The private garden at Micklefield Hall’s rear had, much like the rest of the world, seen better days.

  John stood at its centre, looking around. What must have been a lovingly maintained sanctuary just weeks ago had become a testament to neglect and violence. The formal hedges that bordered the space had grown wild, branches reaching out at awkward angles like arthritic fingers. Roses that should have been pruned back for winter sprawled in thorny tangles across the gravel paths, their late-season blooms brown and withered.

  A decorative stone fountain sat near-dry in the garden's heart, its basin cracked clean through, likely from some monster's passage. What water remained had gone stagnant, a film of algae tinting the surface an unpleasant green. Scattered petals from the roses littered the ground like confetti, and the ornamental grass beds had been trampled into uneven patches of mud and dying vegetation.

  The brick wall that enclosed the space on three sides stood mostly intact, though sections had crumbled where something large had crashed through. Broken statuary lay among the undergrowth, a cherub's head here, the remnants of what might have been a sundial there. Even the wooden benches that had once offered peaceful spots for contemplation were overturned, one of them split down the middle.

  Despite the damage, despite the decay, John could see the bones of what this place had been. Someone had cared about this garden once. Had planted each rose with thought to colour and placement. Had tended the hedges into precise shapes. Had swept these paths until they were immaculate.

  All that care, all that effort, undone in less than a fortnight.

  Story of the fucking world right now, isn't it?

  He looked over his shoulder, finding his team arrayed near the garden's entrance, giving him space but close enough to offer support. Doug stood with his arms crossed, his considerable height making him loom even in the relatively relaxed posture. The old man met John's gaze and gave a single, encouraging nod. Beside him, Lily offered a small smile, though her green eyes held obvious concern. Jade gave an enthusiastic thumbs up, her expression one of determined cheerfulness that John suspected was entirely for his benefit. Chester just shrugged, looking uncomfortable in his hockey armour but managing a wan smile nonetheless.

  Their presence helped. More than he'd expected, honestly. He wasn't alone in this, even if he was the only one who could actually perform what came next.

  John took a fortifying breath, letting it out slowly, and turned his attention to the ring resting in his palm. He rotated it between his fingers, the smooth black material looking near hellish in the light of the burning sky. The transformation from mundane gold to this had been striking. He'd started with a bog-standard ring from his Inventory—had no idea when he'd even looted the thing, but a ring had seemed convenient for his purposes. Easy to wear without being cumbersome or ostentatious.

  Once he'd enchanted it with Summon Undead, the gold had turned black as midnight. When Medium was added, faint ghostly wisps began to trail from its surface. And once Shinigami Eyes had been woven in, the ring gained this disconcerting property where, from certain angles, it felt like an invisible eye was staring at him through the hole.

  The sensation made his skin crawl every time he experienced it, and yet he kept rotating the ring to find that angle again, compulsively checking that the effect was still there. His Inventory listed it simply as the 'Necromancer's Band,' which was appropriately dramatic even if it made him feel like he was cosplaying a villain from a particularly edgy fantasy novel.

  Please work. Please, please work the way I need you to work.

  With one last fortifying breath he slipped the ring onto his right index finger.

  Knowledge flooded his mind immediately, that familiar haptic buzz accompanying every new Spell or enchanted item. He grimaced as the method for using the ring crystallised in his thoughts, because of course it wasn't going to be convenient.

  For some reason, he'd held out a foolish, desperate hope that the ring would be able to target the Human Corpses in his Inventory directly. Just reach in with magic, establish the connection, have a nice chat with Claire's spirit without needing to physically interact with her body.

  But that's not how it worked. Of course it wasn’t. As much as he’d hoped, the rational part of him hadn’t actually believed that would be the case.

  The ring demanded a corpse be present in reality for its functions. Not in some extradimensional storage space, not in a menu somewhere. Here, in the world.

  A laugh bubbled up from John's chest, harsh and humourless. He tilted his head back and glared at the burning sky, mentally using the flaming heavens as a stand-in for his ire against the System itself. The System, which seemed to possess an almost sadistic knack for making everything as mentally torturous as possible.

  Of course. Of fucking course. Because why would you ever make things convenient for me? Can't pass up an opportunity to twist the knife a little more, can you?

  Even with his anger simmering, he couldn't help but chastise himself for believing, even for a moment, that things might work out smoothly. The System had never once done him a favour. Had never once made his life easier. Every power, every ability, every supposed blessing came wrapped in barbed wire. Why had he thought this would be any different?

  Eventually, he worked up the courage. There was no putting it off any longer.

  John summoned Claire's corpse from his Inventory.

  The weight appeared in his arms, and for a horrible second, his mind refused to process what he was holding. Then reality reasserted itself.

  Claire's body was far too light for a girl her age, the cancer having stolen flesh and weight both. He laid her down gently on a patch of relatively intact lawn, his hands shaking slightly despite Biomancy's best efforts.

