Rory watched Evelyn trying to grasp the apparition that was her son. Her hand passed right through, the boy’s translucent body evaporating into grey mist where she made contact. Evelyn withdrew quickly like she’d been burned.

“Evan…” she murmured, fresh tears dripping down her face. “What happened to you?”

“Rory.” Ned grabbed his arm. “Rory. Did you hear me? That thing’s a lich. We have to get away!”

Allen shook his head. “There’s no way there’s a lich in there.”

Rory pulled his gaze away from the grieving woman. Maybe there was still some hope that her son wasn’t dead just yet.

He’d been about to ask what made liches so awful, for the term was only vaguely familiar to him, but then his Sigil of Knowledge started spouting frightening information. Liches were necromantic creatures that used the souls of others to power their dark magic. That was bad enough, but then they were also often unkillable.

That bit of information made him grimace. It felt as though death didn’t exist as a concept for every major monster they came across.

The Thunderclaw Knight hadn’t died after all.

“What’s our plan?” Allen asked. “They’re starting to notice us…”

The fear in his voice made Rory pay more attention. The man now stood stock-still as he faced them, the woman’s waves were directed at them, and the little kid was frowning at Evelyn. A couple more ghosts—an old lady with a broom and a guard with a baton—had appeared too.

“I don’t like this,” Trish said. “They don’t look friendly.”

“You have any idea why they’re noticing us now?” Ned asked Rory.

He did. And he didn’t like it one bit. “You’re right. Let’s retreat for now. We need to come up with a—”

“Welcome, welcome, to my humble abode.”

The chilly new voice froze Rory in place. Pure ice entered through his ears and covered his brain in permafrost, making it hard to think, much less do anything at all.

With a gush of freezing cold, the lich was upon them. Rory found himself strangely envying the intricate breastplate carved with bone-edged vines, the leather war skirt studded with steel, and the metal staff topped with a glowing skull whose eye sockets glowed deadly blue.

“My, my,” she said musingly. Her voice was old, like a crone pulled out of the grave. “More wonderous puppets arriving to offer themselves to me? Tis my lucky day, it seems.”

“We’re not here to offer ourselves in any way,” Rory said, doing his best to not let his teeth chatter in the cold. “We’re here to free our friends. Tell us where they are, surrender them to us if you have them, and we will leave in peace.”

The lich looked around at the ghosts. “You already have your friends.”

Evelyn wailed. “No. You’re lying.” Her eyes glanced at the ghost of her son, then at the lich, then back at the kid. “This can’t be real.”

Trish hadn’t spoken much yet, which was strange for her since she was normally the one most eager to get to the actual confrontation. Now, her face was twisted with anger, yes, but also sorrow. She had grabbed Evelyn and wrapped an arm around the shoulders of the grieving woman.

Rory recalled that her family had been killed too. A spike shot through his heart, imagining coming across proof of Viv’s death, or Alex’s.

“Dissidents, then?” The lich bared her teeth. “Your friends were unwilling to come peacefully to my embrace, though they hardly put up any resistance. It was satisfying, but also quite boring, I must say.” She pointed her staff at them. “I hope you will offer me a suitable challenge, mortals. The more glorious your deaths, the stronger your soul is in the afterlife. Greater risks provide greater rewards, after all.”

Rory wasn’t sure what that meant, but there was something important in there. A clue he needed to figure out. Ghosts and rewards…

“She needs the souls to use her powers,” Rory told the others. “The ghosts are feeding her.”

“Correct!” the lich said. “My, aren’t you a smart one. Seems I mustn’t let anything slip in your presence.”

Before they could do or say anything further, the lich attacked. She swiped her staff in an arc before her, a wave of glittering frost and ice rushing towards them like the ocean’s surf.

“Fall back!” Trish shouted, sending Evelyn sprawling backwards even as she stepped forward.

If Rory hadn’t been suffering this terminal illness called age, he’d have been able to react in time with his Weaving. Unfortunately, he was too slow, but fortunately, Trish was faster. She placed herself before them all and summoned a large round shield of steel.

It wasn’t enough.

The lich’s blast of winter struck like a giant hammer. It wasn’t just the cold. There was a heavy force behind the blast too. Trish’s shield reverberated with a gong, and she was thrown off her feet, taking Rory and Ned along with her back into the hallway. Rory groaned as he tried to get up. He had to stop getting caught up in these physical battles.

Evelyn was already sprawled in the hallway thanks to Trish. She hadn’t managed to avoid all of the lich’s attack, though. A thin layer of frost covered her, and she was shivering. But she was alive and alert. That’s what mattered. That said, the fear and grief twisting her face confirmed she wouldn’t be much use in the fight.

Rory tried not to feel too guilty about his thoughts. Here he was, thinking about how useful a grieving mother would be in a monster fight.

Worst was Ned. He had tried to use his Sigil of Water as some sort of shield, probably out of sheer panic, and it had frozen him against the wall. He couldn’t move an inch, and his skin was turning blue all over, eyes darting this way and that. But he couldn’t scream or cry out. The cold must have shocked him enough to take away his voice.

But he had summoned his rocket-ended appendages, firing it low to start melting the ice off. He’d be free soon.

“Hold the lich back,” Rory said as he struggled to his feet, wincing at the pain and the cold. “I’m going to take down her souls.”

Trish nodded. She had already recovered and was now forcing herself towards the lobby as the lich approached. A steel spear glinted in her hand. Just behind her, Allen stepped forward with his baseball bat ready to swing.

“You all possess intriguing talents, I must say.” The lich surveyed them through her cold, glowing eyes. “But it is far from enough.”

