For the first hour of looking through houses, I had Owl close-by, but after the fourth house, he said, “We’ll split up.”

I knew he was testing me and had no doubt that he’d already found the den of the shapeshifting creature. As he moved to the part of the village that lay on the other side of the river cutting through it, I went into another house, holding the Energy Stone out in front of me like a flashlight and my left hand around my staff, white-knuckled and tight.

Until now, I’d never been so terrified of an abandoned place. It was a sunny day and the place was by all means idyllic, but, to my Spirit-Goggled eyes, it was clear that a creature lived here. I imagined that it would jump out at me from a corner at any moment as I moved through the main room, looking at the hastily-abandoned meal on the table, which had been left to rot. Unlike the previous house, the windows and doors had been securely barred, meaning that no animals had managed to get inside.

As I came to the bedroom, I realised the reason why. A large rust-coloured stain covered the bed and the floor. I froze in place for a moment, as the overwhelming and heady stench of aged blood filled my head, but then gritted my teeth and pushed through the dread. Although it was terrifying and my head filled with horrific imaginings, I managed to lean down and look under the bed, finding it thankfully empty. With a hard swallow, I moved over to the large cabinet against the wall near the window and carefully pried it open with the end of my staff, while standing as far away as possible.

Thankfully, no monster jumped out at me from its shelves full of clothes, sheets, cutlery, and other random items. I walked closer to look at a little wooden box, opening it to find some crude jewellery. I was sure that Owl would have pocketed it, but I already felt dirty just sleeping in someone else’s house, even if it was abandoned, so there was no way I’d loot their belongings, especially not something that might be a precious heirloom.

I closed the box, then shut the cabinet doors as well.

A gasp left my mouth as I saw the face staring at me through the shutters from outside.

“Rana! You scared me.”

Her face vanished from between the shutter panels and I went out into the main room to greet her by the door, but as soon as I rounded the corner out of the bedroom, she was already standing there, only a metre from me.

“You’ve gotta stop scaring me like that!” I complained. My heart was already on edge as it was, so it was really cruel to prank me like this.

It seemed very out of character for her too.

I looked closely at her emotionless face.

“Did you not manage to catch anything?” I asked. I had no idea how long it might take to hunt something, but she had been gone for over an hour.

“…Why aren’t you saying anything?”

Rana took a step towards me and I involuntarily stepped back. She was taller than me, and, in this moment, very terrifying. Then I realised something.

Her aura was wrong… it was like black smoke, instead of the spike-filled crimson I’d seen every day since I met her, even just an hour prior.

“…Who are you?”

Rana took another step forward, and, like a zipper in a onesie, her face opened from just below the nose and to the bellybutton, splitting wide with a sound of tearing flesh and skin.

I took another step back, but then the strength went out of my legs and I collapsed onto my ass, while looking at Rana slowly unfolding from the centre of her body to reveal rows-upon-rows of large and hideous teeth with saw-like edges.

I wanted to scream for help, but my faculties had left me. Somehow, though, I managed to lift my hand to point at the monster wearing the guise of Rana, and say, “Repel.”

Nothing happened and I looked dumbfounded at the Energy Stone in my hand, having mistaken it for my Focus.

“Ryūta!” I heard someone shout from behind me, before the backdoor of the house slammed open with a loud snap and clunk. Then a shield slammed into the monstrosity, pushing it back a couple of steps.

I blinked and looked up at Rana standing there with her shield on her arm and blade in hand.

“Ryūta! You got to move! Get out of here!”

Her words took a second before they hit me, but then I began frantically crawling towards the backdoor she had burst through, while I heard the sound of her shield and blade hammering into the monster, which, a moment later, let out a blood-curdling shriek.

I managed to get to my feet by the time I reached the door, and no sooner had I stood up than Rana came running and grabbed me by my arm. Together we ran away from the house and headed for the place we’d stayed in overnight, which lay a few hundred metres away.

In the distance, the monster continued to scream, but it did not give pursuit.

My hands were still trembling an hour later, while Rana and I sat in the leaning chairs and watched the entrance to the house. I had added more of the Sacred Ash to the doorways and windows to keep us safe, but I worried it would not be enough.

“Thank god that I spotted you when I did,” Rana said, breaking the silence. She seemed pretty shaken-up as well, but hid it better than I managed. But her aura was flickering, perhaps matching her pounding heartrate.

“I thought,” I started, but then went quiet for a moment. “I thought it could only take on the appearance of the dead.”

“Whatever it is, my weapon has no effect on it,” she replied. “I’m pretty sure I stabbed it through its face and broke its right arm, but it didn’t really seem to care much.”

I let out a shuddering breath.

I wanna go home.

After opening the Encyclopaedia with my clammy and cold hands, I tried to consider the monster objectively, although my heartbeat was still drumming so fast that it echoed in my ears and a painful headache stabbed my right temple like an icepick.

I scrolled through the entries I had considered already. My assumption that it was a type of Revenant still held firm, but I reconsidered a few of my other assumptions.

After a bit of reading and back-and-forth leafing through pages, I said, out loud, “I know what it is.”

