Emil Sorianno

"Leon," Emil called out to his boss by the door, "got a minute?"

"Yeah, let's talk in my office." The inspector waved him over, gesturing to follow. "What is it?"

It was a good thing he didn't seem too busy. Otherwise, he wouldn't have slowed down for a second, tossing a brief "later" over his shoulder and leaving it at that.

Emil followed Leon inside and froze by the door. His boss had buried himself in the document racks, frantically searching for something.

"Well, what is it?" he asked impatiently, rustling through the papers.

Subordinates rarely sat in the visitor's chair. Usually, everyone stood, heads bowed in submission, hanging on the inspector's every word. Being invited to take a seat was actually a cause for alarm—it usually meant you had done something wrong.

"Let's say I have an undead..." Emil began, scrambling to phrase his question without raising any red flags. His brain was sluggish after the night shift.

It had been a rough night. On top of his usual duties, he'd had to check the feather's location every fifteen minutes, exhaling with relief each time—still there. The undead girl couldn't have thrown the artifact away and fled without it even if she wanted to, since Emil had magically bound the feather to her before leaving. He wondered how she was doing now. Had she turned or not?

Leon stopped his search and stared at the necromancer in surprise. Right, so much for playing it cool.

"I mean, perhaps I need a consultation with a murder victim that goes far beyond simply extracting information from their memories," the man corrected himself. "Could I..."

"No," the inspector cut him off. "Are you out of your mind? That's a direct violation. Besides, what kind of consultation do you expect to get from a revenant? Where the soil is softer and the blood tastes sweeter? Any undead is subject to immediate termination after standard procedures."

Boom. Total failure on all fronts. Clinging to a sliver of hope, Emil decided to approach it from another angle.

"And what if the undead hasn't lost its mind? What then?"

Not that he was particularly confident about it, but what if the girl actually remained herself? Unfortunately, there was no way to know until he returned to the crypt. He desperately hoped this whole gamble, started for reasons even he couldn't quite explain, wouldn't end in his dismissal or imprisonment. In theory, no one should be visiting the Amatto family tomb today. The burial was set for tomorrow.

"If you somehow find one, we'll hand it over for research," Leon scoffed, "but I've never heard of such cases. Why all these questions, Sorianno?"

"Just wondering," Emil replied vaguely. "Thinking about the Mancini case, remember? We had to raise the widow twice, but if we had just... Anyway, never mind. Plus, the students brought up an interesting case during their practicum, got me thinking."

"Is that so?" The inspector finally found the folder he needed and graced the man with a piercing look. "Well, if your brilliant minds happen to raise some unusual walking corpse, drag the miracle straight to the Bureau. Anything else?"

"No." He shook his head. "That's it."

"Then go. Have you filled out the shift log yet?"

"Haven't had the time."

"Be quick about it. Or you'll run off to the Academy again. When are you finally transferring to us full-time?"

"When they find a new professor," Emil replied. "It's not a quick process, you know how it is."

"I've been hearing that for two months now," Leon grumbled.

Under his boss's rather eloquent glare, Emil had to return to his desk. His "favorite" paperwork was waiting for him. If he filled everything out quickly, he could leave by noon. The main thing was not to mess up somewhere; his nerves were already frayed to breaking point. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this anxious.

It felt like everyone around him knew what he had done, ready to press charges at any moment. The right thing to do would have been to bring the undead to the Bureau, extract the memories, and open a murder investigation. He might have even earned some praise from the brass. Except no one would have bothered with this Amatto girl for long, and the investigation would have been handed off to one of the inspectors. Emil would have been sidelined once again.

Yes, everything he had done violated every safety protocol and rule in the book. But this girl... The necromancer desperately wanted to figure out what was really going on.

Usually, Emil stayed until the very end of his shift, trying to get as much done as possible, but this time, he slipped out of the Bureau by half past eleven, having completed only the bare minimum.

"Running off to a date?" joked Mathias, one of his colleagues.

"You could say that." He didn't deny it, saving himself the time.

By the time he reached the cemetery, it would be around one o'clock. The height of the day. Good thing the residents of Yalrendo chose picturesque parks for their walks on hot days, rather than the equally picturesque graveyards. Emil always chose the latter.

The last thing he saw when he left was the undead huddled in the farthest corner of the burial chamber, looking like some wild, cornered animal. For some reason, the necromancer had left the torches lit for her, even though revenants saw perfectly well in the dark and she hadn't needed them at all.

But sitting in the company of crackling flames was somehow more comforting than absolute silence.

He had also closed the crypt doors—by the rules, no one had the right to open them before the burial. Those amateur necromancers must have been the ones who left both stone slabs wide open during their hasty escape.

Opening such doors by hand was no easy task; you had to know where the unlocking mechanism was hidden. Or be a mage who had mastered unlocking spells of the second level or higher. In this case, you'd need to be an archmage, as the wards on the Amatto family crypt were nothing to scoff at. Locking them, however, was simple—just a forceful push.

"What on earth?" Emil muttered under his breath as he approached the crypt. It was open!