At night, the capital glowed just like the estate had, only a hundred times worse.

Duncan whistled appreciatively. “I see what you meant, Gwyn. That is… a lot of ghosts. Too many. How are we going to get past them and find the palace?”

I walked to the ship’s railing and leaned on it, carefully observing the harbor.

The capital city had been beautiful, once. So much of it had been built with purpose, built for beauty, built by the fallen to be their glorious throne. The harbor we were docked in was just one of many in a patchwork sprawl that stretched on and on, an entire district dedicated to shipyards and warehouses. Everything in it looked artificial; there were rough patches of dirt carrying tree husks, but they were too perfect, too neat.

Spires rose in the distance, but no building in the docks was taller than a few floors. It was like the whole city was looming over this one area, claiming it for the fallen.

We hadn’t dared travel near enough the Vaulk estate to see its residents, but our ship was docked in the harbor with a dozen wrecks and the ghosts of the fallen were merely yards away. Rough-looking kindred in shiny, ornate armor patrolled the streets. Refined kindred in luxurious garments pointed at ships or moved in and out of warehouses. Black-garbed kindred lashed whips at the air.

There were no kine ghosts, and none of the fallen noticed our presence.

“Gear up. The palace will be whatever building is the fanciest.” I descended and sorted through my things. I slid the old journal into my coat, adjusted my sword belt, put on my best boots, and threw together a few days worth of rations just in case, stuffing them into a satchel. I grabbed a compass too, and a matchbox.

We reconvened at the gangplank. Everyone except Finn carried weapons, and Gavin and Aislin wore light armor. They shouldered their supply packs and followed me down the ramp.

Almost immediately, a plain-dressed ghost waved at us cordially and said, “Welcome to Aurelion, heart of the empire! Enjoy your stay, and feel free to ask any of our proud imperial soldiers for help navigating the city. Hail the emperor, and have a lovely day.” The ghost smiled vacantly.

I glanced at my companions and raised an eyebrow. They had no input, so I turned back to the ghost and said, “Uh, hi. Who are you? And are you aware that your empire is dead?”

The ghost was not, in fact, aware of that, and he continued to be not aware of that. “Welcome to Aurelion,” he began, and I tuned him out.

To the others, I said, “Not exactly an auspicious start, but maybe it’ll make things easier.” I started walking away from the boat, and they followed.

Gavin and Aislin looked around with wonder. Duncan followed me on the right, and Finn frowned at me from the left.

He said, “It’s kind of creepy. They’re all just repeating the same actions, like they’re stuck in the same few seconds. In the moment they died, maybe?”

Duncan shook her head and pointed at some of the guards. “Those soldiers have traveled across the length of the docks and are still walking. I’ve seen some of the other ghosts move about, too. They don’t match the corpses, either. They should be clustered around the shoreline, but most of them are closer to the buildings.”

I stepped over one of the few corpses that wasn’t by the network of piers and nodded. “They’re reliving something, but without more knowledge about ghosts it’s hard to say what and why. Maybe the library will have answers on that too.”

We passed between a pair of squat, dilapidated warehouses and Finn asked, “Yeah, speaking of that, any plan to find that beyond wandering the city looking for the tallest towers?”

I shrugged. “Do we need one?”

“We could try asking for directions.”

I stared at him blankly.

“That’s what the ghost said. Might not work, but it’s worth a shot, right?”

I was suspicious of this “directions” idea, but I grudgingly admitted it probably couldn’t hurt. Probably.

We intercepted the nearest guard patrol and I gestured for Finn to say his piece.

He cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me, I’m a new visitor to the city and I’m looking for the palace. Could you help me out?”

The lead soldier, a woman with dark hair and a raven on her tunic, nodded. “Of course, citizen. The imperial palace or a palatial estate?”

Finn’s eyes flicked up in brief thought, then back down as he said, “The imperial palace.”

“Go down this road until you hit the canal bridge, cross over, then follow that canal north until you reach the bridge with the statue of Agrippa. Cross it, stay north, and you should be reach the palace district in a matter of minutes.”

“Many thanks, ma’am.”

“Have a good evening, citizen.” The ghostly soldier continued on her way, her patrol following.

Finn grinned at me. “See? Directions.”

I watched the guards leave, focusing more on them than Finn. “Interesting. I guess you just have to… ask the right questions? Hmm.” I shook my head to clear my thoughts and turned back to Finn. “Right, yes. Nice work, Finn. I’ll admit I didn’t actually catch all of that, so, mind navigating? I’ll keep up us on the right bearing.” I took out my compass and let it settle.

We followed the fallen soldier’s instructions and passed through the ruins of Aurelion.

