The story wasn’t a long one, but it still felt like it took an eternity to force all the necessary words past his lips, each syllable weighing heavier than the last, progressively clogging up in his throat until there was a lump that blocked the rest off entirely.

  By then, at least, he was fairly sure he’d given all the context the others needed.

  Not for the first time, he was glad for Biomancy and his shades. The former had let him keep his voice steady throughout the explanation, but it could only focus on one thing at a time. Thus, the heat behind his eyes was no doubt yielding some humiliating redness in his sclera, and the thought of his team seeing that, if not for his shades, even after everything they’d been through, made him want to Teleport out of here and hide.

  He doubted he’d ever be able to suppress that emotion-avoidant instinct, but here, at least, he managed to ignore it.

  When it was clear no more words were forthcoming, Lily stepped forward. With his hands still aloft to maintain their Shadow Stream dome, John was helpless to resist as she closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his torso, pressing her face into the crook of his neck and squeezing hard enough to momentarily restrict his breath.

  But she let off the pressure after a moment and leaned back to look up at his face before she spoke with her arms still circled around his upper back, "I’m so fucking sorry you went through that, John. It sounds awful. You looked so sad when you came back after the school portal fiasco, but I never imagined…"

  There was endless sympathy in her green eyes, shimmering with unshed tears of her own.

  He swallowed, then nodded.

  Lily returned the nod with a small smile, before her expression slowly transitioned into a grimace. "And I have to be honest with you here. You asked for my opinion, so I’m gonna give it." She paused, drew in a deep breath. "I don’t think it’d be the best idea to bring the girl back. Actually, no. Hold up. Can’t be sugarcoating it like that when I’ve just said I have to be honest with you." She huffed a laugh that had no mirth in it. "Truth is: I think it would be wrong to bring her back."

  John stared at her for a moment. All he could do to express his desire for her to elaborate was to arch an eyebrow.

  "From what you said, it sounds like she wanted to go. She’d been brought back before, and she actively chose to move on when faced with death again. That’s… I don’t think Claire would want to have another chance at life, and so. Yeah." Lily averted her eyes, and slowly slipped her arms out from around John until her palms rested against his chest. "That’s why I think it would be wrong to bring her back."

  After a moment of silence, John turned his gaze to the others, taking in their reactions. It was dim within the dome his Shadow Stream was maintaining, with only the glow of a bunch of burning arrows Lily had fired into the ground bringing them any light. Still, he could see the range of expressions on his comrades’ faces.

  Chester’s eyes were wide with shock, staring at Lily’s back, and he was slowly shaking his head while his lips moved soundlessly. Doug’s head was bowed, eyes closed, a solemn set to his features that John could only interpret as regretful agreement.

  Out of them, Jade was the hardest to parse, primarily because it seemed like she was torn on the matter herself; there was an angry set to her eyebrows that contrasted severely with the sympathy in her eyes. She was biting on her lip, and her fingers were flexing and relaxing in her sides in a consistent rhythm, like she was grasping for the right words. Eventually, she seemed to find them, though they came out in a whisper:

  "I accepted my death too, at the end there. But I didn’t really want to die, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to be back now that I’m here." She paused to take a shuddering breath. "It was the circumstances that made me come to terms with it, if only for a second or two. I tried to heal with a level up, but that ninja fucker had done something to the wound that made it come back after healing. I knew I was fucked, so I just… made my peace with it. No point struggling or raging. If it weren’t for the struggles I was having with my system, with what it made me do…" She sighed. "There’s a chance it was like that for Claire, right? She knew her dad was dead. Her mum too. And she was sick. Really sick. I can’t blame the lass for just wanting all the pain to end, when faced with the choice. But would it be the same if she could be healed?"

  "Could she be healed?" Doug asked neutrally.

  John swallowed. He tasked Biomancy to hold him steady as he replied, "I could enchant something with a combo of Biomancy, First Aid, and Medic. That’s the combo I have running, and I’m pretty sure it would be able to heal cancer."

  Doug hummed. "A manual thing. Might be a lot for a little girl."

