Loup landed lightly beside them, bare feet making as much noise as the paws of her two lupine companions. She carried a yellow bundle in her arms. The bundle shifted, and an arm fell out. A set of three gold discs hung from its waist, flashing even in the low light.

Roan. Oz moved closer, hesitant. “He’s dead, right…?”

One of the wolves turned, a messy, hairy ball in its mouth. It lowered its head and spat, and Roan’s head came rolling over to Oz’s feet.

“Yeah, okay.” Oz bent and picked up Roan’s head, for lack of a better idea. He turned it over, gazing at the boy’s face. Still so young. So much life ahead of him.

Even if he was kind of a douchebag, he didn’t deserve… this. He had a whole life to live. Years to mature and grow past his doucheyness.

And now that’s all been taken from him.

Roan’s eyes snapped open.

Oz yelped and threw the head away from him. It struck the ground with a dull thump.

“Ow,” Roan grumbled.

“He’s alive?” Aisling asked, brows furrowed.

Loup shook her head with finality. “No. He’s dead. He smells of blood and rot.”

“His head is detached from his body,” Oz said, at first with certainty, though uncertainty leached into his voice with every word. It’s a magical world. Anything’s possible. Having your head removed from your body doesn’t necessarily spell death, maybe.

“What?” Roan asked. He twitched, moving his head around. His body laid limply in Loup’s arms, unresponsive. Turning his eyes down as far as they could go, he surveyed the ground before him, then looked back up at Oz and Aisling, helplessness glimmering in his eyes. “What… what happened? Where am I?”

Oz cleared his throat. “Hello, Roan. Good to see you again. Er, I don’t really know how to explain this, but you’re dead.”

Roan stared at him.

Loup stepped forward, showing him his body. Her wolf ears perked forward, full of curiosity, and the wolves flanking her leaned forward as far as their long necks would allow, sniffing Roan’s head. “The Beheading Tree got you.”

“The Beheading Tree?” Oz asked.

“That’s what I called it. The Beheading Tree. It was the bad thing I was going to show you.” Loup paused, putting her nose in the air, and sniffed. “But it was moved. It wasn’t where I remembered.”

“It wasn’t always in the town?” Oz asked.

She shook her head. “They’d all be dead long ago if it was.”

“Was the town always Underhill?” Aisling asked.

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Loup glanced at her, then hesitated. After a moment, she shook her head. “Close. But not inside.”

“I’m…dead?” Roan repeated, stupefied.

“You might be a dullahan. Do you want to try using your body?” Oz offered.

“No…I mean, yes. No. What happened? How did I get here? I…What?” Roan’s brows furrowed.

“Loup,” Oz ordered, gesturing at Roan.

Loup approached. She knelt, laying his body on the ground, the neck-stump nearest his face.

Staring down his own spinal cord, Roan grimaced. “Yuck.”

“That’s your own body, you know,” Oz said.

Haughtily, Roan tossed his hair. He looked at Oz with a derisive look. “And it’s disgusting.”

Oz shrugged. I guess your opinion changes once you’re not attached to you. I wouldn’t know.

What do you mean, ‘I wouldn’t know?’ You’re not attached to your body right now! Fflyn pointed out.

Shush.

Loup turned and raked her hands through one of the wolves’ fur. Without his eye fully active, Oz couldn’t see what she lifted from its fur, but from the way she looped it around her arm, spooling it, he understood it was the threads. Sitting Roan’s body upright, Loup set his head atop it and settled the invisible threads around it like a scarf, then stepped back to survey her work. She nodded, satisfied.

Oz looked at Roan.

Roan stared back. “What?”

“A snowman,” Oz muttered to himself.

“What was that?”

Oz waved a hand. “Do you really remember nothing? Why you left the Mages’ Quarter? Nothing?”

Roan went to shake his head, then froze as his head nearly fell off his shoulders. He frowned instead. “Nothing. The last thing I remember is walking around my sect. I had to fetch something for my Master, and then…” His voice trailed off. His brows furrowed.

“And then?” Oz prompted him.

“Nothing. That’s it. I wake up here.”

Oz put a hand on his chin, thinking to himself. Why Roan? Of all the disciples of the Sun Heart Sect, why Roan? Did he see something in his sect? Something he wasn’t supposed to? Or something outside his sect, either way? Or do they hold a grudge against Roan? I could understand that. He is kind of a douche.

But even so…it’s starting to look pretty bad for the Sun Heart Sect and Cecil Daggarty. Random disciples showing up here, in the midst of the region he possesses, where mysterious necromancy is going on, it’s all very suspicious.

I’m sure some people might take Roan’s presence as evidence it couldn’t be the Sun Heart Sect, since Roan is a precious disciple of the sect whose life was cruelly cut short, but I find it more indicative that the Sun Heart Sect is behind this. After all, it’s not like any random person has easy access to the Sun Heart Sect’s disciples, while any Sun Heart Sect Elder does.

Roan looked around. He strained, but nothing happened. His body slumped, half sitting beneath him. “Can anyone tell me what happened? Why am I here? What’s going on?”

“We don’t know either,” Oz said, shaking his head.

“The Lafayne Region,” Aisling added.

“What?”

“That’s where we are. The Lafayne Region.”

Roan’s brows furrowed. “The Lafayne Region…”

Oz looked over. “Did you remember something?”

“I…” Roan lifted a hand and put it on his chin, thinking.

“Ah!” Oz pointed.

Roan looked up at him. “What?”

“Your body. You’re moving it!”

“What? I…” Roan looked down and spread his hands. He closed them, then opened them again. Lost, he frowned deeper. “I am. How?”

“Let’s thank our good fortune,” Aisling opined. She looked at Oz. “Should we go?”

“Ah, yeah,” Oz said. There’s a lot of undead in this town. I saw them when I channeled my eye. People walking around with their heads detached.

Right, but those people had no heads in sight. Why was only Roan left with his head?

Was he not part of the ritual? Something that happened by accident, perchance?

Footsteps, slow and dark. One at a time, deliberately approaching the Beheading Tree, the walker still immersed in shadow, too far to see.

Oz grabbed Aisling, dragging her toward a nearby alley even as he activated his cloak. Roan hesitated, then ran after them. Loup vanished entirely, she and her wolves fading into the twilight as though they were never there.

Squeezing into a vine-choked alley, Oz made room for Aisling and Roan by climbing upward, perching on a thick vine about a floor overhead. Peering out through the thick tangle of vines and brambles that spanned the narrow alley, he waited with held breath. Who is it? Who’s coming?