  The sight of her made his heart clench painfully. A lump formed in his throat, hot and uncomfortable. Heat prickled behind his eyes. He'd been prepared for all this, had been working overtime with Biomancy to keep himself together, manually regulating his stress hormones and tamping down on the cascade of grief trying to overwhelm him.

  She was as gaunt as he remembered. Paler now, somehow. She'd been like porcelain before, and death had leached out what little colour remained. He could see the resemblance to Curtis in the sharp angles of her cheekbones, in the shape of her brows. The cancer had stolen her hair, and she looked impossibly fragile lying there in the overgrown garden, a small broken thing in a world that had broken everyone and everything.

  Despite the circumstances of their brief acquaintance, despite how it had ended, he couldn't help thinking that she looked awfully peaceful.

  With great reluctance, John placed his palm against Claire's forehead. Her skin was cold. He activated the Necromancer's Band's effect.

  Information flooded his mind. The Shinigami Eyes aspect showed him everything about Claire's death and the current status of her soul in clinical detail that felt grotesquely inappropriate. Dead for five days, eight hours, and forty-two minutes. Body in good condition despite the underlying cancer—no decomposition, no damage, perfectly preserved by his Inventory. Soul available for channelling, neither claimed by whatever passed for an afterlife nor dispersed into nothingness.

  The Medium and Summon Undead aspects of the ring gave him an option, presented in his mind's eye as clearly as any System menu. He could call forth her ghost. Allow it to communicate. Ask his questions.

  John activated that aspect.

  A ghostly version of Claire sat up from her body, the spectral form perfectly identical with the corpse. For a moment, she looked around in confusion, translucent and glowing faintly with a nimbus of sickly purple. Her wide eyes swept across the ruined garden, taking in the burning sky above, the overgrown hedges, before finally settling on John.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Her face crumpled, spectral features twisting with an emotion somewhere between grief and horror. "No, no, no," she said, her voice carrying that same hoarse, weak quality he remembered. "Why have you brought me back again?"

  The lump in his throat threatened to choke him. John immediately saw the way this conversation was going to go, could predict the trajectory like the script was sitting in front of him. Still, he felt obligated to try. Had to offer her the choice properly, lay it all out.

  "You haven't actually been brought back yet," he said, keeping his voice gentle. Biomancy helped smooth out the tremor trying to creep in. "I'm just using a special ability of mine to talk to your spirit. So I can ask you whether you want to return."

  "No," Claire said immediately, without hesitation. "I want to be with my mum and dad."

  He'd known she'd say that, but hearing it still felt like taking a punch to the sternum.

  "I can heal your… illness," John told her, forcing the words out. "If that changes things. I couldn't before, but I can now. I could bring you back healthy. No more sickness. No more pain from that."

  Claire hesitated at that. For just a moment, something doubtful flickered in her ghostly eyes.

  "Could you bring back my mum and dad too?" she asked.

  John's heart sank even further. "I could technically bring back your dad, but he did a lot of bad things, and a lot of people don't like him. It might cause problems if I brought him back."

  Five hundred murders. Five hundred fucking people. Some of them probably kids like you, if Natalya wasn’t bullshitting.

  Claire's expression fell, spectral features settling into profound sadness. "There's no point without my mum, though," she said, and the absolute desolation in her voice made something crack in John's chest. "Can you please let me go back to the river?"

  John frowned. "What do you mean by the river?"

  "I was in a cool river," Claire said, and her voice took on a dreamlike quality, distant and unfocused. "I didn't need to think about anything or feel anything. Everyone was there with me. It was... nice. Peaceful."

  He looked back at Jade on reflex.

  She just met his gaze with obvious confusion. "I can only hear your half of the conversation," she said. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

  John held back a sigh. It was confirmation that the ghost was only visible and audible to him, at least.

  John turned back to Claire's spirit. "Are you sure? One last time, I'm asking. Are you sure you don't want to come back?"

  "When I was little," Claire said, "my grandpa died. It made me really sad. But my grandma, who was supposed to be even sadder than me about it, told me something while they cremated his body." She paused, seeming to gather her thoughts. "She said death is just another step in the road a person walks. That she believed they would see each other again in the next life."

  Claire's ghostly form seemed to solidify slightly, gaining definition as she spoke with more conviction. "I hate this world. I hate being sick. I hate being scared all the time. I hate watching people hurt each other. I just want to go be with my mum and dad in the next one. So please..." Her voice broke. "Please burn my body so my soul can be released for rebirth."

  Barely able to keep it together, his own voice threatening to crack, John managed to say, "I understand."

  He ended the Necromancer's Band's effect.

  Claire's ghost faded into indistinct fog that immediately dispersed into nothing, there one moment and gone the next. The connection severed with an almost audible snap, leaving John crouched there by her corpse, alone with his thoughts and the terrible weight of what he'd just agreed to do.

