The young hunter's heart was moved in ways he could not predict. Although deep inside, he could still feel the pressure of his guilt gnawing at him, it seemed almost impossible to hold on to them when he was surrounded by nothing but kindness. He lifted up his head and looked Sizzy straight into her eyes.

"I've never stopped thinking of you as my friend, you know? That's why I kept coming back. That's why I kept apologizing. But you are right. I can't fix my mistake and saying sorry all the time won't change a thing. If you've really gotten over it, and if you are happy as you claim, then I suppose I should try to leave the past behind as well."

Finally, she heard the words she truly wanted to hear, instead of the repetitive apologies. "Yes! An old friend obtained!" she exclaimed, swaying her body from side to side and snapping her fingers a couple of times. "Then this calls for a special celebration!" She went over to one of the wardrobes and pulled it open. The contents were rather modest, as far as the children could tell. Most of the clothes looked the same. Either a simple tunic or a whole dress, usually in a single plain color, with the only decoration being a few bones here and there, attached by a generous amount of string. One particular item, however, caught Glavas' attention. The light was practically reflecting off of a simple dark-orange robe, which, in contrast with the other clothing, almost seemed to glow. The red symbols of fire embroidered along the lower part then added religious meaning to it. For the uninitiated, however, it may have looked too similar to a nightgown.

"Is that...? Am I really seeing a Path of the Flame robe?" Glavas' forehead scrunched up and he squinted his eyes, examining the details to make sure his sight did not deceive him.

"Oh! Yeah, that is something I've kinda wanted to tell you but... we got kinda caught up in your side of things. Basically, about two years ago, I decided to undergo the Path."

"What?! But we always agreed that this religious nonsense is a bunch of crap. You shared my views on this." His loud surprise was followed by a brief period of silence until he quietly continued. "Did the injury make you change your mind?"

"No, not really, I still hate everything the priests stand for. And I still consider your title of a Moon Scourge a massive compliment from them." Hearing those words, Glavas bowed a little. "But with me not being able to walk, I had to look for something new to occupy my mind."

"Yeah, I know, you became a necromancer." When the children heard Glavas, their heads slowly turned to the young elven lady clad in animal bones.

"I'm sorry, you're a what now?" Alma's eyes widened and eyelids fluttered as if they hoped to discover some optical illusion on her dress.

"A Necromancer. Glavie is right. It is what I found joy in after the incident."

[We are talking about raising the dead, right? Necromancy? Or am I reading your lips wrong?]

"No, you are right. I am indeed a necromancer. Although raising the dead is not exactly what we do. It is a stereotype that most people believe in."

"Wait, then what do you do? I thought the whole point of this magic was to raise the undead."

"Heh, trust me, little one, there is much more to this. Necromancers can indeed create undead, but they are mere... husks. Not really alive. They are just constructs created out of the remains of bodies. In fact..." she put her thumb and index finger into her mouth and whistled. "Fredrick! Come out!" Her call was answered by a faint rattling. A tiny creature crawled out from underneath a filing cabinet at the far end of the room. Tens of its tiny, boney feet were tapping against the wooden floor like raindrops against a window. Countless small hands then each held an appropriately-sized broom, with which they immediately began sweeping the floor around them. As if the minuscule abomination already knew what Sizzy wanted from it, it began shuffling its round, disk-like body back and forth around the floor, slowly cleaning it.

"Ew! What is that?!" Surdi muttered and hid behind Glavas.

"Don't worry. That is just Fredrick. He's an undead I created to help me clean. It's an example that not all necromancy is used to make horrible abominations. It can also be useful to people."

"And the bones?! The little arms it has. Aren't they..."

"Yes, they once belonged to children."

[Oh no, it's happening again. It wasn't just Rotler!]

"Don't be alarmed though," Sizzy tried to reassure the dragon when she saw him backing away. "All of the remains were taken as fair payment and according to law."

"What?! Did they pay you with corpses? And... for what?!" Alma could not wrap her head around it.