  Lily moved her hands so they were cupping John’s face. "That’s not the important part, for me. Whether you can heal her or not takes second place to whether you should. And, in my mind, it’s a matter of her consent," Lily said, fixing her gaze on John’s eyes. "Jade’s situation was more up in the air, because we hadn’t heard one way or the other from her. But this kid has explicitly said she didn’t want to be healed. She wanted to go, John."

  "She’s just a kid," Chester chimed in the for first time. His voice was soft and strained, like he was out of breath, though he didn’t appear to be breathing hard.

  Lily glanced back at him. "That’s… yeah. I get that kids can’t necessarily make informed choices. And you could say the circumstances in which she made that choice was extreme." She returned her gaze to John, tears shining in her eyes, and she spoke with a tremor in her voice, "I just think a choice of that magnitude should be respected."

  The silence that followed Lily's statement stretched for several seconds, broken only by the faint crackle of the burning arrows still embedded in the ground. John watched the conflict play across Chester's face, his features twisted in evident distress.

  "But she's a kid," Chester said again, his voice gaining strength this time. He pulled his arms tighter across his chest, the padding of his goalie armour creaking with the motion. "Kids make bad decisions all the time. That's why they have parents, yeah? To protect them from themselves."

  His voice had lost its strength towards the end there, dropping to a whisper that sounded almost pained.

  "And her parent was the one who murdered five hundred people to bring her back the first time," Lily said, though her tone had lost some of its conviction. She sighed, stepping away from John, standing at his side. "I'm not saying it's not complicated, Chester. I'm saying we have to respect—"

  Stolen story; please report.

  "Respect what?" Chester interrupted, and John felt a flicker of surprise. The younger man rarely cut anyone off, too anxious about causing offence. "Respect a decision made by a dying child? A sick, scared little girl who'd just watched her dad get killed? That's not informed consent, Lily. That's trauma."

  Jade nodded sharply. "Exactly. Look, I get what you're saying about respecting her choice. I do. But Chester's right: the circumstances matter."

  "We'd be making a choice either way," Chester said. His hands had dropped to his sides, fingers flexing and clenching rhythmically. "If we don't bring her back, that's still a choice. We're choosing to let her stay dead."

  "Because she asked to stay dead," Lily insisted.

  Doug, who had remained silent throughout most of this exchange, cleared his throat. All eyes turned to him.

  "For what it's worth," the older man said slowly, "I think you're both right. And both wrong." He leaned back a little, crossing his arms over his bare chest. The burning arrows cast flickering shadows across his weathered features. "It's a shit situation with no good answer. But if I'm being honest? I think bringing her back now, in these circumstances, would be cruel."

  Lily looked vindicated, but Doug held up a hand.

  "Let me finish. The world's a nightmare right now. Monsters everywhere, people killing each other, the whole system designed to pit us against one another. And this girl would be coming back without a system of her own. Powerless. Dependent on us for everything, including keeping her alive." He shook his head. "That's a hard life for an adult, but for a kid? A sick kid who'd need medical attention from John's enchantments? In the middle of an apocalypse?"

  He let that statement settle in for a moment for a moment.

  "But," Doug continued, "that doesn't mean never. Maybe later, when we've got the monsters pushed back more. When we've got real safety and defences and a proper community. When we can actually give her a life instead of just survival. That's when we should consider bringing her back. If we do it at all."

  Chester's expression wavered, caught between hope and doubt. "But what if we don't make it to that point? What if something happens and we lose the chance to bring her back?"

  "Then that's how it goes," Doug said, not unkindly. "Can't live your life based on what-ifs, lad. You'll drive yourself mad." He lowered his head. "People died all the time, before this thing, and life… went on. You just had to keep going."

  Jade shook her head. "I don't know if I agree with waiting. Every day we wait is another day she's... wherever the dead go. Is it fair to leave her there just because it's inconvenient for us right now?"

  "It's not about convenience," Doug said, a harder edge to his voice. "It's about whether we can actually give her a life worth living. Right now? We can't. Simple as that."

