Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sam Manson was only fourteen years old when her world shattered.

She’s fourteen, her life has changed before, the world has changed before, but nothing has left Her this empty and cold.

She will remember the moment she found out for the rest of her life: the sterile buzz of her phone against her palm, the way Tucker’s voice cracked on the other end, the silence after the words ‘Danny’s gone.’ Even the world seemed to hold its breath, traffic stilled, birds quieted, the hum of the fridge was too loud in the kitchen. It was an ordinary afternoon, and yet nothing would ever be ordinary again. And now here she was, looking at her best friend’s body, pale and still, dressed in a suit that he would never have worn in life, lying in his coffin.

She sat stiffly in the front row of the chapel. Her fingernails dug crescent moons into her black dress as someone speaks at the podium. She had painted them black just a few days ago. Danny had teased her about the color, asking why she didn’t branch out, maybe try some shades of grey, or, if she was really feeling adventurous, even purple. Now the polish was chipping.

The words of the speaker washed over her, “tragic accident,” “too young,” “bright future,” “dearly missed,” but they felt like hollow echoes in a room that couldn’t contain the weight of her grief. She felt like she was choking on it as it pushed its way up her throat; tears that wouldn’t come as her heart raced and her breaths shortened. Her pulse pounded in her ears, drowning out the murmurs of the crowd around her. She feels like she’s suffocating; as the crowd pushed in, her chest tightens.

The room smelled of lilies and candle wax, but Sam could’ve sworn she smelled ozone and smoke, like the aftermath of a raid when the streets burned. The scrape of chairs, the drone of voices, the murmur of grief. It all felt wrong, muted, like she was watching someone else’s funeral. Like maybe she’d wake up tomorrow and Danny would still be there, smirking at her over lunch.

She doesn’t look at the speaker. She doesn’t look at Jazz, trembling silently beside her. She doesn’t even look at Danny’s parents, who sit stone-faced, as though grief itself has scorched them hollow.

All Sam could see was the coffin at the front of the chapel.

Danny Fenton wasn’t the first fatality in the war against the Ghost Zone, and he wouldn’t be the last. But he was Sam’s best friend. He was only fourteen.

The last time Sam had seen him, they were getting lunch at Nasty Burger. He was so bright and cheerful despite the growing darkness of the war. He spent the whole time gushing about some new satellite that was launched toward Jupiter to study its moons and would arrive in five years. He was looking toward the future, and now it would never come.

Everyone knew what had happened. A ghost had broken into the FentonWorks lab, and Danny had been caught in the crossfire when one of their ecto-weapons overloaded.

The lab breach wasn’t random. Pariah’s forces have been targeting ghost-tech research. It wasn’t just an accident; it was murder. The body in the coffin was proof enough. The town mourned, the Fentons seethed, and Sam believed every word. She needed to. She needed to believe it was murder. Because if it wasn’t, if it was chance, then the world was crueler than she could stand. Ghosts had taken him, and someday, they would pay.

Sam glanced up at the funeral crowd.

Uniformed soldiers lined the chapel walls, guns crossed over their chests, braced for an attack. They needed to stay guarded even in this time of grief. Sam hated it. The war took Danny away. The war was pain and suffering, and Sam needed to scream.

Townsfolk Sam doesn’t even know, crowd into the small space, eager to pay their respects to the fallen son of the town’s top ecto-biologists. But none of them knew Danny, really knew him. Sam caught whispers from the crowd, “Poor kid,” “Another casualty of the war,” “Can you believe it? The Fentons’ own kid?” It’s all a farce. Sam hated the way they said his name, like a headline or a warning label. None of them knew him; they didn’t know the way he laughed when Tucker burned toast, or the way he hummed under his breath when he worked on homework. She wanted to cry and rage, to make them understand! Danny’s dead, he’s gone, and he’s not coming back!

None of them, none of them understands what they’ve lost. Sam dug her nails into her palms, hard enough to leave crescent moons in her skin. They called him a “fallen soldier,” a “casualty of war.” As if Danny had been drafted, as if he’d chosen any of this. He wasn’t a soldier. He was a kid who just wanted to help. And they killed him.

Dash, Paulina, and the other A-listers sat a few rows back. Sam is shocked to see Paulina actually crying; she didn’t think she cared. Just a few seats away sits Mr. Lancer. He dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief, muttering under his breath, “The Dark Interval indeed.” It seems even the grief of losing a student can’t shake his habit of cursing in book titles.

Jazz looked dazed as she stood and walked to the podium to give the eulogy, like the fact that Danny’s gone hasn’t clicked yet. Jazz’s eyes glistened, but she didn't cry. Sam almost envied that blankness, the way shock shielded her from the truth. Sam doesn’t have that luxury.

Jazz talked about her brother, his deep love of the stars, - Sam remembered lying on FentonWorks’ roof with Danny and Tucker, Danny pointing out Orion’s belt with sticky fingers from melted popsicles - his desire to become an astronaut and go to space some day, and overall, overshadowing everything, the tragedy of such a bright life cut so short.

“My brother was brave.” Jazz’s voice was steady, even though Sam could see the way her knuckles whitened where she gripped the podium. “Braver than most adults I know. He wanted to help people, no matter how afraid he was. And I . . . I hope the world remembers him that way.”

Sam sat stiff in the pew, listening but not hearing. The word brave thudded in her chest, meaningless against the roar in her head. She hated the coffin sitting at the front of the room, too small, too final, too wrong. Bravery didn’t save him; bravery doesn't matter when you’re dead. Sam couldn’t stop the thought looping in her head: It should’ve been me. I should’ve been there. I should have saved him. The weight of the coffin pressed down on her chest like stone, and she couldn’t breathe. She wanted to throw herself across it, pry it open, tell him to get up.

Sam remembered being here, in the chapel, just a few years ago, when they were in elementary school. Danny’s mom had suggested he join in the local nativity play to gain some Christmas spirit. Even back then, Danny hated Christmas, but his mom insisted.

Sam and Tucker teased him ruthlessly until Danny let it slip to their parents, and suddenly the nativity play was a group activity. They all auditioned together and got the role of the sheep (they didn’t try very hard). Even though their roles were super small, Sam recalls Jazz standing up and cheering for her brother at the end, and Danny’s bashful smile.

They used to be so happy.

Tucker is curled up in his chair in the front row. He hasn’t moved since the funeral started, when Danny’s casket was carried down the aisle. She thought about reaching for his hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch another person right now, not when she felt like she could crumble any moment. Tears streamed down Tucker’s face, and the knees of his pants were wet. She wished she could cry.

God, she wished she could cry! Then at least she could feel something other than the aching hollow chill in her chest.

Once the service is over, the crowd spilled outside into the grey afternoon, a sea of black clothes dotted with Fenton green “Ghost Free World” pins. The soldiers carried Danny’s coffin on their shoulders to the graveside. Sam shivered as an otherworldly wind cuts through the mourners. It felt like the chill ghosts leave behind, bone-deep and haunting. The breath of the crowd misted in the air as people glanced around worriedly, even now bracing for an attack.

Sam stood shoulder to shoulder with Tucker, both of them silent as the coffin was lowered. Jazz stepped forward again, trying to speak, but the words were devoured by the low, grinding hum overhead.

Military aircraft, blotting out the sky. Anti-ghost patrols.

The engines howled, and Sam thought bitterly that even the sky didn’t care enough to let Jazz say goodbye. Even here, the war barged in, louder than grief, louder than memory. War clawed at the edges of the funeral. The soldiers in their stiff uniforms, the sound of jets overhead, the whispered prayers for protection from Pariah Dark. Grief didn’t matter anymore, not when the whole world was counting bodies and drawing lines in the sand. And Danny had just been another name added to the list.

Danny’s parents, the Fentons, stood off to the side. Jack has his arms wrapped around his middle and is shaking silently, eyes dry. He clutched one of Danny’s model rockets in his hand like he’s afraid that it might vanish. Maddie was stone-faced and silent, gazing off into the slight green haze that surrounds Amity with a murderous expression on her face.

Sam follows Maddie’s sight line over the horizon into the green haze.

The green didn’t used to be there. Amity used to have blue skies, but seven years ago, that changed.

The tears in reality started like hairline cracks in glass, barely there, only visible when the light hit just right. By the time Sam was starting second grade, they were everywhere. At first, it was small things, bugs with glowing eyes, tiny rodents scampering across playgrounds. People joked about “ghost bugs” on the news; kids traded stories about tiny glowing mice scurrying across the playground. Strange, but almost magical.

Sam remembers one summer afternoon when Danny caught a flickering dragonfly in his cupped hands, its wings glowing an eerie teal. He grinned, eyes wide with wonder, and Tucker took a picture on his PDA like it was the coolest thing they’d ever seen. That picture still hangs in Sam’s room. A grainy image of the three of them with a glowing speck cupped in Danny’s hands.

Fenton Thermoses became commonplace, and life went on. Back then, Sam hadn’t hated the ghosts. She’d even argued that they were just creatures displaced from their home.

When she was seven, she remembers finding a little glowing green rabbit in the Amity Park Park. It hopped around the park and nosed at the flowers that were beginning to peek up through the grass. Its nose twitched, and Sam couldn’t help but smile. It was so small and innocent-looking. She immediately fell in love.

She had heard her parents and people around town discussing ghosts, talking about how they were pests and evil, but what did they really know? she reasoned with her naive seven-year-old logic. After all, this bunny didn’t look like it could do any harm.

When she had picked it up, the soft fur brushed against her arms, gentle as a cool spring breeze. She brought the ghost home that evening and did her best to care for it in secret for a while. She’d whispered to it like it could understand, promising it was safe now. Promises she couldn’t keep.

Eventually, her parents found out. They yelled at her for bringing “such a dangerous creature” into their home, and Sam yelled right back. It was just a bunny, it wasn’t hurting anything! Plus, it was just a creature displaced from its home! Can you imagine how scared and helpless it must feel? She was just trying her best to help it adjust to the Living Plane.

But she was only seven, and in an instant, her parents whipped out the Fenton thermos, and the rabbit was gone. The whoosh and steadfast click of the thermos shook Sam to the bones. She had refused to go to Danny's house, to be surrounded by his parents’ inventions, for months.

Sam had been devastated; she thought it was an innocent life lost. She didn’t think that way anymore.

As the years went on, the cracks spread, and what came through stopped being harmless. Wolves with transparent hides and flaming fur stalked the alleys. Bears that could walk through walls appeared in grocery store parking lots. By the time Sam was eight, the ghosts weren’t oddities anymore; they were threats. And then came the first real nightmare: a night when the sky itself split open like a paper bag, bleeding green fire.

They were only kids when the war began. Sam can still feel that moment etched in her chest, the first wail of the siren, high and shrill, cutting through her elementary school hallway. Teachers dropped everything, faces drained of color, herding children toward underground shelters. Sam’s heart had slammed against her ribs as she clutched her lunchbox, Tucker shaking beside her. Danny was the calmest of the three, or at least he pretended to be. “It’s fine,” he had whispered, grabbing her hand, his palm warm and sweaty. “It’s just practice.” He was lying. They all knew it.

That night, whole city blocks vanished. Smoke choked the streets, and Sam remembers standing at her window, watching the orange glow on the horizon while her parents argued about whether to leave. That was the first time she heard the name whispered: Pariah Dark.

Even as a child, Sam understood the weight behind those two words. People spoke them like a curse. Reporters kept their voices low, like saying it too loud would draw his attention. He wasn’t just a ghost; he was the ghost, the king of the dead, the shadow behind every attack. Rumors painted him as unstoppable, an ancient power who could rip the sky open with a thought.

Sam remembers Jazz once telling them a bedtime story, meant to be silly, about a king who ruled the underworld. It made Tucker laugh. It made Sam uneasy. Now, years later, she realizes Jazz had been trying to make sense of the same fear everyone carried: that Pariah Dark was watching, always watching.

The world scrambled to fight back. Governments pooled resources, formed the Ghost Investigation Ward, the GIW: a patchwork attempt to understand what they were facing. They studied ghosts, tore apart stolen tech, and armed soldiers with Fenton inventions: thermoses that clicked shut like coffins, rifles that hummed with ectoplasmic energy.

Amity Park became the fault line, the weak seam between worlds, and the epicenter of the war. The Fenton Ghost Shield kept the worst of it out, but nothing was foolproof. Battles raged just beyond city limits. Sam remembers seeing soldiers march past her school, rows of green and gray uniforms, rifles gleaming. Some never came back. Entire battalions vanished in the infamous Dead March at Amity Hill. The next morning, a black banner stitched with a flaming green crown hung over the ruins. They said Pariah Dark’s army put it there, a message to anyone who thought they could win. Soldiers still whisper about that night, the horrors they witnessed beyond number. Allies caught in the burning green flame who went mad and turned on each other, souls freed from the body with the touch of a blade, terror after terror introduced to the battlefield.

The sirens became part of life. By the time they were ten, Sam and her friends had the routine memorized: grab your bag, find the nearest shelter, wait. Danny would always crack a joke - something about ghost-proof juice boxes - to make Tucker laugh. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. When the doors finally opened again, the city outside was different. Streets smelled of ozone and burning ectoplasm. Sometimes a lamppost was gone. Sometimes a house. A few times, entire blocks.

After a while, no one talked about it. There was nothing to say. The silence after each attack was heavier than the siren itself, like the whole city was holding its breath. It became Sam’s new normal. The world was tearing at the seams, and fear was a constant hum under her skin. And through it all, Pariah Dark’s shadow stretched longer, darker, a quiet promise that things would only get worse.