Pockets of kine and kindred marred the city’s beauty with their corpse-smiles, but there was still a somber grace to the fallen capital. Ruined shops with cracked glass windows, decorated roads covered in dust. Everything was muted, the color drained by wind and rain. Grey-red brick and grey-brown timber and grey-purple tattered banners.

We passed through streets that bore the remnants of thriving marketplaces. We followed the canal and saw how eroded it had become. We walked between the worn columns of a gladiatorial arena. Every road was wide enough for an army to march through, and every building was crammed against its neighbors.

We reached the bridge with the statue and I stopped to admire it. The inscription labeled him Emperor Agrippa, Discoverer of the Gates. His image was stoic, but youthful. He wore a laurel crown and carried an ornate spear. For an emperor, his garb was more militant than regal. Agrippa looked closer to a general than a noble. And yet, something about his likeness made me question even that description. One hand grasped a spear, but the other hand held aloft a hefty tome.

That was four sovereigns, then, that I knew about. Aurelius was the first, Nero the last, while Agrippa and Tiberius were somewhere in the early days of the empire.

The history of my world felt like a puzzle box. Learning all the intricate details could unlock something useful, I felt that deeply, but I didn’t know what secret awaited inside this riddle. The library would hold the answers. Answers about Nero, answers about the dead world, and answers about the prophecy.

My destiny was inside that palace. I stopped looking at the statue and started walking again.

Two minutes later, the imperial palace towered above us.

The imperial palace was almost too grand to comprehend. It wasn’t so much a building as it was an expression of power; at least a hundred spires stabbed at the sky, and the palace itself had no consistent shape. It jutted at odd angles and caved in with no discernable pattern.

The palace had once been cast in gleaming gold, but the color had faded to a dull brass. Red cloth was everywhere on the lower tiers, hanging from balconies or strung across ramparts. The primary building material seemed to be stone, but there was plenty of marble and wood visible.

Statues were everywhere, and two lines of statues pressed against a painted brick road leading straight into the palace’s gaping maw. The front gate had once been menacing, surely; steel teeth in front of a timber door with a bar. Now it was in pieces and the palace was vulnerable.

Well, vulnerable with the exception of all the ghosts inside, and the two spectral guards standing watch. They wore fancier armor and taller epaulets, but otherwise seemed indistinguishable from the other soldiers we’d seen. Their corpses were sprawled with several others outside the gates.

I first tried for the easy route – just walking by – but they didn’t make it that simple for me. The guard on my left (his right, I guess) pushed out a hand.

“Halt, citizen. Do you have business in the imperial palace?”

I looked to my friends and they all just shrugged, so I said to the guard, “Yes.”

He apparently hadn’t been expecting such a simple answer, because it took him a few seconds and several awkward twitches to respond, “State your business. Palace security has been heightened because of disobedient kine.”

“Uh… I’m here for the library. I need to check out a book.”

“Do you have permission from Nero or the Royal Archivist?”

“Of course I do,” I lied inexpertly.

Either the ghost wasn’t expecting such a blatant bluff or his ethereal state kept him from noticing, because he said, “Very well, proceed,” and let us all pass.

We entered the palace proper and I marveled at the scenery. The inside of the palace was more impressive than it had any right to be for something so long abandoned. The palace exterior had been drained of color by time, proud gold and crimson turned to dull brass and rust. But without exposure to the elements, the imperial halls were just as resplendent as they had been centuries ago; each room was a tapestry of silver and purple carefully designed by the empire’s finest decorators and architects.

A silver chandelier, a painting of the city, a royal purple curtain, all beautiful. With the exception of the dozens of corpses littering the floor, it was a simply gorgeous foyer.

I hadn’t been paying the dead bodies much mind, but there was a sharp disparity here that made me give them a second look. Some of the bodies bore imperial regalia, but many more were in rags, and were most definitely not kindred.

When the world ended, had it been so sudden that a rebellion in the palace itself couldn’t be cleaned up? The corpses here were more whole than those outside, and while most bore wounds born of weapons, a few seemed dead of natural causes, like heart attack victims. At least half of the guards on the floor were that way.

My companions were beginning to notice that too, but none of us voiced our thoughts. I pointed at the nearest stairwell.

“According to the journal, the library should be three levels up, with a massive set of painted doors. I want to get there as quickly as possible, but don’t run; we don’t want to catch the attention of any more ghosts.”

They nodded, and we ascended through the palatial labyrinth.

And I do mean labyrinth. The palace was so confusingly laid out that each floor seemed twice as large as it should be. We passed through two ballrooms and an indoor theater before finding the stairs to the third floor, and had to creep our way past dozens of bewildered ghosts going through the motions as they wandered their silver and purple grave.

