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Pain sears through Lilliana's lower back, and she feels her blood coating the stone floor beneath her. Her mom cradles her and says, "I'm sorry, sweetheart, I'm so sorry."

She tries to say something in return, but her tongue feels like lead and her skull is full of concrete. Her vision blurs and she fights to keep her eyes open.

"Go to sleep, baby girl. I'll fix it," her own voice starts to slur a bit, having been slashed with the same poisoned knife, "we'll get you back. Everything will be okay, go to sleep."

As much as she wants to fight it, she can't. The poison spreads through her quickly and stops her heart. Everything goes dark for a moment or two, then she opens her eyes on a beach. She looks out over an endless black sea with spots of light scattered throughout. She can hear voices and laughter as waves come in and pull back with those lights inside them.

"Well, well, well," says a voice from behind her, "what do we have here?" She turns and sees a handsome man in a black cloak. He has a large book open in one hand and is looking down at it. "Lilliana Bluejeans. Seventeen deaths and not one visit to the Astral plane." He looks up at her, eyes flashing with what almost seems like delight. "That is-" he snaps the book shut and it vanishes- "until now."

Before she can say anything in response, he summons a weapon and, for the second time in five minutes, she gets slashed with a blade. This time, she opens her eyes inside a square stone room, with a small barred window on one side and the opposite wall made up entirely of bars. A jail cell. The man stands on the other side of the bars looking awfully pleased with himself.

"What the fuck, man?" She grabs the bars and tries to shake them. They stay firmly in place. "What gives?"

"I've been looking for you and your lot. This is the-"

"Are you doing an accent?"

The man splutters. "No."

"That's definitely not what you sounded like on the beach."

The man huffs in annoyance. "This," he says, his voice normal, "is the Eternal Stockade. It's where death criminals and necromancers like yourself are kept until it's decided that you can be released into the sea."

"I'm not a necromancer!"

"Oh- oh really? Did you miss the part where I said you'd died seventeen times? Because, you see, most people only die once. And if you're not a necromancer, how about-" that book appears in his hands again- "Barry Bluejeans, 22 deaths as well as being a lich? Hm? I don't suppose you would also know a lich named Lup Taaco with 26 deaths. Or Magnus Burnsides with 19. Or- or how about my favourite? Merle Highchurch with 57 deaths. All of which appeared in my bounties out of the blue, along with yours, over a year ago. How do you explain that? All that death and not one visit to Kravitz?"

Lilli purses her lips and sucks on her teeth. "It was an accident?"

Kravitz, unimpressed, vanishes the book and grabs the bars too, leaning in towards her. "Where are the rest of them?"

She scoffs. "Like I'd tell you that."

"I might let you out sooner if you cooperate."

"Or I'll get out of here when my lich mom tells my lich dad what happened and they revive me."

"I'll just track them down then. Reviving someone takes a lot of necromantic power, and I can track that."

"Not theirs."

"Oh? Why's that?"

Lilli pushes back off the bars and turns away. "Wouldn't you like to know."

Kravitz is silent for a moment. He says, "I'll come back when you've had time to think."

There's the sound of fabric tearing, and when she turns back around, he's gone. She slides down the wall and sits against the stone floor. She wouldn't think that a spirit would be able to feel physical sensations, but there's a chill in this cell that permeates her, and now that she's been left with her thoughts, there's a dull ache in her lower back where the knife got her. She sighs, tips her head back, and waits to be revived.

She doesn't know how long she's been in there, but she knows it's been too long. They didn't revive people often during their travels, it was a lot of effort for something the universe was going to do on its own anyway, but the few times they did, it never took this long. The one who died always said it felt like no time at all.

She's trying not to think too hard about it when that ripping sound happens again. Kravitz steps through, and grabs the bars of her cell. "Where are they?" He demands, glaring at where she's sitting. She gives him a questioning look and he says, "the liches. Lup's count went up shortly after yours, and Barry's went up a few months later. They're both in their lich forms, they should be practically beacons to my senses. Where are they?"

Her dad died few months after her? How long has it been since then? "How should I know? You locked me in ghost jail."

"Do they have a hideout? A lair? Where would they go?"