The war had been going on for seven years now, and humanity was losing. Badly. And now, with Danny gone, Sam wasn’t sure if there was anything left worth saving.

Sam was snapped back to the present by the dull thud of dirt hitting the lid of the coffin.

Thud. Thud. Thud. It sounded like death. Like marching boots and falling bombs. Each sound landed like a fist to her gut; she flinched but didn’t move.

Her friend was gone. Gone and buried. Danny won’t be coming back. Never again will they hole up with Tucker during a ghost raid in his parents’ ghost shelter; Tucker cracking jokes and arguing with Sam about veganism while Danny mediates. No more late-night stargazing when the smoke clears. No more horror movie nights with just the three of them. There is no more “three of them,” there’s just her and Tucker.

Beside her, Tucker sniffled. His sobbing had lessened to hiccoughing gasps. Maybe he’d just run out of tears. He mumbled Danny’s name between shovelfuls of dirt, as if the mantra could bring him back from the dead. His hand twitched like he wanted to reach for hers, but neither of them could bridge the gap. Not yet.

As the final shovelful of earth thudded onto the grave, the mourners fell silent. Maddie Fenton stepped forward, her face a mask of steel, though her gloved hands trembled at her sides. The wind caught at her auburn hair, but she didn’t flinch. Her voice carried, steady but sharp, cutting through the quiet like a blade.

“This is not the end,” she said. “Pariah Dark and every specter that follows him will answer for this. For every life stolen. For every name carved into a headstone. We will make them pay.”

She didn’t shout, but the promise in her tone made Sam’s stomach tighten. It wasn’t just grief; it was fury tempered by brilliance, the sound of a genius calculating revenge. Maddie had always been the mind behind the Fenton arsenal; now, she sounded like a general.

When she turned toward Jack, the steel cracked. Her shoulders hunched as though the weight of the grave pulled her down. Jack met her halfway, catching her in arms that had always seemed too big for delicate things. Today, though, he held her as if she might break. His tears were unhidden, slipping down his cheeks, rough and unashamed.

Sam watched them fold into each other - grief and love tangled together - and felt a strange ache in her chest. Maddie’s words echoed in her ears, heavy with a promise that reached beyond the grave.

A few people clutched at each other, fists trembling, as if Maddie’s words had lit something inside them that had been smoldering. Mothers pressed children to their sides, and veterans straightened in their uniforms, the weight of years and loss pulling at their shoulders.

Sam’s stomach twisted. She wanted to scream, to echo Maddie’s promise, to hurl every ounce of rage she felt into the empty air. Her fingers dug into the grass, and her nails bit into her palms. Tucker exhaled shakily beside her, eyes wide and unblinking, still trying to hold himself together.

Some began murmuring prayers, quiet and hesitant. Others shouted names, not just Danny’s, names of those lost in the seven years of war. The chapel’s order and control had fallen away; for a moment, everyone was raw, human, untamed by ceremony.

Sam’s eyes swept the crowd, seeing people she didn’t know, faces twisted with grief, some angry, some stunned. And in every pair of eyes, she saw the same thing she felt: loss, helplessness, and a need for justice.

And as the crowd began to drift, Sam found herself staring at the headstone, at the fresh soil that still smelled of rain and iron. Life felt smaller without him. The fight larger.

She thought of the ghosts and the banners and the blood, and for the first time, the idea of losing didn’t feel possible. Not now.

Sam’s knees ached from the hard ground as she kneeled by her best friend’s grave, and her hands were raw from gripping the grass, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t. The coffin, the dirt, the wind - it all felt like a punishment, a weight she couldn’t shake. Every breath she took burned, hot and metallic in her lungs, and she hated herself for wanting to run, to leave, to escape the scene of a world that had finally broken her.

Tucker’s shoulders shook beside her, silent gasps punctuating the quiet hum of the cemetery. Sam wanted to reach over, to wrap him in a hug, to share the impossible load of grief, but she couldn’t. How could she touch someone else when she felt like she was splitting open from the inside out? Her fingers twitched, itching to do something, anything, besides sit still. She felt the need to scream Danny’s name, throw herself into the cold earth, claw at the dirt with hands stained green and brown, just to feel something real again.

Her eyes flicked to the fresh mound of soil. The world had buried him neatly, with rituals and solemnity, as if those things would soften the blow of his loss. But the grass would grow, the dirt would settle, and no ceremony could undo the absence. Sam imagined Danny’s fingers brushing against her arm one last time, his voice teasing and warm, asking about the latest ghost sighting or her latest social crusade. She could almost hear it, but the memory was too sharp, stabbing like ice.

She remembered Danny’s smile, the one he gave when he thought nobody was looking. How it reached his eyes, bright and fleeting, and made everything feel safer, lighter. She remembered the tiny hand he had pressed to hers during the first real ghost attack she had survived, how solid it had felt, like an anchor in chaos. And now? Now, that hand would never grip hers again. That smile would never flicker across his face.

Tucker’s voice broke her reverie. “Sam . . .” He didn’t finish. He couldn’t. His chest heaved as he stared at the grave, the words swallowed by the wind. Sam wanted to curl into him, to share in the silence, but instead she just let the hollow ache sit in her chest, a cold, stubborn companion.

Around them, the crowd was thinning. Soldiers saluted, townsfolk whispered prayers, and yet Sam felt isolated in a bubble of grief, untouched by the formalities of mourning. She could see Maddie and Jack retreating toward FentonWorks, Maddie’s face still hard as stone, Jack’s hands never leaving hers. She wished she could step into that bubble of strength, to lean on someone, anyone. But she couldn’t. She had to endure this alone.

The breeze shifted, carrying a faint metallic scent that reminded Sam of the lab, of burned circuits, of Danny’s endless tinkering. It made her stomach twist. She thought of the day Danny had tried to teach her how to solder, how he laughed when she nearly burned herself, how Tucker had cheered her on like she had just won a medal. Those moments felt like light against the shadow now, unreachable and cruelly distant.

Her fingers found the edges of her sleeves, twisting the fabric until it creased beneath her nails. She closed her eyes and let herself remember the quiet nights on the FentonWorks roof, when the city hummed below and Danny traced imaginary constellations with his finger. He had always known the patterns, always believed there was order to the chaos. Now, she couldn’t find any. Stars hid behind the haze, ghosts prowled freely, and the boy who once promised to make everything brighter was gone.

By the time the last car pulled away, only she and Tucker remained. Neither spoke; words felt like intruders here. They sat side by side on the damp grass, backs pressed to the cold stone. The evening crept in quietly, painting the cemetery in blue shadows.

When the sun finally slipped below the horizon, Sam tilted her head back, expecting the comfort of familiar constellations. Instead, the sky was murky, choked with ecto-haze, a sickly green-gray veil that swallowed the stars. It was like the world itself refused to shine.

Her throat tightened. Danny loved the stars. He used to trace them with his finger, pointing out patterns only he seemed to see. Without them, the night felt empty. Wrong.

She imagined the stars hidden behind the haze, cold and distant. If they can see her, she hopes they burn bright enough to witness what comes next. Sam clenched her fists in the grass. “I know you’re there,” she whispered to the hidden sky. “I don’t care if I can’t see you. You’re watching. You have to be.”

Tucker glanced at her but didn’t interrupt.

She stood, wiping her hands on her jeans, and raised her chin. “I swear to you,” she said, voice low but sharp, the kind of promise that carves itself into bone. “They will pay. Every single one. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make sure they regret ever touching him.”

The haze didn’t clear. The stars stayed hidden. But in the stillness, it almost felt like someone was listening.

Chapter Text

Three weeks had passed since the Fentons buried their son, and the world was still at war with the Ghost Zone. Amity Park hadn’t healed; it had hardened.

The posters had gone up overnight; ghosts, sketched in harsh black ink, leered from every wall. “REPORT SIGHTINGS. TRUST NO ONE.” The ghosts on the posters look beastly, inhuman. Even in daylight, the streets of Amity Park felt hollow and dark; shadows seemed to stretch longer than they should, as if the ink from the posters had bled into the streets themselves. The silence between passing patrols was louder than any alarm.

In the cold air, people’s breath misted, tinged a faint green by the ectoplasmic haze. It lingered and caught on skin and in throats until each breath felt like wasting borrowed time. The sound of patrols echoed in the distance. The buzzing hum of their vehicles pounded in time with Tucker’s pulse as ecto-sensor lights flashed in the distance.

The walk to school felt longer now, each step heavier without Danny. They used to race and laugh the whole way; now the streets were silent.

People hurried past, heads down, as if speed alone could keep them safe from a ghost attack.

At Casper High’s gates, students shuffled past a wall of soldiers, one by one. Each student was scanned with an ecto-detection wand; anyone showing high contamination or signs of possession wouldn’t make it inside.

Tucker slipped to the back of the line, eyes down, fingers tightening on his backpack strap. He’d avoided school as long as he could, but his “excused absences due to grief” had run out. The whispers, the fear, his friend’s death being used as a rallying cry - it was all too much.

In front of him, the wand beeped, sharp and shrill. Star froze, eyes wide, before soldiers seized her by the arms. She screamed, insisting she wasn’t possessed, that it was a mistake.

No one moved. A couple of kids winced, one boy shifted his backpack higher on his shoulder, but the line kept shuffling forward. Heads ducked, eyes slid away. They’d all seen this before, or something like it. Better to keep quiet. Better to keep walking.

Tucker’s stomach twisted. He ducked his head too, pretending not to see.

The wand swept over him. A flash of green, then a soldier’s rough hand shoved him through the gates.

Soldiers line the front steps. Inside, reminders about the new curfew and warnings about recently spotted ghosts are plastered all over the walls.

The halls buzzed, lockers slamming, voices echoing, but Tucker felt cut off from it all. The crowded hallways blurred around him as he fiddled with the PDA, flipping it open and closed, scrolling through files that didn’t matter, pressing buttons that didn’t do anything. Anything to keep his hands busy, anything to keep his mind from spiraling.

Nothing felt normal anymore. No Doomed. No tinkering with his PDA. No meat debates with Sam. No quiet side glances, no whispered jokes across the lunch table. Danny had been the glue holding it all together, and now every small thing felt untethered.

A laugh rang out: bright, sharp, familiar. Tucker whipped his head around, heart jumping. Danny? Blue eyes sparkling, grin wide?

No. Just a freshman, blond hair, brown eyes. The laugh had the same pitch, the same carefree energy, but it was all wrong. Tucker’s chest tightened, hope twisting into a sudden ache. Even that small, fleeting thought of Danny - of seeing him just for a second - had been cruelly stolen.

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and turned back to the blur of students, lockers, and announcements, everything moving too fast, too loud, too normal. And yet nothing was normal anymore.

As he wandered, not really seeing, Tucker collided with someone. Dash turned, snarled, and Tucker flinched. He didn’t have the energy for this today. But Dash only sighed and shoved him aside, almost gently, as if even Dash didn’t have the heart to keep old habits alive.

Well. Tucker’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth - whatever that meant.

He continued to drift down the hall. His eyes wandered, catching on random details: Paulina touching up her lipstick, Valerie tying her shoelace, Kwan putting up a poster. Tucker froze.

It’s a memorial poster. Danny’s school photo stared back at him ‘In Loving Memory. Honor the Fallen.’ Danny had hated that picture. The eyes seemed to follow him as Tucker rushed down the hall, flat and printed, but catching the green tint of the hall lights in a way that made them seem alive.

Tucker arrived to class ten minutes late. Normally, Mr. Lancer would glare, yell, or hand out detention. But today he only looked at Tucker with a sad, almost helpless, expression.

He would rather have been yelled at.

Tucker spent the rest of class staring down at the screen of his PDA. Just needing a distraction, a distraction that school can’t provide. He needed something, anything, to keep from looking over at the empty, cold seat next to him. If he looked, the grief would hit again, and he couldn’t handle that.

He didn't get scolded once.

At lunch, he sat at their usual table. It felt so much larger now, without their third - actually, without Sam either. Where was she?

Tucker glanced around. He couldn’t find her, until the commotion drew his eyes.

Sam stood by the corkboard, the one that had been reduced, for months, to war notices and safety warnings. Kwan stood beside her, cowed and looking at the floor, while Sam raked him with a furious stare, a crumpled flier clenched in her fist.

“You don’t get to ‘honor his memory’!” Sam shouted. “You didn’t know him! You and all your buddies - you bully him one day and then act all grief-stricken the next!” She flung the flier to the floor and stomped it flat with her platforms, then stormed away from the small crowd.

For a heartbeat, there was silence. A few students shifted their weight, eyes darting between the fallen flyer and the space Sam had vacated. One whispered something quickly to a friend, who smirked awkwardly and looked away. A couple of younger students shuffled backward, pretending to tie their shoes or check their lockers, hoping no one would notice they had seen the confrontation.

Tucker flinched. It was one of the memorial posters, like the one he’d seen Kwan put up earlier. The whispers, the half-smiles, the avoidance, it all hit him like a cold weight. Even grief, here, had rules, and most people followed them blindly, or wore them like a mask.

When Sam stalked over, Tucker forced a small, tight smile, something like solidarity. He didn’t want to see Danny’s bullies fake their grief, either. She snorted, spared him a brief look, and kept walking; she didn’t sit with him.

