When Vlad wasn't at work or teaching Daniel, he was only ever in his secret lab studying the samples he took from the castle and the scanned pages of the books that Tucker and Jasmine had forwarded to him.
According to the history that was recorded in those pages, humans built the red castle. They built it to defend themselves against an enemy they were slowly learning more and more about: ghosts. It was during the days of Pariah Dark's reign before he was locked in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep. He had devastated the Ghost Zone and had turned his eyes on the human world, sending wave after wave of ghostly skeletons, and even The Fright Knight, to wear the humans down. The castle was built and used as a shelter for many humans; the reason that it was empty was to fit in as many people as possible. Then, years after Dark's initial attack, after the scepter was prepared and tested on captured ghosts, Dark opened up a large portal, sucking up the entire building, it's foundation, even the very dirt it stood on along with every human inside.
With the humans trapped in the Ghost Zone, they had nowhere to go. The castle was made out of anti-ghost element Ectoranium, and that provided some degree of protection, but it wasn't enough. The last entry in the diary-like history books was about the large stone ball in the center of the gazebo-like obelisk. It stated just what Vlad had theorized: that it's only vulnerable when it was actively sucking in a ghost's soul. It was made to destroy Pariah Dark. It was cut entirely out of an Ectoranium deposit that Vlad was certain had disappeared by now. After it was cut, it was covered in a layer of red stone that was described almost like it was cement. The outer layer was not only to protect the stone, but it was also to ensure that the stone wouldn't outright reject the ghost's soul.
The ball was then enchanted by who they described as their "magic wielders", but Vlad had gleamed through their description that they were only wielding anti-ghost natural elements such as Blood Blossoms. Due to those weilders' enchantments, that stone would always contain at least a drop of the energy from a ghost that it touched. Always.
The entries stopped there, but it cleared up almost everything. Vlad had studied the flames, smoke, and the stones. Like the entries stated, they were mainly made out of Ectoranium diluted by other stone mixtures. Ectoranium was quite rare, so Vlad suspected that these ancient people had obtained it via an asteroid that had crashed into Earth. They must have used all of it to build the castle, staff, orb, and obelisk and diluted it to make their limited supply stretch as far as it could go.
The sample of the flames remained intact in the bottle that Vlad had kept it in, and that only partially surprised him. The flames have remained burning for who-knows-how-long considering that the history entries didn't have a date attached to them, so what's to stop it from burning in the bottle? It was nigh on impossible to diagnose what the flames were and what caused them to burn. Vlad was sure that if he could just get to the bottom of the fires in that dungeon, he would find the source. But his heated ghost core could only protect him so much. He couldn't diagnose any chemical properties in the fire he had. Not even the color of the flame narrowed it down.
The smoke was, for some bizarre reason, easier to figure out. It left behind the chemical residue that was similar to Blood Blossoms. So either Blood Blossoms were eternally burning at the bottom of those fires or some extinct species of the flower that has similar chemical properties. The residue was just similar enough to a Blood Blossom to cause pause.
He had no idea how far back that this thing went, so it was clear that unless he could travel through time, there was know way that he could figure out how all of the samples worked together. Instead, he focused on the historic entries. He poured over them, analyzing every word straight down to the handwriting. It was written in Latin, so it was written before that language went conventionally extinct. Luckily, he had studied Latin. He mainly focused on the last few entries about the orb. Not its composition, but its function. The entries stated that it was designed to both contain a ghost's soul and use it up. It was linked to the castle itself, using the ghosts it consumed as a power source to keep the building intact and partially give the red scepter its power. And in Vlad's theory, it also used the ghost's soul to fuel the fires in the chamber. There wasn't much oxygen in the Ghost Zone-at least, not as much as there was on Earth. It was livable for humans, but it wasn't enough to keep a fire of that size burning for all eternity. The initial fuel source that the ancient people used was, theoretically, the equivalent of tinder, and the ghost souls the equivalent of wood and oxygen.
How many ghosts had they trapped in there to keep those fires burning for so long?
That grotesque bit of his theory might also solve Daniel's memory problem. It was a risk and something straight out of a novel, but it was a chance. If the orb would forever contain a piece of the soul of each ghost it had touched, part of Danny's soul must still be inside. It was possible that it would still try to take in the rest of Daniel's soul, making it open up and be vulnerable. Daniel could blast it with a ghost ray. The orb might mistake the energy of the ray for the energy of Daniel himself and open up. Then, they could destroy the orb. The other option was to get Daniel close to the orb and make it open up by sensing Daniel's presence. It was risky, but it would make the orb open and become vulnerable.
"How are you coming on that translation, Tucker?" Sam wondered at lunch.
Tucker held up his PDA proudly. "Just finished last night. Want to head over to Danny's place and go over everything after school?"
Sam nodded. "I've been wanting to check up on him ever since Jazz texted us last night about what happened."
"Yeah, me too. Meet up on the way there?"
After the last school bell had rang, Tucker and Sam rushed out of the classroom. "Hey!" Mister Lancer's voice shouted. "No running in the halls!"
