I stared at her, feeling my eyes bulging with disbelief. I knew of Reapers who'd come across specters, many years ago. Legends among us had hinted at the specters being rare spirits who'd been left on their own for too long. Not all ghosts could turn into them. We'd always assumed it depended on what type of creature they'd been prior to dying. Some souls simply carried more power than others.

Specters were so scarce that we didn't even have enough data to compile an accurate profile. They couldn't be pinned down or talked to. All they knew was violence, until they were kissed by the Reaper's blade. Only then could they move on. Theirs was a tale of tragedy. Therefore, how did the First Ten fit into this?

"You need to explain," I said, waving my scythe out to keep an angry specter away for a few more seconds. The rest of them were getting restless, a tad too eager to slice through us.

"Specters are the only ghosts that can wound a Reaper," Dream replied. "Their spirit essence is powerful enough to—"

"I know that! Get to the part where you made them!" I snapped.

Nightmare cut one of the specters down, and it vanished in a flash of sparks. The scythe of a Reaper meant the end. In our case, that meant a boatload of Reaping, for there were hundreds gathered around us, and more coming in from all directions. This was unprecedented.

"A specter does not form on its own. We discovered this a long time ago," Dream said. "A Reaper can put something of their own inside a spirit. A thread of garment. A little gemstone. Even a strand of hair. The ghost absorbs it. Without reaping, it all just festers until it devolves into a specter."

"So the First Ten are responsible for specters…" I repeated, trying to wrap my head around the concept, to understand the reasoning behind it.

The twins nodded. "We used them to play around sometimes. We didn't share the information with the other Reapers, though. We didn't want anyone else trying it," Nightmare said.

"As if that's a good excuse!" I replied. "Hold on, so… the specters my fellow Reapers came across belonged to one or more of you?!"

They nodded again, looking like children I'd just caught stealing from the cookie jar. This simply reinforced my already negative opinion about the First Ten as a unit.

"We can't really control them," Dream said. "Most of the time, we just let them loose to piss another First Tenner off. Sometimes, the specters got away before we could reap them. They're abnormally agile."

"You are insane!" I shouted.

"Yeah, I know, we're not perfect, Miss Judgy!" Nightmare replied. "But we've got a problem here! There are too many of them! I think the Spirit Bender made them to keep us from getting to Time Master!"

Holy smokes.

As the bigger picture cleared, the entire chain of events leading up to this point began to sound like a carefully thought-out plan which the Spirit Bender had been working on for a very long time.

He'd helped Brendel steal Thieron, for sure. He'd definitely helped her bypass GASP on a few crucial matters, and he'd even assisted with her healing after Taeral had first cut her down with an incomplete Thieron.

To make matters worse, Spirit had also messed with Death—it was the only explanation that stood for her disappearance. To this point, we knew he'd had something to do with the Time Master, as well.

In conclusion, as the spirits jumped us, and we had no chance but to slash away at them all with our scythes, I realized that the Spirit Bender had been keeping his fingers in many pies, masterfully setting the scene and pulling the right strings… as if he'd anticipated that some of us might catch on and realize he had something to do with all this.

Needless to say, I had no intention of being stopped here. An army of Spirit Bender's specters wouldn't stop me. All they were meant to do was hurt us and keep us busy for long enough for the ritual to be completed.

Neither I, nor Dream and Nightmare were willing to let that happen. That treacherous son of a bitch had done enough harm already. It was our turn now, and it was his wheel of deceit and spun lies that needed to be broken.

Taeral

Kelara told Seeley through their telepathic connection that they were getting closer to the Time Master, and that the Spirit Bender had had something to do with his disappearance, as well. Seeley was worried that they had specters to deal with—many more than he'd thought even existed—but Kelara had reassured him that they had a handle on it.

"It just involves a ton of reaping," Seeley said.

We'd gone through Strava's pink waters first. Upon entering the white space, Phantom had whispered one of her spells, revealing thousands of tiny slits that glimmered pink. They were all openings to other worlds, normally hidden from our sight. She'd explained that, with Death gone, she'd had zero regard left for rules regarding interference in the plane of the living, hence her decision to show us the white space like we'd never seen it before.

