After the head's up from Lily, Alec asked Maia's pack and the Institue to keep an eye out for anything that matched the description from Zeke. It was brought up a few nights later when they had a meeting at the New York Institute, each head figure gathered around the dining table as they talked about recent events. This mostly included Lily as the head of the Vampires, Maia for the werewolves, Magnus, Maryse, Jace, and Alec himself. Clary had the option to come, but she was doing something with Simon that night, leaving Jace unsupervised. Isabelle was watching Max in one of the other rooms, getting her "aunt time". Alec mostly lead the meetings unless there was something specifically related to Clave business or something solidly important.

"Has there been any news about our current mystery person?" Alec asked into the room.

Lily shook her head and Maia seemed to be pondering something. Maryse also seemed to be thinking, but she did a lot of that nowadays. Jace raised his hand like a schoolchild before speaking.

"You mean the one with the creepy shadow powers and weird sword, or a different mystery person?" Jace asked.

Alec gave Jace a flat look, and Jace raised his hands, a smirk on his face. After another moment of silence, the meeting proceeded.

"Anything else unusual recently that we should discuss." Alec asked.

"There's been a lot of ghosts recently." Maia announced, "but..."

"But, what?" Lily asked.

"They vanish quickly. Massive groups sometimes, there have also been sightings of some... less friendly spirits, but quickly after they appear, sometimes by the next night, they're all gone. All of these locations smell... off for a bit afterward too... like death and danger." Maia explained, pausing to search for words when she got to describing the scent.

"Do you think it's related to Mr. Mystery?" Jace asked, messing with something in his hands, something reflective.

"Could be," Magnus added.

"I've done a bit of research in the library on the matter," Maryse said, catching everyone's attention.

Alec was surprised, his mother usually left things alone unless there was an explicit danger.

"On the weapon in particular that Lily reported," she continued, "'Like a dark seraph blade, absorbing the light around it and clinging to the shadows', correct?" she asked, turning to Lily, who nodded.

"I had to trace back quite a few records, but few were of any help, nothing similar was mentioned. So, whoever this is, also claimed to be a reaper, so I looked into weapons associated... but I came up empty. It could be something new that we don't yet know about, or something more... sinister in nature. I hope for the former." Maryse said, eyes downcast as she finished.

"So we know this guy claims he's a "reaper", has a spooky sword, and does shadow magic. I also think he's linked to all the sudden ghost and spirit activity." Jace went on, counting the details on his fingers, "maybe he's helping, 'clearing up the place'." Jace shrugged.

"We should still make sure he isn't a threat, either way." Alec grumbled, then turned to Maia again, "Has a new group of ghosts popped up recently? If these things are related, we might be able to catch him there." Alec purposed.

"Yeah, actually," Lily hummed, "A bunch just appeared around an old theater downtown. It's been abandoned for a while."

"That used to be quite the place to go for a show, shame to the company went out of business." Magnus pouted.

"Would it work for an ambush?" Alec asked.

"Probably." Lily shrugged.

"Oh, boy, I love stakeouts." Jace groaned.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"When you said 'boys night out', this wasn't exactly what I had in mind, Jace." Simon grumbled, wiping the dust from his glasses.

"You've known me this long? What'd you expect?" Jace snickered.

"I don't know, more chaos and action? Perhaps some demons?" Simon responded.

"Aww, you do know me." Jace grinned.

"Be quiet" Alec whispered.

Currently, Alec, Jace, and Simon were sitting up in the catwalk of the old theater, waiting for their mysterious person to show up. Unfortunately for Simon, there was dust everywhere messing up his glasses and blurring his vision. There were also all sorts of creepy critters and bugs all over the damn place, also an unfortunate situation. Simon struggled not to sneeze every few minutes.

Simon and Jace were near each other, Simon sitting down anxiously glancing around below while Jace paced on the metal beams, each about a foot wide. Alec sat on the opposite side of the theater, visible to them, but not to anything below. It was his job to signal when creepy-mystery-person showed up. The night vision rune Clary had given him before they had left itched as he tried to peer through the darkness, but it didn't fade.

They had Magnus trap the area earlier with a circle cleverly written in invisible ink, to be activated when someone, who wasn't them, stepped into it. They were also given a few other things to knock out people just in case that didn't work out too well. Magnus actually decided to stay too to watch and observe and to possibly be backup. He sat somewhere near Alec but wasn't visible from where Simon was.