"A necromancer can bring a dead soul back to life, but only for a limited time. I use it to bring people closure." She looked out of the window and into the dark night outside. "It is not easy to survive among the Unodes. We don't have medicine to cure certain diseases. People die here. And sometimes, even children. Just like anywhere else. My job is then to help the living and the dead reunite. To allow them to say their final words and spend their final minutes together. It helps people with their healing if they can see their beloved off, and tell them all they need to. All I ask in return is the body, now devoid of soul and life. And I use it to make something useful. That is necromancy. It is an allowed and sought out service."

[Glavas, the longer I am here, the more disgusting the place is. Can we please just...]

"Wait!" Alma quickly stopped him. "Can you bring back anyone?" She turned to Sizzy. The girl's eyes were shining with newfound hope.

"Well, yes, theoretically so."

"So... our parents? Can you do that?"

"Oh... I would love to dear, trust me. But I need at least some remains to channel them into. A body, a bone, anything."

Alma clenched her fists. Her voice suddenly got a lot quieter than usual. "I don't have that." She recalled her and Surdi leaving the mass grave in the ruins of their town. Right now, she doubted she would even be able to find them anymore.

"But your Path of the Flame?" Glavas returned back to the topic that concerned him. "How does that connect to your new job?"

"Oh yeah! Well, basically, I've been a necromancer for decades now. And it is amazingly fulfilling to see people actually getting the closure they need. And I want to keep doing it. So, I underwent the Path to just symbolically leave my past behind. No more looking back. No more reminiscing about the old hunter days. It only made me sad. Now, I am a necromancer. I help people, just as I always wanted. Just in a different way."

"And the end goal?"

"None."

"But... that's not how it works. Path of the Flame needs an end goal. Something to live for."

"Now who is the one siding with the priests?" She smirked at him. "Of course, they weren't happy with me choosing this. Wanted to even kick me out. But my past customers went with me. Helped me past the parts that weren't really wheelchair accessible, and also kinda acted as my bodyguards. Heh, you should have seen the faces of those white-robed bastards! They looked so mad, but couldn't do a thing." Her wide smile was a testament to the relationship she and the priests had.

"I've never thought about it like this. Hah! I wish I were here for that. Would've carried you all the way there and we'd laugh in their faces together." The hunter leaned closer and his face lit up with a similar expression. The bridge that was their friendship was still ravaged by the years of separation, but at that moment, a few new bricks were finally put together in an attempt at repairs.

"Say, Glavas?" Sizzy asked after a moment of silence. Her eyes shifted around him as if she was trying to paint his silhouette with her eyesight.

"Yeah?"

"There is still something from your story you haven't told me, right?"

"No, not really." He frowned and shook his head.

"Glavie, you clearly don't know much about us necromancers. I told you before. There is a fog of death around you. I can see it. Perks of my profession. But yours is... wow! I have never seen anything like it. As if more than a hundred souls were cursing you all at once. And that is not something to take lightly. It's the kind of cursing one does at the moment of their death."

"Oh... I know what that is."

"Care to share?"

"Do I have to?"

"No, but you should. I'm worried about you and we used to tell each other everything. So why not this?"

Glavas took a moment to think. Only now did he realize just how much his usual words lacked honestly. When traveling, people rarely bothered to ask him about his past or stories. Usually, those he ran into were only interested in knowing what he wanted to order, or if they can hire him. It was the children that finally demanded a different form of communication. Only after meeting them did his life change into one where sharing was common. And apparently, such changes just kept coming.

"I'm afraid of what you'll think of me if I tell you," he answered honestly. Shivers ran along his back as if somebody was stroking him with a massive ice cube. Every inch of his body was telling him that getting up and leaving would be so much easier.

"I won't change my mind about our friendship if that's what you're worried about. I simply wish to know the truth. No judgment. Promise."

Even so, this was no easier for the hunter. He came to terms with what he had done and why, but that still did not change a thing about it. There was always a chance that not everyone would agree with his decision regarding Rotler.

"When we were younger, I used to talk about how I will only kill monsters, right?"

"Yeah, I remember. It did not work out, did it?"

"No." He hung his head down and pulled the hat more into his face.

"That's natural. If you are afraid I would hate you for killing people, then you're clearly just as naive as you were back when we were kids."

"I'm a murderer."

