.

Chapter 1

(In which a ghost appears in Lyon's room and promptly makes a nuisance of himself.)

Lyon woke with a start, sitting bolt upright and gasping for air. He fisted his trembling hands in the sweat-soaked blankets and twisted the fabric into knots. His heart thundered in his chest even as the dream began fading and losing clarity, the last remnants clinging to the inside of his skull like sticky cobwebs stretched tight.

It was Deliora, of course, eyes burning bright like coals and roars deafening. A recurring nightmare, sometimes accompanied by Ur and Gray and copious amounts of ice. He could hardly expect anything else with what he'd devoted the past years to, but he had long since tired of it.

"Bad dreams?" a voice straight out of his nightmares enquired politely.

Lyon startled, heart jumping into his throat and head whipping towards the other side of the room. Light filtered through the tattered curtains stretched across the window on the far wall. And in front of the window, cast in shadow, stood Gray.

Lyon stared, knowing full well it was impossible. His eyes must be playing tricks on him, but a swathe of watery light slashed across Gray's face and cast his features in sharp relief. Lyon might not have seen Gray in a decade, but he'd recognize him anywhere. The features were sharper, baby fat long since sheared away, but the contours matched the child in Lyon's memories.

"Wh-what the–? Gray?"

Lyon's first panicked thought was that Gray had caught wind of his schemes and dropped in to make a mess of things, but there was no way. He had been so careful to keep everything hushed up and secret. Anyway, no one would have been able to sneak in here past all the acolytes in the compound. There were too many people about.

He hadn't seen Gray in a decade and didn't even know if he was still alive at all. What were the chances that the fool would show up here after all this time? Not likely.

"Lyon," Gray said. "It's been a while."

Probability aside, that was Gray. Lyon narrowed his eyes.

"Wonderful," he grumbled. "Another dream."

Gray's eyebrow ticked upward. "That would be annoying, seeing as you've only just woken up."

Lyon pinched the soft skin of his inner arm between his fingernails and winced. No, he was already awake. This was worse than he'd thought.

"I've finally done it," he mumbled to himself. "I've cracked."

"I'll say," Gray said, eyeing the room distastefully. "What have you been up to? This place looks like a tomb."

Lyon squinted hard. Gray seemed somehow blurry at the edges. In the dim sunlight filtering through the crack in the curtains, he had a slightly translucent quality. Lyon fancied he could make out the crumbling stone walls and tattered curtains through his very skin.

Out of all the things he could hallucinate, why Gray? Some kind of terrible cosmic retribution?

"I don't know if this really helps, but I'm not just some figment of your imagination," Gray added. "Like it or not, it's me."

Lyon wasn't sure it was a good idea to engage with a hallucination, but he couldn't help himself. "Sounds like something a figment of my imagination would say."

A fleeting smile passed over Gray's face like a shadow, there one second and gone the next. "Sorry to disappoint. I'm not reading your mind, just taking an educated guess."

"You're see-through," Lyon said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Gray lifted a hand, tilting it this way and that, and grimaced. "I'd noticed that, actually."

"So you can't really be here."

"Look, this is hardly the first place I'd pick either, but it seems I'm stuck here for now."

Lyon was still not convinced Gray was here at all, but the apparition certainly looked displeased by this turn of events. In all likelihood this was a waking dream or hallucination, but just in case…

"Like a ghost?" he asked, eyes narrowing.

Gray shook his head. "I don't think I'm dead. Not yet, at least."

"You look like a ghost. Stop haunting me. The last thing I want is to deal with you again."

"Believe it or not, this wouldn't have been my first pick either. I didn't exactly have a choice in the matter."

Lyon straightened up, fisting his hands in the blankets until his knuckles went white. "What do you want?" he demanded. "You owe me some answers right now. What are you doing here?"

Gray rocked back on his heels, his elbow disappearing partway through the wall. He lifted his hand again and plucked at a thin gossamer thread wrapped around his wrist. Looping it loosely in his other hand, he slowly drew it tighter until it rose from its lazy loops on the floor to hang in a sloping line in the air.

Lyon traced the silvery thread with his eyes. It tented through the air like a clothesline across the distance between them and disappeared into the mess of blankets on the bed. He held his breath and lifted his hand. The string shimmered faintly in the dim light as it wound around his wrist.

"What the…?" He grabbed for it, but his fingers passed right through. When he tried to shake it off, it swayed along with his wrist.

"Yeah," Gray said tiredly. "It looks like we're stuck together for now."

He dropped the thread, and it settled to the ground in loose coils.

Lyon's throat tightened with panic and disbelief. "What the hell is going on here?" he managed to choke out. "Why are you attached to me? Why are you like that?"

