she screamed. The places where Yanosh’s light touched the ash-like traces of the miasma started to glow bright red like molten iron.

“You have seen Gerash perform hexes, I presume. For all of them, we binshi use our blood, or something containing a piece of soul as a catalyst. The stronger the spirit, the stronger the hex becomes, but also the harder to control. But this is a double-edged sword. A foreign soul is hard to manipulate, yet using up your own soul completely would mean death. A permanent one, where the spirit dissipates and never reaches the Spirit Plane. The more hexes a shaman performs, the weaker he or she becomes. So, in order to prevent our magic from crippling or killing us, we have two choices. We can use weak foreign spirits, like the ones in plants or animals, with a bit of our blood as means to bend them to our will, or summon a soul from the Spirit Plane, bind it and make it do our bidding. Any questions up to now?”

Clenching her teeth almost to the point of breaking, Lorelei rolled her eyes at the man. Between her fingers, she could feel the wet stickiness of blood and sweat, as her nails dug deeper into the shaman's arm. Yet the expression on the man’s face remained calm and gentle.

Yanosh continued.

“As I mentioned, using a foreign soul is a tricky business. It gives one huge power whether by sacrifice or summoning. But a soul without a vessel cannot last in the Mortal Realm. At best it would dissipate in a few days. At worst it would force itself into a new vessel. Unbound souls are attracted to the emotions of the living, to what we binshi call their core. And when a spirit usurps a vessel that isn’t its own, that’s what you call possession.”

“L-like… you…” hissed Lorelei through her teeth.

This made Yanosh’s smile even wider.

“You are still able to follow the story? That’s very good, little sister. Yes and no. What I am doing is a soul-merge, albeit a forced one. I am only borrowing Gerash’s body and have every intention to return it back to him. Not every spirit can do that. Or would want to. The temptation is too big, since the Spirit Plane… Ah, but I am going off-topic. Back to using spirits in hexes. Because of all of the above, we binshi have very strict rules when it comes to summonings, but even more so when sacrifices are involved. Can you imagine what the biggest of sacrificial taboos is?”

“H-humans…”

“Exactly. And especially children. Children, you see, have very pure but also easy to control spirits. The older the spirit, the greater its power and wisdom, but also the stubborner it gets. Unfortunately, some of the dark practitioners are willing to break the taboos, and the result…”

“Dhrowghost?” Uttering the word made Lorelei’s very soul tremble.

For the first time, the cheerful expression on Yanosh’s face disappeared. His brows drew together as his lips thinned.

“Yes. When one tortures a living animal to the point where its Light becomes the purest of Darkness; when it is so desperate that it renounces life, hope, and love and is filled with hatred; when its mind shatters and only the thirst for destruction remains, that’s how a dral is created. But when a human is used, we call it dhrowghost. This is the purest and most perverse form of evil. Since the human spirit is very resilient, it might take up to days, weeks, even months of constant torture to break it. And the quickest way to create a dhrowghost is to use a child.”

Lorelei felt nauseated. So, that horrid thing that attacked them, that almost killed the twins and Gerash, was a child. Someone tortured an innocent child to the point of turning it into that!

“Why?” She sobbed, but this time it wasn’t due to the pain.

“Greed for power. A single dhrowghost can kill hundreds; poison the land; turn other spirits evil. And it is the only thing that rivals the power of a Star-gazer. You were all lucky that what you encountered was a single newborn. If there were more and mature ones, even Shana’s powers might not have been enough.”

“You…” Lorelei moistened her lips and sighed with relief since the torturous feeling in her body had started to subside. “You talk from experience?”

“What do you think killed me? One day, four of those things attacked my clan. More than two hundred people died, both body and soul, before I managed to destroy them.”

“I thought the Star-gazer could read the future.” The woman looked the shaman in the eyes. “Why…?”

“Why weren’t we better prepared?” A wry smile creped on Yanosh’s face. “If only a Star-gazer’s powers were so convenient. Aside from a few little tricks and a slightly longer lifespan, we are barely different than normal binshi. We do have a stronger connection to the Spirit Plane and can gain wisdom from interacting with different spirits. And sometimes, a Star-gazer might be able to vaguely sense some major disturbances, to see blurred images, or tiny bits and pieces of the immediate future. But we are allowed to truly read the flow of time only once – when we first awaken our powers. And for this, we pay with our own lives.”

