Faces twist in confusion as I describe what just happened. Clutter stays sympathetic through the entire thing, patting me on the shoulder and assuring me that I’m fine. It’s a damn nice gesture, and it definitely helps take the edge off. Pearl, however, starts listening in a different way once I get to the tapping. Her sympathy blossoms to flat-out worry, and that worry gets laced with morbid curiosity as I finish.

  I raise an eyebrow at her. “You think it’s a spell?”

  She slowly nods. “Definitely. But… is it the same kind of spell that the quest used to warn us about the hallway? Is this some kind of warning, too?”

  “What? A warning for what?” Clutter asks nervously. “We already know about the radiation outside. Is there anything else out there we have to worry about?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Pearl drums her fingers against her forearm as a frown traces across her face. “I can’t think of any reason there’d be a monster who can specifically put sound through a near impenetrable magical barrier, unless it was to mind control you. But it just made you feel horrible and run away. There’s absolutely no reason to do that if it could completely control you and… well… make you do anything.”

  She shrugs. “If it wanted you to die, it could make you kill yourself. If it wanted into the tower, it could’ve had you open your Class Card. If it scared you and made you leave, that has to be the exact thing it wanted you to do. But why?”

  Her question lingers like the last plume of campfire smoke on a cold night. And she’s completely right. Illumisia proved that I’m not immune to really powerful psychic abilities, and if I’m even slightly influenced by them, then they’re damn powerful. Otherwise my awareness would let me react before anything hit me.

  “There’s one more question we have to ask.” I clasp my hands together and lock eyes with Clutter. “Who sent that thing? Was it the quest or someone else?”

  Clutter’s eyes widen and he looks around as if I could be talking to anyone but him. “You think I’d know the answer to that?”

  I shake my head. “No. But I want your input.”

  “...Oh. I… okay.” He swallows hard and puffs out his chest. “Before I say anything I want to feel it for myself. Which means I… um… I… want to go up there. Can the two of you come with me?”

  Pearl nods instantly. I hesitate a little, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Clutter face that horrible sensation alone. Even though… he is the scout. He’s the one that really has to be resilient to this kind of thing. Though I don’t know any way for him to do that other than spells or stats.

  “Shelby?” Pearl whispers. “Say something.”

  I blink, then look up at Clutter. “Right. Sorry. Yeah, of course we’ll go with you.”

  He sighs in relief as his legs start to tremble. Wordlessly he nods, gets up on the table, and shakily raises his hand to the ceiling. Absolutely nothing leaks through, so we don’t know if the thing on the glass is still there. My heart tells me that it is–that whatever put it there wants us out of the tower for some reason–but my head says one scare could be enough. And the rest of me wants to tackle Clutter to the ground to stop him from opening the ceiling.

  A sneer pulls at my lips as I focus on the sensation of fear. It’s so… unnatural. I know it’s planted in there by whatever’s in control of the monster, but that doesn’t make it any less real. There’s something or someone behind the monster. That fact alone unsettles me to no end. Everything in me screams to stop Clutter from opening that door. Finally, I take out a purification coin and crush it at my feet.

  Clouds of salty magic wash over me. I breathe deeply, focused entirely on the magic etching itself into the ceiling. It’s going to be fine. We’re going to get a second and third opinion, then work from there. The door pushes upwards, slides to the side–

  TAP.

  The sound echoes through my brain like a gunshot. I physically flinch backwards and snap my hands to cover my ears as purification does absolutely nothing to stop it. My heart thunders in my chest, my blood boils and freezes at the same time, and everything focus down to a single pinprick of noise.

  TapTap.

  Two quick taps this time. Almost desperate sounding. The disquiet and terror they send down my spine feels second-hand; almost like I’m listening to a psycho give someone I know an amateur icepick lobotomy. I feel Pearl’s hand smack against my skin, and even though I can't focus on her, I know she’s there. Words leave her, and even though I hear them, they don’t actually reach me.

  Yet somehow, I know Clutter’s gone up. So I grit my teeth, push through the horrible sensations, and jump up to grab the lip. I quickly throw my entire body up, whip my head in every direction to find him, and come up empty. But the door to the tower is open. I scramble to my feet and dash out the door, up the stairs, and into the room at the top in a haze of adrenaline and terror.

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  Waiting for me at the window is Clutter. He stands at it, staring at a wall of flesh and cloth as if he can see through it for miles. His hands are clenched at his sides, claws digging deep enough to draw generous trickles of blood. My awareness sees his face, but there’s… no fear on it. No discomfort, either.

  Just radiant, all-consuming rage.

  TAPTAPTAPTAPTAP.

  Dozens of bodies slam their heads against the glass in a haunting, macabre rhythm. It sounds like utter noise, but I can hear each one. Each individual splatter, crunch, and reverberation. There’s no walls to be seen through the mass of bodies. Only sickly blood, flesh, and tattered cloth.