A pair of spectral noblewomen flirted with each other in a shadowy corner. Imperial guard patrolled through heart attack-corpse halls. Kine servants and kine rebels lay dead all throughout the second floor, but I saw not a single specter belonging to the fallen empire’s slave population.

The third floor was much the same as the second, maybe a few more bedrooms and kitchens and menial things. At the same time, the artwork was more resplendent on the third floor, and a few of the statues looked of superior craftsmanship to the ones outside.

It took us longer to reach the next set of stairs, owing to a more active guard presence and a more paranoid tone to our movements. There was a growing tension in the air, and I could see it in everyone’s faces; we were getting close to our goal, and it was making us all nervous of what might be waiting.

When we finally did reach the fourth floor we saw an immediate change. Things here were crisper, more orderly. There were fewer bodies here, too, and fewer ghosts. Everything on the fourth floor seemed to have a purpose. We passed by a few balconies and lesser rooms before reaching our goal: the palace library.

The doors to the palace library were covered in fancy illustration and calligraphy. The shape of a lock had been engraved into the doors, but there seemed no mechanism by which to actually lock them. Two imperial guards stood at attention in front of the library entrance, expressions resolute.

I took the lead once more. “Hello there, soldiers. We have business in the library.”

They crossed their very sharp-looking spears. “No one has business in the library today.”

I searched my brain for something clever to say in response, but subtlety wasn’t my strong suite. “Uh, the emperor said we could?”

“No he didn’t,” replied one of the guards. There was no quaver, no doubt. He knew his orders.

“Look, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Why don’t you contact-”

“Leave, or be forced to leave.” Both imperial guards leveled their spears at me. They had that same distant look as all the other ghosts I’d seen, but there was a focus in them as well. Something – or someone – was keeping these guards more whole than the rabble in the city.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine, be that way.” Then I drew my sword and lunged.

The guardsman was ready for my blow, his shield raised in defense, but my blade passed right through his shield and carved into his spectral form, passing through cleanly and leaving watery disruptions like skipping a rock over a pond.

Unfortunately for me, those disruptions resolved themselves in seconds, and the guardsman’s face barely registered the sword slash. My blade hadn’t slowed, and the ghost hadn’t felt the wound. Being incorporeal had its benefits, it would seem.

I stood there, taking in the sight, as my friends rushed up next to me and assumed combat stances. I just tilted my head and kept examining the ghost. If my sword did nothing, how could I kill it? And how could it possibly fight back?

My answer came in the form of numbing cold shooting through my chest like someone had ripped out my heart and replaced it with a shard of ice. I gasped and doubled over, clutching at my chest, and when my hands started to go numb too I noticed the spectral spear currently impaling me.

The word ‘cold’ was insufficient to describe the ghost’s attack. Cold was falling onto a pile of snow in weather-inappropriate clothing. Cold was a sharp wind leaving little cuts on your hands. Cold was that slight annoyance that made a hot drink and a warm blanket all the more palatable.

This was oblivion’s edge. I felt like I’d been kicked in the lungs with steel-toed boots, then thrown into a frozen lake with my legs and arms tied up so I couldn’t swim out. It was so cold it felt warm again, sensation so overwhelming that it removed sensation entirely and left me unable to feel my chest beyond a vague notion of pain and alarm.

I wrapped my hands around the spear and felt it, felt something just barely physical. I pushed with every bit of strength I could muster and the spear came free with a howling sound like wind on ice. I stumbled back and took in a massive gulp of sweet, precious air.

My companions weren’t having much better luck. All their attacks did nothing, and I could see that numbing pain on all their faces. We couldn’t beat these ghosts with brute strength. All our skill wasn’t enough against these broken memories of a dead empire.

Our objective was right in front of us, beckoning to me, taunting me. What kind of chosen one gives up so easily? What kind of hero can’t deal with a few dead idiots?

You aren’t special. You aren’t anything. You deserve to fail.

I clenched my fists. No. No, that wasn’t going to happen.

My name is Gwyn, and I am the chosen one. I’m the hero. I have a destiny. These pathetic scraps of ectoplasm will not stand in my way!

I screamed my fury and thrust both hands at the shimmering warriors. Crimson lightning exploded from my fingertips and danced across their incorporeal forms. The ghosts fell to their knees and cried out in pain. One dropped his spear, and the other clutched it to his chest as he writhed in agony. I sifted through my memories and found more fuel, remembering Morgan, and the council, and all the unbelievers who dared stand against the chosen one.

I rose to my feet as the imperials crawled pitifully, aimlessly. I gave a sharp jerk of my head towards the doors. “Somebody get that thing open. I don’t know how long I can keep them restrained.”

