PART I: THE BATTLES

She died on a Sunday.

It didn't feel like a Sunday; the crew of the Myriad had been working tirelessly with no rest through the constant pitter-patter of rain that had become Myria's most reliable aspect. The grey clouds hung so low that Archer felt like he was sifting through them on the way up to his balcony. He pushed through the doors, ignoring the eerie state of his captain's quarters. Every day was a successful day in the grand scheme of disappointment, and this one was no different.

The quarters were empty, as they had been all year. The air hung cold and heavy in the room, everything dark in the absence of an afternoon sun. Like always, Archer tossed his papers on the desk and went to the shelf to get some water once the workday was done. And like always, the creeping sensation of exhaustion set in once he felt the whisper at his neck.

It was an often occurrence these days, beginning the night one of the Myriad's rowboats mysteriously disappeared, taking something very important with it. Since then, when he felt something invisible touch his forearm or his shoulder, it didn't feel quite so invisible.

You cannot bring back the dead. That was the consensus, the one Archer fully supported, but it was also the one he began to doubt when the light faded for the day. He hadn't seen any dead people out on excursions, of course, but his quarters?

It was, utterly and completely without a doubt, as haunted as a room could be.

It always starts with the sounds. At first, it would be just a little groan here or there, one Archer couldn't even place, but then it progressed to the very familiar sound of furniture being pushed. He hardly even realized how unnatural it was until he remembered that no one lived in that room anymore.

The first time he heard the sounds, he'd shaken his head, believing it was nothing but an echo of a noise he knew too well. She's fine, just tired. No, that wasn't her dragging barrels across the deck in the middle of the night. Of course she didn't rip the pages out of the ships log. She doesn't have an obsession with pushing furniture around like a madwoman. I promise.

That was then, and this was now. The rowboat was gone, the room was empty. Those sounds were just in his head.

But he didn't believe that. Not even a little. Those sounds over there in his quarters were real. There was something there on the other side of the fabric of life, ripping pages, moving furniture, bleeding the sounds into the living world. In the end, no matter what he believed in his heart, they were just sounds, and sounds were harmless.

He made his way to the curtains, pushing them away so the little light could get through. And there—right there. Something shifted. Something changed. That thin veil between his world and the dead world was suddenly sliced open.

Riiiiiiiiiip.

He moved his head slowly, watching his closed bedroom door.

Riiiiiip. Rip. Riiiiiip.

He could feel the space get cold, could feel the air crawling through the windows despite them having been closed. He kept his gaze on the door to that haunted bedroom. They were just sounds, and sounds were harmless.

The handle twisted.

He stayed unmoving by his desk, watching the shadows under the door move as they crawled across the floor. There was the soft, almost inaudible sound of footsteps behind him, but he didn't look. The handle turned, very slowly. Not just a sound.

"Cap?"

Archer startled as he snapped his gaze back to the open door to his quarters. Light from the hallway spilled into the room, bending as Valour held the door open. "Is everything okay? I knocked like five times."

Archer looked back at his bedroom door, closed, no light under the crack. "Fine," he said.

Vikki stayed by the door. "Britter told me to come up and ask for the sheets, but he's always sending me up here for random things, and I wasn't really sure if you actually intended for the sheets to be given—"

"I'll give them to him tomorrow," Archer interrupted. He kept his eyes on the handle to the door, still once more.

Vikki nodded, pursing her lips as she began to back up, eyes on the ground. She waited, as always, for him to call her back. He could feel her hope that he would, but he hadn't once done so; he'd let her go, let everyone else leave him to his isolation.

But then the handle began to turn again, and Archer took a few sharp steps back, holding his arm out for Valour, gesturing her closer without taking his eyes off that door. She stopped, hesitant as she came over to see what he wanted.

"Cap?" she whispered, coming up beside him.

He reached for her shoulder and turned her a little. "Do you see that?" he asked quietly, nodding to the handle.

Vikki's eyes darted back to the door, then stopped. "See what?" she asked.

"The handle."

She looked back again. She would see nothing, of course. It was in Archer's head, like it always had been.

"It's moving," she breathed, stepping back and glancing at him. "Is someone in there?"

Archer curled his fingers around her shoulder, tight as possible. What safety did she offer? What kind of solace did another person seeing what he was seeing give? He never realized how much better it would be to live with insanity than live with a real ghost.

"Captain," Vikki whispered. "Who's in there?"

Archer felt his jaw tighten, his mind turning. Movement where there had once only been noises. A rift where there had once been just a transparent sheet. A real ghost.

In the absence of his reply, Vikki took a few steps forward, always striving for bravery in his presence. She reached for the handle, pushing it open and scrambling back a few steps as it creaked.

In the moonlight of the window, a single torn page floated down from the ceiling.

Archer watched it fall. He could feel it in his bones, right down to his soul. Oh, he was so sure. It was her in that room, ripping pages again—only this time, it had finally happened.

"She's dead," he said softly, realizing.

"Who?" Vikki asked.

Archer tilted his head to the side as he approached the room. He ignored the shivers, ignored the haunting movement of the page as it floated to the ground.