She shrugs. "If they're anywhere, they're with all the other mystery bounties." She grins. "Are you sure you're qualified for this? You can't even track down seven bounties in one room. Some patron of death."

Kravitz sneers at her. "There are two more liches in this world at risk of losing themselves and harming countless people-"

"You do realize you're asking me to sell out my parents, right?"

He gives a grunt of frustration and turns back to his rift. "I'll never understand how you necromancers pick your morals."

"I'm not a necromancer," she calls after him. He's stepping through his rift, but she pushes herself up and grabs the bars, yelling at his back, "I didn't even die on purpose! Just leave them alone! Let them-" but he's already gone. She shouts in frustration and unsuccessfully tries to shake the bars. "We weren't trying to die!" Her voice echoes through the haunting stone corridors, mingling with all the other despaired cries of souls in their cells. She falls to her knees and rests her forehead against one of the bars. "Why is this taking so long?" She whispers to herself. She looks up to the small barred window, "what are you guys doing out there?"

She sits back in her spot against the wall and more unmeasurable time passes. She tries to tune out all the anguished souls around her. Sometimes new cries join them, and sometimes she can hear Kravitz talking to other souls. One time, he's walking past her cell, and she doesn't know what comes over her but she calls out to him.

He stops, and looks at her curiously. She stands and he faces her properly. "Look," she says, "I'm never going to sell out my family. But I'm not a necromancer. None of us died that much on purpose. My parents made themselves liches because it was useful to our situation. Can I just- are you the one in charge? Just give me an- an audience, or something, where I can explain everything. This is where we were supposed to be happy and safe. I can't be dead already. We'd only just started our lives here. I should've been revived by now, which I know you wouldn't like, but if you knew our situation you'd have to make an exception."

He just looks at her for a few long moments. The silence hangs over them. "I know what this is," he says, "you're desperate."

She rolls her eyes. "Sure I am. I'm dead and I don't want to miss too much time with my family, so won't you just hear me out?" He raises his eyebrows at her. She frowns. "What?"

"You don't want to miss too much time?"

"Duh. You said my dad died a few months after me. That sucks, I don't want to be away from them for months."

He crosses his arms. "Lilliana, you've been dead for nearly six years."

It's like a slap in the face and a punch to the gut and falling into ice cold water. "You're lying," she says around the lump in her throat.

"I'm not."

"You're full of shit," she starts raising her voice, "you piece of shit motherfucking asshole, you're lying to me!" She tries to shake the ever unmoving bars, "you heartless bitch let me GO! I don't belong here! I'm going to be revived and you can't stop it you shitty lying reaper!"

"I'll leave you be," he says, walking away.

"FUCK YOU!" She screams after him, ghostly tears starting to roll down her cheeks. She stumbles back away from the bars until her back hits a wall and she falls to the ground. She brings her knees to her chest and sobs.

Six years. How has it been six years? She's never even felt a tingle of magic trying to bring her back. Surely they've tried? Her mama said she was going to fix it. She said they'd bring her back. Even if they're being hunted by Kravitz and dealing with the fallout of the war, they must be working on it. But why is it taking so long? Why is she still here? Why have they abandoned her?

She sits there and lets even more time pass without her. She tries to feel for magic reaching for her soul, tugging her back to life, but there's nothing. Just her and her spirit in a dingy cell in the afterlife.

Then there's someone standing over her. She lifts her head, and it's Kravitz. On her side of the bars this time. He holds a hand out to her. She curls in tighter, "what do you want?"

"You asked to explain and-" he sighs heavily- "I just let the biggest bounty I've ever encountered off the hook, so the Raven Queen has agreed to hear you out."

She doesn't take his hand just yet. "How long has it been? Since I died?"

"A little under ten years, now." She would throw up, if she could. "But, hey," he says, looking... oddly sheepish, "better late than never?"

He's got a point, and she doesn't want to be dead any longer, so she takes his hand and lets him pull her to her feet. He links their arms together and walks her through the bars of her cell and down the halls of the Stockade. She can feel the eyes of the other souls all on her. They reach the exit and step out onto the beach. The light breeze over the sea is a welcome break from the stale interior of the prison. With her arm being held by Kravitz, she's able to walk with him over the top of the sea, the lights of free souls dancing underneath their feet. He takes her to another island with a towering, dark palace, then through black marble hallways until she finds herself standing in front of a goddess.