Gray's gaze slid to the side. "I don't really know," he said, but was there something shifty in his eyes? "I just sort of woke up like this. I don't understand it any more than you do."

Lyon stared at him, trying to determine if he knew more than he was letting on, but it was impossible to tell. "Well, you'd better take a guess, then."

Gray shrugged. "Maybe I'm in a coma or something."

"Comas don't usually send out ghosts to haunt people."

"Been in a lot of comas, have you?"

Lyon glared. He did not appreciate the banter, and he did not want to deal with this right now. He had more important things to be working on, and he would have been perfectly content to never run across Gray again.

"Lots of people die in comas," he snapped. "Hopefully, you'll be next."

Gray frowned down at the silver thread coiled at his feet. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe so."

Lyon did not feel bad. Gray deserved worse, and he had no right to have come here.

"How do I get rid of you, then?"

Gray shrugged again. "I suppose–"

A loud knock came at the door, making Lyon flinch in surprise.

"Lyon-sama?" Sherry asked from the hall.

"Sama?" Gray repeated skeptically.

"Shit," Lyon hissed, his gaze darting back to Gray. The last thing he needed was for Sherry and the others to meet Gray. "Don't–"

But it was too late. The door slammed open with more force than was strictly necessary, and Sherry bounced inside with more energy than anyone in their right mind should have in the morning.

"Good morning, Lyon-sama!" she chirped. "I'm glad to see you're awake after all. It's getting a little late, so I wanted to make sure you were up."

"You have a girlfriend?" Gray asked, and Lyon cut a glance his way just in time to see his eyebrows shoot up his forehead and disappear beneath his hair.

"Shhh!"

"Lyon-sama…?" Sherry asked, blinking at him in surprise.

"Ah… Sorry," he said, flushing. "Not you."

She frowned, brows knitting together in bewilderment, and followed where his gaze had been directed toward Gray. Lyon held his breath as she crossed the room, and Gray's eyes narrowed to slits as he tracked her progress. Sherry stepped right through Gray to push the curtains back and let the light come streaming through the window.

Gray winced and stepped away, out of her path. In the bright sunlight, he looked even more translucent than before, just a faint mirage painted on the air.

Lyon wasn't sure whether to be relieved or concerned that Sherry truly couldn't see or hear Gray. On the one hand, it was definitely easier not to have to explain his presence to her, but on the other, it didn't solve the problem. He still didn't know if Gray was a hallucination or real, although it would have to be a very vivid hallucination. Lyon wasn't sure his imagination was active enough to produce such a thing, and he had never quite pictured Gray all grown up like this, even when he bothered to think of him at all.

"We're doing another progress check tonight," Sherry said. "Yuka thinks we might be closer than expected. I thought you might want to do an inspection beforehand. It will be a long night, I think."

"…Right." Lyon shook his head and rubbed at his eyes. This Gray business had thrown him off, but there was still work to be done. "I'll be down in a minute."

"Let's get breakfast first!"

"Sure, just a minute. Let me get dressed first."

Sherry only stared at him expectantly until he jerked his head towards the door. She turned and flounced back out of the room with a sigh.

"You too," Lyon grumbled in Gray's direction.

"No can do." Gray shook his arm, the string waving in the air along with it. "I can't go very far."

Lyon eyed the length of thread, trying to judge how long it was. Long enough to let Gray lurk on the opposite end of the room with a little extra to spare, but not much more.

"What happens if you try going past the end?" Lyon wondered.

"I can't. I get stuck. And it hurts."

"Hurts?"

"Yeah. I get tingles everywhere and start hurting all over."

Lyon narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "I thought you said you didn't know any more than I did."

"Do you have any idea how long you were sleeping? I had some time to test boundaries. Believe me, if I could get out of this, I would have been long gone before you ever woke up and we wouldn't be having this ridiculous conversation."

Lyon groaned. "At least turn around and keep to yourself. I have more important things to do, and I'd like to pretend you aren't here."

Gray rolled his eyes but turned away. Lyon slid out of bed and got dressed, although what he really wanted to do was go back to sleep and hope things would be normal again when he woke up.

"Where are we?" Gray asked. He peered out the window and stuck a hand through experimentally. "It looks like you've taken over some crumbling monkey god temple in the middle of the jungle or something."

"Can you please shut up? I can't very well pretend you aren't here if you keep talking, can I?"

"Just go back to pretending I'm a hallucination, then. Then you can pretend I'm not here and I can talk however much I want."

Lyon did not think this solved the problem at all. "Just be quiet."

He imagined he could hear the eye roll, but Gray actually stayed quiet this time. A miracle.

Lyon shrugged on his jacket, pulled on his boots, and opened the door. Sherry waited in the hallway.

"Ready for breakfast?" she asked.