After picking at his lunch, he headed back to class. The rest of the day rushes by, teachers mumble and students whisper, and Tucker registers none of it.

At day’s end, he shouldered his backpack, his eyes stuck on Danny’s empty seat. He moved in a daze and was funneled out the doors as soldiers swept the school, making sure everyone was headed home before curfew.

He walked home, dragging his feet. If going to school was unbearable, home was worse. At home, there was nothing to distract him, no chatter, no rush of other students. His silence was broken by a crash, a flash of sickly green light overhead, and distant sirens.

Tucker glanced up, sighed, and kept walking. The pervasive chill that had settled over Amity since Danny’s death made him shiver. The cold clung to his skin and made his teeth ache.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

After walking back from school, Jazz slowly opened the door to her home. She peeked around the corner, sighed when she didn’t see her parents, and stepped fully inside.

They’d been a bit manic since the funeral. Checking her over for ecto-contamination, any chance they got, and when they weren’t half convinced that she’s a ghost in disguise, they insisted on showing her their new anti-ghost inventions, each more brutal than the last.

Jazz remembered coming home the evening after Danny died . . . She could still see his little sneakers by the doorway, untouched. The image made her throat tighten, and she had to press her hands to the counter to keep from breaking down. She had found her parents down in the lab, scrubbing green splatters off the floor. They looked like blood. Her dad was sobbing; Maddie had been blank-faced and furious. She ran her scrub brush over the floor and walls with a sharp, staccato rhythm. The toxic green streaks that stuck to the walls glimmered faintly, almost like they didn’t belong to this world at all.

Jazz had asked what happened, and it was like they couldn’t hear her. They just kept cleaning. Jazz kept asking. “What happened?” “Where did this mess and all the shattered glass come from?” “Where’s Danny?”

Her mom had started scrubbing faster after that question.

“Mom?” she’d asked hesitantly.

Maddie had looked up from the ground. “He’s . . . “ She choked out. “Your brother . . . The ghosts got him. He’s gone.”

Jazz shook herself out of the memory. She didn’t need to dwell on that right now. Right now, there were things to be done.

Lately, Jazz’s parents had been even more forgetful than usual. They forgot to eat for days at a time, instead staying locked down in their lab. The bills weren’t getting paid, the house wasn’t getting cleaned. So, Jazz took over.

She would be the perfect daughter. Her parents wouldn’t have to worry about her. She cleaned the house. She avoided Danny’s room; it was too empty, too neat, too unchanged. She blasted music in her headphones to make the house feel less empty and quiet. Less like she was now an only child.

After cleaning up, Jazz made dinner. She had to fend for herself and for Danny for a while now, her parents too caught up in their research and the war effort. So, she was a pretty decent cook, or at least a passable one. She could make fantastic chicken nuggets, and pasta was her signature dish.

Tonight was a pasta night, and Jazz made enough for three (just three). She plated it up and carried two downstairs to the lab. Her parents are hunched over their tables, tinkering with high-powered rifles and ecto-bombs. They didn’t notice her when she came in.

She cleared her throat, and Jack jumped. His hands spasmed, and the gun he was working on shot off a bolt of green energy that hit the wall with a sizzle and left a massive charred spot. Jazz flinched at the sound.

Her parents both looked up at her and smiled when she gestured to their plates of food. Jazz forced a polite smile back, but her stomach twisted. They hadn’t noticed her efforts, hadn’t noticed anything, and part of her wanted to yell, to dump the plates on the floor and storm out. She swallowed the urge with bile in her throat. They stood up, took their plates, and smiled at her as they set them down on their workbenches.

“Thank you for the dinner, sweetie,” her mom said, “I’m sure it’s delicious. Your father and I are so excited to try it, and we’ll get to it as soon as we finish these last few tweaks!”

“Just these last few tweaks, honey!” her father boomed from across the room.

Jazz nodded and sighed to herself; they’ve been saying the same thing for the last few days, and the last few days, whenever she comes by, she’ll inevitably end up taking their only half-eaten meals back up to the kitchen. She scooped up their still-full plates from the day before and headed back upstairs.

Jazz ate her dinner by herself (no annoying little brother to bother her) and did some research on her computer.

While she may have been a bit ambivalent to the war before, now that the war had taken Danny, her little sibling, hers to protect, away from her, and she would no longer sit by.

She fell into rabbit hole after rabbit hole. She plotted instances of recent ghost activity and tracked them on a map, hoping to see a pattern somewhere. Some way to make sense of Danny’s death. There had to be a reason for it all.

It was around midnight when she sat back, the blue glow of the screen lighting her face as she stared at the map in front of her.

Well, she doesn’t know why it’s happening, but Pariah Dark was definitely getting closer.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Sam kicked at a loose pebble as she stalked down the empty street, the sound echoing louder than it should have in a town that used to buzz with life. Curfew signs glared at her from every lamppost, bright red warnings about ghost attacks, about staying inside, about safety that didn’t really exist anymore. She shoved her hands deeper into her jacket pockets, jaw tight. Everyone else was content to grieve quietly, but Sam’s anger wouldn’t let her sit still. Not when posters with Danny’s parents’ faces stared down at her, promising protection they hadn’t been able to give.

“Thought I’d find you out here,” came Tucker’s voice, warm and tired all at once. He jogged up beside her, his breath fogging in the cold night air, and for a moment she didn’t meet his eyes. He didn’t press, just fell into step with her, hands shoved into his own hoodie pocket. They didn’t need words yet. The silence between them carried enough weight.

Sam kept her gaze fixed ahead, shoulders tight enough to ache. The sidewalk blurred under her boots, each scuff of the concrete sounding too loud in the stillness. “It feels wrong,” she said finally, her voice sharper than she intended. “Everyone’s acting like this is just . . . another sad story. Like he was just some kid who got caught in the crossfire.”

Tucker’s jaw tightened. “He wasn’t just some kid.”

“No,” Sam said, hands curling into fists in her pockets. “He deserved better than this. Better than whispers and pitying looks and a painted-on calm- ” Her voice broke off, thin and sharp.

Tucker didn’t say anything for a moment, just let the silence sit heavy between them. The wind tugged at his jacket, carrying with it the distant hum of cars and the faint scent of drying flowers. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, but hard. “They’ll never get it. They didn’t know him like we did.”

Sam’s throat tightened. “They didn’t see him when he -” She cut herself off, biting down on the memory of his grin, the way he’d light up when he got something right, even if it was something stupid like a pop quiz or a bad joke. “He was more than this.”

Tucker pushed his glasses up, blinking hard. “Yeah. More than some headline.”

For a moment, they just walked, their footsteps syncing without trying. Sam hated the weight in her chest, hated that she couldn’t shake the image of the casket, hated the neatness of it all. “You know what gets me?” she said, sharper now. “People talk about him like he was fragile. Like he didn’t matter. Like he didn’t try. He might not have been some big hero, but he -”

“He mattered to us,” Tucker finished.

“Yeah.” Her voice cracked. “Yeah, he did.”

They stopped at the corner, the light changing from red to green and back again, while they didn’t move. The silence stretched around them. The world kept going, and Sam wanted to scream at it for not stopping, for not caring.

Tucker glanced sideways at her and fiddled with his PDA. “He hated that suit, you know. The one they made him wear for photos, the one from the funeral. Said it made him feel like a mannequin.”

Sam let out a breath that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. “Of course he did.”

“He was awkward,” Tucker said, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “But he was ours.”

“Exactly.” Sam looked down at her boots. “He wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t - he wasn’t strong. But he was brave in his own way. He showed up. Even when people made his life hell.”

“Especially then,” Tucker added quietly.

Something loosened in her chest, just a fraction, hearing it said out loud. “Do you think,” she started, hesitated, “do you think people ever really knew him? I mean, really knew him?”

Tucker shook his head. “Not like we did. And that’s what makes this so much worse.”

The words sank between them, heavy but true. They stood there a moment longer, the hum of the traffic and the echo of memories filling the space. Sam thought about the lunch table where they’d sat together, Danny’s stubborn cowlick, the way he’d try to hide his shaking hands after a bad day. None of it belonged in a casket.

“We can’t let them forget him,” Tucker said finally.

Sam’s head snapped up. “What?”

“I’m serious. If they want to treat him like a footnote, fine. But not us. We tell the stories. We keep him here.”

Sam swallowed hard. “You really think that’s enough?”

“No,” Tucker admitted. “But it’s something.”

And for the first time all day, Sam’s hands relaxed in her pockets.

They walked down the street in silence for a while until Tucker let out a quiet snort, muffled like he was trying to swallow it down. Sam’s head snapped toward him, frowning through blurred vision. “What?” she asked, her voice raw.

He shook his head quickly, shoulders hitching as if denying it would make the sound disappear. But another snort escaped, louder this time, and then he was chuckling, helpless, awkward, like the laugh had slipped out without his permission.

“He - he would’ve hated this, “Tucker wheezed between gasps of laughter. “His name being used to build up the fear of the war, and all the new ‘safety’ measures being put in at school. All he wanted was to have a good time. To go to the movies after school, or to play Doomed all weekend.”

Tucker broke down with more wheezing laughter. Sam just stared. He was broken. Her friend had cracked.

“He would’ve loved the fame, or well, not the fame, exactly - just being seen for once.” Tucker managed to get out. Her chest twisted, was he really laughing? But the more he wheezed, the more the corner of her own mouth betrayed her. And then, like water pouring from a broken dam, she burst out laughing.

Not her usual contained, haughty snort either, but full belly laughter. The kind that had tears streaming down her face, leaving trails of eyeliner in her white foundation.

She and Tucker gasped and hiccuped and giggled, leaning on each other. Eventually, the laughter turned to sobs, and with a start, Sam realized that it was the first time she’d cried since Danny’s death. She’d been too focused on her simmering anger, boiling just under her skin. Crying felt like a relief. Like a pressure valve that’d been opened, letting out the pressure of her grief.

“I - I miss him,” Tucker whispered into the crook of her shoulder, like he’s voicing a terrible confession.

With her head leaning on his red cap, Sam croaked, “I do too.”

Silence enveloped them.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Danny drifted in a place that wasn’t the sky, wasn’t the ground, but something vast and humming in between. The Ghost Zone felt alive in a way the living world never had. Threads of light twisting through green haze, shadows shifting with the weight of unseen eyes.

Craggy purple islands floated in the distance, defying physics in a way that messed with Danny’s mind. Portals, doorways, and cracks in the haze flared and vanished, faster than eyes could track.

His breath caught, or tried to. He twitched for a heartbeat he no longer had, his chest refusing to rise and fall. The realization pressed cold against him: he was dead. Actually, really, fully dead.

The currents of the Zone drifted around him, and he could feel his body (his ghost body?) move with them. He could feel the zone, almost like it was part of him, or he was a part of it. The shadows shifted with him, slow and deliberate, as though they weren’t following the currents but his heartbeat- except he didn’t have one anymore.

Danny’s jaw tightened. He couldn’t just float here. He could feel that fact in his bones, or whatever passed for bones now.

“But how does someone move,” he muttered, glancing down, “when physics called it quits, and you don’t even have legs?”

Where legs should’ve been, black vapor curled into a ghostly tail. He thought about kicking off the air, about swimming, and the tail twitched. Progress. Sort of.

Then something inside him stuttered, a hot spark at his core, a white flash, and suddenly the ground dropped out from under him. Danny yelped, the world blurring into streaks of green and violet. Islands and clouds tore past as he spun, weightless and utterly out of control.

The spark flared again, brighter this time, and everything snapped. His tail coiled, his body righted itself, and he was suspended midair, chest heaving out of pure habit. “Okay,” he panted to no one. “That’s . . . something. That’s something.”

It didn’t last. Another surge ripped through him, his body glitching, splitting into static, limbs phasing in and out, tail stuttering like a broken signal. For half a second, he saw double: the human version of himself overlapping with the ghost, then fragmenting apart. His voice echoed back at him, warped and distant, as if the Zone itself was laughing. For half a second, his grin split too wide in the static reflection, teeth glowing where they shouldn’t be, before snapping back into place.

Somewhere in the green fog, a deep, measured ticking answered his glitched-out scream. It was faint, but deliberate, like a clock in a silent room, steady and unhurried. When Danny whipped around to find it, there was nothing. Only the slow swirl of mist, and the certainty that someone, or something, was watching.

Danny twitched, scanning the green around him, certain that there was something there somewhere. The ticking got louder, and from the clouds emerged a large, deep blue clock tower. A cacophony of sound arrived with it, and Danny felt like it physically pushed him backwards. He’s hit with clicking of different gears at different paces with different tones, the ticking of arms, the gongs of large church bells, and the lighter chime of grandfather clocks.

The sound wrapped around him; it seemed too big and too layered to belong to one source. Danny’s hands curled into fists at his sides as he fought the instinct to retreat. The Ghost Zone didn’t exactly come with a manual, and the sudden appearance of a building where there hadn’t been one was enough to put his nerves on edge.

The tower solidified out of the mist like it had always been there, stone and metal gleaming faintly blue, faces of countless clocks built into its walls. Some ran forward, some backward, others froze mid-tick, but all of them seemed aware of him.

The heavy doors creaked open on their own, releasing another wave of sound: tick, tock, whir, chime. It wasn’t chaotic, exactly. More like a thousand voices speaking in perfect rhythm, inviting but unnerving.

Danny hesitated. His powers still sparked and sputtered under his skin, unpredictable and raw, and the idea of walking into another unknown wasn’t comforting. But something about the sound was steady, anchoring. Not hostile. Watching, yes, but patient.

