Chapter 7-Serena
For the first time in my life—the dead weren’t what frightened me.
It was whatever had just taken notice.
And the storm outside had only begun.
The words left my mouth again, unbidden and unwanted.
“I mean, I guess this is normal here, right? I mean, I see dead people, so big deal?”
“What did your admissions letter say?” Ursula asked quietly.
“Um, it said I was a Necromancer.”
For a second, nothing happened.
And then everything did.
The air shifted.
Not metaphorically.
Physically.
Every ghost in Buckie’s snapped into sharper focus like someone had adjusted the resolution of the room.
The blurry ones clarified.
The half-formed ones solidified.
A child near the hearth, previously little more than a suggestion of pale mist, now had eyes.
They were all looking at me.
Because I acknowledged it.
Because upon my arrival someone had told me recognition is power in Asgarheim.
I should’ve known that instinctively.
After all, spirits feed on attention.
But they also respond to ownership.
For years I had hidden my powers.
I’d denied them.
Pretended the dead were nightmares, stress hallucinations, grief echoes.
But saying it out loud?
That was a summoning in itself.
The temperature in the tavern dropped several degrees.
The lantern flames flickered sideways.
And outside—thunder detonated.
A crack so violent the tavern windows rattled in their frames.
The storm had answered.
I felt it again then—that awareness.
Heavy.
Massive.
Alert.
The same presence I’d sensed earlier.
The same feeling that something enormous had caught my scent the moment I stepped into Asgarheim.
It pulsed like a second heartbeat beneath the world.
Hungry.
So damn hungry.
And listening.
Dietrich blinked at me.
“Okay, so you see dead people,” he repeated slowly.
Sapphire inhaled sharply.
“For the record, it’s not common,” she said.
And I realized it wasn’t fear I was feeling from them. It was surprise.
Fascination.
Ursula squeezed my wrist under the table, grounding me.
Emery’s amber eyes glowed brighter.
“You’re what my mother called a veil walker,” she murmured. “Or close to it.”
“I didn’t know that was a thing,” I said weakly.
“It’s very much a thing,” Emery replied. “And super freaking cool!”
Around us, tavern noise dimmed. Not silent—but aware.
Runevald students didn’t scare easily.
But apparently Necromancy wasn’t casual magic.
It was doctoral-level dangerous.
“So, is it like one big dead cult or party out there?” Olaf asked.
“Really? You think all dead people are like rooting for the same team now?” Emery asked.
I shook my head.
“The dead aren’t organized. But they’re never neutral, either. They have an agenda. They linger for reasons. It’s just, well, I’d always seen them without invitation.”
The table got quiet again and my anxiety stirred.
I mean, I just got here, and even though I was closer to thirty than I was to twenty, making friends hadn’t gotten any easier for me.
I didn’t want to mess this up already.
“That’s why you get travel-sick,” Ursula said softly. “Your magic is sensitive to threshold crossings. The veil destabilizes you.”
That made a horrible amount of sense.
I’d always hated bridges.
Hospitals made me faint.
Funerals were unbearable.
Not because of grief.
Because of crowd density.
Spiritual crowd density.
“How long have you known?” Dietrich asked.
“Well, the first time I realized what I could see, I was six. My grandmother had died the week before.”
“And you saw her?” Ursula asked, eyes brimming with tears.
“Everyone said she’d moved on. But she hadn’t.”
My memories came back strong as everyone made the appropriate noises. I mean what did you say to someone who claimed they’d been haunted by a dead grandmother at the tender age of six?
But I remembered every minute of it. How she’d stood in the hallway outside my bedroom every night for three months.
Not menacing.
Just confused.
I would wake to the sound of soft crying and find her hovering by the bathroom door.
She didn’t understand why no one responded when she knocked.
I told Aunt Gabby.
Her reaction? Well, it left a lot to be desired.
She’d slapped me.
Hard.
“Don’t say that,” she whispered fiercely. “That’s not funny.”
I learned then that truth could be punished.
Later, I learned to categorize.
Clear ghosts were newly dead or emotionally anchored.
Blurry ones were fading.
Angry ones were dangerous.
Children were the hardest.
They followed.
They clung.
They didn’t understand that they were gone.
At nine, a little boy followed me home from the park.
He had drowned in the lake thirty years earlier.
He thought I was his sister.
He stood at the foot of my bed every night, asking why she wouldn’t answer him.
I tried to ignore him.
But ignoring made him louder.
I begged him to leave.
He didn’t know how.
That was the year I’d stopped sleeping.
That was also the year I’d demanded a television.
The noise drowned them out.
Sometimes.
But never completely.
By twelve, I could see them in classrooms.
In grocery stores.
On the subway.
Hospitals were impossible.
So many of them lingered in hallways outside ICU rooms.
Waiting for someone to notice.
I stopped making eye contact.
Stopped reacting.
That’s how I learned to survive.