She towers above her, sitting in a tall black throne. She has a raven skull for a head and skeletal hands, one of which caresses a raven at her side. The rest of her is hidden in layers of heavy black robes.

"Lilliana Bluejeans," her voice comes from every direction, "my Kravitz tells me you'd like to explain yourself. I have made some allowances recently, so I have decided to allow you this as well. Don't waste it."

She explains everything. The Institute, the Light, the ship, the Hunger, the cycles, dying, regenerating, dying again. She explains the relics and the wars and how she and her mom left to find and hide the relics, and what went awry. She explains that she expected to be brought back ages ago, but she hasn't been and she doesn't know why. She tells the Raven Queen that she just wants her family to be safe and happy.

"Why do your friends not remember?" The Raven Queen asks.

Lilli cocks her head. "I'm sorry?"

"When I saw them," Kravitz says, "they said they had never died. They were surprised when I read them their bounties."

"They were probably lying to get out of it. Though our style wasn't always very diplomatic so that surprises me."

"Didn't seem like they were lying."

"Then I don't know," she snaps, "you kept me in a cell for ten years, remember?"

"Nevertheless," the Raven Queen interjects, "this is most certainly an exceptional situation. I will grant you a construct and wipe your bounty so you may continue a life on the Material plane, under the condition you work with my Kravitz as a reaper."

"What about the others?"

"...I will allow a respite on their bounties until we may have a discussion at another time."

Lilli bows her head and thanks her. She beckons her closer to her throne, then reaches down and touches a skeletal finger to her forehead. It's like an electric shock shoots straight down her spine, and she feels it tingle all the way through her body. Suddenly she feels so much more solid, feels the familiar weight of red fabric settling over her shoulders. She takes a breath and feels a pair of lungs inflate, pushing a ribcage out, and her chest rises. She exhales, and her chest lowers. She can feel a heartbeat. It's faint and slow, but it's there. She's alive.

Kravitz takes her away. She wants to find her family and hug them and kiss them and scream at them about why the fuck she was left as a ghost for ten years, but he insists on doing training stuff first. He tries to get her to use a scythe and she kindly informs him that if she can't use a bow and arrow as her main weapon, she will use a scythe on him. He teaches her how to sense and track necromantic and undead energy and she says, "I want to find my dad."

He laughs a little bit. "You can try, but I've been a reaper for centuries, and even when I'm actively looking he evades me."

She ignores him and shuts her eyes, reaching her senses out to the world like he taught her. They snake through Faerun, ignoring rituals and vampires and zombies until- there.

It's not the magic of a lich, but it's magic that's uniquely Twosun, uniquely her dad, built to hide away the undead. Kravitz never found him because he didn't know what to look for. But she does. And she found it.

She opens her eyes. "Got it," she says, standing. Kravitz splutters in surprise, but she ignores his questions and is through a rift before he can follow.

Her rift brings her to a snow-covered rocky pathway. She walks carefully along until she can feel her dad's magic radiating out, concealing the entrance of a cave. She breathes deeply, taking in fresh air for the first time in years, and steps over the threshold.

In the cave, there's a chest to one side, a tank filled with green stuff at the back, and a table opposite the chest, covered in papers. Then there's her dad, in all his lichy glory. He's in the middle of the floor, face (or lack thereof) in his hands, red magic crackling around him.

She doesn't want to startle him, he doesn't seem to be doing well, but he needs to see her. He needs to know she's okay. She takes a tentative step forward and says, "dad?"

His head shoots up, and she can imagine his eyes as wide as saucers. "Lilliana?"

"Hi, daddy."

He floats up, "you're dead. I saw your body- I saw both of your bodies," more magic crackles around him, "you're dead."

"I made a deal. I thought you would bring me back, but nothing ever happened and they finally let me explain and they gave me a construct. I'm okay now, I'm back." Her chest is tight and she has to ask, "why didn't you bring me back?"