Although I was sure that Owl would scold me for it, I showed her the entry. It had no picture, but the description was spot-on.

“Skinstealer?” she asked.

“It’s a type of Vengeful Dead,” I told her, reading from the page. “It is unable to leave its place of death and will search fervently for whoever killed it and left its body to rot. If the person responsible is nowhere to be found, it will begin indiscriminately attacking and devouring people it comes across. It prefers to strike lone targets and generally attacks at night, but if it finds a person by themselves it will attack during the day as well. It is capable of taking on the shape of those that it devours, as well as those that it has observed for a while.”

“You mean to say that it was watching me in the forest while I was hunting?”

“I don’t know, but possibly? Unless it was able to watch you at night through the window.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“But why didn’t it attack me?”

I wondered about that for a moment, before answering, “I think it is an ambush predator and probably prefers to go after the weakest prey… which would be me. After all, you injured it yesterday night.”

Rana bit her lower lip in contemplation. “I won’t leave your side again.”

I couldn’t help but blush a bit at the sincerity with which she said it. “…Thank you.”

“So, how are you gonna deal with it?”

Are you crazy!? I’m gonna deal with it by running far away to where it can’t reach me! I almost blurted out.

“The book just says that it must be put to rest, but I don’t know what that means.”

“Maybe—” Rana started, but a rattling from the backdoor made her jump up and pull her blade from her scabbard, moving to position herself in front of me. I hurriedly got up as well, eyeing the front door as a viable escape route.

Suddenly the backdoor opened and hit the wall with a clunk, then Master Owl came into the house, stepping over the line of white ash.

“Stay where you are!” Rana demanded, pointing her double-edged shortsword at him.

Owl grinned, but lifted his hands in the air nonetheless, then slowly brought his right hand down to the neck of his blouse and exposed the red chalk mark he had made.

“Don’t worry, I won’t eat you.”

Rana lowered her sword slightly, but remained on guard.

“Your turn now, show me the mark I made.”

She pulled down the neck of her arming jacket as well, presumably showing him the mark, though I stood behind her and couldn’t see.

Content with the result, Master Owl closed the door behind him and then walked into the main room. He took a look at me and said, surprised, “Huh, you’re still alive.”

“You knew!” I said and pointed an accusing finger at me. “You knew it would go for me when you left me alone!”

“I didn’t know that,” he argued. “I just made an educated guess.”

“You’re an asshole!”

“Thank you, that means a lot to me.”

I frowned. There was no way I’d trust this guy with my life ever again, given that he’d used me as bait.

“Did you realise what we’re dealing with?” he asked, returning to teacher mode as though he hadn’t just been caught offering me up to the monster.

“It’s a Skinstealer Revenant,” I told him angrily.

He nodded. “Bingo! Well done.”

“You knew from the start,” I replied and pulled down my shirt, “That’s why you drew these marks on us.”

“It was fairly obvious from the Quest information and the many different sets of footprints. Of course, it could also have been a Doppelganger, but those are quite rare.”

“How are we supposed to Exorcise it?”

“Well, technically your work is done here, but if you want to learn how to do it, I’ll show you,” he said with a grin that made me very uncomfortable.

“The book just says to put it to rest.”

“Easier said than done with something like this. Now, if we were dealing with a more traditional Revenant, we could simply wait until it was inactive, find its grave, and then perform a fairly simple funeral rite. However, as you may have noticed, our little friend doesn’t sleep during the day, despite being hyperactive at night.”

“How are we supposed to do it then?” I asked.

“We have to trap it,” he said with an even bigger grin. “And what does every good trap need?”

I hate this guy so much.

“Why do I have to be the bait?” I complained for the eight time.

“Focus on the linework,” he scolded me, “you don’t want to mess this one up.”

I sighed and continued following the design in the back-half of the Encyclopaedia. As a failsafe for if the trap went wrong, Master Owl had said I would summon a Protector familiar of a type called a ‘Guardian Wraith’. These seemed to be neutral spirits of people who had died protecting someone, which was unlike Sumi, who was an ‘Eye of the Observer’, i.e. the offspring of some unfathomable entity that lent its eyes to Exorcists in exchange for just a little bit of their energy, as well as their reverence. Whatever that means…

Just like the first time, I was drawing the ritual onto the floor of the bedroom using the Blood Chalk. However, this time the design was a triangle within a square within a circle. The asymmetrical design really threw me off and more than once the Old Exorcist had to correct my linework. It felt like I was back to practicing calligraphy like in middle-school, although a mistake here would result in more than just a bad grade…

I wiped my sweaty face on my shirt sleeve and stood up from the drawing, my elbows, neck, and knees all sore from the strenuous work.

“Good enough,” Owl said.

I frowned as he pulled out a small knife and handed it to me. “What am I meant to do with that?”

“Did you not read the instructions properly? As you invoke the Guardian Wraith, you slice the blade across your palm and offer your blood directly onto the ritual drawing.”

I grimaced and started to feel a ball of a dread forming in my stomach. I was already a wreck of nerves, but intentionally injuring myself seemed incredibly counterintuitive.