Simon checked his watch, which faintly glowed in the dark, to see it was approaching midnight, and internally groaned. He had already had a long day training and then taking Izzy out to lunch and around the city. Now, he got to stay up all night with Jace and Alec on a stakeout in a theater filled with ghosts.

Admittedly, the ghosts didn't bother Simon as much as he thought they would. They just wandered around the theater stage and in the front row seats, some a lot more... opaque than others. Where he was, he couldn't tell what the ghosts were talking about, but he didn't know what ghosts could talk about... comparing notes maybe? If the ghosts knew they were there, they didn't say anything, but they clearly avoided the trap Magnus had set up.

Jace suddenly stopped pacing and got into a crouch, standing in the middle of the beam, almost perched like some sort of bird of prey. Alec also was getting out his bow, so Simon emulated, loading an arrow loosely into his bow.

Someone had entered the room below, and the ghosts seemed to start to move anxiously about at this new presence. There had been no sound that someone had entered the room, he had just appeared there.

"I'm guessing you know why I'm here?" He spoke. His voice was echoed about the entire room, making his words comprehensible.

It was the voice of a young teen, but despite his vantage point, he couldn't make anything out on the teen despite dark. He did, in fact, look like some type of reaper. The ghosts clearly knew the answer to the question and continued muttering amongst themselves.

Simon saw Jace getting ready to lead down on the unsuspecting teen, but he was stopped by a signal from Alec. Wait, let's see what he does.

"Alright then, so are you going to come willingly, or just make this difficult for me?" He asked the ghosts again, sounding almost as tired as Simon felt.

The effect was immediate, the ghost started to scatter, their forms flickering as they fled and the boy sighed, at least that's what Simon thought he did. He had no idea what the boy did next though. He just.. said something Simon couldn't make out, stomped his foot, and then the ghosts were pulled into a massive crack in the ground, struggling to flee. But as the ground cracked open, the temperature in the room plummeted and Simon almost considered using a warming rune if he wasn't frozen in horror at what he had just witnessed.

The ghosts were pulled into the chasm, unable to escape and the ground seemed to slam back close once all the ghosts were gone. It was that moment, while he was still distracted that Jace leaped from the beam and flung himself at the boy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nico was tired, Will had attempted to teach Nico how to shoot a bow today, with moderate success. He wasn't as awful as Percy was... that was near impossible to match that, but he could safely say that a bow wasn't his weapon of choice. Now his phone buzzed with another alert for a group of ghosts just lost souls that got pulled from the Feilds of Asphodel. They were just lost souls, so Nico didn't come seriously prepared for a fight.

He gave them the option of going back smoothly, but no... they had to panic and make it that much more difficult for him. He focused, muttered in Ancient Greet, and opened a chasm directly into the Fields and the ghosts were pulled into it. He had to focus on keeping the chasm open, and it was a seriously draining thing to do, but he just wanted to pull the ghosts back to where they belong, he didn't want to hunt them down with his sword or personally lead them back to the underworld. It was late, and to reiterate, Nico was tired.

Apparently, because Nico was tired, the Fates wanted to irritate him further, by having someone fling themselves at him from the ceiling, and then crash into him. Luckily, Nico managed to catch a glimpse of the golden boy who attacked him and avoid being slammed quite painfully into the ground. As soon as combat began, two arrows flung flew at Nico from the opposite side of the room, and he retreated towards the stage, trying to simultaneously find the archers and not get pummeled by the golden boy attacking him.

Golden Boy, that was the only way Nico could describe his melee attacker. Gold hair, skin, and eyes, dressed in a black outfit that seemed to double as protection and he was armed. The attacker kept swiping at Nico with a quarterstaff, each time Nico barely managed to dodge. This guy was dam fast, like a child of Hermes on coffee. Nico barely had enough time to snatch his blade out of the shadows to block a particularly aggressive hit.

To Nico's surprise, markings on the quarterstaff made themselves known, flaring up when they connected. Nico was already beginning to pant, sorely unprepared and obviously outnumbered at the moment. He was tired after creating and controlling the rift and capturing the ghosts, and surprise attacks weren't the most refreshing thing Nico could think of right now.

Another arrow wobbled through the air, and Nico immediately noticed that it wasn't normal, and it burst into a cloud of colored smoke, bright blue, and enveloped the area. Instinct made Nico hold his breath, and he was right to do so when he glimpsed his attacker retreat out of it. He followed in suite, but ran in the opposite direction, retreating back onto the stage while his attacker went into the seats.

