John: "Gah—Ann! I'm fine!"

Ann: "Like hell you are! Sit still!"

Although Connie definitely did most of the early damage, the one to be splattered with liters of blood was—somehow—myself. Connie came home with slightly more tattered sleeves, a few blood splatters, and a bruised knee. I, however, came home with very minimal injuries, but clothes stained with dark and dry blood.

The kids' family was never bothered by my appearance. After all, they knew where it came from—it was the result of saving the lives of their loved ones. In fact, they didn't even seem to bat an eye to my bloodied appearance, so long as I wasn't showing any signs of an injury.

When Connie and I concluded our little hunting trip, landing ourselves back in the cliffside campsite, it was Ann that went straight to solving the problem. Whereas Jessie took Connie to the side, berating her for her decisions, Ann was the one to begin wiping us down, and taking our excess clothing into a wash cycle.

So, to reiterate, our campsite looked a little something like this:

As usual, there were four tents—Jessie and Ann slept together, then there were separate tents for Connie and Steven, leaving the final "guest tent" for myself and Riley, the wolf. These tents encircled a small firepit, now burning bright enough and strong enough to keep the area somewhat warm, considering the current cold of the night.

Strewn about the camp were a variety of clothing articles, some bloodstained, all either drying out, being soaked in water buckets, or being prepped for the next set of water buckets. While everyone else had enough spare clothes to last them the night, my only set of clothes were drying out on a string hung between the tents.

Steven had to lend me some underwear and an overcoat, but at least until it was time to sleep, I would be stuck in a camp full of mostly-strangers wearing clothes that weren't mine.

And to make matters worse, this woman keeps—

John: "Would you cut that out?!"

Ann: "Not a chance!"

Pushing past my hands with a wet rag, Ann continuously fought against me to wipe my face and hair clean of blood and soot. That wasn't the part that annoyed me the most. What I found truly annoying about this situation was how she kept getting past my hands; every so often, after fending my aggression off, her arms would suddenly begin to pass through me, as if I wasn't even fighting back. As if cutting through the air itself, her arms seamlessly phased through any of my attempts to stop her, at which point she would begin wiping again.

John: "How are you even doing that?!"

Steven: "Oh, you don't know yet?"

Waving himself into the conversation, Steven strolled over to the cliffside, where Ann had been squeezing excess rag water over the edge. With a quick explanation and a smile, he filled me in on Ann's particular situation—that being,

Steven: "Well, you see, she's a ghost!"

John: "A...ghost?"

Steven: "I guess if we want to be specific, then she's a Spectre."

Ann's ability to phase through solid objects, her ragged clothes, her being the older sister despite looking the youngest out of the whole group, and even her white pupils.

Steven: "All of it is because of her death."

John: "Yeah, that's dumb."

Ann: "Huh?!"

John: "If you're dead, then how would you be here? Come on, stop playing pranks on me!"

Ann: "It's not a prank, idiot! Are you seriously telling me that you've never seen a Spectre before?!"

Steven: "Haha! Wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't. They aren't exactly prone to showing themselves to people."

First a lesson in fishing, then in the concept of spirits. For being here only about a day, Jessie's group had already begun to teach me so much about survival within the Barriers. It was nice of them to do so, but how long did they really think I'd be staying with them? Did they even have plans to kick me out? Had they already accepted me as one of them...?

Regardless, Steven and Ann tutored me on the basics of spirits—specifically, the differences between Spectres and Phantoms.

It turned out that Ann Leider, older sister to Jessie Leider, had actually been dead for about eight years. Her unique situation put her as the eldest sibling, despite being stuck with the appearance of a sixteen-year-old. Even so, her mind continued to grow as she lived in a new incorporeal form, so it wasn't as if death was the end of a person's life.

Spirits, either Spectre or Phantom, are often easily discovered by the color of their pupils. Whereas iris color rarely dictated much of anything, due to the influence of magic, pupils in living beings had always stayed black. Most Monsters had bright red pupils, some had white to indicate a Monster that used to be Human in some way, and others shared the black pupil appearance as a means to deceive their prey.

No matter what, Spectres and Phantoms will always have white pupils. That was what they told me. Yet, for obvious reasons, I couldn't shake off the feeling that something more was missing from that description.