“Can’t I just prick a finger? Does it have to be my palm?”

“Pipsqueak… don’t make me lose my little faith in you now. There are no half-measures with rituals, do you hear me? You’re asking a spirit to become your servant and defend you from harm, but do you think any will respond if you can’t even willingly offer the reward they seek?”

He grinned. “If you want, I can do it for you, but I might go a bit overboard.”

I took the knife from his proffering hand resolutely. “I’ll do it, okay!?”

Gritting my teeth as I prepared for the ritual, I pulled the Black Tallow Candle from my lower-back pouch and placed it in the centre of the ritual drawing, then I began the invocation.

“Fallen heroes and defeated champions; guardians and saviours who died to defend your beloved; I call upon thee to grant me your aid in death as you granted your aid in life; in exchange for my blood—” I pulled the blade across my left palm slowly and deliberately, the biting edge tearing open the skin and releasing a deluge of blood down onto the candle and the lines drawn in red oily chalk. Tears welled forth in my eyes, and I struggled to continue the invocation, but then realised that my pain was for naught if I didn’t. “…I beseech thee to guard me well and true; be the bulwark that defends me from the evils of this world!”

As I finished the final syllable, I closed my left hand into a fist as tears ran down my cheeks. It felt as though the knife was still digging into my palm, even though I held it in my other hand. The warmth of my blood contrasted the sudden coldness in my arm.

Then my ritual took hold and the temperature in the room dropped significantly, the spilled blood that ran across the floor forming ice crystals on top and my breath rising in the air like mist. To my eyes alone, a spirit emerged from the black candle, as though imitating a flame, before it grew into the size of a brutish human whose lower half had been cut off.

I began to reach out with my essence like I’d been taught, and imbued it with my pact:

In exchange for my offering of blood and a taste of my bountiful soul, I ask of you to protect me.

When my spirit connected with the floating brutish wraith, it felt like lightning punched into my stomach and sent its pent-up electricity down my limbs. I was about to give the Guardian Wraith a name to finalise the Pact, but then it spoke to me:

“My name is Armen and I will ensure no harm befalls you.”

A warmth spread across my body as the Pact was formed, but instead of vanishing like Sumi, the half-severed human wraith just detached from the candle and lifted into the air, exploring the surroundings. Though his features were blurry and hard to distinguish, I got the notion that Armen’s body was covered in rusted plate armour and that he wore a close-helm through which shone two perfectly-round white-glowing eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Owl asked. “You pulled it off correctly from the looks of it, so why are you just spacing out like that? Does your hand really hurt that bad?”

I didn’t know what to say and he apparently took that to meaning “Yes”, as he grabbed my left hand and unfurled my fist.

“Where’s the wound?” he asked. “Oy, pipsqueak, what the hell did you summon??”

“I just did what you said, I don’t know!”

“It would perhaps be prudent not to tell your Master that I can speak.”

“Show me your Guild Card,” he demanded.

I was so confused and terrified of having done something forbidden that I blurted out, “No!”

“Don’t be obstinate, you little shit!”

As he grabbed my shoulder in a vice grip, Armen suddenly shot forward like a truck and knocked into the Old Exorcist, sending him flying away from me and out into the wall of the hallway.

His chubby body hit the wall with a loud thump, before he settled down onto the floor.

“That fucking hurt,” Master Owl complained as he got up.

Rana suddenly came running. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart, I’m alright,” he said. She cast him a glare as though he was a pile of dogshit, then she looked at me with a worried frown.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “Master accidentally triggered my new familiar and it was a bit too rough with him.”

“I’ll say. That was one hell of a punch.”

Thank you, Armen.

“I require no praise for doing my duty,” the Wraith replied soberly.

Master Owl rotated his shoulder joint. I was sure he’d sport a bruise from the impact. His eyes narrowed behind the lenses of his Spirit Goggles and we had a tense stare-down for a moment, while Rana stood between us like a boxing referee preventing us from breaking the rules.

“Your Master is observing me.”

How? I thought only I could see my familiars.

“He is using his Watcher familiar.”

You can see his familiars? I realised that one of the uses for a Watcher familiar was also to gauge other Exorcists and the kinds of familiars they used, as they apparently had the ability to see other familiars, though that made me wonder why Armen could see them too. He was definitely no ordinary Protector familiar.

I noticed Owl’s gaze flicker as he looked around, maybe trying to spot something other than Armen, though Sumi was invisible when dismissed, even to me.

“Yes. He has quite a few. His Defender is quite formidable, without it, he would have broken several bones.”

If he touches me again, please do not attack him.

“Inadvisable, but the decision is yours. I will obey.”

I let out a steady breath and tried to appear innocent. “We should prepare the trap, before it gets dark, right?”

Master Owl did not look fully convinced that I hadn’t summoned something terrifyingly-powerful or forbidden, but he nodded slowly and we went back into the main room, with Rana trailing along and looking very confused.

I had no idea why Armen could speak, but I could guess that familiars were not meant to speak or have so strong a personality.

I almost don’t want to look at my Guild Card and find out what it says…