"No, you're not. You just think so. Listen, Ezma is a wonderful world and I am sure it has its beauties, but I don't have to travel to know that it is also incredibly dangerous. If bandits attack you, ready to kill you and steal all your stuff, should you feel bad for killing them? If you spare them, how can you be sure they won't kill someone else? What if your mercy results in many other deaths? What if you can't simply defend yourself without endangering the attacker? Sometimes, you just can't cling to the illusion that pacifism is the solution to everything."

"I... Yes, to be honest, I do feel that way. I honestly believe that I made the right choice. It's terrible, I know. Nobody should feel this way after killing people, but I do. They were awful. At their hands, so many have suffered fates worse than death. With them gone, things can be better in Ezma. I wholeheartedly believe that." He raised his head and finally looked his friend dead in the eyes. "Have I crossed the line? Does it make me a monster too?"

"No, I don't believe so. If your killing was caused by the aggression and threat from someone else, then I don't believe you did a bad thing. But maybe you could tell me the whole story? I can't understand just from these little bits."

Glavas shifted on his chair. In his retelling of the events from Rotler, he tried to be as brief as possible. He omitted the part about him wanting to leave the children in better hands, and stuck only to the most crucial parts. How he uncovered the truth, saved the children, and unleashed his magic. Sizzy's eyes were glued onto him as if she was envisioning the whole thing. By the time he got to the part with the aftereffects of his magic, she had completely forgotten to blink. Even a split second of shutting her eyelids felt like a chance at missing a valuable detail.

"Wow..." That was the only word she could force out of her mouth by the time he was done with the story. Out of the two, she was always the more pragmatic one, while Glavas was someone she would label as a hopeless dreamer. At the age when he still believed in good hunters and evil monsters, she was already aware of the gray hues of morality, and how the path they wished to choose would inevitably lead to them taking the life of another person. And yet, the idea of destroying an entire city, or even encountering such a place, was something even she could not predict.

Sizzy approached him and grabbed his hand. "Are you okay? This... I mean, I can't even begin to describe it. With the way you have always seen things... I just want to know if you're handling it."

"Surprisingly, yeah, I am. The kids have helped me a lot. And it's been a long time already. Still, I can feel so much... panic when I reach out for my magic."

"I can imagine." She reached back and grabbed a few strands of her light brown hair. "Sometimes, when I work too much, I can notice myself getting pretty irritable. It's often a great sign to stop and call it a day. But to push yourself even further... I am so sorry, Glavie."

"It's okay. I guess right now, the worst part is just the fear of telling other people. But seeing that you're not running away from me in fear is quite a relief. I will be fine, I know it." He gave her a slight but honest smile, albeit a short-lived one.

A loud scream filled the entire area, nearly making the dead rise from their graves just to complain about the noise. Fredrick jumped, immediately dropping the little brooms and running to hide back under the furniture. The creator of this ungodly sound did not even realize its volume. Not that he would care anyway. All Surdi could focus on was running. He dashed out of the room across the hallway, nearly taking the door along with him. Once inside the office again with everyone else, he shuffled himself into the nearest corner and curled up, digging his head into his knees.

"What the hell?! What's going on?" Sizzy looked at everyone else, unsure whether or not she should call a healer.

"It's okay, this happens sometimes." Alma tried to explain while Glavas approached the panicking boy. Whatever caused his state must have been powerful. The moment the hunter crouched down beside him, he noticed the young dragon digging his claws into the floorboards with so much force that he was cutting into them.

"Hey, hey, it's okay. I'm... whoa!" Glavas tried comforting him, but the moment Surdi realized he was nearby, he practically leaped into his arms. "Ow! Ow! Ow! Claws! Sharp! Too many!" the hunter called out, not realizing the boy can't hear a single thing.

"There! It's there!" Surdi eventually shouted past the rivers of tears leaving his eyes and pointed out of the door and across the hallway, dimly lit with just a few candles.

"You went in there? That's my workplace. I have a corpse there prepared for tomorrow."

"Oh! So that's why. You see, he can sometimes have these panic attacks when he sees something that reminds him of the demon attack. Although he is usually okay with corpses," the girl explained and then approached the dragon, sitting down right in front of him so he could see her clearly.

[It's okay. It was just a corpse that Sizzy was working with.]

"It's there! It's there! It came for us!" the boy kept screaming.