Duncan was first to the library’s entrance. She pushed it lightly and nothing happened, so she gave it a shove with her shoulder. The doors didn’t even creak. She drew her weapon and slammed it against the twin doors, but a barrier of light sprang into existence, a glowing curtain flowing over the surface of the entrance.

I gritted my teeth as I started to feel the strain of pouring out this much power, and shouted to Duncan, “Sorcery! Try sorcery on it!”

Duncan nodded and took in a deep breath, then let it out. She raised her blade and it glowed with a deep red, closer to burgundy than crimson. She yelled a fierce battle cry and swung the blade down, red clashing against white and sparks flying everywhere.

The barrier rippled, but only slightly.

At Duncan’s feet, one of the guardsmen drew a horn and blew a pained warble into it. The off-note sound echoed through the halls, and in the distance I heard shouting.

Damn it. Damn it!

Finn grabbed my shoulder. “Gwyn, we have to leave. We can’t fight that many, we could barely take two.”

I was still staring at the door, as if I could pierce it with sheer will.

Finn shook me. “Gwyn! You can’t become the chosen one if you’re dead!”

That broke my spell. I shook my head to clear it and growled. “You’re right. I don’t like it, but you’re right. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

We raced for the stairs, leaving the two guardsmen behind. More shouts, from all angles, everywhere. We caught sight of one and Duncan cleaved through her with a sorcerous strike, leaving her gasping behind us as we drew closer to our escape route.

We rounded a corner and at least a dozen guards were waiting for us. We turned to flee back the way we came, but half a dozen more imperial guard marched up and leveled weapons at us. We were surrounded.

“Surrender!” shouted one of them.

We didn’t have much of a choice: we surrendered.

The imperial guard marched us up a flight of stairs and into the most heavily-defended and most richly-opulent floor of the palace. There was a growing presence, a prickling on the back of my neck. Something important was here. Something powerful. It called to me in siren song.

Our escort stopped at a pair of doors even taller and fancier than the library’s. These were gilded. Royal. Fit for an emperor. It took four ghosts more effort than it would have taken one of us, but they pushed the great doors open.

We stepped into the throne room and were surrounded by a hundred ghosts.

Spectral nobility prattled in clumps and gawked at the evening entertainment. At the edges of the room, stony-faced soldiers watched us enter suspiciously. If you ignored the way everyone was transparent, you could almost believe the empire had never fallen. Silver chandeliers, purple curtains shrouding the windows, and a crimson carpet leading to a golden throne.

Upon that throne sat the pristine corpse of a man who could not be anything but an emperor. He wore a laurel crown and imperious garb, and there was a curious silver bracer on his right arm that I had a hard time looking away from. When I finally tore my gaze from the strange armlet, I saw the emperor’s ghost: Nero, the last sovereign of the fallen empire.

Nero’s hair was perfect, his eyes manic, and his lip curled cruelly. With age, his hair had not turned gray but instead greasy. Instead of sagging, his cheeks had worn to the bone. He looked like a particularly venomous and malnourished teenager reveling in accidental and absolute power.

His voice was a trickster’s lilt, slithering and false-faced.

“What have we here? Intruders, in my palace? Fool kindred these be, or perhaps well-masked kine.” The crowd chortled at his words as if cued. “Fair guardsman, what tricks were these precious children playing?”

I didn’t let the guard say anything. “We need into your library. Since you’re dead, I figured it wouldn’t be a problem.” I gave him a smirk that was far more confident than I felt.

A few faces in the crowd flickered at the word ‘dead’, but Nero was unchanged. He raised an eyebrow at me. “Was that a threat, little girl? Threats and attempted theft. My, you’re just begging to be thrown in the dungeons. What’s your name, pet? I’m sure the guards have a report to write up.” He grinned at me thinly, and his eyes showed the spite he felt.

He was like Valeria. I didn’t know how, but he was. He knew exactly what was going on, and he was letting all his subjects believe a lie.

I spat at him. “I’m Gwyn. I’m the chosen one, too. And it’s not a threat if I back it up.”

I lurched away from the guards and thrust my hands at Nero, pouring lingering fury and frustration into a blast of lightning surging straight for his smug bastard face. I was the hero of this story, and no dead emperor would best me.

Nero held out a hand, gritted his immaterial teeth, and stayed standing. I stared in disbelief as my lightning ebbed, died, and left him almost completely unharmed.

The last emperor snapped, “To the dungeons! Let them starve. Let them rot. And when they are weak, they shall be brought before me and slaughtered. Thus is the will of the emperor. Thus is the will of the empire! Praise Nero!”

The entire court shouted, “Praise Nero!” and a dozen speartips lanced my flesh. Everything was cold, and then warm, and then black.