“Okay,” he muttered, forcing himself to move. “Creepy ghost clock thing wants to meet me. Sure. Why not? It’s been that kind of week.”

As he stepped forward, the air shifted. The ticking slowed, deepened, like it was matching his pace. A faint figure appeared in the open doorway, a tall, robed ghost with a staff tipped by an ornate timepiece. The figure’s face was calm, unreadable, and impossibly old.

“Daniel,” the ghost said, voice like the echo of a grandfather clock in an empty room. “You’re late.”

Danny’s guard went up. “Yeah, thanks, but who are you? And how do you know my name?”

“Names are easy to know when time is no barrier,” the ghost replied, stepping closer. “I am Clockwork. I keep the balance of what was, what is, and what might yet be.” His gaze flicked over Danny, assessing but not unkind. “And you, young one, are . . . unpredictable.”

“Not sure that’s a compliment,” Danny muttered. His powers still twitched under his skin, unpredictable since the glitch, and the idea that someone was watching made his stomach tighten. “So what, you’re some kind of time ghost?”

“I am Time,” Clockwork corrected, tilting his head. “I observe. Occasionally, I . . . intervene. The Realms are wide, Daniel, and full of forces you have yet to meet. Some benign, some less so. It is wise to prepare.”

Something in the way he said it made Danny’s shoulders tense. The words were calm, but there was an edge, like someone quietly nudging a chess piece into place. “Prepare for what?”

Clockwork’s smile was small, unreadable. “In time, you will see. For now, your first step is to learn. To listen. The Infinite Realms have many currents, and they are shifting.” He turned, gesturing toward the open doors. “Come. There is much to discuss, and even more to show you.”

Chapter Text

In a small village, east of Amity Park, the war had taken over. Soldiers had built temporary housing structures, and the village residents had long since evacuated. The streets that used to be full of children’s laughter and happiness were now overrun by the sounds of marching boots and barked orders. Every corner seemed to hold its own shadow too long, as if something waited in the dark beyond the soldiers’ firelight.

For now, though, it’s calm. Or, as calm as it can get. Soldiers cleaned their weapons, read their books, or prepared for the day ahead. Despite the downtime, the mood was melancholy and subdued; everyone was tired of war.

In the command tent, a radio crackled, squeaked, and then went dead. Sergeant Miles tapped the side of the headset, frowning. “Command, repeat your last. Say again.”

Nothing. Then, static, like wind over broken glass, and a voice burst through, jagged and thin. “- attack - breach - need immediate reinforcements - something new - don’t let it -.” A sharp, keening feedback swallowed the rest. It sounded like wind whistling through an empty canyon.

“Hell,” Private Singh muttered. “That’s GIW frequency. Those bastards never call for backup.”

“Until now,” Miles said. He waved a hand at the nearest squad. “Load up. Whatever’s got them spooked, we don’t want it getting any closer to our lines.”

The truck roared to life, tires chewing mud and frost. No one spoke.

When they crested the ridge, the facility came into view, or what was left of it. The reinforced gates were twisted metal, the perimeter wall sheared open like it had been hit with a wrecking ball. Smoke curled upward in greasy ribbons. The smell hit next: burned plastic, ozone, and something faintly sweet and wrong. The sweetness clung in the throat, like rotting fruit, like breath that wasn’t theirs.

“Contact left!” one of the scouts barked, rifle snapping up.

Miles raised a hand. “Hold fire.” He moved forward, boots crunching over scattered shell casings. The ground was littered with GIW gear, helmet visors shattered, white armor stained with something that glowed faintly green.

Bodies lay scattered, some still twitching, some utterly still.

“Sir,” Singh called, crouched beside a fallen agent. “This isn’t Pariah’s work. Look at the residue, no scorch marks, just ice. It’s like something just . . . ripped through them.”

Miles’ gaze tracked the destruction. The walls hadn’t been blown inward; they’d been blown out.

Another voice: “Over here!”

The squad gathered at what used to be the main lab doors. They were folded outward like tin foil, and the concrete around the frame was glazed, smooth as glass.

Something moved in the smoke, just a flicker, a pale light cutting briefly through the haze. The light wasn’t steady; it pulsed like many eyes opening, then closing again. The air sharpened with sudden cold, breath frosting at the edges of the men’s masks, and for a heartbeat the haze itself froze in place—ash and dust hanging midair as though time had forgotten to move forward. A low sound followed, not a growl, not quite human. Then nothing.

“Sir?” Singh whispered.

Miles didn’t answer. He was staring at a single mark on the ruined wall, a stylized P, scratched deep into the concrete, glowing faint green before fading.

“Whatever hit this place,” Miles said finally, “it wasn’t Pariah. It wasn’t anything I’ve ever seen.”

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Rumors spread like wildfire, hopping from one encampment to the next. The name Phantom was whispered late at night, under the cover of the stars and behind bunker walls. In a southern outpost, a single lamp stretched long shadows across a dented metal table where a handful of soldiers lounged, cards in hand and gear scattered at their feet. The air smelled faintly of oil and cold rations.

“Your turn,” one muttered, flicking down a card. “And make it quick. I’ve got watch in twenty.”

Another snorted. “Watch? What’s there to watch for? Pariah’s troops don’t move at night.”

“Maybe,” said a third, cleaning his rifle with slow, methodical strokes. “But I heard the GIW said the same thing before their Utah site went up in smoke.”

The first soldier raised a brow. “That story again?”

“I’m telling you,” the rifleman insisted, voice low. “They called for backup, whole comms were scrambled. When help finally arrived, nothing left but rubble and green sludge. They say no survivors.”

“Green sludge? Sounds like ghost residue,” one said, shuffling his cards. “Pariah’s got wraith units that could -”

“Wasn’t Pariah,” the rifleman cut in. “Word is it was something else. Something fast. Hit them hard and vanished.”

The table went quiet for a moment. Then someone scoffed. “You’re all talking about that Phantom thing again, aren’t you? That’s just a ghost story. A real ghost story.”

“Yeah? Then why’s every GIW site running extra drills? Why are their squads suddenly scared of the dark?”

Another soldier leaned back, boots thudding on the table’s edge. “I heard he’s stronger than any ten ghosts. That he tears through wraiths like paper. They say his eyes glow like burning ice. Like they could cut straight through you, freezing you from the marrow outward. And if you’re close enough, you’ll hear it, like whispers brushing your ear. Not words, not really, just the sense that something is speaking from inside your own head. Some guys swear it’s the voices of the damned.”

“Burning ice,” someone echoed with a short laugh. “What does that even mean?”

“Means he’s not normal,” the rifleman said. “Some say he’s a traitor, one of Pariah’s own who turned on him. Others say he’s something else entirely. Not a ghost. Not human. A ghoul.”

“You’re all ridiculous,” the skeptic said, though his voice had thinned slightly. “Next, you’ll say he can bend time and vanish before you blink.”

“He can,” said the rifleman softly. “But no one who’s seen it has ended up sane.”

The card game went still. The lamp buzzed faintly overhead.

Finally, the soldier with the boots on the table smirked, though it seemed forced. “He’s just a rumor. A myth to scare rookies. Ghosts fight ghosts, nothing more.”

“Maybe,” said the rifleman, clicking his weapon back together. “Or maybe he’s out there right now, deciding who’s next.”

The lamp flickered once, then steadied. For a heartbeat, every shadow seemed to lean closer, listening. No one moved to deal the next hand.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The year after the funeral was one of uneasy quiet. Amity Park lived with the war the way you live with a storm always on the horizon: distant, threatening, but just far enough to pretend it couldn’t touch you. But lately, the whispers were growing louder. They spoke of a figure who moved like a shadow between worlds, more ruthless than Pariah’s generals, more cunning than his knights. Some swore the shadows bent toward him, stretching as if eager to be claimed. They called him Phantom.

Nobody knew where he’d come from, only that his rise was fast and merciless. Ghost armies were breaking. Survivors told stories of a white-ringed blaze cutting through the dead like paper, of cold green eyes that spared no one. Humans saw only fragments: grainy footage of a glowing figure on battlefields, ghost-hunting patrols doubling overnight, news anchors struggling to keep up.

Even the streets of Amity Park felt the shift. Children dared each other to whisper his name. Posters warned civilians to run. But for some, it was an omen, a shift towards worse to come.

And Sam was the first to aim for war.

Shouldering her rifle, Sam squinted down the range at the green, blob ghost shaped target. She breathed in, aimed, let out her breath, and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot sounded like thunder in her ear. The recoil pushed her back, but she’s used to that by now. She’d been going to the range almost every afternoon for months.

She couldn’t bring Danny back from the dead, but she could get revenge on those who killed him. As soon as her sixteenth birthday rolled around, she planned on enlisting. She’d make her way to the front lines and end those bastards herself.

After checking to see that she hit the target dead on, she reloaded mechanically, motions smooth and practiced, like she’s memorizing the ritual of war.

She breathed, aimed, fired again. This time, the shot went wide. Sam muttered a curse under her breath and yanked on the lock of hair that fell into her eyes. Why can’t I do anything fucking right?! She slammed the gun down, paused, took a deep breath, and then raised it back up to her shoulder. Her hands trembled as she reloaded.

She didn’t know if the ghosts could feel fear, but she hoped so. Every round she fired was a promise, a quiet vow that the universe wouldn’t get away with what it took from her. Her friends thought she was reckless; her parents thought she was going through a phase. They didn’t understand the restless energy that coiled under her skin, the way she would wake up some nights half-convinced she could hear Danny laughing just down the hall, only to remember the coffin and the cold words spoken at his funeral.

Only three hundred and fourteen more days until she could get out there and fight the real thing. She couldn’t wait. Sam sighed and began to pack up her bag. Before zipping it up, she took out a battered black notebook and marked down her scores for the day. She’d been improving.

She scuffed her boots along the sidewalk as she walked home. Bits of the curb crumble underfoot where it had been damaged in some past ghost skirmish. The walls beside her are covered in posters, some faded and peeling, others brighter and newer. One in particular stood out. It’s one she hadn’t seen before. “NEW THREAT,” it blared in bright green. “PHANTOM STILL AT LARGE! Do not confront, if seen, RUN.” Sam snorted softly and thought to herself, yeah right, if I ever see that ghost, I’ll nail him right between his eyes.

Letting out her breath in a soft whoosh as she passed by Tucker’s house, she glanced up at his window. From the street, it’s just a square of dim blue light, but she could just make out the faint silhouette of his hunched shoulders, head bent toward the glow of his monitors.

Tucker Foley’s world had become one of screens, signals, and secrets. Where Sam burned, Tucker buried. He threw himself into code, tech, anything that could keep his hands busy and his mind too full to think. Between classes and his parents’ polite worry, he built things, tracking programs, drone prototypes, backdoor feeds into government servers. It started as a way to help Sam keep tabs on ghost activity, but somewhere along the way, it became more than that. Something about the grainy Phantom footage wouldn’t let him go.

Nowadays, his life existed in encrypted chatrooms and Ghost Zone forums, trying to learn anything and everything he could about ghosts and the war effort. He couldn’t protect his friend, but maybe, just maybe, if he goes deep enough, if he learned everything there was to know, he could protect the people who are left.

Lately, he’d been running into more rumors about some new player called Phantom.

Lately, he’d been running into more rumors about some new player called Phantom.

The posts read like scattered weather reports - storm warnings from people who swore they’d seen the lightning firsthand. One claimed he’d “wiped out a whole battalion near the Far Frozen,” though the timestamps didn’t line up with any official GIW reports. Another whispered about a wail, some kind of ultimate weapon, but the descriptions shifted like wind: sometimes sonic, sometimes a shockwave, sometimes just a bone-deep chill. A few threads insisted he was a Pariah loyalist, a rogue ghoul, or completely unaligned, dark clouds rolling in from every direction, no two stories the same.

Tucker frowned at the inconsistencies, scrolling as if chasing static across a broken radio. Rumor wasn’t proof, but he knew how to read the weather, and patterns were forming. Every sighting left the same trail: sudden comms outages, shredded mission logs, entire squads vanishing like houses ripped off their foundations. Wherever Phantom passed, systems cracked and toppled in his wake.

This wasn’t random thunder. The data pointed to strategy, not chaos. Someone, or something, was hunting with intention. Phantom had a grudge. And it was personal.

A quiet knock broke the glow. “Tuck?” His mom’s voice, gentle. “It’s late. Want me to make you some tea?”

He hesitated, torn between the warmth in her tone and the cold lines of code on his screen.

“I’m good, Mom. Just finishing some homework.”

A pause. “All right. Don’t stay up too late.”

The door clicked softly shut. Tucker exhaled, then leaned closer to the screen. He wasn’t sure if Phantom was after total destruction or just one person, but whatever it was, Tucker needed to know why.

Outside, the sidewalk stretched on. Sam’s boots tapped a slow rhythm, passing Tucker’s silent house and heading toward the brighter end of the street. Just a few blocks over, another silhouette bent over papers instead of screens, a curtain drawn against the night: Jazz Fenton.

She sat at her desk poring over news reports and paper cuttings. There were highlighters and pens of various colors scattered everywhere. There’s a system to it, but one that’s a mystery to everyone but Jazz herself.

She muttered to herself as she scanned over war reports that she snuck out of her parents’ lab. She ran her hands through her hair, and there were ink marks on her cheek.