"Let's go."

Lyon shut the door behind him and strode past her down the hall. She fell in half a step behind him.

"Really, what is this place?" Gray asked.

Lyon's eye twitched. He'd been hoping against hope that that problem would have disappeared.

"Yuka was saying he wanted to discuss the schedule with you," Sherry said. "I'm hoping he doesn't decide to do it over breakfast."

"I kind of always imagined you somewhere colder," Gray said. "I guess that's kind of stupid. There wasn't a lot of reason to stay. I really don't understand this whole jungle temple thing, though. This place could use some redecorating. Do you think–?"

"Will you please shut up?" Lyon demanded.

Sherry froze mid-step and stared at him, mouth still half open. "…Sorry?"

He flushed, realizing he had no idea what she'd been saying with Gray jabbering in his ear. And since she didn't know Gray was there, it sure sounded like Lyon was talking to her.

"Might want to be more careful if you don't want her to think you're crazy too," Gray volunteered helpfully. "Doesn't seem like she can hear me."

Lyon cast him a glare to show exactly what he thought of the advice, but Gray seemed to have lost interest already and was examining the walls and peering down the hallway as he drifted along.

"Sorry," Lyon told Sherry. "I think I must still be half asleep. What were you saying?"

She eyed him a moment longer before starting forward again. "Oh, nothing important. We can talk with the others."

She fell quiet and Gray seemed too preoccupied to say much, and Lyon had about forty seconds of blessed silence before the low hum of voices floated out of the dining hall they'd set up.

He and Sherry sat with Toby and Yuka, but nearly a dozen of their companions were still eating or holding discussions over breakfast around the room. Lyon half listened and picked at his food while Yuka and the others debated if they needed to recalibrate their plans based on the progress of the moon drip ritual.

His eyes and attention followed Gray as the ghost wandered around the far side of the room and examined everyone and everything. Gray took an experimental jab at someone's breakfast and scowled as his hand went through the plate. He waved his hand in front of people's faces and said words Lyon couldn't hear from here, but nothing got a reaction.

Lyon found his frustration satisfying. Gray deserved it, and it would be less of a hassle if no one else acknowledged his existence. This entire fiasco was a snarl in Lyon's well-laid plans. Not that it would change anything if Gray wasn't able to interfere, but it was a distraction Lyon didn't need when they were gearing up for the endgame. The stakes were too high for distractions, and there was no way Gray's presence wouldn't be an itch under his skin.

The initial shock had begun to fade, if not the confusion, and Lyon could feel all that old rage seeping in to fill the cracks. Gray had still killed Ur and was the reason they were in this whole mess, and he had a lot of nerve showing his face here.

Lyon heard very little of Yuka's speculation while his thoughts were elsewhere, but he would hardly admit to it. They were friends, but Lyon was their leader first and foremost. He would show no weakness, not even one so small as distraction.

When they finished their meal, he followed the others down to the lowest level where they kept the demon in its icy prison. He didn't look at Gray this time, but assumed he was following. It was time to get down to business, and he had bigger fish to fry now.

"We've been making remarkable progress recently," Yuka said as they filed inside the cavern. "I mean, it's still a slow process, of course, but we thought it could take another six months. But we've almost broken through at the weak point on top in the far left quadrant. If we focus there, I think we can leverage that to crack through the rest with reduced effort and it won't take nearly as long. Maybe a month, month and a half? It's still preliminary, of course. I thought we could stay down here during the ritual tonight and see if we need to readjust anything."

Lyon craned his neck and squinted up at the beast encased in ice. The slow, methodical melting of the ice had seemed to be moving at roughly the same rate at first, but it had seemed a bit less uniform over time. Some areas were thinner or seemed to be melting just a hair faster than others, and Yuka's idea to focus their energy on a weak point and see if they could crack the whole thing open from there was intriguing.

"It's worth a shot," he decided. "If it doesn't provide enough leverage to crack everything open, then we might lose some time, but if that's only a month or two… I think it's worth the gamble. It could save us a lot of time. We'll need to experiment with how to focus the moon drip. If we can concentrate it, it might put increased pressure on that point. We should make sure the rest of the ice is still getting some too, though, to minimize any lost time if this doesn't work."

A small, choked noise came from behind them, and Lyon half turned to cast a look back. Gray stood in the doorway, the silver thread binding them together stretched taut in the air. He stared up at Deliora with a stricken expression, like he was crumbling apart right there. For just a moment, he looked so small and forlorn beside the towering demon that he could have been a child again.

He tore his gaze from Deliora to look at Lyon, and his eyes were wide and dark and brimming with hurt.

"Lyon, why?" he breathed, his voice cracking.

Lyon only smiled and turned back to the ice.