They were in a graveyard, a place filled with the dead. Many corpses had been buried here over the years. And just as many spirits passed through this place, each one sticking around for varying amounts of time before being able to move on or eventually weakening and fading away. Practically every bit of dirt here contained a small amount of death. This was likely part of the reason why, when he first came here, that sense of hunger had triggered so easily.

It was this ambient power that Emil drew from now, pulling it from the air to cast his spell. For the unholy flames, Mana would be the starter to light the flame. But he decided that it would be the local energy of death that he would use to feed the fire. He concentrated on bringing the unholy flame out from the depths of his inner being. He had already visualized it and its properties once before, when he remade Theo’s body. But now, the cold flames of death would be lit for the first time.

-20 Mana

From his hand, a sensation of cold came forth. Then out of the tips of his fingers, a blue flame appeared. When he was a Mage and used fire magic, the flames always danced wildly and proved difficult to hold back. But that was not the case here.

The unholy fire of death did not flicker or threaten to spiral out of control. Instead, it was almost still, as its flames only moved ever so slowly. It actually felt soothing against his skin, like his fingers were covered by a cool cloth. In the time it had taken for him to summon the fire, several moments had already passed since he made his offer.

“Don’t have any last words, or anything to say for yourself then?” Emil asked. Hadwin looked up at him, his face smeared with mud and filth. But there was nothing except for defiance in the cleric’s gaze, as the older man didn’t say anything in response to the question. Instead, he simply closed his eyes and silently mouthed something, likely for some kind of prayer.

“Fine then, so be it.” That was all Emil said before having the undead mayor take a few steps back. He then let the unholy flames loose, shooting the fire at his target. The blue fire engulfed the cleric’s head, before spreading quickly to cover his entire body. There was almost a kind of irony to it. The man who killed through drowning others in water for the sake of the divine, would now die from being set aflame.

For a few moments, Hadwin didn’t react, as though he didn’t even notice the flames. But that only lasted a short while. After those initial seconds, the older man suddenly opened his mouth to let out a blood-curdling scream of pain. He threw himself to the ground, rolling around while continuing to shriek. His hands covered his face, his nails clawing into his skin as he pulled down.

But the mud and puddles of water did nothing to quench the fire. The flames instead just continued to spread, unimpeded but his attempts to put them out. The fire’s blue light illuminated that patch of the cemetery. And as he tumbled around in the dirt, that moving light made the shadows of the surrounding tombstones dance eerily.

“Ahh! God-goddess!” Hadwin yelled out. It seemed that not even the cleric’s stoic attitude could hold up against being burnt alive. Was he about to ask Flumdea to save him from Emil? “I curse your name and forsake the Order!”

“What the…” Emil began. The cleric’s goddess had protected his soul, so why insult her now? Perhaps it was just a reaction to the insane amount of pain Hadwin was currently in. That now he was lashing out against her, for not protecting his body as well.

It was then that his thought process was suddenly interrupted. Faster than he could possibly react to, multiple bolts of lightning struck down directly onto the cleric. In an instant, Emil was blinded as the world turned unbearably bright. He was sent flying back from the force of the explosion.

The front of his shoulder smashed directly into a grave marker, the bone-shattering as it collide against the stone. He could hear nothing but ringing in his ears as his entire body felt numb. Emil was barely still awake and aware of himself, but remained both deaf and blinded. Before he passed out, all he could do was send a mental command for help from all his creations. However, he had no idea if the order actually went out or was received before he fell unconscious.

“He's lost way too much blood, someone go get a doctor!” A voice yelled out, one he didn’t recognize. But whoever it was, why did they have to be so loud? He was having such a nice dream too, just keep quiet and let him stay asleep. He couldn’t hear anything else the voice said, as it became distant and everything faded away again.

After an unknown amount of time passed, Emil slowly woke up. He opened his eyes and glanced around. Currently, he was laying on a bed with a thin sheet below his body. The bright light of the sun shone into the room through an open window. The room itself was simple, the wooden walls and floor were painted white. Aside from the bed he was in, there was only a small nightstand for furniture. His memory was fuzzy. He remembered everything up beginning to cast the unholy flames, but everything past that was a complete blank to him.

Emil sat up and swung his legs off the bed. He pressed his fingers against his head and rubbed his temples. He was in the graveyard, ready to kill Hadwin. But then something must have happened. Because a full night had passed and now he had somehow ended up here. He tried to massage his brain into bringing the memories back of what happened between now and then, but the fog in his mind refused to lift.