She reshuffled the papers, then glanced around the desk top, looking for more space. Her eyes caught on a framed photo of her and Danny, her arm over his shoulders, and wide smiles on both their faces. She reached for it, hesitated, then quickly flipped it over before placing it on the floor.

Jazz was quiet about her grief. She didn’t have Sam’s anger or Tucker’s restless obsession, but she carried her own weight of guilt. The funeral had aged her in ways she couldn’t explain; one day she’d been a sister, the next she was a guardian of no one. She still lived at home, still smiled when their parents asked about college, but it was all surface-level. Every night she locked her door and read psychology texts, occult manuals, research reports on ectoplasmic phenomena. She was piecing together something larger than herself, trying to understand how a world could so easily steal a boy and leave behind nothing but questions.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The night was alive with neon and glass, a bustling city that never slept, but right now, it was holding its breath. Cameras from half a dozen networks lined the streets, their operators whispering urgently to anchors who were already mid-broadcast. It started as a ripple - first a green glow reflecting off mirrored towers, then the sudden surge of icy wind that blew through summer air.

“This is Channel Nine News, coming to you live from downtown Denver,” a woman’s voice said, pitched high with barely restrained urgency. “Something is happening above the Daniels & Fisher Tower - wait, we’re getting confirmation now. It’s not a storm, folks. It’s them. It’s the ghosts.”

A shimmer, at first no bigger than a raindrop, widened until it was a body. Massive. Armored. Cruel. Prince Aragon spread translucent wings that eclipsed entire blocks, his roar rattling in ribcages and windowpanes alike. Glass hummed, thin and fragile. Below him, people scattered. Cars honked and collided. The city lights sputtered, flickered, died.

The second glow arrived like a knife. Blue-white, sharp enough to sting the eyes. Cameras jerked upward but caught only a blur streaking through the sky, fast as a lightning strike. When the blur steadied, the shape resolved.

Phantom.

The anchor’s voice cracked. “He’s here. The Phantom.”

The two shapes circled each other high above the tower, ghosts haloed in their own radiance. Aragon struck first, a gout of emerald fire spraying down the side of a high-rise. Phantom answered with a blast of ice, freezing the flames mid-fall with a hiss that echoes like breaking glass. Their attacks collided, the explosion lighting up the city like noon for one blinding instant.

Sound lagged behind. A thunderclap shuddered through concrete. Car alarms screamed. Someone in the crowd whimpered.

“We’re witnessing what appears to be a full-scale battle,” the anchor narrated breathlessly. “Phantom is engaging the Prince of Pariah’s court. This - this is unprecedented.”

Phantom dove, fast as a bullet, striking Aragon across the jaw. The sound cracked like thunder, reverberating off concrete. Aragon reeled, snarled, and lunged, his claws tearing through the air and sending shockwaves across the rooftops. Phantom twisted around him, firing twin streams of ecto-energy, each blast slicing neon green through the darkness. His grin widened, showing an unnatural amount of teeth, as the blast carved clean lines, surgical in their cruelty. Aragon answered with sheer brute force, slamming Phantom against a building hard enough to shatter glass ten stories below.

“Oh my god,” someone said off-camera. “Did you see that? He just went through the side of the tower!”

But Phantom wasn’t down. He glitched through the collapsing debris, almost as if reality bent around him, before reforming into a boy-shaped warrior. He grinned, teeth flashing white. It was too sharp, teeth catching the city’s light like broken glass; for a second, his outline seemed wrong, larger, as if more than one shape flickered around him.

“T̶̛̟̞͈̗̮̈́͝͝h̷̫̾ȧ̵̹͈̃̚t̴̡͙̜͕̄̿͂́̏ ̷̨̤́a̴̯̍l̵̙̐l̸̫͕̝̥͐͝ͅ ̶̱͉̓̈̾y̶͙͂̀o̸͓̜͔͊̆͠ǘ̷͕̬͊ ̶̢̻͔͊͐ģ̶̙̖̓͑̚o̴̱̫̼͋t̴̰̿͛̽ ̷̬̽̄͒͘͝l̷̠̓í̸̗̀̋̇z̷͙͍̞̝̣̓̎͐̎z̶̛̯̅͛̂ả̷̠̰̑͆ŕ̸̛̖̼̤̩̍̊ͅd̴̢̄̑̄̒ ̸̘̤̓͂̍̋̓ḇ̴̱̈̏̈́̂͘r̸͈̼̺͍̬͂̊̿̾e̵̗̮͂͑̀a̴͍̙̰͛͂̎̌̚t̷̼͐̉͐̄h̶̯̐͠ͅ?̸͕͍͕̽̇̚͝” [1.] he taunted, voice carrying even without speakers.

The crowd’s scream came seconds late.

Aragon bellowed, fury rising. He dove, jaws wide, a lance of green fire preceding him. Phantom shot upward to meet him head-on, the two colliding in an explosion. The air between them collapsed into thunder and pressure, a storm made flesh. Shattered windows became rain. Sparks became stars. Denver drowned in echoes. Car alarms wailed. Somewhere, someone screamed.

Phantom darted around the dragon, his smaller frame a blur of speed. Aragon followed like an avalanche, swinging his tail like a wrecking ball. The clash of their attacks sent shockwaves that shattered glass in nearby buildings.

Civilians ducked behind cars. The news anchor ducked, then popped up again, adrenaline pushing her forward. “The Phantom appears to be pushing Aragon back, though reports suggest Aragon’s forces have already caused significant damage. Authorities have not yet issued a statement on whether this incident is linked to the Ghost Zone conflict, though the evidence seems clear.”

Phantom spiraled upward, gathered energy into his palms, and fired. The blast tore through Aragon’s wing, sending the prince spinning backward with a roar. But the victory was brief. Aragon recovered fast, snarling, his form swelling with ghostly rage.

“Ỳ̶͙̙̘̟̱͎̤͉̯̬̾͋͆͐͒ơ̴̢̺͙̦͕̭̻̟̺͉̯̳͒̐̽̐͌̃̚ų̴̹̦̈́͑̔̄͌̒͂͛̌̋ ̷̨̧͔̬̟͇̦̰̳͖̖͇̭̍̋̈̇̃͂͜w̸̛͕̍̇͒̐̈́͆̄́̏i̶̻̼̒͋̎͂̅́̓̃̕l̴̺͍͉͠l̴̯̙̓̌͗̓̅̃̕ ̸̧̮̥͈̟̦̺̹͎͓͖̳̻̝̔ķ̴̛̯̜̼̦̓̏͌̎͆̀̆̏n̴͉̮̯͚͙͎̟̯̖̋͊̓̓̌̃͂͆̕ȩ̴̡̧̧̲̘̗̩̺͉̼̳̗̳̲̉̑̓̔́͆̾͋́͗̐̐̊̚͘é̷͙̹̗̞̹́͊͌̊͘̕l̵͍̲͗̒̐ ̷̡̤̥̝͔̎̑b̴̧̰̬̮̹̻͎̠̹̝̲́̈́̃̉̍̕e̸̲͙̾͒̀̄͗̏̃̽͘͜f̸̢̨͎̹͍̟̲̅̈̊͒̑̔͑̀ô̶̧̙̯̟̝̭̻̟̣̥̦͍͚̟̖̾̃̀̈́̅̅̈́̎̽͌̕̕r̸͔̬̄̓́͑̽̓̆e̵̳̐̑̓͒̔̃̃́̂͑̕͠ ̵͔̃́͆̎̊̌͐̆̕͝ṁ̴̰͕̤̲̩̯̻̠̦͖̦̪̯̐͋̑̄́̕͘͝e̴̝̮̙̓̏̐̊̊͗!̴̝͎̀̅̄̇́̑͐͘”[2.] Aragon bellowed. He slammed his talons into the street. Spectral chains erupted, lashing upward like snakes. Phantom twisted and phased through most of them, but one clipped his wispy tail, yanking him downward. He crashed hard, impact rattling the street.

The camera zoomed in. “Phantom’s been hit! I repeat, Phantom’s been - wait!” The anchor’s voice cracked with disbelief as Phantom surged to his feet, chains melting away around him. His eyes glowed brighter, his jaw set. The glow bled into the cracks of his face. At first it was just a hairline fracture, a seam of light at the corner of his jaw. Then it spread, slow and deliberate, a spiderweb of fissures crawling across his cheekbones and down toward his throat. The glow inside wasn’t steady; it pulsed, brightening in uneven surges like something alive straining against bone. For a breathless moment, his face looked less like flesh and more like a mask splitting apart from within, as though the fire under his skin had grown too fierce to be contained. He shot upward, straight toward Aragon.

“I̶̫̅͂̆͛ ̶̙̹̓̎̇̈̊͋̄͌̔̔̉̀͂͠ḑ̷̝̮̖̯̬̞̞̬̞̽̎̓̈́͒̓̌͝͠o̸̺̮̩̫̱̝̫̔̈̀͆̾̇̈̈́ͅͅn̴̛̝͎̠̦̣͙̫̯͆̊̌̈́̍͛’̶͉͙̆͌͑̃̇̽̾͂̊̃̿̒͆͘͠ẗ̴̥̥̥̘̹̬͕̯́ ̷̧̢̖̰̘̐͛͊̅̀̚̕k̶̢̫͖̳͈̪͎̩͙̃́̂͛͝ͅņ̷̰̗̭̼̬͔̺̼̽͐͋͒̍̈́̔̓̌́̀̓̄̽͠e̸̝͕̘̰̳̮̻̐̓̇̃̀̈́̍͠ē̶̠̰͑̌̔̿̀̐͛̋͒̚͝͠l̸͈̼̻̻͂̃̒̂̚ ̶̢̛̛̫̼̻̀̆̎̀͜t̷̨̢̛͉͖͚̹̩̹̰͙̑̃̌͛̌̾̔̚͠ȯ̵̼̯͔̹̑̈́̏́̍͛͋̇͐͌͐͝ ̵̛̉̾̇͋̒̈́̒̈͑̍̍̕ͅt̸̢͔̠̠̭̼̦͆̏͊̾̅y̷͈̮̝̹̽͝r̵̛͕̟̦̲̮̎̍͐̔̑͒̏͝a̸͇̥͑̈́͂̾̾͘̕͠n̶̺̖͍̾̀̈́͛̌̀̕̕ţ̴̺̫͇̀́̀͒͛́͗̃́̌̕̕͝s̶̛̟̫͍̾̂͆͒,̶̭̟̫̪̐̎͜”[3.] he spat.

With a roar, he slammed into Aragon full-force. The prince’s dragon form shattered, fragments raining down like crimson stars, leaving his human guise behind. They grappled midair, fists blurring. Phantoms’ smaller size seemed to be his strength - every hit precise, every dodge razor-thin. And then, with a final surge, He twisted behind Aragon and drove an ectoblast into his back. The explosion lit the night, the shockwave throwing both of them apart.

When the smoke thinned, Aragon faltered. Phantom remained, glowing fissures spiderwebbing across his face, his body split by the light inside. Not flesh. Not bone. Something else.

The news anchor’s voice was soft, reverent. “Aragon is retreating . . . the Phantom stands.”

The silence after was deafening. Phantom hovered there, panting, before turning. The cameras caught it, though they were half-blind with dust. Just a flash of white hair, green eyes, and then he vanished into the night.

Chapter Text

The broadcast flickered on. Green and white light cutting through the shadows of living rooms, cafes, and makeshift shelters alike. The footage was grainy, distorted - static curling across the screen in jagged patterns - but no one needed clarity to understand the terror. Buildings ripped open from within, walls peeling back like paper. Fires froze mid-air as ghostly ice surged through them, hissing and splintering the flames into shards of frozen light. A car hung, mid-explosion, as if the world had paused its scream. From the haze of smoke and chaos, a figure emerged: white hair streaming like a comet’s tail, eyes cold and vivid, moving faster than the camera could track. Phantom.

Across the city and beyond, rumors spread faster than the images themselves. Some whispered he struck without warning, leaving devastation in his path. Others spoke of the sheer precision of his attacks, as if he knew every move before it happened. Survivors recounted scenes that made even hardened soldiers blanch: wraiths torn apart mid-fight, GIW squads left in frozen tableaux, civilians narrowly escaping streaks of emerald light slicing the streets. Nobody could agree if he was justice or horror incarnate.

In a dim corner of a GIW command center, analysts hunched over flickering monitors, murmuring to one another in hushed, tense tones. Reports of Phantom’s attacks scrolled endlessly across the screens. Each line more incomprehensible than the last. “This . . . it’s coordinated,” one muttered, voice tight. “He’s not just attacking randomly. He’s hunting.” Another scribbled hastily on a red-stained form. “Phantom’s echo?” A note scrawled in the margin, circled, then angrily struck through. No one could prove the connection, but the suspicion lingered. Containment protocols were strict, urgent. One misstep and the consequences would be catastrophic.

The footage switched again, this time to a ruined GIW outpost far north. Soldiers huddled in the wreckage, rifles shaking in frozen hands. “It . . . it wasn’t supposed to be like this,” a private gasped. The static-wrapped voice of Phantom hissed across a handheld radio, fragments of words barely intelligible, broken by interference. “ - all . . . kneel . . . not . . . stop -” Even in pieces, the cadence carried menace. The private’s eyes widened as a pulse of icy light struck the remaining ghost patrol, freezing their very forms mid-motion. When the light faded, silence fell. The soldiers were alive, but all around them, the world had been rewritten in Phantom’s image of fear.