Nico took a moment to find the archers and spotted three people up in beams and catwalks that lined the roof of the theater. There was an archer on each side, and one man was unarmed from what Nico could tell. He was able to make eye-contact with the one next to the other guy as an arrow flew from his bow. Nico dogged out of the way, and yet again, it exploded in bright blue smoke, cutting off his visual of the archers.

Nico stumbled around blindly for a moment, trying not to fall off of the stage, and ran into something solid abruptly. He attempted to walk a different way, despite not seeing anything in front of him, but ran into a similar obstacle. His lungs started to burn from holding his breath, but he couldn't find a way out! Panic slowly started to overrun adrenaline and Nico slashed his sword against the invisible obstacle in his way, but his sword just bounced off of the invisible wall without as much as a scratch.

Nico felt his heart rate accelerate... he couldn't get out!... He... he couldn't breathe...

Nico buckled and collapsed onto the floor, but refused to breathe in the smoke... it could be poisonous... but he was trapped either way... he... he didn't want to be trapped where he could breathe... not again. Fear raced through his system, but exhaustion and anoxia drained his energy, preventing him from calling forth the shadows for any meaningful help, and his vision tunneled... until he felt himself hit the ground, slumped against the invisible wall and his conscientious fade out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Magnus felt his bones shudder when the ground split open. He expected shadow magic and maybe a little bit of necromancy since this kid appeared where spirits and ghosts showed up... but nothing of this level. He didn't expect a kid to just use high-level necrotic magic (not just illegal, but very dangerous) to send the ghosts to god knows where. Magnus didn't want to know where, but when the blue smoke he designed began to dissipate, the only evidence of any dark magic was a sense of wrongness in the air and singular, white flower growing from what would've been the middle of the crevasse.

Jace looked unusually ruffled as he pulled back and the kid fled to one of the locations Magnus had trapped, the center of the stage. The second cloud of smoke became apparent enough to see the form of the boy slumped inside of the entrapment circle, clearly passed out. Alec and Simon began to descend from the catwalks, and Mangus followed, dissipating the remaining smoke with a wave of his hand, and the stage lights flickering to life, illuminating their suspect.

Alec let Magnus pass him, and immediately bee-lined toward the flower, identifying it before he liberally decided to pluck it from the ground.

"What is it?" Simon asked, looking at the flower.

"A flower, Simon." Jace huffed, putting away the quarterstaff, Simon looked at Jace in the exact way Magnus wanted to at that moment, but after that display, Magnus was in no joking mood.

"It's an Adsphodel, a harmless flower, but... its a rarer funeral flower... I" Magnus frowned, caressing the soft petals.

Alec put a hand on Magnus's shoulder, something he greatly appreciated.

"Well, I can definitely tell you he can put up a damn good fight. But I want to know more about that magic he did, fighting I can explain." Jace said, casting a glance at the unconscious boy.

The group slowly migrated toward the boy, Alec removing some runed ribbon, designed not to break or give, but also not cut off circulation. It had been a wonderful idea Magnus had offered, though he was saddened to see it used in the current situation. Magnus, almost hesitantly, scuffed out the circle and the boy fell onto the ground with a soft thump. Magnus watched as his boyfriend picked up their "mystery reaper" and bound his hand behind his back, as well as his feet together.

Up close and under the spotlight, the boy was frighteningly pale and thin, highlighted by his mess of black hair. His black jacket and band shirt consumed his small form, but he wasn't just bones, as lean muscles were exposed as Alec pulled off the boy's jacket, a newer aviator jacket, but also revealed numerous scars that Magnus would've expected to see on a veteran shadow-hunter or rougher downworlder, not a boy. But there were no marks or runes, just pale and fading scars. The back of his shirt had been slashed across four times horizontally, showing a bit of skin on his back, something marked on his skin underneath.

"It's been a long time since I've seen magic like that, powerful and dark, especially just used out of the blue. That was a powerful spell of necromancy, and I'm very happy I'm not a ghost right now." Magnus explained, and Alec motioned for Jace to pick up the boy.

Jace picked up the teen as if he weighed nothing and slung him over his shoulders in a fireman's carry.

"So, I guess that means he's definitely coming back to the institute?" Simon asked.

"Sean, I really wish you would stop stating the obvious one of these days."