The magic around him settles as he calms some. "I didn't know- I didn't want to believe you were gone. I never knew for sure until I saw you recently."

"Didn't mom tell you? She said she would."

He quiets and bows his head, "...I don't know where she is."

"She has to be out here somewhere. I know the Astral plane doesn't have her." He doesn't respond and Lilli wrings her hands. "And I'm sorry." He looks up at her and she says, "we never should have left. Especially not the way we did. She was going to go alone and I caught her and we should've waited and had a meeting with everyone, but we didn't and I'm sorry." She swallows around the lump in her throat, "we never meant to not come back, but now I've been dead for ten years and I don't know what's happening." She looks deep into the darkness of his hood, wishing he was corporeal so he could hug her. "Why are you here? Where are the others? Why don't they remember that they've died?"

He seems to calm completely from the distress she'd found him in and he comes right up to her. "I forgive you, sweetheart. I'm just glad you're okay now." He sighs, "as for everything else... Lucretia erased everything."

Her eyes widen. "What?"

"She took her journals and fed them to Fisher, erasing the relics, the war, the Hunger, everything." He reaches a ghostly hand up to cup her cheek, "she even took you and mom away from me."

"Why? Why would she do that?"

"Same reason you two left. To try and stop the wars. She created a whole secret society to collect the relics. And six months ago, she recruited Taako, Magnus, and Merle. I don't know how, but they remember the relics and the wars but nothing else."

"She wants to put up her shield."

"Yeah."

"And Dav?"

"He's a shell of himself, without the mission. He's with Lucretia."

She chews on this for a second, then looks a him very seriously. "I will come and see you again, but I need to talk to her."

She can feel his sad, soft smile. "I figured you would."

"Do you know where she is?"

He nods and moves past her, through his wards to the outside. She follows, and he puts an incorporeal hand on her shoulder and points to the sky. "See that little moon? It's fake. It's the base for her secret society."

She closes her eyes and reaches her senses out in that direction and, yes, there she is. She can feel her soul. She opens them and looks over at her dad. "I love you."

He does the motion to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, but it does nothing. "I love you too, and I'll see you again soon."

"Of course."

She tears another rift, focusing on Lucretia's energy this time. She steps through to an office, and in a fancy plush chair, she can see her best friend and sister. She was going to approach her calmly, but all her emotions bubble over and- "LUCRETIA."

She jumps out of her chair and whirls around to face her. The spell on her hand dies when she sees her and her jaw drops. "Lilli- where have you been?"

"We'll get to my mistakes here in a second, what the fuck did you do? Why did I have to talk to my dad in a cave about how you-" she cuts herself off. She blinks. "Why are you old?" Ten years shouldn't have aged her that much.

She shrinks in on herself a touch. "Do you want some tea? We can talk."

A few minutes later, they're sitting across from each other, warm mugs in hand, the expanse of Lucretia's desk and all their mistakes separating them.

Lucretia breaks the silence first, "how do you remember?"

"I'm dead, Luce."

She inhales sharply. "When?"

“Before... whatever this is. We were stupid. Let our guards down."

Her eyes cast downward. "And Lup?"

"Also dead, but after that I have no idea. She's not in the Astral plane. I thought she'd be with dad but she's not."

"Taako has her umbrella."

"Good."

The silence stretches between them.

"The Hunger's coming," Lucretia says.

"When?"

"The scouts showed up last midsummer."

"You're going to sever the bonds of this world. It'll kill it."

"I have to try."

They go silent again. It's terrible. They used to talk late into the night, giggling between themselves until they passed out. They could tell each other everything. But now Lucretia's 50 and she's 20 and there's ten years of death and loneliness and mistakes separating them.

Lilli sets her mug down, barely touched, and pushes herself up. "I should go."

"So soon?"

She avoids looking at her. "I just wanted you to see that I'm okay. You probably have shit to do."

She tears open a rift and is about to step through when, "Lilli?" She looks at Lucretia, who's stood up now. "I'm sorry."

She nods. "Me too. But I'm not the one of the ones you need to apologise to."

Then she steps through the rift back to the Astral plane, leaving Lucretia to her plan.