I'D BEEN GOING THROUGH the city's library books for four days. Even if the assortment here was broader, like I'd predicted, I'd found nothing.

The coins Chase had given me were running low. The accommodation and food in the city couldn't have been more priced up. And yet, on the fifth day of my arrival, I continued to wander through the same library like a desperate beggar in search of something edible. Crossing shelves I'd gone through multiple times over these days, hopelessly thinking that perhaps there was something important I'd missed.

Or maybe I didn't try hard enough. Maybe I should have travelled to the Empire of Beasts and begged whoever ruled the empire to spare my sister from whatever awaited her. But it would have been lunacy. If I'd travelled there, I wouldn't have survived a day in their world.

No human would survive. And my sister was going to die there or be used for Gods knew what.

What if I smuggled my family somewhere overseas? It wasn't like it hadn't been done already. Even if we were offering the youngest sixteen-year-old of the family, since it was unlikely that a younger one would be born when the age gap between them was sixteen years, it wasn't like it wasn't probable. Sometimes a baby was born into a family after one child had already been offered. Fearful that morphs would come and kill them just for it made people hide their newborns or smuggle them out of the Mortal Region. Nobody knew why morphs preferred such an offering system. After all, it made no difference. Every parent lost a child to the portal.

But paying somebody to transport my family... it would be costly, and where would I get the money? Smuggling them couldn't be feasible.

I almost kicked the bookshelf, wanting to scream with frustration.

How was I going to face Gen once I came back? She knew the purpose of my trip. She might not ask how it'd gone, as she questioned none of my research. But I could tell she still had faith. And if I didn't come back with something, the flame of hope still burning in her would go out.

There was still something I hoped I wouldn't have to go for, but I'd officially run out of possibilities... and hope.

I'd got wind of people selling their souls in exchange for their deepest, darkest desires to come true. I could sell my soul to save my sister. But first, I needed to learn how to make the Gods below listen to me.

I found myself in the aisle of books about Gods. In a matter of minutes, I held the book about the merciless Gods ruling below. I opened it and sought the keyword of the soul until the sound of psst interrupted me.

I let it pass my ears, but then another one followed.

I raised my head from the book and looked to my left. Right at the end of the bookshelf, a small head was poking from behind it. A short, dark-haired boy.

"Come," he said quietly, beckoning me to approach closer.

I frowned, doubting if I should listen to him. I checked around myself, expecting to spot his parents nearby, but I didn't detect or hear anything. Giving in, I returned the book and followed him.

I didn't focus on where we were heading, as my full attention was pinned on the boy. His trousers and tunic were tattered and so filthy that it was impossible to tell their original colour. His bare feet were muddy, but as he moved, he left no trace of dirt behind him.

"Who are you?" I inquired silently, with a tinge of wariness.

He came to a halt and turned to me. His face was as white as a sheet. And his neck... his neck was sliced, smeared with blood.

"Your neck..."

He looked down at his bleeding neck. But it wasn't bleeding. No blood was seeping from the wound. It was as if stuck or... painted. A deceiving image. "Oh, this is nothing."

"It isn't nothing. We should head to the infirmary, we—"

The realisation hit me like a bolt of lightning.

The boy wasn't a boy. Not quite. He used to be a boy, but he'd died, and it was his spirit I'd followed.

It was the first time I'd encountered a spirit. Teachers had informed me they only showed up two days prior to the Summer and Winter Solstice. But what baffled me was that it was precisely two days, not five, unless teachers had made a mistake and spirits emerged whenever they liked.

The boy's spirit was no older than ten, and I couldn't help but wonder what kind of monster would kill the kid by slashing his neck this cruelly.

"You're a spirit, right?" I inquired, only to make sure.

The boy nodded his head, smiling widely. "Right in the bull's... eye." His smile fell quickly, and he cast his eyes down, starting to fiddle with his fingers. "You're the first one from the living to see me in forty years."

"How old are you?"

"Ten," he answered. "Well, I died ten," he amended with a smile, but it soon faded as though he'd realised something.

"Who slashed your throat?"

Only after such an inquiry had left my mouth, I acknowledged how insensitive it'd sounded. I didn't understand how I had the nerve to be curious. I might hurt the soul talking about his death, but the boy lifted his head, brown eyes flickering instead of being pricked by my blunt question. Then I realised. Perhaps the boy was excited that somebody from the living was talking to him. He'd mentioned that nobody had seen him for four decades. He was alone, roving as a spirit wherever spirits resided. Perhaps someone talking to him, even if the topic was about his own death, brought a beam of joy to the boy's ghostlike heart.