“W-What?!” Lorelei gasped, completely forgetting about her own plight.

“When making our prophecy, for every line we say, we pay ten years of our lives. Some Star-gazers have died immediately after uttering the last word. For me, it cost me eighty years.”

Completely dumbfounded, Lorelei stared at Yanosh. She didn’t notice that the burning sensation coming from her limbs was almost gone. She also didn’t realize that her miasma-spots had turned from glowing red to white and were slowly dissolving. All she could see were those two star-filled eyes – so gentle, but full of sadness and wisdom. This person had given up almost all of his life to get a glimpse of the future and lost the little he had left to a pack of vicious monsters. Was such sacrifice even worth it?

Quiet laughter brought Lorelei back to reality. Yanosh was looking at her with a boyish grin.

“Don’t pity me, little sister. I had a good life. I found love, set great events into motion, had the chance to laugh and argue with the dearest of friends, and saw the smile of my newborn daughter. Even after death, my existence is quite fulfilling, I must say. Not every decade can one meet someone as peculiar as you, lady Norden.”

“Me? Peculiar?”

“Never even wondered why the dhrowghost affected you as much? Why Shana’s purification didn’t work?”

“Isn’t it because I’m a limerian?”

“Goodness, no! It worked perfectly fine on Noah, right? No, little sister, you are quite a rare find. In all my years, you are the first person I’ve met without a life-core.”

“H-how… what…? Y-you mean that I… A-am I… dead?” Lorelei stuttered and her body suddenly grew weak.

“Oh, no! You are very much alive. For now. Your life-core is… well, simply put, it is the essence of life, your desire and reason to live, the thing that binds your body and soul together. The more you wish to live, the more desires you have, the stronger your core is. A regular living being is a mixture of both Light and Dark desires that bind them to life and thus to their bodies. Usually, when one loses the will to live, their core dims. And this is the condition the dark practitioners use to change the nature of your core from Light to Darkness and create a dhrowghost. If neither Light nor Darkness exists in a body, there is no core, nothing to tether the soul. The body is just an empty husk that soon perishes. Except in your case.”

“Impossible! It is all wrong. I do have desires.”

“Really? Is there anything you wish for yourself? Is there anything you do that benefits you? Not the people around you. You. Do you wish to live, lady Norden, or do you continue existing for others? When you were faced with the dhrowghost, did you think of surviving, of rescuing yourself, or did you resign to your fate? How many times have you given up on living? You have the habit of discarding your own wellbeing for others, am I wrong?”

“I… I… Noah, the Duke, does the same,” said Lorelei quietly.

“Wrong! Noah is amongst the people with the strongest life-cores I’ve ever seen. He lives so that he can spit Death in the face. He has clawed his way out of its clutches so often, that a normal wraith would rather run away than face him. His Light is shielded by such a thick aura of death that to any spirit he must look like a creature from the Nether Realms. But with you, it is a different story, little sister. Whether you live or die, it’s all the same to you, right?”

Lorelei hung her head and her body trembled. Yet, she couldn’t refute anything of what was said. Yanosh was right. She had never felt the urge to live. Everything she did was so another day would pass, followed by another, and the next one after. And the only thing that kept her going was master Levi's teachings. 'Life is precious and it is our responsibility to nurture and protect it. We are but mere servants blessed by the Gods with knowledge and the means to save others.' It was indeed no desire she had, rather a duty, a way to fill the void inside, to feel needed, to simply... be. Yanosh had seen the truth she had tried to deny all her life. But then, if she really didn’t have a core, a driving force to keep her alive, then how could she still exist?

“What am I?”

“How much do you know about what you limerians call ‘saints’?”

“S-saint?! I-impossible! They are the messengers of the Gods. The few from the mortals chosen to show the rest of the world the right path. The ones blessed with the glory of the Heavens. Do you mean that I… am a saint?!”