[I know. But it didn't come for us. It won't hurt you. They are already dead. You don't have to fear them.]

"No. No! They are there!"

"Wow, I have never seen him have this much of a breakdown. Sizzy! The hell were you doing there? What kind of a messed up shit did he see?!" Glavas snapped at his friend.

"Hey! Don't blame it on me! It's just an embalmed body! It's completely normal! I didn't even cut it open yet!"

"The demon!!!" the boy shouted, nearly freezing the blood of everyone in the room.

"Demon? Surdi, what demon?" Alma asked but his response did not bring her answers. "The demon! The demon came for us!"

Glavas carefully turned around and slowly pushed Surdi away, making him almost instantly cling to Alma instead. "I'll go have a look. Sizzy, is the place secure?"

"Yeah. We have windows and locked doors. As secure as can be in this part of town."

Glavas places one hand on his holster and carefully entered the hallway. It was dim, just as he expected, but also quite colder than one would anticipate. Then again, with the largely unpredictable weather in the north, nothing was impossible. Very slowly, he opened the other door. The place was dark. The candles were unlit and the only illumination was therefore provided by the moonlight passing through the windows. Although Glavas could not see everything due to the lack of proper lighting, he noticed the most important details. A metal table sat in the middle of the room, with a middle-aged elf of a slightly oversized physique lying on top of it. The walls were then lined with cupboards and shelves with all sorts of liquids or jars with organs floating inside. "Fuck, Sizzy, your job is disgusting," the hunter muttered to himself.

"Quite so, isn't it?" something answered. A voice that sounded like a million whispers with an echo that got hushed sooner than it could dissolve naturally. The elf drew his gun, only to hear the door slam behind him. His head instinctively turned to them.

"There we go," the voice appeared again. Glavas turned around and even his own heart, trained by hundreds of hunts and hardships, nearly flew out of his chest. Something was standing on the other side of the table. A humanoid figure that he could barely see. The only prominent details on it were the hood, out of which were sprouting two rather modest antlers. The hunter's attention, however, seemed to be instantly grabbed by the countless small, glowing, red eyes, scattered all over the creature's face without any respect for symmetry. Due to the darkness, it was pretty much impossible to distinguish any other facial features. Their mismatched blinking invoked a strange feeling in Glavas. As if hundreds of ants were crawling down the back of his neck. "Finally, some privacy. Quite hard to obtain in a place like this. And I suspect we have little time."

"What are you?" Glavas asked and aimed his gun straight at the creature's head.

"Oi oi oi! Careful, that weapon is dangerous. One shot and I would be dead."

"That's the point."

"Unwise." The creature slowly pulled up its tunic, revealing a bug-like carapace of a body. In it were embedded several glass orbs with all sorts of colorful flames dancing inside.

"No... Those are not real."

"Are they not? Dear Glavas, you already know they are real. That is why you are not shooting. The boy was right. I am indeed who he describes me as. Given the fact that you know what I did in the past, you must also be aware that I would clearly be capable of obtaining these. So to correct you, yes, these are real souls. A single shot might kill me, but those things inserted into my body will act as bombs. Are you willing to destroy me at the cost of your children? Your friends? The innocent out there? Are you willing to cross the line and take their lives? Will you become a real monster?"

"You are volatile with those around. It's not efficient for combat. Quite the opposite. So why did you do this? What do you want?"

The demon raised its hand, gesturing over to a chair sitting in one of the corners. Glavas took a good look at its hand, which had briefly reached out into the moonlight. Just like the body, it was a dark green flesh covered with a brown exoskeleton. At the end of the hand seemed to be only four fingers, with claws that might as well be sharper than Surdi's.

"I simply wish to talk. There is something we should discuss. And the souls will ensure we do so in a civilized manner. I am well aware that in combat, I might not win against the likes of you. Therefore, I made some countermeasures to make these negotiations possible." He slowly gestured over the numerous tiny lights around his body.

Glavas reluctantly approached the chair and lowered his gun, while still keeping it firmly in his hand, barrel facing the demon and finger resting on its side, close to the trigger.

"Speak then."

"Splendid. Then, as the elven customs dictate, since I know your name, I should also share mine." The demon moved in a way that only loosely resembled a bow. "Ruundaneidai. My pleasure."