As he faced the locked door of the basement, the voiceless whispers James had heard were louder than ever, almost deafening. For some reason - probably something to do with the paranormal activity he supposed - he couldn't sense anything behind the door, not even with his domain. Looking back there had been something similar with the skeletal tree, but there it was only the undead itself he hadn't noticed until he opened the door, the rest of the room was fine. Here? Nothing.

I could just run away, leave this place behind and never come back... But that doesn't seem right.

James was no saint, but ignoring someone's desperate plea for help felt wrong, especially after directly talking to them. Besides, knowing his luck and the tendency for this world to follow tropes, he wouldn't be surprised to learn that trying to cheat a spiritual entity after a deal was struck was a great way to get cursed, or worse.

James eyed the wooden key in his hand, a big, bulky thing that looked more at home in a feudal dungeon than a relatively modern orphanage, and put it in the door's lock. The whispers went silent for a second before they began anew, even louder. James carefully prepared a few magical bolts with a pair of newly grown tentacles, easily holding the black shimmering orb. He had yet to test the things out in an actual combat situation since he had preferred taking down the invading thugs with his tentacles to use the element of surprise, and after that to directly skip onto the heavy weaponry to avoid testing out if Grover's clay armor was immune to magic.

Hopefully, he wouldn't have to magic today either, but better be safe than sorry.

I just hope that the whole "magic works against ghosts" thing is about real life and not some game. Kinda hard to tell sometimes. Zalcien's weird.

James turned the key and opened the door, immediately being hit by a wave of a horrid smell. He had a few guesses as to what he would find and was sad to find out he was correct.

Bodies. Mostly skeletons, some still had skin but those were rare. They were all huddled together, some hugging, some handholding, some resting their heads on others' shoulders and preserved this way. Corpses in nun clothing were generally the ones on which the others held on, but for each one there had to be five "normal" bodies next to them. As normal as children's skeletons could be.

Shadows flickered around the room, beneath the bodies, up on the ceiling, and around the doorways of the immense basement, probably leading to rooms used for storage or living areas in case of crisis. Hopefully, a bathroom too, though maybe they hadn't needed to use it in the end.

The twisting ethereal things were relatively humanoid in the same way his Silhouette persona was. A head and a torso, but everything past that were too jumbled, too thin, too unstable to be recognizable. Well, they had eyes he supposed, large ovals occupying most of their faces, holes through which he could see an even more decayed version of the basement. They were all staring at him, a dozen or so looked incredibly tall but the rest barely reached his waist, with a few outliers that were eye-level with his shoulders.

A new hole slowly formed beneath their pairs of eyes. A mouth.

At once, they screamed.

"HElp Us!"

"I'm afraID-"

"SisTEr, whERe Is-"

"Is THe Bad mAN GonE?"

"Is MiSTer MOOn goinG to SAVE US?"

"It hurTS!"

"I cAN't sEE!"

"I'm SOrry, chiLd, I-"

"ArE we GonnA sEE maMA?"

Countless voices, all screeching out their last words, an unbearable cacophony of despair and agony.

Until the voice of a little girl whispered.

"I'm cold."

The others stopped screaming before slowly repeating after her.

"Cold."

"Cold."

"Cold."

"Cold."

"Empty."

"Hollow."

"Hurt."

"Lost."

"Lost."

"Cold."

"Trapped."

"Hurt."

"Empty."

"Hollow."

"Cold."

Somehow, their whispers were even more deafening than their screams. It took all of James' will simply to keep standing and hold onto his human form, his shadowy flesh melting under the ghostly wails.

Gotta... Tell...

"Door... Open..."

"Speaks?"

"Voice?"

"Someone?"

"Here."

"Intruder."

"Friend."

"Brother."

"Threat."

"Child."

"Alone."

"Afraid."

"Help."

"Hug."

"The door... Is open... You're free..."

"Free?"

"Free?"

"Free?"

"Trapped."

"Light?"

"Where is the light?"

"WheRE IS The LIGht?"

"TRappED!"

One of the smaller spirits approached James and looked up at his face with its large hollow eyes.

"Name. Trixie. Name?"

"I'm... James... Could you... Tell your friends to calm down?"

Her relatively big head tilted to the side as she stared at him, examining his body as he kept on focusing to keep it solid.

"Hurt."

"Yeah, it... It kinda does..."

She looked at him a little more before floating away to go see one of the tallest spirits who was muttering something about safety over and over. The little ghost rose until their eyes met.

"Friend. Hurt. Noise."

The tall one appeared to notice James for the first time, despite having screamed at him when he had first stepped into the room. As it saw his disheveled state, it gasped and in a flicker of existence stood next to him, humming what sounded like a lullaby as a pair of ghostly hands formed out of thin air and began to pat James' head and slowly rub his back.

The other tall spirits turned around and stared at the scene before they dispersed in the room, forming eerily long arms to hug close the smaller entities and hold them close as they kept on gathering more. The screams and whispers slowly died down as the spirits calmed each other and soon enough the room was silent once more, apart from an ambient wind coming from nowhere.

The spirits had all gathered in the center of the room, the only exceptions being the tall one that had hummed and the small one that James had talked to who both stood next to him.

"Thank you..."

James stretched a little, trying to ease what was left of the pain.

The only things that had really hurt me so far had been the Titaroach's electricity and the Matoador's charges, and even then that last one I quickly got over. Guess ghost attacks can be added to the list... If that even was an attack...

