Chapter 16: Wraith Clearance - Part 2
Midnight approached like a blade to the throat.
We stood in the warehouse's ground floor, torches casting dancing shadows across walls that had seen too much death. Mira's light globe hovered at her shoulder, brighter than before—she'd been practicing all afternoon, pushing her limits in preparation for what waited above.
"The wraith will be strongest now," I said, checking the silver sword's edge for the third time. "Full dark, full power. But that also means it can't hide. Can't ambush."
"That's supposed to be comforting?"
"It's supposed to be tactical."
She laughed—nervous, short, but genuine. "Tactical. Right. We're fighting a ghost and you're worried about positioning."
"Positioning wins fights. Raw power just makes the mess bigger."
The stairs creaked as we ascended. First floor to second, torchlight pushing back shadows that seemed thicker than before. The temperature dropped with each step. By the time we reached the third floor landing, our breath misted in air cold enough to burn lungs.
[DANGER SENSE: CRITICAL ALERT]
[Entity Status: Active, Hostile, Aware]
[Threat Level: HIGH]
"Here we go."
The third floor opened before us—a vast space that had once been a merchant's counting room. Broken furniture littered the corners. Water stains marked the walls from decades of leaking roof. And in the center, where moonlight filtered through a cracked window, the wraith waited.
It looked more solid than before. The merchant's form was clearer now—fine clothes darkened by river water, face twisted in that eternal drowning agony. Its eyes found us immediately.
The scream came without warning.
Not sound—something deeper. Images slammed into my mind: cold water, betrayal, hands pushing down, lungs filling, darkness—
I dropped to one knee, fighting the psychic assault. Beside me, Mira gasped but held her ground, light globe flaring brighter as she channeled magic instinctively.
"The scream. Have to push through it."
I forced myself upright, silver sword raised. The wraith glided forward, incorporeal form rippling like disturbed water. Its hand reached toward my chest.
I swung. The blade passed through empty air—the wraith had shifted, phasing to the side faster than physical movement should allow.
Cold struck my shoulder. Not a blow—something worse. Warmth drained from the contact point, spreading numbness down my arm. Despair followed, creeping into my thoughts like poison.
"You can't win. You're just a child playing at hero. Everyone you touch will die like I did—"
"FINN!"
Mira's voice cut through the mental fog. Her light globe expanded, brightness intensifying until shadows fled the room entirely. The wraith shrieked—different from its psychic scream, this was pain—and solidified slightly, form becoming more defined under the magical illumination.
"Light forces it physical. She's doing it."
I Shadow Stepped.
Reality folded. One moment I was facing the wraith's front, the next I was behind it, silver blade already swinging. The weapon met resistance—actual resistance, like cutting through cold gelatin—and the wraith screamed again.
[COMBAT LOG: WRAITH DAMAGED]
[Silver weapon effective against solidified form]
[Entity integrity: 78%]
The wraith spun, faster than anything corporeal should move. Its hand caught my chest before I could dodge, and the cold spread through my entire torso.
"—failure and death, everyone you love will drown in darkness—"
I stumbled backward, fighting both the physical drain and the mental assault. My energy pool was dropping—each moment of contact cost something vital.
[ENERGY: 387/500]
[WARNING: Life force drain detected]
Mira pushed forward, light globe blazing. "Keep it solid! I can—"
The wraith turned toward her.
"No."
It recognized the greater threat. The magical light was forcing it into vulnerability. Kill the source, and it could become untouchable again.
The wraith phased through my attempted block and streaked toward Mira like a thrown spear.
I Shadow Stepped—too slow. The cooldown hadn't reset. Three seconds felt like three years as I watched the wraith close on my partner.
Mira raised her hands. The light globe shattered, reforming as a barrier between her and the approaching spirit. The wraith hit it and—
Passed through.
Her barrier wasn't strong enough. The wraith's incorporeal form slid through her defenses like water through fingers, and its hands closed around her throat.
Mira screamed. Not psychic—physical, raw terror as the wraith began draining her directly. Her skin paled. Frost formed on her clothes. The light in the room dimmed as her magical energy fed the hungry dead.
[DANGER SENSE: ALLY CRITICAL]
[Mira Voss: Life force draining rapidly]
"Move. MOVE."
I sprinted across the room, silver sword ready. The wraith turned its head toward me, merchant's face splitting into something like a smile. It knew I couldn't reach them in time. Knew that even if I did, my blade would pass through its incorporeal form.
Mira's eyes met mine. Terror there, yes. But something else too.
Determination.
She stopped fighting the drain. Stopped trying to pull away. Instead, she reached deep—deeper than she'd ever gone—and channeled everything she had left into one desperate act.
Light exploded.