  Pearl gasps. She smacks the side of my face over and over again, and eventually I get that she wants me to get closer. My brain can barely work through the cacophonous noise and terror, but my body gets the message and moves. Clutter turns as if my footsteps are louder than the tapping, his eyes wet with tears and his mouth pulled back into a hateful snarl that comes from somewhere deeper than his heart. Somewhere far more… primal.

  He throws an accusatory hand at the window. Shouts something. The tears flow faster, faster, more, more, until he’s staining his shirt with his emotions. His arm trembles as blood drips onto the floor. Pearl says something back. Her voice is tiny, quiet, and unfathomably sad. I stare, unhearing and barely feeling, as Clutter’s rage dulls, and his sneer turns into a heavy sob. His chest heaves and his eyes squint as more tears flow freely.

  Pearl slides down my arm and scurries over to his leg. He falls to his knees, arms lolling bonelessly against the ground, as he sobs and bawls uncontrollably. She touches her cheek against his hand. All it does is make him cry harder.

  TAP.Tap.Tap.Tap.tap.

  Slowly, surely, the taps hit my heart softer and softer. Thundering impacts fall to deep beats, which eventually give way to mournful taps like a branch against the window of an abandoned house. My breaths come easier. The tunnel my vision worked itself into gradually expands until I can actually take in the scene, and when I do, I wish I hadn’t.

  The things on the window aren’t formless atrocities. They aren’t splattering nondescript ‘heads’ against the glass. They’re faces. Barely discernible through the mess they’ve made of themselves, but regenerating just enough after each impact that there’s still teeth, bone, blood and spittle to go flying with each headbutt. Not just any teeth.

  Shark teeth.

  Each of the forms is a paindne. Twisted in countless different forms of death, yet all still recognizable as Clutter’s people. A different kind of disgust blossoms in my stomach, and it’s joined by an overwhelming sense of confusion.

  “Pearl…” I say through a dry, quiet mouth. “What are we looking at?”

  She turns to me, old grief resonating through her as she gently comforts Clutter. I recognize it immediately as the same emotion from when we found that first–and only so far–crystallized shellraiser.

  “Death.” She states. “Far too much death.”

  A sob rips its way free of Clutter’s chest, and I hurry to kneel at his side. Pearl nods at me for some reason, but that doesn’t matter. I pull Clutter into a hug, his trembling form so weak and fragile in my arms. As if one word could shatter him completely.

  So I say nothing. He wails into my arms, staining my shirt with blood and snot and tears and trauma that I knew absolutely nothing about. Slowly, something pricks at my memories like an insistent splinter. I’ve only seen Clutter this… unraveled… once before. With the tree. At the graveyard. I’d have to be a damn idiot to think this and that aren’t connected in the slightest.

  For a moment, I remember what it was like to be not-dead on this world. The nice-ish room, the peeling wallpaper, how… normal but not normal it felt. And that note. If it wasn’t for Pearl and Illumisia, I wouldn’t have seen that. I’d just be a frozen corpse, and some other poor sap would have the Gambler coin.

  If I’m right… and these are actually dead paindne… then what the hell did I see before? Were they phased out, and those… things… were in their place? Is that even possible? Is this the quest’s twisted way of warning us, or did the horizonguard already kill twenty paindne just to send a message?

  As Clutter trembles in my arms, it slowly dawns on me that it doesn’t matter. Whether it’s the quest or the horizonguard or something else completely, it doesn’t matter. My friend is in shambles because of this. He comes before looking for the bastard that did it.

  I hug him a little tighter. He tenses for a second, but melts into my embrace as his sobs grow quieter and his eyes start to close. Exhaustion and emotion take him over in a matter of minutes, and quiet, rhythmic breaths herald him to sleep. I gently lie him down on the floor, take off my jacket for him to use as a pillow, and turn to finally focus on the window. Now that the taps aren’t scything through my brain and killing off rational thought, it’s just… gruesome.

  Gruesome and horrendously sad.

  Pearl walks up to me and grabs my finger. I nod absentmindedly and lower the rest of my hand for her to climb me like a tree, and after some squelchy footsteps, she’s right back on my shoulder. We sit silently, staring at a display of pointless violence and death. Somehow, it feels… right. No matter how messed up that is, the fact that I’m here–and she’s right here with me–feels like the place we’re supposed to be.

  “I wish Illumisia and Fleur were here.” She says wistfully. “I miss their voices.”

  I nod in agreement. “I miss them too. Now that he’s asleep… do you have any idea what this is?”

  It’s her turn to nod solemnly. “I felt them change, Shelby. I felt when Clutter looked at them, and they saw… themselves. A reminder of what they used to be. This quest is meant for paindne. I’m ninety-nine percent sure of it.”