Somewhere in another lab, a faintly glowing containment field held the unnamed echo, cables and sensors tracing every twitch and shiver. The technicians had long stopped speaking of it as anything sentient; it was simply the Phantom-linked subject, an unknown variable in a war they no longer fully controlled. Occasionally, a monitor would flicker with the echo’s image, blurred and shifting, and the analysts would lean closer. They were trying to learn what made it tick. All the ins and outs of how it functioned. If they could find a flaw, any flaw in this echo, it could be used to take down the Phantom.

They did not know what the connection between the two meant, only that it existed, and that Phantom’s fury might follow it anywhere.

Outside, the city slept fitfully, streets emptied by whispered warnings and the growing sense that no corner was safe. On the edges of towns and villages, civilians caught glimpses of green and white light streaking across the sky. They whispered each other’s names, pressed against windows, tried to imagine why one ghost could hold the world in fear. “The Ghost King. . . or a demon,” someone muttered in a back alley. “Either way, he spares no one.”

And somewhere, watching it all unfold, the unknown echo waited, tethered invisibly to a specter that was shaping a war no one could contain.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The air vents over the lab were dusty, clogged with cobwebs that shivered whenever Sam moved. The stale, metallic tang of old circuits hung in the air, and a faint hum from a half-assembled Fenton device thrummed against her skull like a heartbeat. This mess of the vents didn’t really surprise Sam; the Fenton’s had never been known for their cleanliness or tidiness. What did surprise her was the group of five GIW agents, dressed in their signature, stainless white suits, crowded into the lab down below. Their uniforms gleamed under the flickering fluorescent lights, stark against the chaos of half-finished Fenton tech littering the tables.

Sam shifted carefully, trying not to cough as dust clung to her throat. Tucker was sprawled out next to her, his PDA screen dimmed to the faintest glow, his thumbs darting quick and silent as he probed the GIW’s local signal. Jazz crouched a little further ahead, pressed tight to the grate, her knuckles white where she clutched the metal frame.

Jazz had invited them over under the guise of “studying.” And they were, just not for school. They were studying the war. Things had taken a sharp turn lately. There was a new player on the field. He was ruthless, and no one knew what his motives were.

Phantom.

A shiver traced its way down her spine. Sam didn’t even like saying the name in her head. It wasn’t that she believed in curses, but the word carried its own gravity, its own threat. That flicker of white hair and toxic green light, neither ally nor enemy, tearing into whatever - whoever - crossed his path. Some people had once thought maybe he was on their side. He fought other ghosts sometimes, didn’t he? But then he’d turned the same violence on humans, GIW patrols and even soldiers. If he had a side, no one could see it.

Down below, Maddie Fenton’s voice carried, crisp and edged with calculation. “We’ve tracked Phantom’s energy signatures across four different hot zones. You’ve seen the same data we have. Pariah Dark is still a threat, yes, but he’s predictable. Phantom . . .” she trailed off, shaking her head. “He’s something else entirely.”

The lead GIW agent, rank stripes stitched in black across the immaculate white fabric of his sleeve, nodded. “Pariah is the enemy we know. He wants conquest, control. That can be resisted. But this Phantom? He could raze both worlds without warning. And if he knows about Echo . . . nothing we do will slow him down.”

Sam’s stomach clenched. She darted a glance at Jazz, who hadn’t moved, eyes fixed on her mother below. Tucker’s typing had slowed to a crawl.

Jack Fenton’s booming voice filled the space. “And that’s exactly why we have to work together. Fenton tech and GIW manpower. You’ve got the boots, we’ve got the brains.” He slammed a meaty fist into his palm. “Together we can crack him like an ecto-walnut!”

Sam bit back a groan. Typical Jack. But the GIW didn’t laugh. They didn’t even smile.

Instead, one of the other agents stepped forward and dropped a thin file onto the lab table. The folder spilled open, revealing grainy photographs, blurred streaks of white and green light, wreckage left in Phantom’s wake. And one picture that made Sam’s skin prickle: a dark cell, lit by harsh fluorescent lights. A figure strapped down. Human. Or close enough. Sam’s stomach lurched.

“Recent captures,” the agent said flatly. “We’re holding several anomalous entities for interrogation and dissection. Phantom hasn’t come for them. Yet. If he knew what was inside that containment, he would.”

Her throat went dry. Dissection. The word rattled in Sam’s skull like a stone in a jar. She pressed her fist against her mouth to stop herself from gasping. Beside her, Tucker’s fingers twitched against his PDA screen.

Maddie leaned over the file, her face unreadable. “If he hasn’t tried to reclaim them, maybe he doesn’t care. Or maybe he’s waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” asked one of the agents, voice low.

Maddie’s silence stretched too long. When she finally spoke, her voice was low. “For us to make the wrong move. And when that happens, Phantom will come for it himself.”

The briefing wound down after that, talk of patrol routes, weapons calibrations, updated kill orders. The words blurred together, a litany of violence and fear. Phantom’s strikes. Pariah’s threats. Ghost incursions, anomalous captures, body counts. The tone wasn’t one of victory but of attrition; the sense that humanity was holding on by its fingernails while something vast and merciless circled above them.

At last, the GIW gathered their files and left, boots clicking sharp against the floor. Jack followed them up the stairs, booming about prototype ecto-cannons. Maddie lingered only a moment longer, staring at the empty file folder on the table, before she, too, disappeared.

Only then did Jazz shift back from the grate. Her face was pale, her breath shallow. Sam realized she’d been holding hers the whole time.

They crawled back through the vents in silence. Dust clung to their hair and clothes, streaking their skin in gray. By the time they dropped into Jazz’s room, Sam’s lungs burned, as if the air itself had been poisoned. She sank onto the bed’s edge, her fists clenched in her skirt, every thought heavy with the image of the humanoid figure strapped to the table.

For a long moment, none of them spoke.

Then Tucker exhaled a shaky laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all. “We’re going to lose.” His PDA dangled limp in his hand, the screen finally dark.

Jazz hugged her arms around herself, eyes darting between them. “If Phantom keeps escalating . . .” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

Sam sank onto the edge of the bed, her fists knotted in her skirt. She wanted to argue, to say they had a chance, but the words wouldn’t come. All she could see was that blurred photograph - the captive strapped down under cold lights, waiting for the knife.

And Phantom, out there somewhere, waiting too. Sam imagined those streaks of green light slicing across the night sky, and her chest tightened. Every shadow felt alive, every silence a threat.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The air in the Ghost Zone rippled, thick with anticipatory energy. Soldiers in white stood shoulder to shoulder at the border outpost, weapons clutched tight, waiting. They had been told to expect movement. Phantom had been carving through lairs for weeks, and now he was drawing the powers of the Zone itself into his orbit.

And then the gathering began.

Sojourn, Ember, Skulker, Johnny 13; the warlords who had once terrorized the living. But they didn’t matter next to the Ancients.

One by one, the Ancients drifted in, forms immense and commanding; entities older than recorded human history. Clockwork with his staff, Pandora in her armor, Frostbite like an icebound giant. Nocturn’s starry black cloak folded tight, Undergrowth’s tendrils writhing with silent distaste, Vortex shrouded in whirling winds.

Boots scraped against stone as the soldiers shifted instinctively backward, even though there was nowhere to retreat. Every one of them knew the whispers: none of these beings had bent knee to Pariah Dark. They had stood independent, proud, untouchable.

And yet-

They knelt.

The chamber echoed with the sound of it: massive forms lowering, heads bowed. Frostbite’s claws dug furrows in the stone floor as he pressed his head down. Ember’s music went mute as her flame fizzled. Even Clockwork, timeless and aloof, inclined his head.

Only Vortex and Undergrowth lingered upright longer than a heartbeat. Small gusts of wind swirled around Vortex, murmuring discontentedly. Undergrowth hissed in a language that withered the air. But when Phantom’s gaze snapped to them - those blazing, impossible eyes - both sank low, hatred smoldering but submission unavoidable.

The silence afterward was suffocating. Even the humans watching through cloaking shields felt it in their bones.

And then, from the throng of Ancients, Clockwork floated forward, staff raised. Pandora followed, her armor gleaming in the sickly light of the Zone. In their hands were artifacts of immeasurable power: a crown of fire, braided with writhing sparks, and a ring of rage, black as void and thrumming with violence.

They hovered before Phantom, the air quivering with the energy of ages. Slowly, reverently, Clockwork lowered the crown onto Phantom’s head. Flames licked the edges of his form, tendrils wrapping around his skull as if recognizing him as their master. Pandora slid the ring onto his finger. It pulsed in tandem with the crown, resonating through the very air of the chamber.

Power surged. Phantom’s form stretched, shadows deepening unnaturally, limbs elongating, features sharpening. His eyes burned brighter, green lightning flickering across his skin. The crown’s flames danced and merged with his hair, haloing him in a corona of fire, while the ring sent ripples through the ground, bending reality subtly, making the Zone itself recoil in recognition.

“By god,” one of the rookies whispered, hands shaking around his rifle. “Pariah was bad enough, but this-”

“Shut up,” hissed his commander. “Do you want it to hear you?”

Phantom stood with stillness sharper than motion. He didn’t gloat. He didn’t smile. His words came jagged and inhuman, tearing through the air in a voice that wasn’t a voice - syllables bent into static-etched commands that seared into memory whether you understood them or not.

K̶̼̞̀͊n̸̢̓̆̈́͑è̷̱͖̳̫͓̯̂ě̵̜̰͇̩̭̬ļ̴̡̨̝̰̯̆.̵̢̨̛̼̹̳̺̽̅̂̐ [1.]

The word vibrated in the skull, too loud to be thought, too deep to be forgotten.

Silence followed. Suffocating. Crushing. The kind of silence that made soldiers’ ears ring, that made ghosts shudder in their cores. It stretched so long that some nearly broke under it, desperate to fill the void with sound, with anything.

And then - not from Phantom’s mouth, but from the Zone itself - came the echo, cold and absolute:

S̵̨̛̛̤̱̘̄̋̍͌͘ë̷̢̨̺̯́͊̈́̽̎͑̌͌͝r̷͎̯̍̇͛̄̂̽͠v̴̨̳͈̲̺͇̯̓͐̊̓̋̅̆̿͠e̶̡̺̙̍̈́̅̅.̵͉̰̞̿̒͆͂̆͆̍̚ [2.]

No “or else.” No explanation. The threat lived in the stillness that followed, in the way space itself recoiled from him.

Then Phantom’s gaze shifted. He lifted one hand, and from the throng, a figure was dragged forward.

Plasmius.

Once arrogant, flamboyant, a power in his own right. Now trembling, violet aura sputtering like a candle. He tried to straighten, to sneer, but the weight of Phantom’s eyes stopped him; his knees hit the floor before any words could form.

“̵̯̓Ỳ̷͚o̶̰̍ų̷̐-̶̲͠ ̵̹̏”̸̲̂ his voice cracked. “Ỳ̵̟ò̵ͅú̸̳ ̵͓̔w̶̻̄o̷̜͂u̸̚ͅľ̷̲d̸͔͠n̷̚ͅ’̶̣̽ṯ̷̂ ̷̼͋d̸̹͝ã̴̬r̶̥̍ȅ̸͜-̷͓̈ ̸̥͋”[3.]

Phantom tilted his head. A crack of green lightning carved through the floor an inch from Plasmius’s face. The smell of ozone bit through the chamber.

Silence followed. Endless. Heavy. The kind of silence that pressed Plasmius’s forehead to the stone, not from force but inevitability. His violet aura sputtered, shrinking under the weight of it.

And then - like a verdict, not a sentence - the Zone itself whispered, jagged and cold:

K̶̼̞̀͊n̸̢̓̆̈́͑è̷̱͖̳̫͓̯̂ě̵̜̰͇̩̭̬ļ̴̡̨̝̰̯̆.̵̢̨̛̼̹̳̺̽̅̂̐ [4.]

Plasmius whimpered, forehead pressed deeper into the stone, his aura guttering out. Even from behind their shielding, the soldiers could feel the tension - not rage, not wrath, but something more deliberate, more absolute. Phantom didn’t strike him down; he didn’t have to. The silence itself carried the weight of judgment.

The green lightning dimmed, Phantom’s aura settling slightly, but the message was unmistakable: submission was absolute. The soldiers could feel it, deep in their bones; Plasmius’s chance to rise again, if it existed at all, would not come easily.

The GIW squad leader whispered into his comm. “Record everything. This is why we need Project Echo operational yesterday.”

“Project Echo won’t stand against that,” hissed another. “Nothing will.”

“Orders are orders. The higher-ups say Phantom bleeds, he bleeds. We’ll make it happen- ” He cut off, because Phantom had turned his head.

The commander swore Phantom’s gaze locked straight onto him, piercing the cloaking veil. For a breathless second, he was certain those glowing eyes saw through everything- shields, tech, even the thin armor of bravado. The commander couldn’t breathe. His hand tightened on the trigger, knowing it wouldn’t matter.

And then Phantom looked away. As if the humans weren’t worth the effort.

That disregard stung worse than direct threat.

The silence stretched again, oppressive and heavy. Finally, Phantom raised a hand, and the ghosts - ancients, warriors, predators alike - rose as one. Not defiant, not triumphant. Simply . . . bound. The order had been given, and now they would follow.

When Phantom departed, the cold remained.

Only once the chamber was empty did the GIW squad breathe again. Helmets hissed as filters kicked to high, wiping away the sweat and frost that clung inside.