Soul's tracking spell for Death had made the scythe glow brighter when pointed at one particular planet, and he'd used his hands to widen the entry point. He really could bend space to his will, as if it had been made of clay. We'd come out on a planet called Hydris, though none of us knew much about it, other than the fact that it was part of the In-Between's lesser-known and much older solar systems.

We'd been here for hours, following Soul as he let his scythe lead the way, picking up Death's trail. But we had yet to find anything—not to mention his maker. She was nowhere in sight, and neither was the Spirit Bender.

The news from Kelara had come like a slap in my face, reminding me that Spirit's web stretched farther than we'd originally thought. Learning about specters and their origin had come as a startling bonus, even for Seeley, who'd had no clue about their origins. Then again, we hadn't even known they existed.

"Weren't those spirits from Mortis specters, too?" Amelia asked.

This was the fifth hour we'd spent trekking through foreign purple-and-blue jungles in one of the weirdest worlds I'd ever come across. I'd suggested teleporting, but Soul had insisted that his spell was far too sensitive for that. This needed to be done on foot, to my dismay.

"Not really, no," Seeley replied. "They couldn't hurt Reapers. They could only hurt the living. That was just a trick Death employed to keep any curious entrepreneur at bay. But I think the difference between them and the specters could be considered minimal."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Phantom said. "We didn't want other Reapers to know it could be done."

"You people are absolute creeps!" Riza shot back, scowling at her.

Soul chuckled. "Take it down a notch. We've been out for a very long time."

"It's still wrong! Using spirits as your personal weapons!" Riza replied.

Lumi let a deep sigh out, which sounded more like a frustrated groan. "Enough with these petty skirmishes. We can hash out these details later, and I'm sure Death will have something to say about specters, too. In the meantime, we don't seem to be getting any closer to her."

I motioned for everyone to stop for a few moments. My calves burned. I hadn’t covered such distances on foot in quite a while. Teleporting had had its perks. "We need to reevaluate what we're doing here," I said. "We're wasting precious time, and I thought Soul's tracking spell would help us avoid that."

The Soul Crusher gave me a disappointed pout. "I thought so, too. I did not plan for this to take so long, I promise."

"Why, though? Why are we so slow?" Raphael asked him.

Herakles took out a water flask and passed it around. I gulped from it with a thirst I hadn’t even realized I'd had, and the liquid cooled me down as it rolled down my throat. Passing the flask to Eira, I smiled. "How are you holding up?"

She tried to return the smile but couldn't. "My patience is running thin."

"Join the club, sister!" Soul said, visibly irritated. "I don't know why my tracking spell isn't working. Or maybe Death is just really far away from our entry point! I know she's here because my scythe wouldn't react this way if she weren't."

"I suppose we should just keep moving," Widow suggested, trying to maintain a neutral stance. Phantom was more on the impatient side, with the rest of us, as she scowled at Soul and his glowing scythe.

Soul, in turn, was not willing to take the hit. "I'm doing the best I can! Pardon me for not having a fix-all solution."

"Out of all that death magic in your arsenal, you really don't?" Varga asked him.

Around us, gnarly old trees twisted toward the sky, their blue bark making them look as though they'd been painted as scenery in a children's fantasy movie. The leaves were long and purple, velvety to the touch. They formed thick enough crowns to allow our vampires to move freely, without hoods or masks—which was nice, for a change, because I could see exactly how frustrated they were with this situation, too.

"No, I don't, Prince Snarky,' Soul replied. "I told you before. Stop relying on magic to fix everything. Hell, stop relying on your abilities to do everything. Look at Taeral. The poor lad's out of breath from walking!"

"You're exaggerating," I muttered.

"Am I, though?"

"You're incorrigible," Nethissis grumbled, giving Lumi a pleading look. "Can we help Soul in any way to maybe… I don't know, speed things up a bit?"