James took in the bizarre, creepy, and yet somehow somewhat wholesome sight of the ghostly nuns taking care of the children's specters.

"The door is open. You can leave now."

"Danger."

"I don't know what happened here but it's over. The city is almost empty. The only people left are the desperate and those avoiding the law."

"Can't leave."

"Why? Is it the unfinished task thing?"

"Can't."

"Listen, I don't know much about ghosts. I could try to find someone to help? I already proposed the idea to the one upstairs but..."

"Mother?"

"Greenheld?"

"Yes, she's... She's here. Not like you, but she's in her office. She asked me to open the door and free you, and I'd get to use the place."

"New one?"

"New child?"

"New caretaker?"

"New gardener?"

"I... I'm sorry I can't help more than that, but I really have no idea what to do here. I also have my own problems to deal with, including kids to take care of."

"Children?"

"Orphans?"

"I... I suppose they are. But they're not the only ones. I have employees, a pack of mutated intelligent and somewhat murderous rats..."

"Orphans welcome."

"Everyone deserves love."

"Everyone deserves help."

"Everyone deserves a family."

"I... I'm going to take a look around before going back to chat with... Mother Greenheld was it?"

The phantoms simply stared, and James didn't bother any further before he explored. The basement was set up like a bunker, with dorms - though much worse than the ones upstairs - storage rooms, a mess hall, and the like. There were two storage rooms near the entrance, with one being filled with spare furniture and the occasional collapsing antique, and the other one being a wine cellar. Surprising to see something like that in an orphanage, not so much in a religious building.

James saw one of the nuns' corpses with more intricate clothes than the rest, not by much but undeniably so. She was holding a big iron key, one that he had no trouble identifying as the original his wooden version was based on.

I guess they went down there and locked the door willingly... But then why didn't they get out?

Besides that, there wasn't much in the basement, apart from the piles of old bodies of course. James was very glad he wouldn't have to search them to get an item of value of some sort, handling the fresh corpses of thugs who had tried to kill him was one thing, dead children and nuns that had been left to rot for decades was another. The fact the phantoms followed him as he left the room and climbed up the stairs was surprising, but not unexpected.

When James reached the office, the tall spirits kept the smaller ones outside as they entered the room and studied the skeletal tree at the desk.

"Mother?"

"Sisters... Children..."

"Outside."

"Not disturb."

"Found... Freed..."

"Yes, I found them, and I opened the door, but they say they can't leave."

"Trapped."

"Can't."

"Promise..."

"I can try to contact my undead acquaintance, but I have no idea of what to do here. I'm sorry."

"Tried... Freedom... Light... Share... Welcome..."

"You... Still want to share the orphanage with me?"

"Promise... Reward..."

"I... Thank you. Will the others be fine with people coming here? Even if they're not children? They might do things they shouldn't see..."

"All. Welcome."

"Death... Cold... Grasp... Dark... Witness..."

"I... Again, thank you. Do you want me to do anything particular before I go? Plant your tree somewhere? Dig some graves? Contact a priest?"

"Rest... Garden... Tree... Protect..."

"You want me to bury them in the garden and then plant your tree over them?"

"Protect... Comfort... Sun..."

"I'll do it. But, you should know we're underground now. Can't you see there's no light coming through the window?"

"Light... Protect..."

"I'll see what I can do. But... Can it wait until my next visit? That would be a lot of work and I don't want the people at home to get worried."

"Waited...Decades... Patience... Grown..."

"Thank you, I'll come back soon. I'm off, then."

When the shadowy cutie from earlier came back, the first thing Mimi noticed, before she even saw or heard him, was the remnants of powerful necrotic energies that clung to him. As an undead, she passively noticed any amount of this sort of thing with frightening accuracy and did so passively, whereas a good deal of necromancers would need to cast a spell. She wasn't surprised by the fact the kid was covered in the stuff, he already had some on him earlier and despite its relative safety death was still a common occurrence in the Sunken City, so killing something or finding a bunch of dead bodies wasn't rare. No, it was the sheer amount, age, and potency of the stuff.

To her magical senses, it looked like the kid had jumped into a pile of century-old corpses of some powerful magic practitioner. Again, not impossible considering the place's past, but surprising that he had found such a spot in such a short amount of time and survived. There were usually powerful undead in those areas, and feral ones didn't take too kindly to living folks. Maybe they hadn't realized the kid was even alive in the first place? He did have that odd scent of something that had met death but came back, she wondered how that happened.

"Hey there, cutie!"

"Hey. Say, do you have some sort of confidentiality stuff?"

"Technically yes, but no magical oath to enforce it. Just regular hierarchy."

"Oh."

"Hey, ask away! I know how to keep a secret."

"I wanted to ask about the old orphanage."

Oh, that's where he had been.

"Greenheld's place? I'd avoid it if I were you."

"Does anyone claim the place."

"No one except Greenheld herself, and I ain't approaching that. See, the thing with exorcists is they fill the place with life energy or mana to chase away the ghosts, but Greenheld? She already has life energy in her. So, immune to exorcism, AND great against other undead and regular people. Not violent enough to warrant professional hunters, but she doesn't take kindly to folks who try to come in. So, don't go back there."

"I won't promise anything."

He passed her and went into the lift, and soon enough he was going up, back to the Sewage Network. In the loneliness of her room, Mimi giggled.

"Hihi, kids."