“Still think Echo’s enough?” the rookie whispered, voice hollow.

The commander didn’t answer. He just turned off his recorder, muttering, “God help us if it isn’t.”

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

People huddled in an underground shelter, waiting out the most recent ghost attack. The light was tinged green by the ecto-shield stretched over the ceiling and shadows stretched and bent unnaturally, adding to the eerie air.

A small, beat-up radio in the center of the room was their only source of news in the outside world; when the attack is over, they’ll only know because of the radio.

Static-filled words echoed through the shelter, only intelligible to those near-by, muffled by arguments and sniffles. “The situation . . . Zone . . . escalated.” The words didn’t mean much by themselves, scraps of a larger story, but they were enough. Enough to stir imaginations. Enough to make the silence unbearable.

“What does that even mean?” a woman near the back hissed, clutching her child closer. “They’re just making things up to scare us.”

“They’re not making it up,” an older man shot back, voice hoarse. “I heard the same thing last week. Whole patrol wiped out. Phantom wouldn’t let them pass. He’s not fighting for us, he’s fighting everyone.”

That lit the spark. Voices rose, sharp and overlapping, some insisting Phantom was the only thing slowing Pariah’s armies, others swearing he was worse than Pariah ever was. The shelter walls seemed to shrink as fear turned inward, civilians snapping at each other because they had no other target.

“He’s punishing us,” someone muttered near the radio, words nearly swallowed by the noise. “You don’t kneel, you’re erased. Isn’t that what priests used to say? Defy a god and be struck down?”

“Don’t - don’t call him that.” The woman’s voice shook, but her denial only made the words linger heavier in the stale air. A god. A tyrant. A specter no weapon could touch.

A voice burst from the radio, for once unmarred by static, cutting through the arguments, “Pariah Dark is gone . . . none of his patrol units have been sighted in over 48 hours.” Then the static was back, and so was the silence.

Parents clutched their children closer. Friends huddled together, taking comfort where they can. The same thought filtered through everyone’s heads, this terror was never going to end.

The silence pressed heavy, broken only by the scrape of a chair or the stifled sob of a child. It would have been easy to believe the fear was contained to that single room, but aboveground, Amity Park wore the same expression.

The streets lay dim under the sickly glow of the ecto-shield, neon-green light warping every shadow into something alien. Windows were darkened, businesses shuttered. GIW trucks rumbled down main roads, their engines growling like warnings, while families peered out from behind blackout curtains. It didn’t matter where you hid - the war had found its way into every corner of the city.

At dinner tables and kitchen counters, in bedrooms, and bathrooms, and places that were supposed to be safe, the war pressed in.

In one house on the northeast side of Amity Park, a little girl sat on the floor of her kitchen, green crayon gripped in her pudgy fist. Her parents argue overhead, not really angry, but just so worried that they don’t have another way to express it.

“If the ancients kneeled . . . what chance do we have?”

“We can’t just give up! We have to keep fighting!”

“But that about Claire? Think of her, we have to keep her safe!”

“I am thinking of her! She’s all I think about!”

The crayon in her hand snapped. A jerky green line jutting out from the blob she had been scribbling. The snap echoed loudly and the argument above her stopped, and the silence stretched.

Outside, a storm brewed, and no prayers would be enough to stop it.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

The briefing room was cold, humming with fluorescent lights and the scratch of pens across paper. GIW commanders stood around a projected map of the Ghost Zone, its shifting green geography flickering with unstable borders. The news from earlier in the week still hung heavy in the air: Phantom had taken the ancients. Kneeling. Every last one. The silence in the room wasn’t respect, but fear.

“The situation is untenable,” one agent said at last, voice flat but tight at the edges. “If even Clockwork and Pandora bow to him, then there is no ally left in the Zone. We are standing on an island, and the tide is rising.”

The Director didn’t look up from his notes. “Project Echo is our contingency. Containment is holding. Until further notice, we proceed with analysis and refinement. Phantom can’t know we have it.”

A knock at the door, sharp and frantic. A junior agent stumbled in, helmet under one arm, his face pale with sweat. He tripped over a chair, nearly dropping the helmet. His voice cracked as he blurted it out:

“Containment has failed. Project Echo is gone.”

The room froze.

For a moment, no one moved. Then voices rose at once, orders shouted, questions hurled, panic spilling through the chain of command like a breach in a dam. Someone demanded reports. Someone else swore Phantom must have learned of it. The Director’s pen snapped clean in two between his fingers.

The projection flickered, bathing them all in green light. On the map, the Zone seethed and shifted, borders collapsing in on themselves. Phantom’s storm was spreading.

No one said it aloud, but every soul in the room felt it: whatever Echo had been, whatever purpose it was meant to serve, it wasn’t theirs anymore. And without it, they had nothing.

By now, the storm had already broken.

Chapter Text

The city didn’t sleep. Not since Project Echo failed. Even beneath the flickering green glow of the ecto-shield, streets lay empty, as if the war itself had drawn a line no civilian dared cross. Behind shuttered windows, huddled inside shelters, whispers traveled faster than the news feeds. Some said Phantom was unstoppable. Some said the Ghost Zone itself had bent to his will. Some murmured that no one could survive him unless something, someone, was offered in blood.

The words weren’t said lightly. Families clutched children tighter, afraid the air itself might snatch them away. In one corner of a shelter, an old man repeated the same sentence over and over: “Kneel or die . . . kneel or die,” a mother pressed her forehead to her child’s hair, muttering a shaky prayer, though she wasn’t sure whether she was praying for safety, mercy, courage.

The fear pressed against the walls, seeping upward into a city that had long since stopped pretending to sleep. Above ground, sirens had long gone quiet, replaced by the hum of distant GIW trucks and the occasional crackle of radio static carrying fragmented reports. Occasionally, words cut through the static, eerie and disjointed: “Ancients . . . Phantom . . . Crown.” Voices would fade mid-sentence, leaving only the imagination to stitch together horrors too vast to comprehend. The silence that followed was worse. Even adults found themselves whispering names of friends and neighbors in dread, as though speaking their names might draw the ire of the ghost king to them.

People gathered in ragged lines outside stores with empty shelves, bright yellow ration slips clutched tightly in hand, hoping for enough food to get their families through the coming week. One father held a ration slip for a family of five, but only his wife and two kids gathered around him. Street preachers stood on every corner; the end of times had already come, now all that was left was to bear the aftermath. Some talked of ways to make it better, of submitting to the ghosts. They argued that nothing could be worse than what would come if people continued to fight the Zone. Others spat at their feet, calling them traitors, though the words lacked conviction. Everyone knew, deep down, that desperation makes strange allies.

In a command center far from the families and famine, outside a set of reinforced doors, a group of soldiers milled about. Boots scraped against tile as they waited, straining to catch even a word from the muffled shouts within. They weren’t privy to the debates unfolding, but the rise and fall of voices told enough: fear was winning ground. A younger soldier whispered that brass only shouted like that when there were no moves left to play. No one answered him. The silence said plenty.

Rumors slithered through the ranks faster than radio waves. Some swore they’d overheard fragments of transmission: that the commanders were weighing something beyond tactics, beyond casualties. The phrase surfaced in hushed tones, sharper each time: an offering. No one dared say more, but every man and woman waiting in that hallway felt the weight of the word. They gripped their rifles tighter, as if steel in hand could fend off the terrible choice looming just beyond the doors. A veteran leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closed, lips moving soundlessly. Whether he was praying, cursing, or bargaining, no one asked. No one wanted the answer.

And beyond those reinforced doors, the answers were being forged in voices sharp enough to draw blood. Leaders gathered, their faces pale under the fluorescent glare. Panic had a taste, and it lingered on the tongue of every general, every politician, every scientific adviser. They argued, they shouted, they folded hands in uneasy prayer over maps of the Ghost Zone, trying to make sense of borders that no longer obeyed any logic. The failure of Project Echo - their last hope, the contingency they’d pinned everything on - had undone them all. Without it, they had nothing to hold Phantom back. Nothing but fear and desperation.

The table was long enough to seat thirty, but the space felt crowded, suffocating. Holographic maps flickered at the center, showing sectors swallowed by ghostly green, cities erased from existence as though they had never been drawn on Earth in the first place. Borders pulsed and shifted in ways no strategist could track. The Ghost Zone bled into their world now, as inexorable as the tide.

“Reinforcements?” General Ross barked, his knuckles white against the tabletop. “We don’t have any left. Half my men are ghosts already - walking corpses, cut down by things we don’t even have names for. If we commit more troops, we’ll lose them the same way. Half the men we lose turn to ghosts themselves and become our enemies on the next battlefield.”

“Then we sue for peace.” The words came from Councilor Whitman, thin-voiced but sharp as a knife. He sat straighter, folding his hands in front of him as though in prayer. “We cannot win. The people know it. Every death we throw at him is wasted blood. There are . . . precedents, after all.” His eyes flicked toward the priests seated near the back of the chamber. “The texts say the Ancients spared worlds in exchange for offerings. Gifts. Tributes.”

“Tribute?” one of the governors repeated, voice brittle with disbelief. “What do you propose we give, our last grain silos? The mountains our people shelter in? Half the continent already burns. If we strip away what little we have left, we condemn the survivors to starvation even if the fighting ends.”

Another voice joined in, harsh with weariness. “We could offer land. Access. The mines, perhaps-”

“The mines are exhausted!” someone else snapped. “And do you think the people will meekly hand over what soil they still bleed for? Trade is already dead, our coffers empty. What do we have left to bargain with?”

The chamber fractured, the arguments jagged and overlapping: food, water, borders, relics scavenged from ruined cities. Each proposal carried the same undertone: the surrender of what little remained.

Then the low, steady voice of a priest cut through the noise. “There is another kind of offering.”

All heads turned. The priest’s fingers worried at a rosary, beads clicking like chattering teeth. His face was calm, but his eyes burned. “Blood has always bought peace. Not grain. Not gold. A sacrifice of life. The Zone does not hunger for soil. It hungers for souls.”

A shocked murmur rippled across the table.

“That is barbaric,” Dr. Hirsch hissed, shoving his glasses higher on his nose. “You would have us dress up murder as diplomacy? You would -” His voice caught. He searched the faces around the table, looking for agreement, for outrage. None came.

The priest did not look away. “Tell me which weighs heavier: one life, freely given, or the slow death of millions? Which choice is cruelty?”

For a long moment, silence pressed in, suffocating. The suggestion should have been dismissed outright; yet no one moved to strike it down. Hirsch’s protest found no echo. The silence that followed wasn’t uncertainty, but calculation. Every second it stretched made the priest’s words seem less monstrous, more inevitable.

Hirsch’s mouth opened again, but no sound came. The protest withered on his tongue.

It was Senator Liang who finally spoke, voice measured, calculating. “If such a sacrifice were considered . . .” He let the words linger, poisonous in their plausibility. “Then who decides what life is offered? And how do we present it so the world sees martyrdom, not betrayal?”

That was the pivot point. The shift no one wanted, but everyone had been circling. Words spilled out faster now: prisoners, criminals, volunteers, symbols. Each proposal revealed more about its speaker than about Phantom. Some wanted the powerless, the expendable. Others demanded that the sacrifice be someone meaningful, someone whose death could be paraded as proof of humanity’s devotion.

“A lamb,” the priest whispered, rosary clattering against the tabletop as his hands shook. “The texts are clear. The lamb must be pure. Innocent. Only then will the offering be accepted.”

Around the table, heads bowed or turned away, shame and fear twisting in equal measure. No one wanted to be the first to say it aloud, but the shape of the answer had already settled over them like a shroud.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Sam hadn’t been trying to eavesdrop. She’d only meant to cut through the east wing hallway, away from the ever-hovering staff, away from the suffocating quiet that hung over the house since Project Echo’s collapse. But the low murmur of voices stopped her mid-step. Her rifle bag swung and hit her hip, a solid, grounding bump.

Her father’s voice, sharp and clipped: “You’re asking us to put our family on the line.”

A second voice, smooth, calculated, and unmistakably political, answered. “On the contrary, Mr. Manson. I’m offering your family the chance to be remembered as the one that saved humanity. A gesture like this carries weight. The people are looking for hope, and the Manson name has always commanded respect.”

Sam pressed closer to the half-open study door, her heartbeat spiking in her ears.

Her mother’s voice cut in, quieter but firm. “And you’re certain this is what they want? A lamb for the slaughter?”

“Not a lamb,” the other voice corrected gently. “A symbol. An innocent offered freely shows surrender without shame. It tells the ghost king that humanity is willing to bow, to pay the price. And coming from such an important family, it tells the people that their leaders are not afraid to sacrifice their own.”

There was a pause. Sam’s stomach churned, her heart froze in her chest.

Her father exhaled slowly, the sound of a man resigning himself to an unpleasant bargain. “She’s always been . . . difficult. Headstrong. Rebellious. If her death can serve a greater good, perhaps that’s the path she was meant for.”

Her mother didn’t object. In fact, Sam could hear the subtle lift in her tone, as if already seeing the political advantage. “The family that gave up their daughter to save the world. Yes . . . yes, I can see how that would elevate our standing. It would silence those who doubt our loyalty. It would make us untouchable.”

Sam’s breath caught in her throat. She must be misunderstanding. They couldn’t - There’s no way. Her fingertips brushed the heavy wooden door. She pulled back, sucked in a breath, steeled herself, then shoved.