By pretending.
Back in Buckie’s, the ghosts pressed closer now.
Not malicious.
Curious.
They could feel the difference.
I wasn’t just someone who could see them.
I was someone who might one day command them.
The thought made bile rise in my throat.
“I don’t control them,” I said quickly, as if anyone had accused me. “I don’t want to.”
“I’ve read some about this and that’s not how Necromancy works,” Emery replied calmly. “It’s not about wanting.”
The storm cracked again outside.
The entire building shuddered.
And that presence—it felt closer.
Not just physically.
Energetically.
Like it had leaned forward.
My pulse accelerated.
Dietrich leaned back in his chair slowly.
“Well,” he muttered, “that explains why the air’s gone strange.”
“You feel it too?” I asked.
He nodded once.
Sapphire swallowed.
“Something powerful just shifted.”
Ursula glanced toward the door.
“The Institute wards are reacting.”
And they were.
I could feel the rune network thrumming faintly beneath the tavern floorboards.
Ancient sigils embedded in foundation stone vibrating like taut wire.
This wasn’t just weather.
This was magical pressure.
And somehow—I was at the center of it.
As I sat there waiting for it to stop, a childhood memory surfaced uninvited.
Age fourteen.
Catholic school hallway.
I was alone at my locker.
Except I wasn’t.
There was a woman standing behind the science lab door.
She was transparent from the waist down.
Her face was burned.
She whispered, “He pushed me.”
Over and over.
I tried to ignore her.
She followed me into class.
Sat in the empty desk beside mine.
No one else reacted.
Finally, I whispered back, “I can’t help you.”
She screamed.
Not loudly.
Not audibly.
But in a way that made every fluorescent light in the hallway flicker.
The next day, the principal announced a decades-old lab accident had been reopened after anonymous evidence surfaced.
Now, I hadn’t submitted anything.
Not consciously.
But something had.
Maybe it was because the dead had learned I could hear them.
And sometimes they pushed back.
In Buckie’s, I realized something with slow dread.
See, if ghosts reacted this strongly to acknowledgment, then what did Monsters do?
The awareness above the tavern sharpened.
I didn’t see it.
But I felt it.
Like heat behind my sternum.
Like breath on the back of my neck.
Like something vast and starved had just taken notice.
Not malicious.
Not yet.
But still hungry.
The word slid through me like ice.
Hungry.
Why did that thought feel personal?
“Serena,” Ursula said quietly. “You’re pale.”
“I feel,” I trailed off.
Claimed.
The word came unbidden.
That was ridiculous.
I didn’t belong to anyone.
Especially not in a realm I’d been in for less than a week.
Another crack of thunder split the sky.
A glass shattered behind the bar.
Students flinched.
Rune lights along the tavern beams flared briefly.
The Institute wards really were responding.
To what? To me?
Or to whatever had sensed me?
Dietrich leaned forward, no longer teasing.
“So, Serena, you know Necromancers are rare,” he said. “Especially untrained ones.”
“That’s comforting,” I muttered.
“It means you’re powerful.”
“I don’t feel powerful,” I snapped.
I felt exposed.
Like prey.
The ghosts had gone still now.
Waiting.
The storm roared.
And somewhere high above the cliffs—something roared back.
Not audibly.
But I felt it in my bones.
It vibrated through marrow.
Through blood.
Through the thin place between life and death.
Whatever had made that sound—it wasn’t random.
It had been reacting to my arrival.
I pressed my palm flat against the tavern table to steady myself.
I had come here for answers.
For control.
For the ability to turn it off.
Instead—it felt like something had just turned me on.
Like a beacon.
Like a flare shot into the dark.
And something ancient had looked up.
Sapphire swallowed.
“You feel it too, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
Emery’s voice was almost reverent.
“I think maybe something very old just noticed you.”
The door of the tavern creaked open under a violent gust of wind.
Rain blew in sideways.
Lantern flames guttered.
And in that brief flicker of darkness—every ghost in the room turned toward the doorway.
As if they were bowing.
My heart slammed violently in my chest.
I didn’t know what was coming.
But I knew—it wasn’t human.
And it wasn’t dead.
And for the first time in my life maybe the ghosts weren’t the most dangerous thing in the room.
“The death-walker shouldn’t be in here,” someone grumbled.
A few agreed.
Nerves assailed me and I felt my stomach twist.
My new roommates looked around, and I knew they weren’t sure what to do.
I didn’t want to put them in a position where they had to choose to defend me or their own reputations.
We were, all of us, here to learn about our magic. To learn control.
But that didn’t mean they were responsible for me.
“The dead should stay dead.”
“It’s bad luck having her here!”
More grumbles sounded, and my emotions were getting the better of me. I had to leave.
Had to get out before I broke down and cried in front of them.
“Serena?” Ursula started.
I shook my head.
And I did the only thing I could think of.
I ran.