Not a globe. Not a barrier. A supernova of magical illumination that filled the entire floor, blinding even me from twenty feet away. The wraith's scream became something else entirely—agony beyond death, existence itself rejecting the brightness that had consumed it.
When my vision cleared, the wraith was barely visible. A faint outline, flickering like a candle in wind, cohesion shattered by Mira's desperate burst.
I Shadow Stepped.
The silver blade found what remained of its form. I thrust through the flickering outline, felt resistance like cutting smoke, and twisted.
The wraith dispersed.
Not a scream this time. A sigh. Something almost like relief as the tortured spirit finally let go of its anchor to the physical world. The cold lifted. The psychic pressure vanished. Moonlight streamed through the broken window, clean and ordinary.
[QUEST COMPLETE: CLEAR WAREHOUSE WRAITH]
[+500 GP AWARDED]
[TOTAL GP: 5,847]
[Outpost Designation: NOW AVAILABLE]
Mira collapsed.
I caught her before she hit the floor, silver sword clattering from my grip. She was breathing—shallow, rapid, but breathing. Her skin felt like ice. Magical exhaustion, severe but not fatal.
"Mira. Mira!"
Her eyes fluttered. "Did we..."
"It's gone. You destroyed it."
"Good." Her voice was barely a whisper. "I'm going to sleep now."
She passed out in my arms.
Mira's Perspective
Consciousness returned slowly, like swimming up through dark water toward a distant light.
The first thing I registered was warmth. Not the wraith's killing cold—genuine warmth, from a fire crackling nearby and something soft beneath me. The second thing was exhaustion so complete it felt like my bones had been hollowed out.
The third thing was Finn's voice.
"—should be fine. Magical exhaustion, not physical damage. She pushed too hard, burned through her reserves."
"And you're sure the thing's dead?" Tom's gruff tone. "Properly dead, not just waiting?"
"It dispersed. The binding that kept it here broke when she hit it with that light burst. There's nothing left to come back."
I opened my eyes. The warehouse's third floor, transformed. Fire in a brazier that hadn't been there before. Blankets piled beneath me. Dawn light filtering through the cracked window where moonlight had streamed hours ago.
"She's awake."
Finn appeared in my field of vision, crouching beside me. His face was pale, dark circles under his eyes, but he was smiling.
"You look terrible," I managed.
"You should see yourself." He pressed a waterskin to my lips. "Drink. Slowly."
The water was cold and clean. I drank until my throat stopped burning.
"The wraith?"
"Gone. You killed it. I just finished it off."
"That's not..." I tried to sit up. Failed. Tried again, accepting Finn's help. "That's not how I remember it."
"Then your memory's wrong." He sat back on his heels. "That light burst—I've never seen anything like it. You burned through it completely. If you hadn't done that, we'd both be dead."
"I almost died. I almost killed both of us by not being strong enough."
But that wasn't quite right either. I had been strong enough. At the last moment, when everything else failed, I'd found something deeper and used it.
"The manual didn't cover that," I said. "What I did. It's not in any of the exercises."
"Combat magic is different from training magic. You'll learn to control it eventually. For now—" He squeezed my shoulder. "—you saved our lives. That's what matters."
Tom appeared at the stairs, carrying bread and cheese. "Eat something. You've been unconscious for four hours."
Four hours. The night had passed entirely while I slept.
I ate mechanically, my mind still processing what had happened. The terror of the wraith's touch. The certainty that I was dying. And then that moment of desperate clarity when I'd stopped fighting and simply acted.
"I felt something," I said between bites. "When it was draining me. A connection to... I don't know. Something larger than my own magic."
Finn's expression flickered—interest, quickly hidden. "What kind of connection?"
"Like there was more power available than I could normally access. A reservoir I didn't know existed." I shook my head. "Probably just adrenaline."
"Probably." But he didn't sound convinced.
The property owner, Aldric, arrived at the warehouse just after dawn. His face when he saw us emerge—alive, standing, victorious—was worth every moment of terror from the night before.
"You actually... it's gone? The spirit?"
"Dispersed permanently," Finn said. "The building is clean."
Aldric walked through the ground floor in a daze, touching walls like he expected them to bite. When he returned, his expression had shifted from shock to something more calculating.
"The price was forty crowns."
"And I have seven." Finn's voice stayed level. "But I also just solved a problem that's cost you three buyers and two tenants over the past decade."
"The agreed price—"
"Was based on immediate payment, which I can't make. Here's a counter-offer: twenty crowns down within the week, twenty more within two months. You get your money, I get time to earn it."
Aldric's calculating look deepened. He was a merchant—numbers mattered more than pride. A building he couldn't sell versus partial payment now and guaranteed completion later.
"One month for the second payment. Not two."
"Six weeks."
"Done."
They shook hands. The Covenant of Blades had its first headquarters.
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