Steffan collapsed heavily on the ground just beyond the exit. They’d made it through the maze of mirrors, but Steffan couldn’t shake the hollowness that had settled in his chest. Of all of them, he figured he’d had the easiest time resisting the impulse to attack his reflection. But, then again, what was he actually supposed to have done to it—monologue that version of him to death? Mirror-Steffan had looked just as tired, just as apathetic as he felt.

  Chrissy plopped down next to him, but even her incessant, upbeat chatter did much to brighten his mood. It wasn’t just how nightmarish this obstacle course was being that was bringing him down, it was his growing sense as to the futility of it all. For someone who had chosen his Class in order to bring his friends back to life, he seemed to be spending an awful lot of time watching them die. His Cheerleader Zombie army? Gone. CCMD? Smashed to pieces. Ent being flambeed on the tightrope was just the latest in a long series of failures. The massive creature, once towering and unshakeable, had crumbled under the heat, its bark reduced to ash in the blink of an eye.

  And Steffan couldn’t help but take it personally.

  After all, what good was a Necromancer who perpetually found himself without a summons? The irony wasn’t lost on him. A so-called master of the dead, yet all of his creations seemed to slip through his fingers, one by one, like sand in an hourglass. It was as though even the dead rejected him.

  Chrissy patted his knee as he absently ran his fingers through his hair, tugging at the strands as his mind wandered down paths he didn’t particularly want to travel. Disappointment had been his constant companion for years, long before the integration. Being a Necromancer wasn’t his first choice—it had been thrust upon him out of circumstances. And, after he'd failed to properly resurrect his friends, it came a deep, gnawing sense of inadequacy.

  He’d had ambitions once. Dreams, even. But dreams had a funny way of warping into nightmares when reality set in. Even within the team, Chrissy aside, there was a growing unspoken distance. Sure, they worked together, but there was always that lingering unease when it came to him and his magic.

  Death was something people feared, something they avoided. But for Steffan, it was always going to be unavoidable. The dead were destined to be his only true companions, yet even they were fleeting, slipping away from him when he needed them most. Ent hadn't been with him for long, but the reassuring weight of the creature had quickly become a familiar presence that at least gave him a sense of control, a sense that he could command something in this unpredictable world. But now, quickly following in the footsteps of everything else he had summoned, Ent was gone too, reduced to cinders and smoke.

  Steffan sighed, his shoulders slumping forward as he gathered his knees to his chin. Loss had become so routine that it almost felt like a joke at this point. Every time he raised a new summon, he knew—knew—it was only a matter of time before it would be ripped away from him. Whether by fire, by blades, or giant pools of acid spat by cathedral-dwelling Chimera, they always left. And yet, each time, he felt the sting of it as if he hadn’t already experienced it a hundred times. It was a special kind of disappointment, though, one that gnawed at him in ways he couldn’t quite describe.

  Chrissy rubbed his back and moved his head so that it rested on her shoulder. The still quiet at this point of the obstacle course was bizarre, but he found it oddly fitting. Silence was a companion, too—another reminder of the empty spaces that seemed to fill his life.

  There was a time - just after Lorelei had joined their little group - when he had thought Necromancy would give him power and purpose. But the reality had been far less romantic. Raising the dead didn’t fill the void. If anything, it made it worse. His creations weren’t alive; they weren’t friends, companions, or comrades. They were tools—temporary, disposable. The moment he summoned them, he knew they would fall apart, rot, disintegrate. He could never keep them, never hold onto them for long. They were a reflection of everything else in his life: fleeting, fragile, and ultimately lost.

  He glanced at the others, who were still catching their breath, no one speaking just yet. They probably thought he was brooding—he was the Necromancer, after all. Brooding was expected. But what they didn’t know was that this quiet moment of reflection wasn’t some deep, mystical connection to the dark forces. It was just him, sitting in the ruins of his own disappointment, wondering when—if—he’d ever stop feeling so... empty.

  There was no comfort in this Class. No satisfaction. Just the endless cycle of creating and losing, raising and watching them fall. He supposed that’s what made him a decent Necromancer, if nothing else. He knew loss better than anyone. It was his speciality, his curse, and the only thing he truly understood.

  The others stirred, starting to move again, shaking off the last remnants of the mirror maze. Steffan didn’t rise with them just yet. Instead, he sat there for a moment longer, letting the cold sink into him, wondering if he’d ever get used to how things just... slipped away. Maybe that was the secret. Maybe the only way to survive was to accept the constant disappointment, the inevitable loss, and keep going anyway.

  Not because you had hope, but because you didn’t.

  The unwelcome chime of the System echoed in his mind. The suddenness of it snapped his head up, and Chrissy looked around in surprise. He could feel it coming—a notification, some kind of prompt, the kind that always brought more complications than answers.

  Steffan blinked, his mind sluggish as he tried to process what was happening. A new ability? Now? He hadn’t exactly done anything groundbreaking. In fact, he’d just been mired in his own misery, ruminating on endless losses. And, hang on, what was going on with that message? His Guide had never written to him with that sort of jovial tone before. What the fuck?

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  Steffan frowned at that. A Level 20 ability? That didn’t make sense. He was barely holding things together at Level 10, and now his Guide was throwing something at him from a tier he wasn’t even close to reaching. His gut twisted. There had to be a downside. There always was.

  With a sinking feeling, he glanced at the prompt hovering in the corner of his vision.

  Steffan’s eyes scanned the description, his stomach dropping with every word. Soulbinding Resurgence—it sounded powerful, yes, but those costs . . . He clenched his fists, the words "emotional vulnerability" and "psychic feedback" looming large in his mind. What the fuck did that even mean? Was his Guide warning him he’d have to relive the pain of every summons that had fallen? Every failure? He felt a chill run through him that had nothing to do with the cold ground beneath him.

  Steffan closed his eyes, a wave of exhaustion washing over him. This wasn’t a gift—it was a curse wrapped in shiny packaging. Sure, he could resummon his lost undead, but at what cost? Fifty percent of his mana and then all sorts of crappy mental health issues. But more than that, the idea of being tied, soul-to-soul, to his fallen summons felt . . . wrong. Like it would be taking a piece of him every time he used it. And for what? So he could raise his creatures again only to watch them burn, or rot, or fall apart in his hands?

  He swallowed thickly. The System had never been kind to him, not in the way he’d seen it work with others. Kris had his charm, Chrissy had her flexibility (in more ways than one, his libido chimed in), Lorelei had her unpredictability, and even Michael/Michell had their eerie synchronicity. But him? His path was marked by loss after loss, each more painful than the last. And now, it seemed, the System wanted him to relive those losses over and over again.

  The prompt still hovered in front of him, expectant.

  Steffan’s jaw tightened. That wasn’t the point. Bringing them back didn’t fix the problem. It didn’t erase the failures. It just delayed the inevitable.

  Still, the temptation gnawed at him. His friends were gone, and the thought of being able to bring them back, even if just for a while... It was appealing in its own twisted way. He’d felt so useless lately, so drained. But this... this could make him powerful again. He could feel that sense of control slip back into his hands.

  He hesitated, hovering his fingers over the confirmation.

  Steffan clenched his fists. His Guide wasn’t wrong. This ability wasn’t just about resummoning the dead. It was about binding them to him, feeling their presence more intimately than he’d ever wanted. And every time he brought one back, he’d be reminded of his failures, of the fact that they had fallen in the first place. It would be like tearing open a wound again and again.

  But... he was a Necromancer. This was his path.

  With a deep breath, he pushed the hesitation aside and confirmed the ability.

  The System’s final message appeared more ominous than usual.

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