The two teenagers ignored the comment and continued running. They didn't stop, running all the way to Fenton Works. They only stopped when they reached their friend's door. They simultaneously leaned down and put their hands on their knees, heaving. "I never," Tucker gasped, "wanna run-" Another gasp. "-that far...again."
Sam nodded. "Agreed."
After another moment of catching their breaths, Sam wreaked up and rang the doorbell. After a beat, the door was answered by Missus Fenton. "Hey, there, kids," she greeted. "Is school out already?"
Sam nodded. "Is it alright if we check on Danny?"
"Of course," Danny's mom permissed. "He's just upstairs in Jazz's room. She's studying for a test."
"Thanks, Missus Fenton," Tucker breathed, still catching his breath.
The two teenagers slipped by Maddie and made their way up the stairs and eventually to Jazz's pink-lined room. They found Jazz sitting at her desk intently studying a book and taking notes, and Danny was sprawled on her bed reading a novel.
"I thought you didn't like reading," Tucker voiced, making the two siblings jump.
Danny sat up and smiled gently at the sight of his friends. "I might not have back then, but I find it kinda fun now." He put a bookmark in between the pages to mark his place and closed the book. "What're you guys doing here?"
"School let out, and we have something we need to talk about with Jazz," Sam explained.
"Talk about what?" Danny wondered.
"Is it about…" Jazz trailed off, glancing at Danny.
"You guys can talk about anything in front of me, you know," Danny assured. "I won't freak out."
Sam slowly approached Danny. "It's just that," she carefully began, "every time we talk about what happened when you lost your memory or about anything from your past, you end up in the hospital."
"It's for your safety, dude," Tucker added, walking further into Jazz's room.
Danny groaned, dropping down onto the bed again. "I'm so sick of you guys," he finally said.
"What do you mean?" Jazz asked, turning around in her chair to face him.
Danny sat back up. "I mean that not just you guys but everyone has been walking on eggshells around me." Danny was trying to keep his voice under control, but despite his efforts, it's volume was steadily rising. "I know there's a lot I don't remember, and I know that I'm kinda medically fragile right now, but I need someone to talk to me straight! Vlad's the only one who's done that so far, and even then he doesn't talk to me about anything that's happened! I want to know what happened, and I want to know why every time my head hurts, I literally see red! It seems like you guys and Vlad all have the answers, and I want. To. Know!"
The room was silent, everyone staring at Danny. Eventually, Tucker was the one who broke the silence. "Maybe if we keep it vague and back off and take a break when your head starts to hurt, it'll be okay," he suggested.
Jazz nodded in agreement. "We don't want to hide things from you, Danny," she assured. "We're just afraid of causing another medical lapse."
"It was nothing against you, Danny," Sam added. "We were just afraid."
Danny nodded. "I get it. I do," he assured. "I just want answers."
"Okay. We'll talk about it with you but the moment-the moment-your head starts hurting, you need to tell us," Sam ordered, looking at Danny pointedly.
"Got it," he agreed, genuinely smiling.
"Okay then," Jazz sighed. "Let's get started."
Sam sat on the edge of the bed next to Danny, and Tucker sat on the floor, cross-legged at the foot of the bed. Jazz pushed her rolling chair out from under her desk and slid closer towards the group. "First off," Jazz began, "I've tried to study the samples we took, but I don't have much access to the lab. All of the stone samples seem to be made up of the same substance, but I don't know what it is. The chemical sequence isn't stored in any of my parent's databases. The smoke, on the other hand, appears to be made of something similar to Blood Blossom."
"What's that?" Danny asked.
"It's a red flower that looks a lot like a rose," Jazz explained.
"If I remember correctly from my research on the Salem Witch Trials," Sam added, "it was used as an ancient ghost repellent."
Danny nodded in understanding.
"That's all I've got," Jazz sighed. "Sorry, but I'm a psychologist. Not a scientist."
"It's okay, Jazz. You did what you could," Sam dismissed.
"Where did you get these samples?" Danny wondered.
Sam, Tucker, and Jazz glanced at each other before Sam explained, though she spoke slowly and cautiously. "We got them from a stone red castle in the Ghost Zone."
"And that's the place that is behind the portal doors in the basement," Danny confirmed, receiving a nod from Sam. "Why are you studying those samples?" he continued.
"Well, we think that they could be linked to your memory loss," Jazz said. "And we're studying them to determine if we can reverse it."
"What happened at the red castle?" Danny insisted.
"I think that can be explained with what I have to add here." Tucker held up his PDA and activated it. He messed with it, hitting various buttons until he pulled up the translation of the pages. "While we were there-"
"Was it just you guys who were there or were my mom and dad there too?" Danny interrupted.
"Mom and Dad weren't with us because they don't know," Jazz reminded, "but Vlad was with us, and he's studying the same samples and pages that we are."
Danny nodded again. "Sorry for interrupting, but I had to know," he apologized, looking worriedly at Tucker.
His friend waved a dismissive hand. "It's cool, man. Anyways, while we were there, we found this old forge that hadn't been used in a while, and there was a bookshelf in there. Some of those books were instructions, but the rest of them were history books that were written like they were journals. They were written in Latin, so I used a program to translate them.