John: "After all, don't I have white pupils? I'm not dead, am I?!"

Steven: "If you're this confused about it, then probably not!"

He continued his explanation with a laugh and a smile, though all he could offer to me were a few theories on why my pupils differed from the rest of Humanity.

Steven: "It's a big world out there, so, who's to say we know everything? There's a reason for your eyes, but it's something you'll have to figure out on your own."

He then steered the topic back to that of Spectres—it seemed as though they both skated by the cause of Ann's death, but from the sound of it, it wasn't very voluntary or easy. Ann's last memory involved an attack on her hometown, and somewhere within that conflict, her memories suddenly come to a halt. From then, she remembers standing a blank field of grass, staring deeply into the sun.

Ann: "It was Jessie who took me out of that trance. She looked...older. Not that much, only about six months, but still...I missed all of that time with her, just because I died."

Steven: "We've met a few other Spectres on our travels, and they all seem to recall the same sorts of things. A person's memories from anywhere between minutes to hours prior to someone's death are suddenly erased, and afterwards, that person's soul manifests into a Spectre over the course of six months."

John: "Is there some reason why the memories go away? What about the timeframe—why is it so random?"

Ann: "If I knew, I'd sure like to fix it and fill in the gaps...but I don't. Only Steven and Jessie know what happened to me."

Steven: "We all decided that it would be better to leave that part of her life blank, though. To relive your own death...I'm sure it can't be good, and Ann would have to live with that recollection for all eternity."

Dying and becoming a Spectre, being unable to recall the circumstances of your death, missing out on six months' worth of time, and being forced to sit through all of eternity in your unageing body.

John: "It seems worse than death, to me."

Ann: "Some people think of it like that, yeah. I say it's only as much a blessing as you make it."

John: "What do you mean?"

Ann: "Well, there are certain engraved rules that I know about. Nobody told them to me, but I can just feel that there are rules. One of those rules is to not majorly interfere with Humanity. Strangely enough, that rule doesn't apply to people that you consider as your family."

Steven: "She's allowed to stay with Jessie as a whole new member to her party, only because the rules don't restrict it. If she were to try something as crazy as—I don't know—stopping the collapse of an entire kingdom, then it's likely that that would break the rules."

Ann: "As long as I stay within the bounds of those rules, I can do whatever I want. I can stay with Jessie, and protect her. I can watch over her. I can make sure that she doesn't suffer my fate...to die, prematurely. I consider that ability a blessing—to be able to save the people I love without regard for my own safety."

John: "But what happens when they do die?! At some point, like it or not, she's going to grow old!"

Ann: "Then I'll protect her children, if she has any. I'll protect anybody who was important to her, as I'm sure she'll do the same when she wakes up. This blessing doesn't end with the people I knew when I died. It continues for as long as I open my heart to new experiences."

Steven: "I'd say it goes without saying that, by now, you're a part of her 'blessing', John."

Ann: "Well, you didn't have to spell it out for him!"

You live the life you can, and then you gain the blessing to ensure other people have the same, if not a better, chance at that life. But then, there's the problem of those rules. What are they? How many are there? What are Phantoms, anyway?!

John: "Wait, yeah, you never told me about—!"

Steven: "Look, it's a bit of a long topic, so how about we just leave it at that, yeah?"

John: "Fiiiine. Wha—Hey! I thought we were done with this!"

Ann: "Not at all! You're getting your face cleaned, little brat!"

With the conversation over, Ann continued to phase through my struggling arms, forcing the damp cloth along my cheeks to rub away the stained blood. 

I guess she considers this to be her blessing...

John: "Why the hell do you even care about this?!"

Ann: "Same reason as anything else I touch! Your face is like a trophy to me. You seriously think I'm gonna let it stay stained in blood for eternity?!"

John: "—wha—"

A super effective hit to my heart. Yes, it's safe to say that after that statement, by body relinquished any control I had to the whims of the Spectre. From then, the three of us sat in total silence, waiting for the cleaning to be done. However,

Jessie: "I just want you tell me whose idea it was!"

—the silence on our corner of the cliff was quickly overshadowed by the growing intensity in the argument between Connie and Jessie.