"Silta," he said.

Vikki looked back at Archer, bottom lip trembling. "What?"

There was something dead in that room that used to be alive, and it was tearing pages, repeating Silta's behaviour. It was her. Dead, ghost Silta.

"She's dead," Archer said, something stinging behind his eyes.

"Are you sure?" Vikki asked, briefly looking back to peer at the room.

"Yes," Archer replied.

Vikki wanted to declare him insane, but she could feel the cold air of something as it moved in the room, knew that it was not as empty as it looked. She said tentatively, "I think we should get out of here."

Archer watched as another page floated down from the ceiling.

So she was dead. Life-altering, beautifully skilled Novari Silta was dead, taken down by simple starvation, or maybe Everson. The ghost of her was in that room, living in a superposition between the undead devotee life Everson claimed to offer and true death.

"You go," Archer said.

Vikki swallowed. "Kingsley, I think you should leave, too. I mean—"

"Just give me a second," he said. "It's fine."

Vikki looked from the door back to Archer, too scared to argue. She backed up, into the hallway light once more. She shut the door, footsteps racing down the hall.

Archer took another step forward towards the open room. He abandoned the curtains and his sanity by the desk, feet crossing the threshold. If it was just her in there, the woman he'd loved so fiercely, what did he have to be afraid of?

The room was icy cold, the wind curling under the window above his bed. The sheets ruffled slightly, papers littering the ground.

Archer leaned down to pick one up. They were from a book he had on the borders, one of a faith Silta never believed in. It's nonsense. Angels aren't real. Devils aren't real. Ghosts aren't real.

A page fluttered behind Archer's head, and he reached out to catch it. The page was ripped around a few sentences.

—never truly die. A soul is a soul, and forever will be.

Archer reached out for another ripped passage.

They may come to you for any reason. Revenge, help, simply because they are confused.

He glanced at the page fluttering in front of his face.

Ghosts are not evil. They are just ghosts.

Every passage was related. They were ripped with care, fluttered down into reality.

"Novari?" he whispered, cold fingers clutching bits of torn paper. Was she telling him something?

The sound of something tearing caused him to turn, but nothing was there but a fluttering paper. He reached his hand out, touching the dark space beyond him.

"You're dead," he breathed, because that was her, right there on the other side of this rift, ripping papers. He could feel her. "You're really dead."

His eyes stung beyond his control. He tried so hard to be tough, to blame her for leaving and feign indifference in her absence, to put all this hell in her hands, but she was dead now. She was dead, and he was not blameless. He couldn't hold his patience long enough, couldn't hold his word to her. He promised he'd stay through whatever bouts of insanity she encountered, and he just couldn't do it. Yes, she'd been the one to leave, but he was the one that took it too far.

He grasped his hand around nothing, throat tightening. It was his fault; he knew it.

He looked to the ceiling, trying to stop his tears. He just wanted her to eat something. He just wanted her to try. He wasn't a shallow man, but Silta was Silta because of her body and mind, the things it could do.

And he begged her to eat again, to dig into reality for him, but she couldn't do it. Who knew even he could run out of patience for his lover; who knew it could be so bad once he did. He threw books, threw pistols, threw anything with weight that might make her break her persistent trance. He screamed as loud as he could, asked her not to leave him there alone with all her burdens, but nothing made her her again.

There was one thing that did make her move, though, that finally caused her to break out of the mental space she'd crawled off to for even a mere second, and that was nothing more than one sentence that he uttered only after living that hell for a year.

I wish I put the knife a little higher. I wish it did what it was supposed to do.

Consoling did no good after that. She shook her head, a reaction which gave him momentary hope that shattered when the rowboat was gone in the morning, her with it. It was his fault she left, his fault she was dead, stuck ripping pages for the rest of eternity.

"I didn't mean it," he whispered to the room. "You had to know that."

The wind ruffled his hair a little, causing shivers.

"I didn't mean it," he insisted, tears pooling on the rims of his lashes. Why did he believe anything else would happen? Why did he believe she was invincible, unkillable even in that state? Why did he believe he could forget her out of existence?

"I didn't mean it," he breathed, back against the wall, knees drawn to his chest. The papers drifted all around, dusting the room in quotes about ghosts and the undead. He could feel the presence of her, but it wasn't the one he used to love. It was that shell, that lonely, erratic girl he'd locked in his room for fear everyone would find out the truth.

"Whatever you do," Archer whispered to her, a final plea, "do not let him turn you into something you're not. Do not let him ruin your legend."

The papers stopped midair for a brief moment. When he looked back up, they fell again, touching the ground. Nothing else ripped, nothing else moved again. The cold on Archer's skin faded.

"Novari?" he asked again, but he couldn't feel it. She wasn't there anymore.

True life and true death. There was a place in between, and she'd been there, death calling out to her for the final time. She'd been there, and now she wasn't. The only question was if she'd somehow crawled back to life for the second time, or if she'd finally lost the fight for it.

Nobody knew what was happening out there, Archer least of all. But somewhere deep in the dark stillness, a chess piece finally moved.

And it was game on once more.