The lich summoned a spear of ice, but Trish got her attack in first. She threw her own spear, but it never reached the monster. Rory gawked as the lich created a thin, nearly transparent hemisphere of ice around herself, like the electric forcefield the Thunderclaw Knight had used. Trish’s spear got stuck in it. With a tap of her finger, the lich made it clang to the ground.

Then she threw her own icy spear. Trish attempted to bash it out of the air, but it exploded in impact. The only reason she wasn’t thrown back was because of her summoned shield, and also because of Allen shouting out encouragement. Rory felt it too. His strange Sigil turned his voice into an audible injection of energy.

Just what Rory needed to get going. He wheeled away, hurtling as fast as his old legs could carry him towards the first soul.

“Cover me,” he shouted.

It was a great blessing he didn’t slip on the ice. Rory’s naturally slower gait made him careful, and though he skidded for a bit, he made sure not to trip. Soon enough, he reached the ghost of the waving woman.

His Weaving was already active. Muttering a quick apology, Rory stabbed his hand through the ghost’s midsection. The lines of light coalesced on her, turning her entire grey silhouette into a shimmering figure.

“Cease this futility,” the lich said, sounding almost weary.

She threw another blue icicle at him, but Trish was there. She pelted a small spike of steel to intercept it. Clearly, she’d learned her lesson against stopping the lich’s glowing icicles head-on. The short bolt of ice exploded well away from Rory, though he still felt a flash of cold pass over him.

The lich tutted, shaking her skeletal head. Then she attacked again, shooting out a beam of pure, glowing cold.

“Move!” Allen shouted as Trish lunged and collided with Rory, sending him sprawling away as she summoned a steel shield to guard herself with.

The ice beam collided with the shield with enough force to slam Trish back against the far wall. The lich attempted to freeze Trish against the wall much as she had done with Ned, but the beam was interrupted. Ned himself intercepted it with a stream of water, which froze and exploded in the middle of the lobby.

Rory saw it all while lying down where he’d been thrown. His knee had struck a table after Trish had shoved him aside, and the pain had kept him floored for a while.

Not anymore.

Grunting, Rory rose to his feet and started towards the next apparition. One soul wasn’t enough for them to determine if it had affected the lich or not.

So, while the others kept their enemy occupied momentarily, Rory reached the ghost of the old woman and used his Weaving on her instead. Soon enough, he received another Sigil as the woman disappeared.

“Trish,” Rory yelled. “Try attacking!”

Somehow, she heard him over the din of the battle. Or maybe she had been intending to throw her spear anyway, the steel javelin piercing through the cold air.

The lich responded as before. She waved her skull-topped staff, and the javelin began slowing down, eventually freezing to a stop. But Rory smiled. Trish’s steel spear had still gone farther than the last time, its tip only a few feet away from the lich’s breastplate. They were making progress. Rory just needed to keep it up.

They had the lich on the backfoot. Wasting no time, and with preternatural synchronicity, they continued their combined assault.

Rory rushed to the next ghost, breaths turning ragged at the effort. The ice on the floor was melting so his progress wasn’t as stymied as it had been before. At the same time, Trish, Ned, and Allen all hammered the lich with the full brunt of their Sigils’ strength. She was using more and more of her powers, blasts of shattering ice and waves of cold repelling the humans’ efforts.

As Rory ran, he found himself flashing past windows that showed the main parking lot. What he saw staggered him to a stop.

Dez, Viv, and Miles were still alive and kicking. They didn’t look like they’d suffered any damage, either. But what had clamped Rory’s heart like a spiky vice were the monsters coming in from the end of the streets on either side.

Thundershells.

Everything they’d done to end the Knight hadn’t been enough. Of course, it had survived, but Rory had assumed they would’ve had more breathing room than this.

Rory pressed his hands against the window, staring down at the battle outside. The trio downstairs were still too busy killing the Emberteeth and the Detonetals to notice the Thundershells closing in on them. He was tempted to Weave away the glass and yell out a warning, but he was wasting too much time here.

Faith. Rory needed to have faith. So, shutting away his anxieties, he focused on the task at hand.

The corridor at the other end of the lobby held more ghosts. Rory tried not to let the sudden edge of despair claim him. He might not have enough Mana to Weave away all those apparitions, but he didn’t need that anyway. What he had would be enough to weaken the lich enough for the others to kill her.

Rory was about to proceed when another ghost popped up before him. He stopped short. It was the kid. Evelyn’s son.

“Rory!” Evelyn said, dragging herself after the little boy’s ghost. “Please, spare him.”

The Sigil glowing on the back of Rory’s hand disappeared, as though reacting to some subconscious desire not to steal a child away from his mother. Rory took a single step back, his face feeling hot and his eyes stinging.

No problem. There were other souls to Weave.

He staggered past Evelyn and her son, trying to reach the next wandering ghost, when the lich decided she’d had enough.

“This is quite the dilemma,” the lich said in the lull of her battle with the others. “My patience has been exhausted.”

She raised her staff and twirled it overhead for a few turns, then pulled it down and stabbed it back up in a flash. The skull glowed freezing blue for a second. Then a blizzard erupted out of it.

It took only a second for Rory to be engulfed in the wintry winds. Biting snow seemed to materialize out of nowhere and strike him like icy shards. The very floor was shaking as though it couldn’t bear the burden of a storm, thunderous cracks fissuring across it. People screamed, furniture shattered, and the entire lobby started to crack apart. Snow piled up thick and heavy around him.

As Rory focused his Weaving on the storm around him just to give himself the tiniest of spaces to live, the ground broke. Fissures turned into holes and rocks fell through.

Screaming with everyone else, Rory plummeted.