  He stayed frozen like that for several seconds. Maybe longer. Time felt strange. All he could focus on was the small body lying on the grass, the girl who'd asked him to let her die properly. To let her move on. To let her rest.

  She's just a kid. And she's made peace with death in a way I never fucking could.

  Eventually, he gathered himself. Forced his muscles to obey his commands. Stood to face his comrades, his team, his—friends? Were they friends? Did he have friends now? The thought felt alien and uncomfortable, but he dismissed it. Not the time.

  They could tell immediately, just by looking at him, what Claire had answered. Maybe it was his posture. Maybe it was the defeated slope of his shoulders. Maybe it was something in his expression that even Biomancy couldn't fully suppress.

  He barely registered as Lily moved first, crossing the distance in quick strides to pull him into a fierce hug. Then Jade was there too, her arms wrapping around him from the other side. Doug placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, the weight grounding. Chester hovered nearby, looking unsure but present nonetheless.

  They stayed like that for a while, the five of them standing in the ruined garden while the sky burned overhead. Nobody spoke. Nobody needed to. The embrace said everything that needed saying.

  When they finally pulled apart, John found he could breathe a little easier. Still hurt. Still felt like he'd swallowed broken glass. But easier.

  "Right," Doug said eventually, his voice gruff. "Let's do this properly, then."

  They found Humza in the manor's main hall, helping organize supplies that the rescued survivors had scavenged from the storage areas of the hall’s grounds. The man looked up as John's team entered, his dark eyes moving from face to face before settling on John.

  "I need someone who knows about cremation traditions," John said without preamble.

  Humza set down the box he'd been holding. "I'm not particularly religious," he admitted, running a hand through his graying hair. "But I know the basics. Grew up around it, you know? Osmosis." He paused. "Who are we sending off?"

  "A girl named Claire," John said. "And her father, Curtis."

  Humza's eyebrows rose slightly, but he just nodded. "I'll do what I can. Let me grab a few things."

  An hour later, they'd assembled in a clearing at the edge of Micklefield Hall's grounds.. Most of the fifty-odd survivors John had rescued from Watford stood watching from a respectful distance, forming a loose semicircle around the proceedings.

  John watched as Humza worked, moving with efficiency despite his admitted lack of deep religious knowledge. He'd found clean white cloths to serve as shrouds, had gathered what water was available from one of the manor's bathrooms. Now he washed both bodies. Claire first, his movements gentle as he cleaned her gaunt face and hands, then Curtis, whose larger frame made the process more awkward.

  Humza murmured prayers under his breath, words John couldn't quite make out but that sounded important nonetheless. After washing, he anointed them both with water, making symbolic gestures that were probably pale imitations of the proper ritual but felt significant anyway.

  John had built the caskets using his Crafting menu. Simple pine boxes, nothing fancy, but sturdy and properly sized. He'd made Claire's smaller than he'd wanted to, and even then, it still looked too large for her tiny frame. Curtis's was appropriately sized for a grown man, though somehow the monster's corpse looked smaller in death than it had in life.

  Humza arranged them both in prayer positions—hands folded, bodies composed, expressions peaceful—before closing the casket lids. Then he stepped back, cleared his throat, and began to sing.

  His voice was low and slightly off-key, wavering on some of the notes. He didn't know all the words, clearly, and had to hum through parts where his knowledge seemed to fail him.

  But nobody minded. The survivors watched in respectful silence, some with their heads bowed, others with tears streaming down their faces. None of them had known Claire, and those that did know Curtis despised him, so John imagined they were seeing other people in those caskets, grieving for their own losses.

  John stepped forward, holding up the Blazeball Bat. He looked at the two caskets, sitting side by side on the grass. Father and daughter. Murderer and victim. Complicated and messy and human.

  Fuck. Why does everything have to be so complicated?

  He swung the bat.

  The fireball erupted with that satisfying thunk sound, the magical projectile streaking through the air to impact the first casket. Wood and fabric caught immediately, flames spreading with unnatural speed. He swung again, catching the second casket, and soon both were burning fiercely.

  The enchanted flames consumed the caskets with remarkable efficiency, burning hotter and faster than normal fire had any right to. Within minutes, the wooden boxes had been reduced to ash. The bodies within burned cleanly, leaving no smell of burning flesh, no smoke that made people gag. Just clean flames that devoured everything and left only fine gray ash behind.

  Wind picked up, swirling through the clearing. John watched as the ashes began to lift, catching in the breeze, scattering across the grounds of Micklefield Hall. Some drifted toward the garden. Some toward the manor itself. Some simply disappeared into the burning sky, rising up and up until they were lost to sight.

  Gone. Both of them. Sent on to whatever came next. He could only hope it was better than here.

  John found his eyes burning. This time, he didn't want to stop the tears with Biomancy. Didn't want to suppress this to manageable hormones and chemical signals. This deserved to be felt.

  He tilted his head toward the burning sky, let a few tears leak free, and heard himself say, "It's a terrible day for rain."

  +5000 Aura