"I..." He pursed his lips, eyes afar as if thinking. "I don't know. I'd been sleeping when it all just... went black."

"Did you feel any pain?"

He grimaced. "No."

My heart twinged for the boy—for dying this young. At least his death was painless, but that didn't compensate for the fact that he would never experience all the ups and downs of a human's life.

At last, I tore my gaze off the boy to observe my surroundings.

I'd inspected every part of the library, but I couldn't recall being here before. I'd never stumbled upon it, but how could it be possible?

The shelves were filled with old tomes I'd never seen before. I took one out of the shelf carefully. The book's pages were rusty, and I was tentative to touch them, for they seemed like they could crumble into dust at the merest brush of my hand. Gingerly, I opened the random page of the book. The font was old, written by the ancient hand.

"What is this place?" I asked.

His eyebrows drew together. "A library?"

I smiled softly. "I'm aware it's a library, but as long as I've been here, I haven't seen this aisle before. I'm sure it doesn't belong to the library."

He frowned. "Yes, it does."

"No, it doesn't."

"But it does."

"It doesn't."

The boy slapped his forehead with his palm and dragged it down his face. With a sigh, he raised his head and said in a precise serene manner, "It's a part of the library, but only those who search can see it."

I raised my eyebrows in incredulity.

The boy smiled. "You've been searching for an answer for over a year. My ancestors were kind enough to give it to you."

I didn't question how he was aware of my research. He was a spirit. I supposed spirits had nothing else better to do than to pry into the lives of the living. "If you're talking about my research on how to save my sister, then you're wrong. I don't have an answer."

The spirit's smile turned smug. "Don't you?"

I looked at the ancient book I was holding in my hands. "I don't..." But when I raised my eyes, the boy wasn't here anymore. He had vanished.

I concentrated back on the book, reading the page. I felt a smile pulling the corners of my mouth once it filtered through what the boy had meant.

Could it be that he was a spirit sent to be my sister's salvation?

As the answer might be the one I was staring at right now.

He invited me to his manor to practise fencing, but I avoided it by feeding him with a half-true that I needed to spend the time I had left with my sister. His frown told me he wasn't thrilled, but eventually, he let it go, and this way, I was spared from his lessons.

Alise and Irisa continued urging me to shop for a wedding gown, but I shunned them, too. But I wouldn't need to invent excuses to avoid people I didn't like if my plan worked out.

Next week, I was ready with all supplies, but not emotionally. However, the night before the Summer Solstice, I was close to being psyched up. The most challenging task I'd saved for last. I needed to prime my mum, but before I did, I tarried in the living room where the rest of my family was and played the piano. For one last time, if my precarious plan was going to succeed.

Mum, Gen and Kris were silent as my fingers danced through the piano's keys. I closed my eyes, allowing the music to send me to a peaceful world and fill not only the room with caressing tunes, but my soul.

For the first time in my life, it didn't feel as if my chest was sinking or my mind disagreed with everything I forced it to take as given. Perhaps this was how it should be. Perhaps I'd found my true path.

Once I finished playing, I caught the whimpers coming from Mum. She had Gen engulfed in her arms while whispering her soothing things. Mum had reduced Gen to tears, for her face was buried in her chest as she sobbed.

Kris stood up and walked from the room without a single word. When aura became low-spirited, it was hard to bear for anyone, but to Kris, it was beyond endurance.

I didn't leave like Kris, but didn't shed a tear, either. It met no purpose.

That same night, I faced Chase. I had no clue how he had appeared here when I was eluding him, but here he was fuming with rage, flailing his Goldy at me like a madman.

He thrust it into my chest and pulled it out. Blood spurted out, splattering on the floor, on his clothes, everywhere.

"Traitor," he hissed, eyes bloody. "Traitor of our kind."

I tried to utter something but couldn't. My mouth was sealed like a casket, preventing me from speaking up.

I collapsed on the floor, and he blew another strike into my abdomen.

"Traitor."

The sound of what seemed to be quiet weeping aroused me. At first, I thought it was I who couldn't keep the tears suppressed anymore, but that wasn't it. I breathed covertly through my mouth to steady my laboured breathing and pounding heart. I collected my thoughts, telling myself it wasn't real. Merely a nightmare. I was alive and safe.

In my periphery, I saw Gen's chest rising erratically behind the sheets, as if she was striving to stifle her whimpers to not wake us. I returned my gaze to the ceiling, wanting to tell her there was no reason to cry and reassure her she'd be fine because it wasn't her who was going through that portal, but I couldn't.

Not yet, I couldn't.