“Mother?” Archmund said, his voice cracking. His mouth and throat fell dry, and he didn’t think it was just because of the parched air.

  A part of him was kicking himself. He shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d guessed it was the ghost of all his ancestors. There was no reason to believe that didn’t include the most recent ones.

  “Granavale, don’t!” Mercy said. “Don’t listen to it!”

  He was suddenly just so, so sad. A sob bubbled up from his belly. It didn’t make sense. He’d been at this for a hundred days, and he hadn’t cried at all since his memories came back.

  “Archmund,” said his mother, and her voice was just as he remembered. “You’ve grown so much… You’re so much stronger than I remember…”

  “I am, mother. I really am.”

  His eyes were wet from tears, and not because the smoke had stung them. Despite all of the trivia he remembered, despite the hard work he’d put into getting good at magic, at his heart he was still just a little boy.

  “Come here, Archmund,” his mother said, extending a hand. “We can be a family again. You, and me, and Linus, and Calla.”

  It is very difficult for normal people to think their way out of sorrow. Sociopaths might be able. But Archmund Granavale was no sociopath. Yes, he was far more jaded than any nine year old had the right to be. Yes, he had awakened to ambitions that no normal child had. Yes, he’d spent the past day cutting down ghosts in the shape of man.

  But he was still a child. A child who’d lost his mother and siblings.

  A child with many servants but few friends.

  A child who knew with near certainty that there was life after death.

  “Granavale — Archmund, don’t encourage it,” Mercy said. She cupped him in her stretched, distorted hand, holding him back.

  Archmund’s mother walked up to him, and ruffled him by the hair between the gaps in Mercy’s fingers. Distantly he wondered why Mercy wasn’t doing anything to stop this. Perhaps it was a form of compassion.

  “We can be a family again?” he said, stumbling over the words. He didn’t know where this was coming from. At no point after his awakening had he felt like he was an alien presence in his own body — he was always Archmund Granavale, noble boy with a dead mother, and he was always that person from the other world with loads of cynicism. He’d cried his eyes out already. He’d cried his eyes out and left himself feel sad and then set to work. He’d cried his eyes out and pushed past it.

  He thought he was over this.

  “That’s right,” his mother said, kissing him on the forehead. Her touch felt both chilly with death yet painfully, searing hot.

  He could see it in his mind’s eye.

  The five of them, sitting around the grand dining table, and the hall that currently echoed the sounds of his lonely meals was instead drowned by the chatter of life;

  Their grand excursions to Granavale Village or the Imperial Capital, dressed in all the fineries they could muster, and instead of looks of pity at their loss, the townspeople looked with envy and pride;

  Sitting in a box at a jousting tournament, gazing down at mighty knights upon steeds clashing into each other, the envy of the crowds below, filled with cobblers and craftsmen and merchants and playwrights;

  And on the slow summer days, they would play on the hills and fields of Granavale Estate, overlooking the golden wheat of the county. And once he’d played his way through and was all tuckered out, he would drift asleep under the apple trees in the light of the setting sun, as his mother caressed his hair and sung a lullaby.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “That’s right, my son,” the Ghost said. “I can offer you everything.”

  “Whatever the dead offer is never worth the price you pay,” Mercy said. Her voice was strained.

  “What’s everything?”

  And his mother told him.

  In the upper world, he was a minor noble, of the lesser gentry. There was a path for him. A known progression. To go to the Imperial Academy, to find a wife who could tolerate Granavale County, to sustain the lands as their rightful lord, and to raise a heir who would do the same. And then, to die, and leave behind his worldly grudges.

  A simple life. A pointless life.

  Here, in the bowels of the earth, halfway to the Guts of Hell, he would reign as a prince. The legions of the formless dead would be under his command. They would heed his every beck and call, taking the shape of whatever indulgences he desired. They could be the manor, or a castle, or the Omnio Imperial Palace itself. They could be any matter of food or drink, be anyone at all, be anything at all.

  He could grow strong, here. Spend the decades and centuries building his strength. Exploit eternity to train. Become more powerful than anyone could ever image. So strong they couldn’t ignore him.

  And then, when the time was right, they could surge forth from the earth, an undead army millions strong. Every nation would fall like dominoes against their might. The world would be theirs. All under heaven would become his dominion.

  She made no mention of what it would cost.

  Archmund closed his eyes to blink away the last of the tears.

  This was a familiar enough story. He’d heard it before.

  Get As in all your classes. Take classes at the college level in middle school. Explore every interest no matter how mutually exclusive to become a well-rounded person. Win a science fair, a literary competition, and a math meet. Become top of the class and give a speech for it. Go to an elite college. Get an elite job. Join the ranks of the rich, the well-off, the jet setters. The world would be his.

  He was fucking tired of it. Those false promises of success, so dependent on his own luck and the goodwill of others, if only he worked just a little harder to make his dreams possible. To be railroaded down a path that had no such promises.

  “You’re not my mother,” he said, and he knew that it was true. “My mother wanted me to be happy. She didn’t want to force me onto a throne.”

  “Oh, Archmund,” said the twisted ghost. “Parents hide things from their children, hoping they can grow up before they have to face the realities of life. But I no longer have that luxury, here so close to the Guts of Hell. I see your power. I see your potential. I see how far you’ve come already. This is what I always hoped you could become.”

  Mercy snorted.

  “Oh, now you step in?” Archmund said, glancing in her direction for just half a second.

  “If you gave in, I couldn’t have stopped you,” Mercy said. “But I would have put you down.”

  “Every parent wants the world for their children, Archmund,” the ghost of his mother said, her voice soothing and gentle, not a single plea in it. “If I could give you every star in the sky and every Gem in the earth and every nation of the world I would. I couldn’t, because I left you. But you’ve come to me now, and I can grant you such great power. I can make your strength multiply a hundredfold.”

  But power at what cost?

  What would she offer him?

  To become one of the aimless dead. To become the king of the aimless dead. To join the legions of the unliving. To command the legions of the unliving. Not a life, but a pale imitation of one, throwing away all that life had to offer in pursuit of power.

  “Mercy?” Archmund said, “have you seen someone take this offer before?”

  “…Yes,” Mercy said, and her voice was just a whisper. “My first subcommander. The offer was from my fifth-cousin thrice removed — his grandfather.”

  How did people even keep track of relations that distant?

  “What happened to him?”

  Mercy glanced down at the floor, and that was enough.

  “Don’t listen to her, my son,” his mother said. “She’s the one who’s lying. I’ll make you strong! I could never do anything to hurt you!”

  “The power of the dead flows into you, and with it, their grudges. Their thoughts become your own. You see the living as obstacles. You turn on them. They put you down.”

  “That’s—” how it would look from the outside, he was going to say, but she cut him off.

  “A living body isn’t meant to channel the magic so close to its raw form. The dead are already crystallized. So the power flows into your flesh. The crystals grow in your body. You become dependent on them. They reinforce your thoughts. Everything you do from the moment you accept the power and become one with the dead is the echo of that last final desire that makes you accept the power.”

  “You will get the world!”

  He did not know if she was telling the truth.

  But it was enough to decide.

  He could feel her Monstrous magic, thick and twisted in the air. Yet a door had opened in it, like a vortex or a whirlpool, a siren song for his mind that drew forward his attention.

  He readied his magic.