Purity and Luna carve a path toward one of the more central houses, where Oriana waits out front, leaned against a fencepost. She gives a soft smile as we approach.

"Normally, my patients wait a little longer to get back on their feet," she says, staring at the healed wound. "Glad to see you've cooled down a bit."

I simply gaze at her, and she fills out the group from behind as we enter the house. We're met with the living room, which is significantly rundown, but had once been... average.

"I hope you don't mind housemates," Purity says, cracking one of the doors open. "Here's your room."

I peer inside, only to find it just as average as the living room.

"Housemates? How many people live here?"

"In this house, or in the End Lands? You'll have two housemates, Loki and Aloe, but with you here, I think we're at fifteen. Although, you're the first in a long while, and we're never on odd numbers for long."

Luna drives her elbow into Purity's side and smiles. "Never mind that. You'll have plenty of time to meet everyone tomorrow. Please, get some rest."

The floorboards creak as I step inside what is I guess my room, which isn't large, but larger than what I was used to growing up. The bed groans under my weight, and I quickly shift to my back.

"You've never heard of me before, then?" I ask Luna, as the three gear up to leave.

She steps into the room and leans against the wall. "Nope. It's sort of the nature of things. I can't speak for the others, but the odds of someone knowing you are basically zero. It's a little freeing, in a way. No baggage from your past life, no expectations, no reputation. You'll hear all about it tomorrow from Purity, but we're all from different universes. I was from a world with steam engines that flew in the sky, and I was homeless. Here, I'm the co-founder of our settlement. Whoever you were before, you can be a new person. Although, seeing as you were apparently some big-shot, I imagine you'll try to stake your claim here, too."

As she talks, my vision begins to flare, a red tone flooding the edges of my view. Her voice and body distort. My hands grip the bed tightly and I close my eyes.

No. Not here. Not now. HOW?!

"Alright, get some sleep. You've got a big day ahead of you tomorrow. If you ever need to find me, my house number is 1808."

The sound of the door gently closing echoes in my head, and moments later, things return to normal. My eyes slowly open, focused on the ceiling.

Keep it together, Melodia. He's not here. He can't hurt you. He won't find you.

And yet, his form is still in my retinas, his laugh seared into my ears.

Dr. Adrian Asgard. Hero of Earth. Near-slayer of Melodia Harwood, his arch-nemesis.

And I have his sword. He's powerless without it.

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All according to plan.

Sleep comes rather quickly as I reflect on his status compared to mine.

And sleep is just as easily disturbed when the day comes, with a knock on the door.

"Good morning, new prisoner," an unknown voice says from the door. It sounds androgynous enough. "I hope you're a fan of sad breakfast and ice breakers, because otherwise, this will be hell and a prison."

I press my hand against the pillow to roll over, but my palm finds some sort of sticky residue. Blood, still slightly fresh, had drained out of my body overnight and onto the pillow.

Despite the overwhelming urge to cough up a blood clot, I climb out of bed, sheathing the claimed sword in the process. Then, once I'm sure the person has stepped away, I carefully turn the knob, prepared for the worst.

Instead, I'm met with a curly haired person with rounded glasses and a book in hand. They barely glance my way before moving to the couch.

"I'm going to guess you're Loki, then."

They open their mouth to talk, but a squeal pierces the air.

"A new roommate!" a voice says from behind. I turn to find the actual Loki gesturing widely. Deep black hair curls down to her shoulders, and brown doe eyes meet my cold ones. Her unimposing frame is made larger by a cardigan of some sort, draping all the way to the floor.

The one on the couch poses more of a threat.

"Don't expect me to stay long," I say, turning back around. "I have unfinished business to deal with."

"But don't you want to—"

"No, I don't."

I walk out of the house and onto the cracked pavement of the walkway. There's still no sun. Not that I'd gotten used to a sun, anyway.

In fact, the moon is still in the same spot as before.

This godforsaken expanse doesn't go on for long, but there are some larger buildings way off in the distance. It almost seems like someone scooped a circular chunk of land from a city and placed it in the cosmos.

Luna's words echo in my head. Different universes. What does the cosmos want with a bunch of random teenage-aged people from different universes?

Somebody's behind this somehow. All I have to do is find out who.

"That's a new one," yet another voice says to my left. A person apparates before my eyes, definitely pulled straight from an emo band's front-row seats.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Name's Miami. I can unfortunately read minds, and I'm not exactly... physical. But your thought of some hands behind all of this? Not a single person here has thought that yet."

I draw my sword and point it at the spectral figure. "I'm only going to ask one more time: what the hell is going on?"

He smiles and impales himself on the sword, clearly unaffected by it. "You're a feisty one. Melody, isn't it?"

"How do you know that?"

"I told you I can read minds. I never said you had to be actively thinking it. I'll tell you what's going on. At each of our points of death, we were instead brought here. There are only two things we all share, and that is death and a power of some sort. Like for me, my spectral-ness. And for you..."

He pauses a moment, as if reading through my life. Like a file in a cabinet. The longer he reads my file, the more his facial expression drops.

Of all the people to be stuck with, of course there's someone who can read minds. He's going to know what I've done.

He's going to tell the others.

"You... you're bad news. You can't... I have to..."

My vision flares red again, and the familiar sensation of something at the edge of my fingers overwhelms me. As my vision swirls, the red sparks jolt from my fingertips toward the ghostly person, connecting with him.

He lets out a jarring scream, and a moment later, a shadowy imprint is left on the grass. My vision returns to normal, and I fall to my knees, holding my head.

The front door of the house swings wide as my two supposed roommates stand staring out at me.

"What... what happened?" Loki asks, approaching the singed spot in the grass cautiously.

"I... I don't know. He popped up out of nowhere, started talking, and then screamed and vanished. I figured he was trying to play a prank."

"Well, I guess we have to tell LOP that we lost another one," the other person, who must be Aloe, says. With that, they hold Loki's hand, and walk down the street together toward the same place I'd found myself smashed through the ceiling of.

My gaze drifts back to the spot where the ghost had been. I've had two flare-ups in the last twenty-four hours. If I'm not careful, I may end up accidentally killing everyone before I even have a chance to figure out how to get out of here.

Here's hoping I did kill the ghost, though.