"It looks like centuries ago-there's no date marked on any of the pages, so I don't know exactly how long-but it looks like Pariah Dark-" He looked up at Danny. "-he's a really powerful and ancient ghost that you actually battled last year and defeated." Danny nodded in confirmation. "So what happened was that Pariah Dark was trying to conquer the Earth and sent wave after wave of skeleton ghosts from his army to wear them down. Eventually, the humans found a large deposit of what they called Ectoranium that they discovered was a ghost repellent and built the red castle over it. They mixed it with other materials to stretch it as far as they could.
"The people sheltered everyone inside the castle, and they got to work creating the forge and the dungeon underneath the foundation. They created a staff, forging the red crystal ball out of the fires they lit with red flowers and their magic wielders enchanted. The staff was made to control ghosts."
"Okay, stop!" Danny suddenly shouted. The rest of the group jumped and looked at him, finding him with a hand to his temple. "My head's starting to hurt. It's not bad, but still."
"When did it start?" Jazz asked, sliding her chair closer to her brother.
"It started when Tucker explained Pariah Dark but got worse when he mentioned that red staff," Danny explained.
The group took a break, talking about anything that didn't have to do with the past. Tucker told some lame jokes that made Danny laugh and Sam groan. After a while, Danny's head stopped pounding, and Tucker looked down at his PDA, ready to continue reading. As Tucker opened his mouth to start again, a knock sounded at the window.
The group jumped again, looking towards the sound. Danny stood up from the bed and approached the window. "Vlad?" he wondered as he opened up the window. "What're you doing here?"
Vlad glided through the window and morphed back into human form. He scanned the faces of the teenagers before speaking. "I have a theory, but first off, how much does he know?" he gestured to Danny.
It was Jazz who answered, standing up from her desk chair. "We didn't talk about what happened in the castle dungeon out of fear for his headaches, but we were just discussing the translation of the books we found," she explained.
"Have you read them?" Vlad wondered.
"I have, but I just started explaining the history to these guys," Tucker responded as he got up from the floor.
"Daniel," Vlad called. "Do you think it's safe to discuss this considering what happens when you get headaches?"
"Yeah," Danny confirmed. "We figured out that when I get a headache, we can just take a break until it calms down, and then we can continue."
"Good." Vlad turned to Tucker. "I suppose that you can continue. It's best you know everything from the history before I can explain my theory."
Everyone sat back down again, though Vlad remained standing, leaning up against the wall. Tucker continued explaining the synopsis of the history from the books, taking a break every now and then to let Danny's headache subside. "That's it," Tucker said once he had finished, looking up at them all.
"Well, okay then," Danny sighed.
"So my theory is that the orb is only vulnerable when it opens up and takes in a ghost's soul," Vlad explains. "And since it says that the stone orb will always hold a part of any ghost that it comes into contact with, it's possible that part of Daniel' soul is still inside."
"And that's the reason I can't remember anything?" Danny questioned.
"Partially," Sam said. "We think that the one who used to hold the red staff-his name was Freakshow-we think that he ordered you to forget everything."
"And since the staff and orb are connected, if part of your soul is still inside of the orb, you could still be following the order to forget," Jazz added.
"So we would have to destroy the orb in order to release Danny's soul and get his memory back?" Tucker confirmed.
Vlad nodded. "I believe that the orb will open and attempt to claim the rest of Daniel's soul," he continued. "If Daniel blasts the orb with a ghost ray, it might mistake the energy of the ray for the energy of his soul and open. Then we can destroy it."
"What if that doesn't work?" Jazz challenged.
"And does Danny even remember how to use his ghost ray?" Tucker added.
Vlad sighed emptily, but Danny saw in his eyes a certain fear, and he didn't know why. "If we get Danny close enough, it might open and attempt to take the remainder of his soul. While it's in the process, we could destroy the stone."
"Do you realize how dangerous that is!" Sam shouted. "He could die!"
"What's going on up there?" a new voice faintly called. Jack.
"Nothing, Dad!" Jazz called back. "Tucker's just playing a movie on his PDA."
After a few seconds of silence, Tucker spoke up, his voice somewhat quieter than before. "What about resonance?"
"What resonance?" Vlad asked.
"First off, how does a ghost's soul compare to their ghost energy?" Tucker questioned.
"Their powers are extensions of their soul," Vlad explained. "Everyone has a soul, but ghosts have the ability to use theirs as a weapon."
"Okay, so what if Danny uses his Ghostly Wail on the orb?" Tucker suggested.
"Then it's possible that the two frequencies would resonate and shatter the stone," Sam continued.
"Like an opera singer with a glass?" Jazz wondered.
Vlad hummed in consideration. "That could work. And I would rather try that than getting him closer to the orb."
"So let me get this straight: you want me to use my what on a stone orb that I haven't seen that might possibly give me a headache and put me in the hospital again because it's related to my past?" Danny questioned.
Tucker nodded and shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much."
"And I'm using what to shatter the stone?"