Kairo didn't sleep that night.
Again.
He lay in bed with his eyes open, listening to the sound of rain slithering down the windowpane like a living thing. Crowboy had vanished hours ago without explanation. One minute he was sitting on the fire escape, fiddling with a feather made of shadow. The next, gone.
That was fine. Kairo was starting to get used to it.
The apartment was quiet—but not the kind of quiet that meant peace. It was the kind that meant something was holding its breath. Waiting.
At 2:11 a.m., the walls giggled.
Kairo sat up fast. "Nope."
The sound came again—high-pitched, singsong, and childlike. It echoed through the pipes, danced along the floorboards, and finally settled in the air above his bedroom door.
"You've been ignoring me," it whispered.
Kairo groaned and rubbed his temples. "Whimsy."
The door creaked open on its own. A porcelain face peeked through, upside down. Red-streaked hair hung toward the floor like wet threads.
"Why don't you play with me anymore?"
Whimsy's voice was all sugar and sickness. She floated into the room, body twisted in a way that made no physical sense—elbows bending backward, legs clicking like puppet joints.
"You've been spending so much time with him," she said, her painted smile too wide.
"Because Crowboy doesn't crawl through my ceiling vents."
"He would if he fit."
"Not helping."
Whimsy twirled in midair. Her limbs detached and reassembled mid-spin. "You forget I was your second. That means something. Doesn't it?"
Kairo didn't answer.
Mostly because he wasn't sure.
The Ashbrand had a way of pulling the dead to him—some half-sentient law of resonance. Most of the time, he didn't choose who came. They just… answered. Showed up in the corners of rooms. Leaked through cracks in the world.
Whimsy had arrived three nights after Crowboy. She manifested in the bathtub, humming something that made the mirror bleed.
----------
"You're leaking again," Kairo said flatly.
Whimsy paused mid-float, head cocked.
"Your aura," he clarified. "It's fraying. You're destabilizing."
Whimsy shrugged. "It's the walls. They chew."
Kairo exhaled and stood. He crossed the room and reached into the nightstand, pulling out a small kit: soul ink, chalk, and a needle made of bone.
"Come here."
Whimsy squealed and flopped onto the bed like a doll with its strings cut. Kairo sat beside her and began to draw careful lines along her arm, using the chalk to reinforce the runes he'd etched into her form days ago.
"You smell like Crowboy," she whispered.
Kairo didn't stop drawing. "I don't have time for jealousy."
"I'm not jealous." She pouted. "I'm territorial."
The chalk began to crackle as the runes lit up. A soft hum filled the room—half lullaby, half warning.
Whimsy let out a long, content sigh. "Better."
"There. You're sealed for another two days. Maybe three."
She blinked her button eyes at him. "Do I get a reward?"
"No."
She giggled again and vanished into the walls.
----------
By morning, the apartment felt emptier.
Dregg hadn't returned since the Crowboy incident. Mother Rattles hadn't stopped humming through the sink. The house buzzed with ghosts Kairo hadn't named yet—echoes that peered through mirrors and walked in his dreams.
Kairo sat at the kitchen table with a notebook and black coffee. The notebook was filled with scribbles: soul equations, summon configurations, and a rough sketch of a ritual circle meant to "refine resonance."
He didn't know if it would work.
Crowboy reappeared at noon, dragging behind him a bundle of black feathers and a scowl.
"You look like hell," Kairo said.
"I went scouting."
"For what?"
"Trouble."
Crowboy dropped the feathers on the table. They smoked slightly. Burnt.
"What is this?"
"Remnants. Something's hunting necromancers in the East Ward. Tearing out their bindings."
Kairo stiffened. "How many?"
"Three. One survivor. Missing an arm."
"Was it a summon?"
Crowboy shook his head. "Too precise. Summons don't leave behind runes. This thing's marking territory."
Kairo felt a chill crawl across his shoulders.
There weren't supposed to be other necromancers. Not active ones. The Ashbrand was a singular legacy—or so he thought.
Crowboy seemed to sense his fear. "Don't spiral."
"I'm not—"
"You are."
He leaned in close, eyes dark and still. "This city is waking up. You're not the only one feeling the pull. Others will come. Hunters. Pretenders. And worse."
"Worse?"
"The ones who never died."
----------
That night, Kairo tried a ritual.
He cleared the apartment's center, drew a circle of grave chalk on the floor, and lit six candles—all black, all stolen from the corpse market's quiet vendor booth. He placed a small token from each of his current summons in the points of a star: a doll's eyelash, a wolf's fang, a sliver of Crowboy's ash, and a drop of something that used to be human.
He whispered their names, not aloud but in his mind.
Then he bled.
A cut along the palm, slow and deliberate. The Ashbrand pulsed.
The circle ignited.
From the smoke, a figure stepped forward.
Kairo stood, blood dripping onto the floor.
The new summon was tall. Inhumanly so. Wrapped in layered black paper and gauze. Its eyes glowed like twin moons, and its voice was silence made solid.
"What do you offer?"
Kairo's lips trembled. "A place among the four."
The figure paused. "You already have four."
"One is unstable. Another is gone."
"Then I accept."
The being stepped forward—and immediately, the room cracked with shadow.
Crowboy appeared from the wall, eyes burning.
"NO."
Kairo flinched. "Wait—he's not challenging!"
Crowboy raised a hand. The flames in the circle shrank.
The new summon stood tall, unmoved. "I do not challenge. I obey. For now."
Kairo stepped between them. "Crowboy, stand down. This is what we have to do. We need strength."
Crowboy's fists uncurled, reluctantly.
The figure tilted its head.
"I am known," it said. "In life, I was Aramanth. In death, I am The Black Manuscript."
Kairo's breath caught. That name was in the grimoires. A cursed tactician. A warlord whose commands echoed past the grave.
"Can you fight?" Kairo asked.
The Black Manuscript smiled.
"I do not fight. I command wars."