Finding strength when you didn't expect, fighting battles you never even hoped to fight, arms reaching toward a sky that was beyond reach, forgiving the Moon that cursed you, there was nothing to hold you back.

There was nothing I couldn't do as long as I believed.

Ghostly hands that tore at my chest, I wanted them gone. I wanted them cold. I wanted them never to be able to touch again.

I remembered Oracle's lessons. She was gone. Maybe she was dead. I was still here. I was the only one in that world of agony. I had to remember there was a world beyond the pain, a world that waited for me, expected my call.

'You carry a life inside of you that you can share with others...'

What was I supposed to do with that life she spoke of.

'Think about what you felt when you were on the other side. Relax and remember the feeling.'

Cold. Lost. Trying to see in the pitch black of the eternal night. There was no circle to protect me from the dead now. I didn't need any protection from them.

'Find them. See them.' The words rang in the darkness. Screams reverberated from a great distance – screams I recognized as Lucas'.

Come! My own voice shot out into the darkness, ripping the very texture of the world. Come to me! I bellowed.

The world around me quaked from the sheer power in my voice. I was pulsing along with that world charged by my own will. Life, was it the life inside of me I could feel?

Light broke through the darkness, illuminating their faces. I didn't know these people. I didn't know who they were but I knew what they were. Dead. The souls of the dead that lingered.

I'd stirred them into motion. I'd called them out of their hiding and they were here now – with me, waiting for my next command. Quiet. Lips pressed together never to speak the language of the living but capable of producing unintelligible sounds. More were coming. Floating through space. There was nothing in this world but them. It was like a vast nothing covered in darkness with only the dead to occupy it.

But darkness had already retreated and with it, the pain was gone too. Only the screams kept coming. Pleas for mercy echoing from the other side – the world of the living. I could no longer listen to them. I wanted them gone but how did I return back there without losing the dead standing around me?

I had no answer.

I concentrated on his voice, on the words he spoke.

"Please... stop it... please."

With each step that I took, the voice became clearer.

Stay with me, I told the dead.

They never answered me. They followed.

The first sign of the world appeared and then another until I could see it all. Like looking through a glass – it was surreal.

I could see the dead right there with me and I could see Lucas laying on the altar with the soulless' hands driven into his chest. Casting my gaze down, I realized I was holding my chest with my hands. I was kneeling.

The dead were still here. I was still here – and I wasn't. One foot in the otherworld, the other in the world of the living, how was it even possible?

How was it possible for me to not feel any pain now but to know exactly what the soulless was doing too?

The soulless snapped his head up. Red glowing eyes shot toward me but he was not looking at me. He sought his mistress.

"I lost it, my lady. I lost his soul," the soulless man said with confusion in his voice. I could see the shock in the fires of his eyes even with his face unrevealed.

"You lost it?" Leila echoed from beside me. She was no longer paying me any attention. Her corrupted flesh no longer rested around my shoulders. Sometime during the minutes I spent in the otherworld she'd let me go. I was glad.

"I can still sense it, my lady. It's just... it's out of my reach. It's like there's a wall surrounding it." He was talking about my soul – the same soul he'd held inside his grasp and tried to rip out of my body the same thing he wanted to do to Lucas' heart.

His hands remained inside Lucas' chest, not moving at all. He was waiting perhaps, or maybe he was trying to get to me.

"That's impossible, Alastor," Leila spat out and made her way to the altar. She glanced down at Lucas who seemed to be completely out of it then rounded the altar to stand next to the soulless man. Rolling up the sleeves of the blouse she was wearing, she turned toward her servant.

"I'll do it. Step away," she commanded. Alastor slowly removed his hands from inside Lucas' chest, blood dripping from shadowy fingers.

I could see that same blood streaming out of the wound in his chest and down the carved wood of the altar. A soft, pained sound escaped my friend's lips. They were as pale as his face now. He was going to die from blood loss if this continued for much longer.

Is it possible for a magical to die from a flesh wound?

I didn't want to find the answer and I didn't intend to. It was time this shit stopped.

Taking a quick glance around me to make sure the dead were still here, I rose to my feet. The soulless man stepped away, remaining a few feet behind the altar. Leila took his place, hovering above Lucas' still body. I watched her inspect the wound on his chest and a few minutes later, she placed her hands on top of it, letting them roam across his pale skin.

Was she feeling him up?

I shook my head, realizing how ridiculous my assumption was. Besides, time was running out for him.

"Remove your hands from him right this instant!" I snapped and started toward the altar.

Leila raised her head and gave me a look that would have stopped me in my tracks a few hours ago. Not anymore.

An evil smile slithered to her lips. "Well, well, well." She cackled. "Look who's back and no less but giving me orders. I suggest you remember who's running this show, Scarlet."

