Rin: Aiden's dead.

Aaron: You're joking…

Rin: I'm not

Aaron: What happened?...

Rin: Well, Aiden was in the same death trap as Maya and we had to find Gill's leather jacket. My team found it, but we were delayed by the hounds of Shadows, so by the time we reached the room, it was too late.

Aaron: I can't believe this… First Maya, then Angel, and now Aiden. What's with her targeting the Order and their friends?

Rin: I do have a hunch. Remember what I tried to tell you before I got dragged away?

Aaron: It's kinda hard to forget.

Rin: Well, I'm pretty sure Jesse and Angel are both her targets, even though Angel is more of a target. Since Angel is already dead, she's targeting Jesse's remaining friends to make sure she's not a threat.

Rin: Jesse can't live without her friends, she'll be destroyed and the lady knows it. Angel is more likely to explode and charge forward for her friends, so she'll be a big problem for the lady.

Aaron: That's... a bit overwhelming.

Aaron: You still haven't explain why Jesse and Angel are both her targets by the way.

Rin: Oh! Right! Okay, Jesse and Angl are both equally stubborn and a great believer in justice, so they're both candidates for Personas. We knew this the moment they walked in the lodge, so we decided to get them to Igor to see if we can get them to grow.

Rin: We can invite them via handshake, but unlike Igor, we can only use it once. Ann got to invite Angel, while I got to invite Jesse when they get to bed.

Aaron: How on Earth did you do that?

Rin: I snuck a rock under her mattress, so she called for an assistant, I fixed the problem, offered my hand, and there she goes.

Aaron: Normally, I would ask how you snuck a rock under her mattress without her knowing, but knowing how you were as a child, I'm not going to ask.

Rin: Good to know. Anyway, the two showed no signs of seeing Igor, but Jesse was the second last person to wake up after Angel, so we assumed they did see hin.

Aaron: Why is that? What is waking up later than everyone else mean?

Rin: Your mind is consciously awake when you go to the Velvet Room. Igor usually talks to you for a few hours, then let's your mind go to sleep. That's why guests of the Velvet Room wake up much later.

Aaron: That… is a lot to take in.

Aaron: Wait, are you a guest?

Rin: Yes, I am.

Aaron: Oh. OH!

Aaron I feel so bad for your friends in the mornings after the Velvet Room, haha.

Rin: What are you doing?

Rin: Why are you not responding.

Rin: ARE YOU LAUGHING AT ME?

Rin: You are!

Aaron: Oh Irene, I need to stop laughing, Aphmau is giving me a strange look so I need to stop.

Rin: That's not funny. Do you know how exhausted I was after talking with Igor?

Aaron: You're always exhausted in mornings. You're not a morning person, especially in high school.

Rin: Shut up, Aaron.

Aaron: 8D

Rin: Hphm. ANYWAY, before I was so rudely interrupted, as we observed Jesse and Angel, we discovered that Angel is more of a threat because

Aaron: Rin…?

Aaron: Are you there?

Aaron: Oh my Irene, are you okay?

Aaron: I'm sorry I laughed at you, just tell me you're okay.

Rin is typing…

Rin: No fair, the one time I scared you over text, it wasn't a prank.

Aaron: Rin, you scared me!

Rin: Sorry. Gill just came back. I gotta go. I think he's trying to tell us something...

Aaron: Alright, I love you.

Rin: Love you too.


"Alright," Mason said slowly. "So let me get this straight. This Goldie girl, who we couldn't see, happened to appear next to Aiden, put a silver coin under his tongue, and told you that Shadows can apparently reduce us to a vegetative state by eating our psyche or soul?"

Gill bit his lip and nodded. "Pretty much, yeah."

To be honest, Jesse was really skeptical about Goldie. There was no way Gill can happen to see a ghost who knows how to fight the Shadows, but that changed when Seri interrupted after Gill told them about Goldie's tip.

"Oh! So that's why!" Seri had said, snapping her fingers. She flushed at the stares. "We were running away from those Shadows earlier and one of them popped out of nowhere from the darkness! It was scary."

Jesse frowned. She and her team never faced these problems. Sure they mostly searched around the lodge and hid whenever they spotted a Shadow, but she would have thought they faced the problems.

When everyone from the other teams agreed and shared their experiences, skepticism gave way to hope. With Goldie as an informant, they could get to the victims faster!

However, Ann was the only one who didn't look happy about the news. "That's nice and all but how did she know about that fact? We've been researching the Shadows for years. There's no way we could miss this."

"Goldie mentioned a long-nosed man," Gill said, which nearly made Jesse choke and rub her throat.

The quill in Renee's hand snapped neatly in half and Annabelle and Adrian's heads snapped up from their whispered discussion. Ann's eyebrows rose until they were hidden by her hair. Jesse wondered why they reacted like that.