“Wrong. You are not a saint. At most, you are a potential one. We binshi call them ‘nesvet’. The nesvet, or saints, are not mortals blessed by the Gods or the High Spirits. They are creatures of the Higher Realms, using the bodies of former mortals without a core to inhabit. When a nesvet takes over a body, it is very similar to the way a normal spirit possesses someone – the original soul is assimilated and eventually replaced. But unlike a normal possession, since the body originally lacks a core, there is no rejection to the nesvet’. The new power is not recognized as foreign and so neither the new spirit nor the vessel is damaged.”

Yanosh stopped to clear his throat, and the shimmering aura around his body dimmed a bit.

“That is why you have such a strange reaction to the powers of the dhrowghost and the Star-gazer. Or most likely, to any type of magical power. You are like an empty slate. Any ghost from our realm or the Spirit Plane, even a dhrowghost, is attracted to one’s life-core since they lack one. But you should be almost invisible to them. And when the miasma of the dhrowghost entered your body, it most likely did little to no damage to you. Perhaps you even gained some ability. Did you happen to see the true form of the dhrowghost?”

Lorelei only managed a nod. Her thoughts were in complete chaos.

“As expected. Usually, without using a special hex, no one but a binshi can clearly see such beings. Anyway, everything was most likely fine, until Shana tried to purify you. Since the powers of a Star-gazer are an almost pure manifestation of Light, it reacts with the Light in one’s core, nurtures it, and drives away any foreign darkness. But you have no core, no Light of your own. So, Shana’s purification recognized your whole body as a malicious existence, hence your current situation. But I have made sure that these powers won’t harm you anymore.”

The hands holding Lorelei’s palm started to shake. It was then that the young woman realized that the face of the shaman healing her had become almost translucent with small blue veins crawling under the skin. His eyes were blood-shot and a trickle of red flowed down from his nose and dripped on the white sheets.

“I don’t have much time left or I might end up killing Gerash.” The man’s voice had become gravely and distant. “Right now, I have collected the two powers ravaging your body and have condensed them into a false core. Like that, you don’t need to fear about your soul deteriorating and your body becoming a nesvet-host any time soon. But this is a temporary solution. You need to build a life-core of your own. Learn to live, little sister, or a fate worse than death awaits."

Yanosh words faded away. At the same time, the aura surrounding Gregor’s body flared up. Like a puppet with broken strings, the shaman slid to the floor. The light, however, lingered a bit longer. Before Lorelei’s eyes, it condensed, forming the shape of a young man. His long hair was tied with a band and fell over his left shoulder almost to his waist. The features of his see-through face were soft and gentle with small dimples around the mouth, indicating that its owner liked to laugh. And indeed, the ghostly lips were stretched in a fatherly smile. The almond-shaped eyes peered deep down into Lorelei’s soul and somehow made her feel calm and a bit lethargic.

“I should be going, little sister.” The voice of the real Yanosh was melodious and a bit deeper than Gregor’s. “After you have a good sleep, you will feel better. Please, don’t mention of this encounter to anyone, not even to Noah. Everyone else but you will forget that I have intervened. For a variety of reasons my presence and our talk must remain a secret for now.”

The silver ghost leaned in and his lips touched Lorelei’s forehead.

“I hope the next time we meet would be under happier circumstances. You have my blessing, lady Norden, and may it help you through all the trials that are to come.”

A sudden gust of wind came out of nowhere and blew the spirit of kush-turgan Yanosh into thin wisps of glittering smoke without leaving a trace behind.

Laying in her bed, the young woman was completely dumbfounded. So much had happened that her mind was struggling to comprehend everything. Both her body and soul felt exhausted but also somehow light, now that the grueling pain was gone. If she had to be honest, all she wanted was to fall asleep immediately. But there was still something that she had to do.

“Saya. Lucas.” Her voice was so weak that she feared they wouldn’t hear her.

To her joy, the door sprang open immediately and her attendants ran in, both confused and delighted to see her better. From their slightly muddled gazes, Lorelei could read that they still experienced some aftereffects from Yanosh’s hex.

Before either Saya or Lucas could storm her with questions, she hurriedly cut them off.

“I am fine now. Find sir Gregor a healer.”

Giving her last order, Lorelei finally surrendered to the fatigue. Her eyelids fell yet again, but this time she was sure that she was going to wake up.