The door banged hard against the wall. Both her parents and the aide turned at once, their expressions more annoyed than surprised.

“You can’t be serious.” Her voice cracked, her whole body trembling. “You’re- you’re selling me off? To him? Like I’m nothing but a pawn in one of your stupid games?”

Her father didn’t flinch. “It isn’t a game, Samantha. This is survival. The world demands sacrifice, and you have been chosen.”

“No.” Sam’s fists clenched so tight her nails dug crescents into her palms. “You volunteered me. Don’t dress it up as destiny. Don’t pretend this is noble.”

Her mother’s eyes were cool, sharp, cutting away every plea before it left Sam’s throat, but she was looking at the wall behind her, refusing to meet Sam’s eyes. “One girl’s life in exchange for peace is a bargain anyone would take. You should be proud. You will be remembered long after the rest of us are gone.”

“I don’t want to be remembered!” Sam shouted, her chest burning with fury and grief. “I want to fight. I want to live. I’m not your lamb. I’m not-”

But the words broke off as her father stood, straightening his jacket with finality.

“You are what the world requires. Nothing more, nothing less,” he said. “And you will not shame this family by refusing.”

Sam’s vision blurred with hot tears, rage and betrayal twisting so tightly in her chest she could hardly breathe. She slammed her palms against the polished desk, rattling the fancy trinkets and rewards her parents prized so much.

“You don’t get to decide this for me!” she screamed. “You don’t get to throw me away because I don’t fit your perfect little picture. I’m not a bargaining chip, I’m your daughter - your child!”

Her voice cracked on the last word, but her parents only stared at her as if she were an inconvenience, a mistake in the middle of an otherwise tidy arrangement.

Her father’s lips thinned. “Compose yourself. You will not disgrace us further.” He turned back to the government aide, an apologetic look on his face, and reached down to adjust his cufflinks.

Her mother’s gaze was colder still. “If you cannot understand the necessity of this, Samantha, then perhaps you were never as strong as you thought.”

Something inside Sam broke at that - not cleanly, but jagged, like glass shattering. For a heartbeat she thought she might lash out, might tear the room apart in fury, but her strength failed her all at once. She let out a strangled sound, somewhere between a sob and a curse, and spun on her heel.

She stormed down the hall, footsteps echoing too loud in the empty mansion, until she slammed her bedroom door behind her. The lock clicked under her shaking fingers, but it was useless - what good was a lock against a death sentence signed by her own parents?

Sam slid down the door, her knees giving out. The sobs came fast, wracking her chest until she could hardly draw breath. She pressed both hands to her face, smearing tears and snot across her skin, trying to hold herself together and failing miserably. Perhaps you were never as strong as you thought. The phrase coiled through her like poison, making her wonder if her mother had been right all along.

They’d taken everything from her. Her freedom. Her future. Even her fight. She’d sworn to battle the ghosts, to avenge the friend ripped away from her by the war, and now - now she was being offered up like cattle to the very monsters she hated.

And the worst of it, the knife twisting deepest, was that her parents hadn’t hesitated. They hadn’t fought for her. They had given her away.

She couldn’t breathe. Tears clogged her throat, choking her - drowning her. Her chest felt hollow, frozen through, but beneath the ice something still burned, rage and betrayal simmering like embers refusing to die. Her own parents. They hadn’t really gotten along in years, but still, Sam thought they loved her, cared for her, would fight for her, if it came down to it.

But no; they were tossing her out like an inconvenience. Casting her out of the only life she’d ever known. No more afternoons with Tucker, discussing the war or watching movies or playing video games to distract themselves. No more evenings at the range, practicing so she could avenge Danny. God, Danny. It felt like a betrayal of his memory to just surrender like this, to give in without a fight. Maybe her mom was right; maybe she wasn’t strong enough. She couldn’t bluster her way through this with false bravado.

Sam curled into herself on the cold floor, shaking, choking on the sound of her own grief. She clutched the tiny bottle on a chain around her neck. Inside the bottle, a glow-in-the-dark star from Danny’s childhood bedroom rattled faintly. For the first time since the war began, she felt utterly, terrifyingly alone.

⭑⭒⋆☆⋆⭒⭑

Sam sat motionless on the edge of her bed, her skin cold beneath the thin silk shift her mother had pressed into her arms. She hadn’t spoken since the decision had been made almost a week ago. Words felt hollow, useless; even breathing took effort. When her mother’s hands guided her upright, she didn’t resist. When fabric settled heavy across her shoulders, she didn’t flinch. She was nothing more than a mannequin dressed in white, prepared for slaughter.

Her hands jerked in an aborted motion to tug at her hair, a habit she picked up at the range - you couldn’t aim well if you couldn’t see. But no, she didn’t have her rifle, she couldn’t fight this. And her hair was oh so nicely styled. God forbid I look unseemly in my big media appearance, she thought bitterly.

Her mother murmured platitudes, soft tones, practiced tenderness, but they slid off Sam like water off stone. “Keep your eyes lowered. Do not raise your voice. Obey what is asked of you, and you may yet find peace. If he grows angry, do not talk back. If he reaches for you, yield. In time, perhaps you will even learn to be grateful.” Her hand lingered for a second on Sam’s back. The scent of her rose perfume drifted over her shoulder and Sam wanted to be sick. She used to like her mother’s perfume, but now it was just suffocating.

Sam’s stomach churned, but she didn’t move. The words pressed against her like silk binding her tighter than any rope.

The only thing anchoring her was the faint rattle at her chest, the tiny glass bottle with its fading plastic star. She kept her fingers curled over it, even as pale gloves were pulled onto her hands. Her hip ached with phantom memory - the rifle bag that used to hang there, a solid weight, her proof she could fight back. Gone. Now all she had left was this, and it felt unbearably fragile.

The gown was smoothed, the sash tied. At last, her mother’s fingers brushed the chain around her neck.

“This,” she said gently, almost apologetically, “does not belong. It’s childish, Samantha. And disrespectful. You cannot carry the memory of an enemy into the Ghost King’s presence.”

Sam’s breath hitched. For the first time in hours, she moved, snatching the chain in both hands, clutching it desperately to her chest. A flicker of Danny appeared in her mind - his wide, hopeful eyes, the ceiling of his room dotted with stars. She could feel him there, even in memory, and it fueled the fire in her chest.

“No,” she rasped. “Please. Not this. Don’t take this from me.”

Her mother’s face softened in a way that felt crueler than any slap. “Let go, darling. Some things must be left behind.”

Sam shuddered, digging her fingers into the chain. Her knuckles whitened as she grunted, a low, ragged sound, resisting with everything she had. Her mother was methodical, inexorable, prying her fingers apart one by one. The chain slipped free.

The loss was physical. Sam folded in on herself as though something vital had been cut away, as though her heart had been ripped from her chest. The world seemed to blur around her. She didn’t want to - she couldn’t - face reality without the necklace there, without the tiny star to remind her why she had to keep fighting.

She was numb and hollow as she’s guided out the front gate of her family mansion. She didn’t register the faces of strangers that pressed around her as she walked to the car, or the questions and flashing lights of the press. None of it mattered anyway - Sam was a sacrifice, she was as good as dead. Maybe she would see Danny soon.

The drive to the edge of town was spent mostly in silence. Occasionally her mother would shift in her seat, dress rustling against the leather, or her father would clear his throat, as though he was going to say something, before looking down at his lap and returning to silence.

The seatbelt dugs into Sam’s chest oddly. She’s not used to not having it catch on the studs and pins that adorn all her usual clothes.

They reach the edge of town and pass under the pulsing green ghost shield and are met by a gathering of men in white suits: the GIW. They were going to be the ones escorting Sam to her fate. Not my parents, Sam thought bitterly, they would never set foot in the Ghost Zone themselves, that was far too dangerous.

The car door opened, and Sam’s parents stepped out first, straight-backed and solemn, accepting nods from the officials as though this were a business deal and not their daughter’s life. Then Sam was pulled gently but firmly from the car, her pale dress catching the light, her hollow eyes hidden beneath the fall of her hair. The shield’s pulsing green glow cast a sickly tint over everything, bleaching even the grass of its color. Ahead, the GIW agents stood in crisp formation, faceless behind their visors. Behind them, a small cordoned-off area held the only people who mattered.

Tucker broke through first. He nearly tripped in his rush, but he didn’t seem to care. His hands clutched at her arms, his voice cracking as he tried to sound braver than he felt.

“Sam, listen to me. I’ll find a way - I swear I’ll find a way. They can’t just take you like this. I’ll hack the systems, I’ll tear down the shield if I have to. I’ll get you back.”

She wanted to believe him, God, she wanted to, but the GIW was already moving closer, their stiff white uniforms a wall between them. Tucker’s face twisted with desperation. “I promise!” he shouted as rough hands yanked him backward. “I promise I’ll save you! I can’t lose you too!” His voice broke into a scream, his words lost under the scuffle as he was dragged away, still reaching for her.

Jazz came next, calmer, but with eyes swollen red as though she hadn’t slept in days. She wrapped Sam in a trembling hug, holding on longer than the GIW agents seemed to like. When she pulled back, her hand pressed something small and sharp into Sam’s palm.

“I’m so sorry,” Jazz whispered fiercely. “I tried to stop them. I tried everything. You didn’t deserve this.” Her voice cracked, but she steadied herself. “Stay alive. For him. For all of us.”

Sam curled her fingers around the tiny shapes Jazz had slipped her. Later, when she dared to peek, she’d see the familiar edges of glow-in-the-dark stars. Danny’s ceiling. Danny’s room. A piece of him to carry into the dark, gifted by Danny’s sister, a token to get her through this.

Valerie, a friend from the shooting range, lingered at the edge of the crowd. She didn’t push forward like Tucker or cling like Jazz, but when Sam’s eyes met hers, the connection was sharp and unspoken. Valerie gave her a single nod, grim, soldierly respect, and then looked away, jaw tight, as though to show anything more would undo her.

A hand settled on Sam’s shoulder. Her father’s voice, practiced and calm: “We’re proud of you. You’re giving everything for the greater good.”

“So brave,” her mother added softly.

Sam’s stomach twisted. Brave? Her hands shook with the effort not to claw the words back down their throats. It wasn’t bravery if you didn’t get to choose. It was slaughter dressed in silk.

The agents closed in before she could answer. Their gloves were too tight on her arms, too steady in their movements. She was escorted step by step toward the rift that pulsed at the edge of the platform. A wound in reality, glowing sickly green, light leaking like steam. The air around it hummed, thick with static, and every hair on Sam’s body rose as though the Zone had already reached through and touched her.

One agent murmured something into her earpiece. Another adjusted his grip and nudged her forward. Sam’s heels scuffed against the stone, but the rift swallowed them whole.

And then - cold. Cold unlike anything she had ever known, not winter, not ice, not death. It clawed at her lungs, sank its teeth into her bones. She staggered, breath ripped out of her. Her silk dress felt thin as gauze, and without the grounding weight of her rifle bag at her hip, she felt adrift, helpless, and almost like a ghost herself.

The Ghost Zone stretched around her. Skies churned a restless, sickly green, clouds rolling too fast and too low. The ground was an alien purple, rough and scarred like stone that had never cooled. And in that endless chaos, human order had been carved: the GIW’s white tents lined in flawless grids, harsh as scars against the landscape.

It smelled sharp, like ozone - like danger.

They didn’t loosen their grip until she was shepherded to the outpost gates. Only at the edge of their perimeter, where the air itself seemed to snarl, did the agents finally pause. Beyond lay the Zone proper.

Sam shivered. The silk clung to her skin. And for the first time, she realized how far from home she truly was.

The GIW outpost ended in a hard line of floodlights, and beyond that, there was nothing but the eerie, shifting glow of the Zone. The agents slowed, exchanging uneasy looks. None of them wanted to be the first to cross.

Then a shape flickered out of the mist. Small. Quick. Human-sized.

Sam’s breath caught as the figure resolved into a girl, barefoot, white-haired, and younger than she was, only eleven or twelve at the oldest. A child, and not a child, her sharp green eyes glittering with something inhuman. She wore a simple over-sized tunic and pants, covered in a cloak that fluttered gently in a wind that wasn’t there. At first glance, she could’ve been a lost child. But when her head tilted, too far to one side, the motion birdlike, unsettling, the GIW flinched back as though a gun had been drawn.

“Clockwork told me I had to pick up something important from here,” the girl said, voice soft, lilting, almost sing-song. Her gaze swept Sam up and down, unhurried, unsettlingly precise. Then her mouth curved. Just for a flicker, rows of teeth too sharp flashed before her smile reassembled into something almost normal. “You aren’t what I expected.”

Her words hung in the air, colder than the Ghost Zone’s unnatural chill, and Sam’s blood ran cold. She reached instinctively, desperately, for her rifle, for a Fenton thermos, for anything. But she’s alone. Helpless.

The GIW agents shoved Sam forward. She stumbled, silk skirts tangling around her legs, and a small hand caught her wrist.

The girl’s grip was firm. Too firm for a child. Her skin was cold as marble. “Come on,” she murmured, tugging Sam over the threshold. As she moved, her limbs jerked in tiny, staccato flickers, the steps almost out of sync, and the cloak swirled like wind-chased smoke. “He’s waiting.”

The floodlights behind her flickered and dimmed, swallowed by green.

And just like that, Sam was gone, dragged into the Ghost Zone by inevitability and innocence twisted into something monstrous.