My hands formed fists on my sides. I gritted my teeth. "And I suggest you remove your hands." I took another step toward her. I was not going to give her another warning.

She laughed at me. "Or what? What are you going to do to me? Are you going to kill me?"

She thought I was joking. She thought I couldn't do it. She thought wrong. My eyes didn't move from hers when I said, "I will kill you, Leila." Perhaps not today, maybe not tomorrow, but I will kill you.

"And how, pray tell, are you going to do that? There's nothing that can kill me, you stupid girl! Let me show you," she said, her body starting to change.

I watched it morph – first her face, then her hands and at last the rest. Darkness crawled over her skin like a disease spreading. It transformed her human disguise into something else, something inhuman.

A woman made of shadows, a face made of darkness, these same slits of fire replacing her human eyes, long sharp talons made of the same dark substance forming at the tips of her fingers, everything about her was deformed into a sight of horror.

"What you see is what I am," she spoke, her voice nothing and everything like her human version. It had that echo to it I knew only the soulless possessed.

"I have no soul to keep my flesh alive and I have no flesh to shelter the soul. There's nothing that can kill me. Nothing!" Her crazy laughter rang through the place. It rained biting cold against my skin, making me shiver.

I looked around, seeking an answer – a solution. The dead were flowing around me, like a shield only I could see. A woman stopped in front of me, her ghostly eyes looking at me with a plea inside of them.

It was the same woman I'd seen in the cavern – a woman who probably died a long time ago. She had tried to speak to me back then.

She opened her mouth. She wanted to tell me something. Only that gurgling unintelligible sound came out. I stared at her.

She shook her head then raised her nearly transparent hand.

She pointed a finger at me.

You?

She pressed her hand against her own chest. Her lips moved again.

I?

She removed her hand from her chest and flicked her wrist at the dead surrounding us. She mouthed something.

They?

She clasped both of her hands together.

Together?

She made another gesture, sliding her hand through the air in front of her as if cutting her throat and nodded her head in Leila's direction, then turned to me and mouthed again, 'We can kill her together.'

The sound coming from her throat wasn't a real sentence. There were no words that tumbled out of her lips but I understood.

"You're so afraid you can't even look at me now? Just look at yourself! Pathetic!" Leila shouted, bringing my attention back to her. And that one glance at the soulless creatures by the altar was all I needed to make sense of what the dead just told me.

The lingering dead were souls that existed without their bodies, souls I could somehow reach from the world of the living. They were in their own world, a world in between. They could not be harmed by someone in the physical plane because they didn't exist in it. They could not be reached by the soulless. Yet, if I was to trust the dead woman standing just a few inches away from me, they could somehow hurt the soulless.

"Fuck you, Leila! I'm not afraid of you!" I snapped at her.

"Language, Scarlet!"

"Fuck you and your language!" I said then called out to the dead, "Come out!"

The dead woman smiled at me. Her lips produced a shrill sound. A battle cry. The motion stopped. The world became still.

And then, I felt something flowing out of me. I watched hundreds of small fires bursting to life while human forms sparkled and lit up the darkness. The camp exploded to life. I had to squint my eyes to see through the blinding light.

A moment later, my retinas adjusted and I gasped at the sight before my eyes. Letting them roam over the place, I found they were everywhere. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Like sentinels glowing in the night.

I did understand now what people meant when they talked about 'the living dead'.  Those ghosts were not how movies described them, though. They were beautiful, alive and sparkling. And, just like them, I was glowing too.

The sound of clapping reached my ears from the altar's direction. "Bravo, Scarlet!" Leila was clapping her disfigured hands. "This is a remarkable trick you've been hiding up your sleeve. I just don't know how it's going to help you. It looks like quite the treat to me. So many souls will make for a very nice feast."

She would have licked her lips if she had such just then. I was sure of it by just hearing the delight in her voice.

"They are not here to feed you, Leila. Let me pass," I told the ghosts standing in my way. The dead retreated, forming a straight line in between Leila and I. Only the altar stood in my path now.

"I called them here for a different reason," I said and took a step forth. I directed her my own version of a wicked, evil smile then said, "Kill her. Kill the soulless. Kill them all."

In nothing but a whisper.

The stillness of the dead became a blur of movement. They'd been waiting for this all along.

There was just a fraction of the second in which I saw them move. They reached her before I could even blink. She screamed a bloodcurdling cry as glowing hands tried to rip her shadowy form. More screaming followed. Voices shouted in agony, the dead' voices mixing into the cacophony of sounds.

Pieces like sand scattered in a whirlwind of motion. Cold breeze bit across my face.

"I'll come back for you, Scarlet. You just wait!" The wind carried her haunting words.

Sharp claws stuck into my back. Pain exploded in my body. My own scream ripped through the litany of cries. Darkness swallowed the world.

#AN: I hope you enjoyed this chapter, peeps. Let me know what you think :)