But if he was here, then what happened to the cleric, the mayor, and Theo? He needed answers, and he wouldn’t get them by continuing to just sit there

Emil hopped off the bed. However, when his feet touched the floor, his mind finally realized something. He was no longer wearing his normal clothes. Instead, the only thing covering his body was simply a kind of grey nightgown.

He patted around himself, but already knew that it meant that all his things were also gone. From his money, to more importantly the memory orbs and part of the mayor’s soul. Emil momentarily began to panic, but told himself to calm down. Chances were, nobody would be able to recognize those things as what they really were. So they were likely stored with the rest of his stuff, wherever that storage actually was.

The door to the room he was in was currently wide open. So he walked across the room to it, and peered into the hallway. The door to a room further down the corridor was also open, and he could hear people talking from it. However, he couldn’t make out what they were actually saying from where he currently stood.

Emil carefully walked through the hallway, careful not to put too much weight on the wooden floorboards. Until he was sure about what happened, he couldn’t be too cautious. When he was close enough to the other room, he stood by the doorway and listened in.

“Dental records just came back, confirming that this indeed is mayor Duran. Though if I’m being honest, you wouldn’t know it by looking at him. It’s difficult to point out the exact cause of death, due to the severity of the injuries across his entire body. However, the heart does show signs matching that of a severe heart attack. So as of right now, the most likely theory is that it was triggered by the extreme amount of shock affecting his body’s systems, causing them to shut down,” said a female voice.

Mayor Duran? Well that answered where he was. From the way this person was talking, it sounded like he was in some kind of hospital. He decided to peek his head around the corner, to get a view inside. On the bed was the corpse of the mayor. Standing beside it were two people, a man and a woman. They were both dressed in white coats, and the man was currently jotting down notes.

When Emil looked at the mayor’s body, it was apparent that the lady hadn’t been exaggerating when she said you wouldn’t recognize him upon sight. The skin on his face was basically just a third-degree burn all around, and the eyebrows had burned away as well. However, the most prominent feature was that his mouth was simply gone. There was nothing below the nose, like the entire bottom half of the head had been ripped off.

“Well then, I’ve written everything down. Just gotta get the other guy’s stuff filled in before we’re good to go. So I’ll go ahead and do that, to get this all filed in so we can start the paperwork. But now that we’ve confirmed that it is the mayor, this town’s going to be messy for a while,” the man said as he began to turn towards the doorway.

Emil swiftly ducked his head away, and pressed himself against the wall. He needed to think quickly. With how long the hallway was, the only way he could get back to the room before the man saw him was by running. However, then he would just be heard anyway and the result would be the same.

He decided that it was pretty clear that he was a patient in this place though. So he might as well face the music and greet the man. The worst that could happen is that he would be scolded for being out of bed, right? But at the very least, there was the chance that he could have the answers Emil was looking for. He went ahead and moved away from the wall and stood in the center of the corridor. The man stepped out through the doorway, and turned towards him.

“Sorry,” Emil began while extending a hand. “But could you-” However, he was interrupted before he could get another word out. The man walked right up to Emil, but didn’t seem to so much as really even looked at him. Instead, he kept moving as though he wasn’t even there.

Before they crashed into each other, Emil stumbled back in an attempt to get out of the way. However, he didn’t move fast enough. But instead of bumping into the man with his extended arm, his hand phased right through the man’s body. The hospital worker kept walking on, simply shivering while moving toward the room he had woken up in. Emil looked down at his hand, his mind needed a moment to catch up and process what had just happened.

“No, no. It can’t be,” he muttered to himself in disbelief. After standing still there in shock for a few more seconds, Emil followed the man, quickly catching up to him back to his room. The professional was standing by the bed, writing down more notes. When Emil had stood up from the bed and left the room, he hadn’t bothered to look back. Why would he have bothered doing so, after all?

Well as he looked into the room, he quickly realized that he should have. Because still laid on the bed, was him. Or rather, it was his own deceased corpse One that wore the same nightgown, but whose features were in an even worse state than the mayor’s. His body was horribly damaged and disfigured, but he was still able to see himself in it.

There was no denying it, he was dead. Emil still couldn’t remember what had happened in that cemetery to cause this. But whatever it was, it ended with his own death. He took a few steps backward, and slumped onto the floor.

Emil didn’t want to believe it, he wanted to just be a bad nightmare, one he would wake up from at any second. But he had hoped for something similar in the dungeon, after he met Alterum. And like then, even if he didn’t wish for it to be true, reality didn’t care. He was now a ghost.