"Long-nosed man?" Renee asked cautiously. She looked alarmed and, strangely enough, annoyed.

"Yeah. She seems really annoyed with him though. I think she was muttering about shoving a rapier up his arse when talking about him."

It reminded her so much of Angel, Jesse both laughed and choked. It reminded her of the time Angel got so mad at an old man for harassing a little girl, she shoved a broomstick up his arse and dumped him in a dumpster. They still laugh about it to this day.

Still, she was curious. The long-nosed man may be the same person as the man she bumped into.

"Well, the long-nosed man seemed suspicious, but there's still something bothering me…" Lukas said, frowning to himself. "You said she put a silver coin under his tongue?"

"Yeah, she did, I asked her why but she just shrugged and said it felt right. Why?"

Jace spoke up next, much to everyone who didn't know him's surprise. "Well, in Greek Mythology, when Hades took over the underworld, he forced Charon to limit the payment to one silver coin. If you want your dead person to go to the underworld, you have to put a silver coin under their tongue. Maybe in Goldie's past life, she'd done it to someone in her life and subconsciously remembered it?"

Jace looked pale and shocked, so did the rest of their friends as well as Jesse herself. In Angel's family, it's tradition to tuck a silver coin under a friend or family member's tongue. You have to know Angel very well to know that fact. Jesse should know. It took two years for Angel to finally share her family tradition. Jesse can already imagine her yelling at Jace for telling the story wrong.

"Jace, you forgot to tell them that Charon is the ferryman who carried the souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron!" Angel complained several times. "If you don't give him the coin, Charon forces them to wander the shores for a hundred years!"

Goldie just seems eerily similar to Angel for some reason. Both of them wield rapiers and have something to do with Greek Mythology. And now that Jesse thinks about it, Gill hadn't mentioned Goldie's description yet.

"Gill, what does Goldie look like?" She asked. Gill stared at her for the sudden question but answered her question anyway.

"She's a gold ghost, like I said, so I couldn't tell her hair color or eye color, but she wears leggings, combat boots, a belt with a sheath hanging from it, a shirt with armor pads on her shoulders, a really long scarf and long hair that reached to her butt and covered the rest of her facial features, and lots of scars. She looked really scratched up too, and her clothes were ripped up. That's all I can tell, sorry. Why did you as— oh." He said when Jesse's face fell. "I'm sorry Jesse, but that's not Angel."

Gill was right. Goldie isn't Angel. Angel hates her scars and made sure none of hers were visible. Goldie didn't seem at all bothered with hers. Angel never wore a sheath since her rapier doesn't need one, but Goldie did. Angel would never hide her face, even from her attackers, but Goldie did. Angel made sure her hair was never too long, but Goldie's reached to her butt. This can't be Angel. They may be similar, but the differences stuck out like a sore thumb.

"...right," Jesse said quietly, then winced when she unintentionally worsen the mood. "I'm sorry. I thought it was her."

Petra looked away, "It's alright, Jesse. I thought so too."

Annabelle gracefully got up. "Let's go to bed everyone. Get some rest. We can't linger on Angel and Aiden's deaths anymore," She said, referring to when they were mourning Angel and Aiden's deaths before Gill came in and told them about Goldie.

Adrian nodded. "We also need to discuss the information about the Shadows and the long-nosed man. Let's not watch the news and go to bed."

And so Jesse collapsed on her bed from exhaustion ten minutes later, her mind swimming from Goldie and how she failed her two friends.


"Mommy! I'm scared… the scary lady is still here… Mommy, I wanna to go home…"

"Mom? Where are you?"

"Alex! Angie! Mom said not to get out of your rooms until she gets you!"

"But James! Mommy's not anywhere in the lodge!"

"I want mom!"

"I know you're scared, but it's still dangerous in here! Mom put me in charge, so it's my job to keep you two safe. Come on and sleep with me if you're scared."

"O-Okay, James…"

"Look! Is that mommy? Mommy!"

"Alex, get back here!"

"James? Why is mommy crawling like that? What is that red liquid dripping down her chin?"

"...oh no..."

"James? Is that mom? Why is she crying blood?"

"Angie, sweetie, can you go get Bill and Charlie? Tell them to get their butts out of bed and run. I'll catch up to them later."

"Huh? Why?"

"Do it now, please. Do it for mom!"

"O-Okay!"

"ALEX, GET OUT OF THERE! THAT'S NOT MOM!"

"But it looks just like mommy! A scary version of mommy..."

"Alex, please, that's not mom! Argh, take that! Alex, Mom will never deliberately scare you like that!"

"James, what the hell is going on?"

"Charlie, take Bill and Angie and run as far as you can away from here? I'll catch up, okay?"

"But James—"

"Bill, go!"

"Alex, get over here, please!"

"But what about mommy?"

"I don't know where she is, but I'm sure we'll feel the real one soon, alright?"

"A-Alright…"