  "But we could heal her," Jade pressed. "John said he could give her an enchantment that’d let her heal the cancer. So she wouldn't be sick anymore. Doesn't that change things?"

  "Does it?" Lily asked quietly. "She'd still be a kid in the apocalypse. Still be powerless while everyone around her has superhuman abilities. Still be vulnerable to every monster and every asshole human we run into." She looked at John, her green eyes searching his face. "You saw what those five did to her in Watford, John. You saw what they were willing to do to hurt Curtis. Would you want to bring her back into a world where that's possible? Where people would torture a child to get revenge?"

  John swallowed. His throat felt tight, and despite Biomancy regulating his nervous system, he could feel the weight of their collective attention pressing down on him. He'd been content to let them debate, to hear all the arguments he'd already turned over in his own mind countless times. But now they wanted his input.

  "I don't know," he said finally, and it came out rougher than he intended. He cleared his throat. "This has been lurking at the back of my mind ever since it happened. And I still don't know."

  Lily let out a soft sigh, her shoulders hunching. "If we could ask her what she thinks, with the heat of the moment behind her…"

  "Because John would need a way to communicate with the dead," Doug said. "And unless he's been hiding a séance Spell from us..."

  John froze.

  Fuck me, I’m an idiot.

  The conversation continued around him, but John wasn't listening anymore. His mind had latched onto Lily’s unintentional suggestion and was now racing through possibilities at breakneck speed.

  Summon Undead would provide the connection to the dead. Telepathy would hopefully allow communication. Medium would presumably strengthen that bridge between the living and the deceased. And Shinigami Eyes... he wasn't entirely sure what that would add, but it was thematically appropriate. Death-related. Combine had surprised him before with how synergistic effects could become when properly merged, and with Archmage, he could adjust the ratio between the aspects of the new ability.

  The debate was still going on. Jade and Chester were now tag-teaming Lily, both arguing for revival while Doug played devil's advocate, pointing out the logistical nightmares. None of them had noticed John's sudden stillness, the way his breathing had changed.

  I could talk to her.

  Not bring her back, not force a choice on her, but actually communicate. Ask what she wanted. Find out if her decision had truly been made in sound mind or if the circumstances had clouded her judgment. Give her the information about healing, about the possibility of life without illness, and let her decide for herself.

  Aura cost was practically meaningless at this point, at least when it came to the lower level abilities. The only reason he hadn’t gone wild unlocking everything up to Level 5 or so was because he wanted to make sure he had a level up in his back pocket for the worst case scenario, as well as keeping his options open in terms of the OP Level 8, Level 9, and, some time in the future, Level 10 Spells and Skills.

  Still, there was something to be said for keeping his options open. An ability to un-combine his magical amalgamations hadn’t come up yet, and he couldn’t say for sure that it would become available in the Level 10 menus.

  Fortunately, the Enchantment menu had already presented itself as a method to solve such problems. He could Enchant some objects with various combinations of Spells and Skills until it gave him something that would let him talk to the subject of this debate directly.

  If it worked, he could stop second-guessing himself. Stop carrying this weight alone. Stop wondering if he was a monster for letting a child stay dead or if he'd be a monster for bringing her back against her wishes.

  He looked at his team, still debating, still trying to help him make this impossible choice. Lily's expression was torn between empathy and conviction. Jade looked fierce, protective in a way that spoke to her own trauma. Chester seemed on the verge of tears, his anxiety about making the wrong choice written plainly across his face. And Doug just looked tired, like a man who'd seen too many impossible situations to believe in easy answers.

  They were trying so hard to help him. The least he could do was try this.

  The debate was reaching a fever pitch now, voices rising as frustrations mounted. Chester's plea had evolved into something almost desperate. "There has to be something we can do. I just... I can't stand the idea of making the wrong choice here. Not with a kid's life on the line." Every breath he took was trembling. "There was a kid… early on… I just…" He trailed off, choking back a sob. Jade rubbed his back.

  "We don't have the luxury of certainty," Lily said, but she sounded less sure than before.

  "Actually," John said, stepping into the centre of the group with shadows still billowing from his hands. "I think I can ask her what she wants."